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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

VOL. XXXIX.
APRIL, 1884, TO SEPTEMBER, 1884.

NEW YORK :

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,
9 Barclay Street.

1884.

H. J. HEWITT, PRINTER, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK,

CONTENTS.

Agotac of the Pyrenean Provinces, The.

E. Raymond-Barker, .... 499
Armine. Christian Reid, ... 83, 235

Bancroft's History of the United States./?.

ff. Clarke, LL.D., 17

Building of the Mountain, The. William

Seton, 266

By-Ways. Marion A. Taggart, ... 58

Catholic Law of Marriage, The. Rev. A. F.

Heivit, ....... 145

Cattle-Ranch Life in Colorado. W. 7*.

Lamed, ....... 637

Concerning Sir Walter Raleigh. Margaret

F. Sullivan, 626

Contemporaneous China. Alfred M. Cotte, 721
Cost of Monarchy and Aristocracy in Great

Britain, The. IV. F. Dennehy, . . 688

Darwin's Mistake. Right Rev. F. S. Cha-

tard, D.D., 389

Delicacy of Shakspere, The. R. M. Johnston, 119

Evolution in the Light of Recent Researches.

'Cornelius O 1 Leary, M.D., LL.D., . 194

Histories and Catechisms. Monsignor Pres-
ton, 216

Honest Protestants and the Public Schools.

Rev. Walter Elliott, 420

Hong- Kong. //. Y. Eastlake, . . .158

Impudent Fabrication Exposed, An. Rev.

George Deshon, 114

Inaad Around the Magdalen Islands. A. M.

Pope, 369

Irish Words in Shakspere, The. C. M.

O'Keefe, S39

Is the American Republic an Anomaly in His-
tory ? Thotnas Felton, .... 449

Katharine. Elizabeth Gilbert Martin,

*75i 382, 543, 666, 822

Last Night of a Martyr, The. M. A . A Hies, 476
Last of th'e Irish Bards, The. Alfred M.

Willm7Jis, . 50

Leading Article in English Journalism, The.

A. F. Mars/tall, 312

Lesson of Life, A. Agnes Reciter, . .513
Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius,

The. L. ff. Binsse, 835

Mexico of To-day. Bryan J. Clinche, .

433

New Flagellants, The. Inzgo Deane, S.J., . 300
New Mexico and her Pueblos. Very Rev. J.

ff. Defourz, ... 72

Oratory in London, The. Mrs. Charles

Kent, 815

Paul. From the Polish "of H. Sienkiewicz-

Litwos. W. R. Thompson, . . . 406

Phases of Faith and Unfaith. Professor St.

George Mivart, 598

Philista. Maurice F. Egan, .... 739

Phillis Wheatley, the Negro Poetess. Rev.

John R. Slattery, 484

Religion of Ancient Egypt, The. Rev J.

Nilan, * 557

Religious Liberty as Understood by the Evan-
gelical Alliance. Rev. George M. Searle, 400

Ruskin as a Teacher. Agnes Repplicr, . 642

Solitary Island. Rev.J. Talbot Smith, 577, 773

Ta-wan-dah,' the Last of the Pecos. Very

Rev.J. H. Defouri, . . . . .606
Tragi-Comedy, A.. Maurice F. Egan, . . 455
Two Miraculous Conversions from Judaism.

Rev. A. F. Hew it, . . . . 13

Unitarian Belief.//. L. Richards,

. 760

Very Last Centenary of Protestant Isms, The.

Rev. Thomas J. Jenkins, . . .323

Who Could Have Taken It? . . . .695
Wisdom and Truth of Wordsworth's Poetry,

The. Aubrey de Vere, . . 49,201,335
With the Carlists. -John Augusttts O'Shea, . 801
Workman and His Little Sister, The. Kath-
leen O'Meara,

CONTENTS.

My Espousals,

My Staff of Age. Alfred M. Williams,

POETRY.

365
738

Spring in
livan,

the North. Margaret F. Sul-

234

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Armine,

Baptism of the King, The 282

Barbara Thayer 856

Book of the Professed, The, . . . .428

11 Catholic " an Essential and Exclusive Attri-
bute of the True Church, . 569

Catholic Dictionary, A, 281

Children's Book, The, 860

Clavis Rerum, 281

Confession and Absolution, ....
Constitution and Proceedings of the Catholic

Young Men's National Union,
Co-operative Commonwealth in its Outlines,

The,

Cromwell in Ireland,

Culture of the Spiritual Sense,

570 Marvellous History, A, 723

Mary Queen of Scots, and her Marriage with

Bothwell, 142

Mary Tudor, 571

Memoir of Charles Lowe, .... 43
Mental Evolution in Animals, .... 427
Metaphysics of the School, The, . . .567

Moida, . . 715

Month of Mary, . . . . 576
My Visit to Distressed Ireland, . . .138

569 Notes on the Opium Habit,

137

717

139
136

Darwinism, Stated by Darwin Himself, . . 384

Edkh ......... 432

Einsiedeln u in the Dark Wood," . . 283

Elements of Logic, The, ..... 574

Elements of Rhetoric and Composition, The, 574

Exercises for Translation into Latin, . . 144

Expos de la Doctrine Catholique, . . 566

Fe'nelon \ Cambrai d'apres Correspondance, . 855

Flowers and their Pedigrees, .... 287

From the Crib to the Cross, .... 576

Gems for the Young from Favorite Poets, . .573

Graveyard Flower, A, ..... 432

Grey of Greybury, . . . ..,_,. 711

Hand-book of Tree Planting, . ." '. ' . 431
History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese

of Vincennes, A, ..... 136

History of the Church of God, The, . . 854
History of the United States of America from

the Discovery of the Continent, . . 428
How Much I Loved Thee ! . . . .576

Indirect Evidences in the New Testament for

the Personal Divinity of Jesus Christ, .

Irish Birthday Book, The, . . . .

Irish Pedigrees, ......

Joseph Haydn,

5 68
284
285

142

Library of St. Francis de Sales, . . .569
Life of St. Francis Solanus, Apostle of Peru, . 143
Lost, and Other Tales for Children, . . 720
Lyra Catholica, 575

859

Only Reliable Evidence concerning Martin

Luther, The, 568

On the Inspiration of Scripture ; Postscript, . 565

Our Birthday Bouquet, . . . . . 576

Phoebe, 856

Poor Millionaire, The, 715

Popular Life of St. Teresa, . . . .575

Primers for the People, . . . . . 144

Prusias, 143

Public Life of our Lord, The, .... 569

Religious State, The, 427

Rituale Romanum, ...... 860

Roman Singer, A, 714

Shamrock Gone West (The), and Moida, . 715

Shaw's New History of English Literature, . 574

Short Memoir of Esterina Antinori, A, . . 432
Six Seasons on our Prairies and Six Weeks in

our Rockies, 860

Spiritual Direction for the Use of Religious

Communities, 428

Stonyhurst Illustrated, 858

Story of the Gospels harmonized for Medita-

tation, 855

Summer, 717

Tancred, Prince of Tiberias 719

To Mexico by Palace-Car, .... 860

Uriel, 137

Vicar of Wakefield, The, 429

Western Journey with Mr. Emerson, A, . 857

What is lt Castle Government "? . . . 429

What Might Have Been 431

Whirlwinds, Cyclones, and Tornadoes, . . 718
Works of Orestes A. Brownson, The, . 282,716

Year of the Sacred Heart,

Young Catholic's Normal Reader, The,

576
858

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIX. APRIL, 1884. No. 229.

THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER.

IN every age there is some salient evil, some pre-eminent
danger, against which society has to struggle and protect itself,
as against an enemy to whom it can grant no truce, but on
whom it is compelled to keep vigilant and unremitting watch
under pain of toeing surprised and overpowered. In our day
this ever-present danger is the artisan. He keeps the nineteenth
century on the qui-vive. If he is at war there is no peace for
the community; all classes must suffer, in a more or less degree,
until his mood changes and he disarms.

Forty years ago Frederic Ozanam said the time was at hand
when the working-classes would be the governing classes, and
therefore it behooved us to Christianize them, if we did not
wish to see the world fall bade into barbarism under the reign
of brute force.

In the year 1867 a little company of ladies wearing the re-
ligious garb and calling themselves Sisters of the Assumption
set sail for Algiers. The famine had swept away thousands of
the poor native population, and these had left behind them a
multitude of orphans, who were now in their turn in danger of
perishing from hunger and neglect. The priests of the mission
sent out a cry to France to have pity on the orphans, and these
Sisters of the Assumption were coming to Africa in answer to
that cry. It was a grand work that lay before them, for they
had not only to feed and clothe the little Arabs, but to give them

2 THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April

the light of the faith, to turn them from little pagans into Chris-
tians, and through them to Christianize the grown-up natives.

The work succeeded admirably. The children proved as
pliant as wax in the hands of the sisters. They were capital
pupils, learned quickly, and, by their piety, intelligence, and
readiness to adopt civilized tastes and habits, proved excellent
little missionaries on leaving the sisters. The latter, fearing the
effects of example and many other pressures if the girls re-
turned to their Mohammedan relations, married them, as a rule,
to the young men brought up by the African missionary fathers,
and enabled them to found two Christian villages, which were
named after those two great patrons of the dark continent, St.
Monica and St. Cyprian. Having thus established a flourishing
little colony of primitive Christians in the midst of an infidel
population, the sisters felt thai their task was done, and they
came home.

Just at that moment some four years ago the bishop of
Grenoble was brooding anxiously over the moral condition of
the enormous working population of silk-spinners and weavers
that his diocese includes. The condition of this portion of his
flock lay heavy on the bishop's heart, and he was casting about
on all sides for some devoted souls to come and help him to
ameliorate it

The country round Grenoble is studded all over with great
manufactories. The manufacturers have been induced to move
from the towns into the open country, in order to prevent, or at
least be in a better position to cope with, the strikes which of
late years have become so frequent and so powerfully organized.
The factories are generally situated in remote districts that offer
few resources for supplying them with hands. The result is
that the workmen have to be recruited from a distance. Some
come from villages too far from the manufactory to make it
possible for them to return home every day. These are the
greater number. They are lodged and fed by the master/*
patron, as he is termed. Of a staff of nine hundred workmen
and workwomen, he will keep, for instance, six hundred on the
premises ; the other three hundred live in the immediate rieigh.
borhood and forage for themselves.

The material lives of these latter are very little removed
those of the animals. One of the largest manufacturers

Lyons, whose factory is some fifty miles beyond the city, told

the present writer that twenty years ago the physical and mo-

ion of the women; and young girls (the workwomen

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 3

are mostly composed of the latter) was something appalling.
They hardly looked like inhabitants of a civilized country.
They never washed, unless their faces on some special occasion ;
the use of a comb was unknown to them ; and as to a tooth-brush,
the oldest habitude of the factory had never seen such a thing.
They fared very little better than savages ; their provisions con-
sisted of a sort of pudding which they brought with them on
Monday morning and ate for breakfast and dinner every day ;
this, with bread which they got at the village, lasted them for the
week. What remained of the pudding on Saturday, before the
girls emptied their tureen and went home, was, my informant
said, the most unsavory mess he had ever beheld. The workmen,
however, seemed quite contented with it. They were used to it,
and no more thought of complaining of it than the dog did of the
food prepared for him by the gardener.

The spiritual degradation of these poor toilers was on a level
with their physical wretchedness. They were as ignorant of re-
ligion as the cattle grazing in the surrounding fields. If they
knew that there was a God, and that they had a soul, and that
there was another world where they might fare better than in
this one, it was the extent of their knowledge ; and my informant
thought that the majority of the workmen were ignorant even
of these fundamental truths.

The advent of the manufacturer's wife, a young and noble-
hearted woman, full of enthusiasm for all noble things, changed
the face of this particular manufactory in a few years. But this
was an exceptional mercy to the race of workwomen. Their
condition in hundreds of other factories and workshops remained
as miserable as this one had been before the coming of an angel-
into the desolate place.

. The bishop of Grenoble asked : " Why should we not send
angels into all these places? " Nothing else, he believed, would
help either patrons or workmen, and place them in a more sat-
isfactory relation towards each other, and smooth down those
hostile feelings which are constantly finding vent in strikes, and
which are as fatal to the material interests of both parties as
to the establishment of a permanent and fruitful entente cordiale
between them. This question ouvriere was a burning one in the
diocese of Grenoble, which swarms with these great centres,,
where its adjustment is of daily and vital interest. To disarm
the antagonism of the workman and win his confidence was the
first step towards any real solution of the difficulty, and Mon-
seigneur Fava believed that this mission would be better under-

4 THE* WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

stood and more effectively accomplished by women than by men.
He resolved to get some sisters to carry the war into the
enemy's country, and by strategy, by surprise, by all the arts
and weapons of legitimate warfare, to capture the ouvner and
bring him into subjection to their sceptre of charity. Where
to find a little band of these peaceful warriors to begin with was
the difficulty. Their name was legion in the church of France,
but wherever the bishop applied the answer was the same" We
are too few ; the harvest is white, but we want more laborers."
There was not a member to spare anywhere. He was beginning
to despair when the Sisters of the Assumption, returned from
their fourteen years' exile to Africa, heard of the new mission he
proposed and offered their services. The bishop accepted with
delight. The Sisters had energy and zeal this they had proved
beyond doubt and the religious spirit flourished admirably in
the little community.

The plan of their new campaign, though less adventurous at
first sight, demanded really more courage, and far more tact and
skill and knowledge, than the mission they had accomplished in
Africa. The intelligent, active French workman is a far more
difficult individual to manage than the ignorant, lazy Arab, and
the task of the Sisters was to conciliate and capture him, and
save him against his own will.

Nothing daunted, they set to work. They were to take up
their abode in one of the working centres ; they were to live
with the ouvrier, to constitute themselves his servants, to become
thoroughly acquainted with his needs, his dangers, his life al-
togetherto make, in fact, his moral and temporal welfare the
aim and end of their vocation. They were to be called Les
Petitcs Sceurs de fOuvrier the Little Sisters of the Workman.

To have secured these auxiliaries was a grand point gained ;
but the bishop had next to obtain the consent at least, and if
possible the co-operation, of the manufacturers. Six of the most
important in the neighborhood of Grenoble came and held a
meeting with him, and discussed the matter in all its bearings.
They recognized the immense advantages which they themselves
might derive from the scheme, and agreed at once to give it
their fullest support. Every detail was discussed, and, oddly
enough, the only point on which the meeting disagreed was the
costume of the sisters. The bishop wished it to be white ; he
wished the sister to be, even externally, a symbol of innocence
and purity and simplicity in the midst of the rough, grimy,
unwashed population of the factory. The gentlemen were of

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 5

opinion that the white costume would soil too quickly for econo-
mical purposes ; they yielded, however, to the loftier and more
spiritual considerations of Monseigneur pava.

This all happened in the summer of 1880 that memorable
year, destined to figure in the annals of the church of France as
the year of the Expulsions. Communities, one after another, had
been turned out of their convents and sent adrift to find shelter
where they could. The Catholics of France opened homes to
them all over the country. The head of an honorable family in
Grenoble wrote to the superior of one that had just been ex-
pelled, placing at his disposal a good, spacious country-house
surrounded by a large garden. It was admirably suited for a
community. But the mission of this particular order made a
residence in a town necessary ; the superior gratefully declined
the offer, but told the generous proprietor that he would be
doing a work of equal charity, and perhaps greater good to the
neighborhood, if he offered the house to the Petites Sceurs de
rOuvrier, whose intended mission he explained in a few words.
The proprietor immediately invited the sisters to come and take
possession of the house.

The news of their coming was received with universal satis-
faction by the inhabitants of the village and the country round.
They determined to give them a grand reception. May-poles
were put up and flags set flying along the road leading to the
house, and the gate was decorated with flowers and banners.
The people then congregated in great force at the church, where
the sisters were to alight, and where the bishop awaited them.
After a solemn benediction his lordship and the sisters, followed
by the entire congregation singing canticles and carrying a ban-
ner, set out for the house. Just as they reached the garden-
gate a sudden storm arose and the rain fell in torrents, with an
accompaniment of thunder and lightning. Nothing scared by
this dramatic interruption, the gay procession rushed on into the
house amidst much merriment and thanks to the weather for
timing its performance so opportunely, while the bishop assured
them that the rain, which lashed the windows so as nearly to
drown his voice, was an omen of the blessings that were going to
pour down on them in the coming of the sisters.

The appearance of the Petites Sceurs de fOuvrier in the work-
shops was quite an ev-ent. Their white habit caused some sur-
prise at first; but the result soon proved that Monseigneur Fava
was right. The working men and women quickly came to love
the white costume of their Little Sister, as they love the white

6 THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

cornette of the Sister of Charity, and to look upon it as a symbol
to be respected and a beacon to be followed.

It was an arduous vocation this that the Little Sister had
embraced ; it included complete devotion to the whole working
population of the great usine, some seven hundred human be-
ings, men, boys, women, and little children. She was to be with
them late and early not as a passing visitor, but as a constant
companion. She was not to be a religious, emerging from the
retreat of conventual life at stated intervals to impart instruction
or consolation to the publicans and sinners outside, and returning
to her convent to enjoy devout exercises and prayerful leisure ;
she was to be the friend and helpmate and servant of the pub-
licans and sinners, to live amongst them, to enter into their
troubles and their interests, to be at their beck and call all the
day long.

The house of the Sisters was in no sense of the word a con-
vent. It was a home where they lived in common with as many
ouvrtires as could find sleeping shelter there. The largest upper
rooms were arranged as dormitories; and here the Little Sis-
ter slept, keeping watch even through the night over those con-
fided to her, and by her presence enforcing order and silence.
The beds around her were occupied by the girls who came from
too great a distance to return home after their work. They
were to pay what covered the expenses of their food, and no
more. They breakfasted at the " home," the maison de famille,
as the house is appropriately called, and then went to the work-
shop at six.

The sisters heard Mass, devoted a short time to prayer, and,
thus strengthened for the work of the day, followed their
charges and remained in the workshops from half-past seven to
mid-day. The boarders then went back for their dinner, which
they took in common with some of the sisters, while others
remained to preside over the larger number who dined at the
shop. The foremen, and the forewomen also, noticed a change
in the tone of the workmen from the day the Little Sister re-
mained in the refectory. Her presence acted at once like a
charm : it purified the atmosphere and kept the rude men and
women unconsciously in check. It seemed as if the sight of
the white costume made coarseness and profanity impossible.
The boldest never dared offend the Little Sister by a dubious
joke or a blasphemous word ; if such were spoken voices fell,
that she might not hear them. But soon they ceased even to
whisper what was not fit for her to hear. In a very short time

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 7

the manners, and even the appearance, of the women showed the
effect of her influence and example. The spotless purity and
simplicity of her garment rebuked untidiness, dirt, and flimsy
finery, and little by little these gave way to habits of cleanliness,
neatness, and modesty. The " White Sister " became a power
that none resented, not even those who did not quite succumb to
it. She did so much for them and she asked so little in return !

During the work-hours the sister went about amongst the
work-people, men and women indiscriminately, advising, encour-
aging, cheering them. She was simple and outspoken with them
as an equal, and they came soon to make her the confidant of
their troubles, even of their faults. If they were lazy, or muti-
nous, or ill-tempered she scolded them ; and they took a scolding
from ma sceur when they would not have borne a word from the
foreman. The sisters on duty in the manufactory itself re-
mained there till six o'clock, when they returned to the " home."

While these had been busy amidst the elders and youths
their companions were employed giving lessons to the children
of the workmen ; there were classes for the little girls and the
little boys separately, and in the evening for grown men and
women who wished to attend them.

When this busy day was over the sisters were well tired
and glad enough to lie down to rest with the workwomen sleep-
ing soundly all around them.

The patrons, as the masters are called, were not slow to per-
ceive the solid benefits that must accrue to them, as well as to
their workmen, from the assistance of the Little Sisters, and
they soon gave them their entire confidence and facilitated their
task in many ways.

They opened a savings-bank and placed it under the man-
agement of the sisters. No pressure was put upon the men,
but the advice of ma sceur soon induced them to put aside some-
thing for the future, and they came to her regularly every week
with the sum they had agreed to nibble off their wages. Some-
times she had to jog their memory; but as a rule they were
punctual in their self-imposed payment.

A fund for the sick was also founded jointly by the masters
and the men, the former agreeing to double the amount annually
contributed by the latter. From this fund the sister draws the
money needed for the workman and his family when sickness
visits them.

And here a new field opens for the exercise of her charity
and helpful kindness and zeal. The time of suffering is for all

8 THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

of us the time of grace. It is especially so for the poor. Sick-
ness for them is weighted with a multitude of superadded trials.
When the rich man falls ill friends make haste to show their
concern by calling to see him and lightening the weariness of
the sick-room by their sympathy and conversation ; they read
to him, they bring him books or flowers, or other little offer-
ings that may cheer or gratify him. The poor man in sickness
knows no such alleviations. He has had no leisure to make
friends. His time and his energies have all gone to the strug-
gle of keeping body and soul together. Charity, heroic charity
born of faith or of that fellow-feeling that makes us " won-
drous kind," the poor exercise towards one another in times of
deepest need, when famine or pestilence draws them close in a
bond of common agony or despair ; but of the graces and helps
of friendship they know nothing. When, therefore, the workman
falls ill he is left alone ; healthy neighbors are at work and too
busy to come and comfort him. But the sister makes time to
visit him ; she reads tq him, and chats with him, and keeps up
his spirits, which are apt to fall below zero when he finds him-
self on a sick-bed, out of work, with all the consequences of that
terrible circumstance staring at him day and night. This is the
Little Sister's grand opportunity, and she turns it to account
like the veriest Jesuit who ever set a trap for a sinner ! When-
ever sickness comes into the workman's home the Little Sister
hurries after it as swiftly as the eagle hurries after the dead
body. She has already circumvented the sick man by her
previous kindly interest in himself and his family, and now he is
an easy prey to her sweet wiles. She knows all about him. He
has nothing to confess. If he is a bad man he has all the greater
claim on her compassion. She nurses him and shows him kind-
ness and respect. He is touched by her gentle ways and her
disinterested goodness. Insensibly he becomes softened to re-
ligion because she represents it. She feels her way, and, like a
skilful diplomatist, leads the unsuspecting victim to think of his
soul. He has probably never been to confession since his First
Communion ; if a priest attempted to propose his going now the
sick man would swear at him. But how can he refuse ma sceur?
She has been so good to him ! " Mon Dieu, since you wish it,
ma soeur ; I will not have you think me an ungrateful dog. I will
see M. le Cur6 to please you."

And M. le Cur6 comes, and the sinner makes his peace with
God, and either dies a good death or recovers to be a better
man ever after.

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 9

If he dies ma sazur still pursues him with her sweet charity.
She has helped him through the last passage, and now she follows
him to his last resting-place with his sorrowing family, or alone
if there be none to mourn him. Nothing, perhaps, that the
Little Sister does for the ouvrier touches him more than this.
Every man in the manufactory feels glad to think that she will
accompany him to his grave and say a prayer over him. Not
long ago the mother of a workman died. It was at some dis-
tance from the factory where the young man was employed ;
there was no one but himself to walk after the lowly hearse.
" I will come with you, my poor fellow," said the Little Sister.
And the two walked side by side to the distant cemetery.
Some laborers at work in a field saw them passing and said :
" She looks like an angel in her white dress."

Even the masters who are themselves indifferent in the mat-
ter of religion are glad enough to have the men brought under
such influences as these. The workshops where the Little Sisters
are soon become transformed so as to be hardly recognizable.
Blasp*hemy and bad language are abandoned as if by instinct, and
the lamentable disorders which make so many of these huge
centres dens of vice disappear completely. Another result,
which certain patrons appreciate even still more, is the disap-
pearance of that antagonism towards their employer which
seems inherent in the French ouvrier. The Little Sister is like
a peacemaker, perpetually smoothing away little asperities and
inspiring kindnesses and concessions on one side which evoke
gratitude on the other, and thus creating a solid foundation for
a cordial mutual understanding. A great manufacturer re-
marked to the superior of the sisters that since they had come
to the factory his workmen touched their hat to him oftener in
a day than formerly in a month.

A further advantage which the masters derive from the pre-
sence of the sister is the preference shown by respectable women
and modest, well-conducted girls for the workshops where she
presides, and their reluctance to change their employer on her ac-
count. Even the bait of higher wages often fails to tempt them
to leave ma sceur.

The city of silks, with its' innumerable looms and silk-weaving
population, soon claimed the 'Little Sisters. They came to a
small town, La-Tour-du-Pin, in the neighborhood of Lyons,
and founded a house there under the protection of the illustri-
ous Lyonese heroine, St. Blandine. The manufacture employs an
immense proportion of very young girls, who are exposed to

io THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

countless perils in the workshops where the}' congregate, and
where evil influences predominate, as a rule, unchecked by any
moral supervision. A moment of special danger for the work-
woman here is the time that intervenes between the removing a
finished piece of silk from the frame and setting up another.
This enforced vacation of sometimes a whole afternoon leaves
her free from all control and throws her necessarily into many
temptations. The arrival of the Little Sisters provided her at
once with a convenient and pleasant refuge at this crisis. She
could go to the convent and be welcomed by ma sceur, who was
glad of her help in some household duties or in the garden. The
sisters were so kind, and showed such an interest in the work-
women, that these, in their turn, were pleased and flattered to be
allowed to help the sisters. The rule of constant attendance at
the workshops, and the receiving unprotected girls into the
house, and holding classes, and nursing the sick, and comforting
the dying, and honoring the dead, was carried out at La-Tour-du-
Pin as in the home near Grenoble, and with the same happy re-
sults. The piety of the workwomen soon became one of the
sweetest rewards of the Little Sisters. Lyons is the classic land
of charity and of revolution. The population present the most
startling combination of faith and savagery to be met with in
France, that country of contrasts and paradoxes. The amount of
money given by the Lyonese of all classes every year in charity is
astounding, and the most fertile enterprises have been started and
continue to be nobly supported by them. The Propagation of the
Faith and the Little Sisters of the Poor both sprang up in this
hotbed of revolt and violence. It has been said that the alms
of Lyons will suffice alone to save France.

The spirit of faith which finds its expression in this material

charity proved to be dormant, but not dead, in the ignorant and

undisciplined population of the factory at La-Tour-du-Pin. The

chapel soon became the centre of interest to the girls, so much

so that when some one had merited praise by her diligence or

good conduct on some particular occasion the reward she

asked for was permission to go to the chapel and make a visit

D U Bon Dieu. Once the boarders in the community-house

ehaved and were well scolded by the superior. Instead

llmg, as would have been the natural consequence had
ie patron or the forewoman lectured them for their bad be-
or, the girls recognized their fault, and, by way of repair-
it, they went to the superior and asked leave to get a Mass

five o'clock next morning, so that they might assist at it

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 11

before going to the workshop. The mother consented, and two
of the workwomen went off in quest of a priest to say the Mass
for them. No one had to be called twice, although the sacrifice
of an hour's sleep was keenly felt by them all.

This house at La-Tour-du-Pin was not long at work when
trouble overtook it. The silk trade is, perhaps, more sensitive
than any other to the political atmosphere of France, and, in-
deed, of Europe. No civilized nation can go to war but the
fact affects the weavers and spinners of Lyons. When "the
situation " is gloomy at home, when the Chamber threatens to
dissolve or the ministry to resign, or when foreign politics look
dangerous, the activity of the looms relaxes. The Kulturkampf
of Germany and the troubles of the church in Switzerland had
their contrecoup at Lyons in the immediate slackening of the de-
mand for the rich brocades that are woven there for vestments.

Any one who has visited the silk manufactories of Lyons in
prosperous times must remember with what a sense of relief he
escaped out into the quiet street from the deafening rumble of
the machinery and the click of the frames snapping after the
shuttles. A more trying thing far it is to visit a manufacturing
city when the looms are silent, when the weavers no longer make
the air resound with the heavy tick-tack of the frames as they
bend over them, flinging the shuttle. The silence means " slack-
time," that terrible visitation more dreaded by. the workman than
an epidemic. It is to him what the dead calm is to the sailor out
on the high seas. There is nothing to be done when the good
ship is becalmed ; no spreading of the canvas, no working of the
engines, no efforts in any direction can avail. There is nothing to
do but wait till the wind rises and fills the sails, and moves the
ship on her course. And meantime all on board may die of hun-
ger and thirst.

Lyons is visited periodically by these terrible calms. They
cannot be prophesied or forestalled ; they depend on the va-
garies of politicians, the tricks of speculators, the moods of
kings. In the year 1882 the tremendous financial crash which
involved thousands of honorable families throughout France
brought the silk-weavers to a sudden standstill. They dropped
their shuttles and went home, and counted how man} 7 days'
bread they had money to buy without working. These periods
of dead calm are fraught with many dangers to masters as well
as men. The men, having nothing else to do, go to the wine-
shops and talk politics ; and talking politics, to the French work-
man, is the most intoxicating of all dram-drinking. Under any

THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

other kind of intoxication he may have le vin gai or le vin tendre,
but when he gets drunk on politics he invariably has le vin
furieux. The slack-time always brings on this dangerous sort of
delirium tremens. When it breaks out amongst the workmen
the bravest patron keeps out of their way. But the Little Sister
has nothing to fear. Her task during these paroxysms of in-
sanity becomes very much like that of the keeper of raving ma-
niacs or a cage of wild beasts. She alone may venture within the
dangerous precincts. The most furious will not dream of laying
a finger on her. Her white costume gives her a charmed life;
she may come and go amidst the rough, exasperated politicians
as safe as a little child. If any were so brutal as to say a coarse
or disrespectful word to her, that man's life would not be worth
an hour's purchase ; a score of grimy hands would be clenched .to
strike him and avenge ma s&ur.

A visitor described the opulent city of silks after the sudden
crash two years ago as "a town after a siege." There was
despair and rage and ruin everywhere. But the Little Sisters
and the white cornettes went about quite fearlessly, even in the
quarter of the Croix Rousse, that was like a seething furnace
of revolution, and the men and the women listened to reason
from them when they would hear it from no one else.

At La-Tour-du-Pin the home and work of the Little Sisters
were caught in the general catastrophe. The masters had to
dismiss many hands, contributions fell off, and the " Home,"
where the year before beds were crowded into every available
corner, was nearly empty. It was a trying time for the com-
munity, but they went bravely through it, cheering and en-
couraging others, helping to the utmost of their power, and in-
spiring confidence by their own courage and example. The bad
times made their mission in some respects more valuable than
ever.

Many wealthy families of the neighborhood, who were not
personally interested in their mission, were so moved to admira-
tion by their intelligent self-devotion that they coalesced to assist
them in carrying it on. The consequence was that in a short time
the " Home " was more flourishing than ever ; the house was en-
larged, funds were supplied for developing the work and open-
ing new opportunities for the workman. Sunday reunions were
organized, and made so attractive that there was soon scarcely a
respectable workwoman who did not prefer them to those dan-
gerous places of amusement where she had hitherto spent her
Sunday afternoon.

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 13

The Little Sister had at an early date cast anxious eyes to-
wards the workwomen employed in the shops supplied from the
factory, and longed to extend her sheltering care to them. There
is scarcely any position which claims compassion more than that
of those young girls in a large town. After a long day's work
they leave the shop for some lonely room where no affectionate
welcome, no cheerful fire even, awaits them, only cold and loneli-
ness. How can they resist the temptation of the public-room,
where there is, at any rate, bright light and noisy companionship
to be had, and where the pitfalls are so softly covered over as to
be almost imperceptible to the unwary, lonely one?

The Little Sisters determined to open a refuge to these poor
girls. They appealed to the bishop, who appealed to his flock,
and the means were soon forthcoming. A house was provided,
and the sisters fitted it up- on the plan of the maison de famille y
and invited the shop-girls to come and live there, lodging being
offered them gratis and food at cost price. Never did courtiers
fly to accept a roval invitation more eagerly than these poor
girls flew to the bidding of the Little Sisters. In a trice the
house was so crowded that there was not standing-room for a
bed from garret to cellar. What came of this hospitality, how
many souls were rescued by it, how many mercies secured to
those who partook of it, even the Little Sisters cannot guess.

The monks of the Grande Chartreuse heard of these things
and begged the bishop to send Little Sisters into their neighbor-
hood. There are vast factories at and about Voiron, the station
where pilgrims alight for the monastery. All the proprietors of
these great beehives joined their appeal to that of the monks,
and promised the white costumes a hearty welcome. Of course
the Little Sisters came. And a right royal welcome they did
receive. The bishop and his clergy, and the clergy of the neigh-
boring towns, were there to greet them, and the towns-people
and the peasantry. It was as if some powerful and wealthy
benefactor had arrived to spread happiness and prosperity
amongst the people. And so, in truth, it was.

" The blessing of Almighty God rests visibly on our work,"
wrote one of the sisters to the mother-general ; " and I am more
and more convinced that it will greatly benefit the working
population of our industrial towns, first as regards their religious
and moral well-being, and next as concerns their social inte-
rests."

The rapid expansion of the enterprise was a sufficient proof of
the justice of this observation. Before it had been two years in

i 4 THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

operation the Little Sisters were established in one of the largest
spinning factories in Normandy. The factory resembles a town,
so wide is the space it covers and so vast its population. The sis-
ters took up their abode in the very centre of it, and their house
soon became the home, in a certain sense, of all the work-people,
men, women, and children. The chapel, with its sweet silence, its
music and lights, and flowers and odorous atmosphere, drew
them like a charm. Their hearts opened to the pious influences
centred there, and they began to feel a personal delight and
pride in adorning it. Once, for Corpus Christi, without any hint
from the sisters, they brought quantities of flowers to decorate
the altars ; every tiny patch of garden, every balcony where all
the year round geraniums and sweet-smelling flowers and plants
had been lovingly tended, was stripped of its contents and the
spoils carried to the chapel.

The Little Sisters have a school in this great spinning factory
of Lisieux; it is conducted by one of them, who has her diploma
of institutrice. The whole work, both in the school and the fac-
tory, is carried on by five sisters. One, who has a talent for
cookery, presides over the soup-kitchen and the refectory, where
wholesome food is provided for the workman at cost price. The
supervision of the factory and the care of the sick absorb the
other three members of the community.

Times are changed since the days of St. Francis de Sales,
when the idea of an order where women in the garb of religious
should go abroad in the service of the sick was an innovation too
like a scandal to be even tried as an experiment. How surprised
the holy bishop would be perhaps is? to see the white cor-
nettes, and the white habit, and all the legion of modern nuns
who go boldly through our towns in the service of suffering
humanity !

A stranger visiting this factory at Lisieux in the sultry dog-
days saw a pretty sight. Two Little Sisters were going about
the workshops giving the men to drink ; one Little Sister carried
the big pitcher full of cool lemonade, the other filled the glasses
and passed them to the workmen, who drained them off with a
hearty " Thank you, sister ! " that told how welcome Avas the
kindly refreshment.

The workman's " Thank you " is not an empty word. He is a
practical man, and shows his gratitude to ma sceur in the way
most acceptable to her. He tries to behave better and to follow
her ad vice. The chaplain of the factory preached one Sunday on
the advantages and the power of prayer, and of the special bless-

1884.] THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. 15

ing that was granted to prayer made in common. After the
sermon the Little Sister talked it over with the workmen, and
urged the foremen to say morning prayers aloud, each in his
own workshop, every day. A number of them promised to do so,
and the very next morning they assembled and gave out the
Pater and Ave and a short prayer, the men responding. To
the surprise of the sisters and the workmen, a Flemish foreman,
a good and very popular man, did not join the movement. No
questions were asked, but comments and conjectures were ex-
changed as to the cause of this abstention. At the end of a week
it came out that the poor Fleming did not know the " Our Fa-
ther " in French, and had to set his French wife to teach it him
before he could recite it in public.

Nowhere has the mission of the Petite Sceur de VOuvrier de-
veloped so successfully, perhaps, as in this immense factory of
Lisieux. From being a mere industrial machine, a wheel of
human labor, and in many respects a centre of moral misery, it
has become a vast human family where God is feared and wor-
shipped, and where employers and employed are knit together
by a kinder and holier bond than mutual material gain.

Such is the work already accomplished by this small phalanx
of brave and loving women. Measuring the possibilities yet
before them by the amount they have already done, it seems al-
most as if they might change the entire social condition of the
country, were they only numerous enough. They themselves
contemplate no such grand horizons. They go about here and
there in little groups of threes and fives, wherever a bishop sends
for them, or wherever a patron beckons them to come and help
him rule his men, and, like humble little missionaries, they try to
make peace, coming and going between the masters and the men,
soothing, pleading, encouraging by turns. They lead the same
life everywhere. It is a life which would be intolerable to re-
fined, educated women, were they not filled with the true spirit
of the Gospel, the spirit of Him who lived as an equal and a com-
panion with common fishermen and publicans. Routine, even
the pleasantest, is soon no better than a treadmill unless there
be love enough to sustain our interest in the work. The interest
of the Petite Sceur never flags in hers ; the love never runs short.
All she wants is leave to spend herself in serving the workman.

The novice-house of the community is now annexed to the
mother-house in the Department of Isere. It is situated on the
road to La Salette, and is one of the wildest and most picturesque
spots of the country. In this profound solitude, under the

16 THE WORKMAN AND HIS LITTLE SISTER. [April,

shadow of the mountains, those generous young souls who has-
ten to God with the offering of their sweet springtime come to
learn their work and prepare to fight his battles. At first it
seemed as if the solitude of the place scared them away. No-
vices were slow to come. The mother-general began to fear
that the position of the novitiate was unwisely chosen. But it
was only a delay to try her faith.

Five young candidates unexpectedly presented themselves at
the convent gate ; one came from Flanders, one from Normandy,
two from other provinces of France, and one from India. They
were all clothed the same day with the white habit in the month
of August, 1882. That was a glad day for the bishop of Gre-
noble, and he drew from his heart words of burning eloquence in
addressing the five wise virgins who had come with their lamps
filled betimes to go forth and seek the Bridegroom in the high-
ways and byways.

France owes much to her bishops ; but perhaps none of them
has done her a more valuable service in the present age than
Monseigneur Fava by this invading army of humility and love
that he has sent into the heart of the working-classes. These
gentle peacemakers will probably do more towards softening the
irritation of the operative, and disarming antagonism between
him and his master, than all the measures of the politicians.

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 17
BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.*

IV. MARYLAND TOLERATION.

IN our two articles on Mr. Bancroft's History of the United
States in the October and November numbers of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD we undertook to prove that the chief motives which
actuated the two first Lords Baltimore, George and Caecilius
Calvert, were, firstly, a desire to extend the Catholic faith, and,
secondly, to provide on the shores of the Chesapeake an asylum
for the persecuted followers of that faith in 'England. We think
we have successfully refuted the intimations of Mr. Bancroft
that mercenary motives induced them to undertake and perform
one of the most honorable and exalted works of human benevo-
lence and impartial, just, and wise statesmanship. We think we
have also shown that Lord Baltimore and his Catholic associates
and followers, having secured a liberal charter and a magni-
ficent landed domain in Maryland, and having founded there an
asylum for English Catholics who were then suffering a relent-
less persecution at home from motives of justice mingled with
benevolence, and of consistency with Catholic principles, ex-
tended to all Christians perfect freedom from all religious in-
tolerance and coercion, and erected Maryland into a place of
refuge not only for Catholics flying from Protestant persecution
in England, but also for Protestants flying from Protestant per-
secution in the other English colonies in America.

After two centuries and a half of concurrent and unanimous
historical tradition and record, by which Maryland was acknow-
ledged to have been a Catholic colony and its Catholic law-
givers to have been entitled to the exalted credit of establishing
religious liberty Mr. Bancroft himself uniting in this concur-
rence and unanimity in fifteen editions of his history it seems
strange that, at this late day, it becomes necessary, for us to
prove that Maryland was a Catholic colony, and that the world
is indebted to Catholics for this example of the first State found-
ed in the New World upon the broad constitutional and moral
principle of no coercion in matters of religious belief.

* History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the Continent. By
George Bancroft. The Author's Last Revision. Vols, i., ii., and iii. New York : D. Appleton
& Co. 1883.

VOL. XXXIX. 2

1 8 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STA TES. [April,

In fifteen editions of his history prior to 1876 Mr. Bancroft
has the following passage : " Lord Baltimore, who for some un-
known reason " (we have shown in our October and November
articles that his reasons were well known, most necessary, and
wise) "abandoned his purpose of conducting the emigrants in
person, appointed his brother to act as his lieutenant ; and on
Friday, the 22d of November [1633], with a small but favoring
gale, Leonard Calvert 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 pinnace, set sail for
the northern bank of the Potomac."

In the present edition before us, " the Author's Last Revision,"
1883, this passage in our history is transformed so as to omit the
italicized words, most of them Roman Catholic, and for them are
substituted the dull, prosaic words, "with very near twenty
other gentlemen of very good fashion, two or three hundred labor-
ing men well provided in all things." Mr. Bancroft has been
nearly forty years finding out that besides the twenty gentlemen
there were more than two hundred other persons. He now
writes two or three hundred. Lord Baltimore, in a document
accessible to all, has stated the number to have been three hun-
dred.

In fifteen editions prior to 1876 Mr. Bancroft states that
" upon the 27th day of March THE CATHOLICS took quiet posses-
sion 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."

This beautiful passage, sustained historically by the concur-
rent voice of historians, commentators, and critics for two hun.
dred and fifty years, is now, in " the Author's Last Revision," 1883,
transformed into the following blunt, unsympathetic, self-evi-
dently and intrinsically false version of the same event : " Upon
the 27th the emigrants, of whom by far the greater number were
PROTESTANTS, took quiet possession of the land which the gover-
nor bought." The word emigrant he applies to all indiscrimi-
nately, and thus with evident intent strives to convey a false im-
pression of the true character of the colony.

For such a liberty taken by our historian with the uniform
record of history for two and a half centuries for such a liberty
taken with fifteen published editions of his own work, covering
over a period of nearly half a century of study no authority, no
author, whatever is cited.

The only writer whom Mr. Bancroft can quote and he does

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STA TES. 19

not appear even to Mr. Bancroft to be of sufficient historical
weight to be quoted or cited by name in Mr. Bancroft's history
.is the Rev. Edward D. Neill. This person, in a small pamphlet
entitled Mary land not a Roman Catholic Colony, after quoting a pas-
sage from a letter of Lord Baltimore, Csecilius Calvert, to the Earl
of Straff ord, stating, in regard to the colony embarked on the Ark
and Dove, " There are two of my brothers, with very near twenty
other gentlemen of a very good fashion, and three hundred labor-
ing men," wrote the following unauthorized and gratuitous state-
ment : " These laboring men were mostly Protestants, as they
took the oath of supreme allegiance before sailing ; and of the
twelve who died on the voyage ten were Protestants. Thomas
Cornwallis and Jerome Hawley, who went out as councillors of
the colony, were adherents of the Church of England." Mr. Ban-
croft, without making research of his own, follows these unau-
thorized assertions and conclusions.

It is a matter of surprise and regret, we might say of indigna-
tion, that a man of Mr. Bancroft's long and ripe experience, of
his extensive and profound study, of his opportunities for re-
search and access to historical documents, of his practical know-
ledge of statesmanship and diplomatic service, of his long ob-
servation of men and nations in their civil and religious history,
should go back on his own history, sentiments, and convictions,
and, at a time when in England and Germany, the countries with
which he was most associated and most in sympathy, the current
of public, official, and private opinion was reacting in favor of
the Catholic Church, that he, having caught the infection of a
temporary flurry of anti-Catholic sentiment, should give perma-
nent form to it, and strive to make it monumental and historical,
and while his friends and models on the other side of the At-
lantic, imperial William and still more imperial Bismarck, are ac-
tually retracing their steps and journeying to Canossa, Mr. Ban-
croft remains at Geneva, worshipping at the Mecca of extreme
Protestantism. His knowledge of politicians might have taught
Mr. Bancroft that as political motives induced Bismarck to per-
secute Catholics in Germany, so also his policy would change
with any political motive or interest, and he would even cringe
to his late victims in order to secure a ministerial majority in the
Prussian Parliament. Mr. Bancroft has seen this, and more, for
he now beholds the Prussian Prince Imperial, who addressed a
stern and haughty letter, upholding German persecution of Ca-
tholics, to Pope Pius IX., going to do homage at the^Vatican
to Pope Leo XIII. The persecution, offspring of a policy, has

20 BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

now been, or is about to be, buried with the dead issue. As
we cannot attribute Mr. Bancroft's altered attitude toward Lord
Baltimore and the Catholics of Maryland to historical enlighten-"
ment, we have no other cause, we regret to say, to attribute it
to than religious bigotry. At an advanced age, otherwise vene-
rable, he has relapsed under the educational influences experi-
enced in his youth in the Puritan colleges of New England and
the Protestant universities of Germany. His history, under his
personal revision, has degenerated into a panegyric of Protes-
tantism. The Catholic mind feels offended at Mr. Bancroft's
conduct. The present writer would experience some diffidence
in speaking alone in the Catholic cause, and hence he feels great
satisfaction in quoting, as an evidence that he does not misunder-
stand or misstate it, the following passages in the American Ca-
tholic Quarterly Review for October, 1883, from the pen of his
friend, Dr. John Gilmary Shea, one of the ripest scholars the
American church has produced, a pupil, admirer, and friend of
Mr. Bancroft, and one who, like the present writer, would far
prefer to praise than to blame in the case before us :

" The history of the settlement of Maryland under the second Lord
Baltimore is rewritten so as to belittle in every way the proprietary and
those who under it planted that province with a liberality, a prudence, an
administrative ability till that time unequalled in America. Every line
shows the influence of a religious fanatic,* whose violence should pre-
vent any sound historian from adopting his statements or his conclusions,
for where Catholics are concerned he cannot possibly be civil or honest.

" Under the new theory of history Maryland ceases to have been a
colony planted under Catholic influence or controlled at any time by
Catholics ; Clayborne becomes a hero and a patriot ; the Protestants who
in Virginia allowed no Catholic to land, the Puritans who proscribed
Catholics and flogged, starved, and hung Quakers in New England, and
imprisoned for life the one rash man who dared raise his voice in their
behalf these men, we are now assured, are the men who really deserve
credit for Maryland toleration. Can a man believe it and not dishonor
his common sense ? If the Church-of-England man and the Puritan of
that day became tolerant in Maryland when bigots, fanatics, and persecu-
tors everywhere else, it could only be due to some Catholic influence in
Maryland; their humanity in the actual presence of Catholics must have
burst forth into life, nowhere else manifest at that day, for in England
Catholic priests met death in those times from Episcopalian and Puritan
alike. Puritans in Maryland put Catholic prisoners to death, when the
field was won, as ruthlessly as Melendez did Huguenots in Florida ; and
Episcopalians established their church .by law the moment they gained
power, taxed Catholics doubly, and compelled them to support an Episco-

* The Rev. E. D, Neill, author of Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony, is probably here
referred to.

1884.] BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 21

palian ministry and attend their churches under heavy penalties. The
mildest of censure, however, is given to all this, and rhetoric lends its aid
to hold up the persecutor as the champion of religious liberty."

Now, the argument of the Rev. E. D. Neill, and of Mr. Ban-
croft as inferred from his " Centenary Edition" and " the Author'?
Last Revision," may be stated substantially thus: The actual
colony of Maryland in 1633 consisted of Leonard and George Cal-
vert, brothers of Lord Cascilius of Baltimore, about twenty other
gentlemen, mostly Catholics, and their servants and laborers; con-
sisting of two or three hundred persons more ; the vast majo-
rity of these latter were Protestants, and constituted a numerical
Protestant majority of the entire colony : therefore Maryland was
not a Catholic but a Protestant colony.

A brief reference to uncontested facts will show the utter
fallacy of this argument and the conclusion sought to be deduced
from it. Conceding for the sake of the argument that a ma-
jority of the servants and laboring men bound to service were
Protestants, and that the majority of this class constituted the
majority of the entire number of persons who came over to
Maryland in the Ark and Dove from England in 1633, it by no
means follows that Maryland was not a Catholic colony, or that
the policy and statute of religious liberty were due not to Catho-
lic but to Protestant agencies. Reserving for later notice in this
article the question as to what religion was professed by the
bare numerical majority of persons in the colony, we now con-
sider the subject from the standpoint of the above argument
even.

The character historically of a colony is determined by the
head and governing class in the colony. The religious charac-
ter of the movement from its inception ; the religion of the pro-
jector and founder of the colony, of the lord-proprietary and
owner of the charter, the proprietor of all its lands ; the reli-
gion of the governor and his councillors, of the leading officials,
and of the heads of families ; the religion of the political electors
of members of the legislature ; the religion of members themselves
of the legislature; the religion of the law-making power, both
executive and legislative all these constitute the elements that
must determine whether a colony is a Catholic or a Protestant
colony. Now, it cannot be denied that all these elements, from
the first inception of the projected colony by the Catholic pro-
prietary, Lord George of Baltimore, down to and including
that illustrious body, the Assembly of 1649, which enacted the
celebrated Statute of Religious Liberty, were Catholic. A

22 BANCROFT } s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

family, for instance, where the head is a Catholic, where the
father and mother and all the children and members proper of
the family circle are Catholics, is to all intents and purposes a
Catholic family, notwithstanding the fact that they employ alto-
gether or to a great extent Protestant servants, even though the
servants, as is generally the case, are more numerous than the
members of the family circle. The servants may enjoy their
rights of conscience and the privilege of worshipping God ac-
cording to their preferences, but their sentiments otherwise are
not recognized and have no influence whatever either in the
internal government and management of the family nor in the
public tone, influence, or recognition of the family. Such a case
is analogous to the condition of the Maryland colony under Lord
Baltimore and the twenty gentlemen accompanying his brother
and lieutenant-governor to the banks of the St. Mary's. Not
only was all the social, financial, landed, and educational influence
and power concentrated in their hands, but so also was the en-
tire political power of the community and state. No law could
be enacted without the assent of the Catholic lord-proprietary ;
so that the executive, a co-ordinate branch of the law-making
power, was exclusively Catholic. So also under the charter, and
under the instructions of Lord Baltimore and the writs issued
for calling together the Assembly, none but freemen were enti-
tled either, to vote or to attend or hold seats in the Assembly.
The freemen, particularly in the earlier years of the colony,
were few indeed, consisting at the time of landing only of the
" twenty gentlemen of good fashion," as described by Lord Bal.
timore, and others amounting to ninety freemen in the whole
colony ; and, as General Johnson, in his Foundation of Maryland,
says, " it is equally certain that a large majority of the freemen
were Roman Catholics." The servants, or those held under in-
dentures or contracts for domestic service or labor or me-
chanical work for terms of years in consideration of their trans-
portation to the colony, were not freemen, and were utterly
disfranchised and deprived of all voice in the government until
the expiration of their respective terms of service. The free-
men, or those entitled to participate in the General Assemblies,
were almost entirely Catholics, and the servants were divided
between Catholics and Protestants, and, for the sake of the pre-
sent argument, are conceded to have been mostly Protestants.
Hence the power, both social, financial, and political, rested en-
tirely in the hands of the Catholics. General Johnson, in the
same work above quoted, says at page 51 : " Politically, socially,

1 884.] BA NCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 23

and religiously it [the colony] was Roman Catholic " ; and again:
" The intellectual and moral and political control was Roman
Catholic.'' Hence all the Assemblies held in the colony, from
the first, held in 1635, until that of 1649 included, were composed
of a majority of Catholics. The Assembly of 1650 was the first
in which it is claimed and conceded that there was a majo-
rity of Protestants. The language of the charter is that the pro-
prietary was empowered, " for the good and happy government
of the province, to ordain, make, and enact laws, whether per-
taining to the public state of the province or the private utility
of individuals, by and with the advice, assent, and approbation
of the freemen or the greater part of them, or of their delegates or
deputies." It was not incumbent on the lord-proprietary to call
the Assembly together or to enact laws, for he could have gov-
erned the colony by proclamation under and according to the
common law of England, as was done to a considerable extent.
Such was the general common-law and chartered power vested in
the executive that, for purposes of preserving the peace and pro-
tecting the colony and the colonists in their common-law rights,
the instructions of the lord-proprietary to his lieutenant-gover-
nor and the two commissioners united with him in the gov-
ernment of the colony were amply sufficient. Hence for nearly
a year after the planting of the colony no other government
than this was known or desired. The Statute of Religious Lib-
erty was not enacted until 1649, sixteen years after the foundation
of the colony. Yet during those sixteen years the most perfect
religious liberty was enjoyed by the Protestant colonists and by
the Protestant refugees from persecution suffered by them in
the Protestant colony of Virginia and Puritan colonies of New
England.

This brings us to the most important part of our inquiry.
For it is in these facts that we find the origin and firm establish-
ment of religious liberty in Maryland, which are due originally
and exclusively to the instructions and proclamations of Lord
Baltimore, promulgated and enforced in the colony by his
brother and lieutenant-governor, Leonard Calvert, and the two
commissioners united with the governor in the government of
the colony. The first case we will relate occurred in the year
1638, eleven years before the Toleration Act. The trial, con-
demnation, and punishment of Captain William Lewis, a Catholic,
and the agent of Captain Cornwallis, one of the commissioners,
for using contumelious language against the Protestant religion
and its ministers, and for interfering with the reading aloud

24 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STA TES. [April,

among themselves of Protestant books by some Protestant ser-
vants of Captain Cornwallis, form one among many ample proofs
that religious liberty was guaranteed to Protestants during this
period of sixteen years before the passage of the Act of Tolera-
tion, but are also conclusive proof that such was the law (so to
say) of the colony, and that it was based upon a public procla-
mation issued by the governor, Leonard Calvert, under the
instructions of Lord Baltimore. The court that tried and con-
demned Captain Lewis of this offence was composed of the gov-
ernor, Leonard Calvert, Captain Cornwallis, commissioner, and
Mr. Secretary Lewger, all Catholics. The following extract
from the proceedings of the court clearly establishes the fact
that toleration was established and protected in the colony under
proclamation from the lord-proprietary and his lieutenant-gov-
ernor :

"And Mr. Secretary found him [Captain Lewis] guilty of an offensive
and indiscreet speech in calling the author of the booke an instrument of
the divell ; but acquitted him from that he was charged withall in the
writing, that he used that speech touching Protestant ministers in gene-
rail. He likewise found him guilty of a very offensive speech in calling
the Protestant ministers the ministers of the divell. He likewise found
him to have exceeded, in forbidding them to reade a booke otherwise al-
lowed and lawful to be read by the State of England ; but he acquitted
him of the accusation that he forbad his servants to have or use Protes-
tant books in his house. And because these his offensive speeches and
other his unseasonable disputations in point of religion tended to the dis-
turbance of the publique peace and quiett of the colony, and were commit-
ted by him against a publique proclamation sett forth to prohibite all such dis-
putes ; therefore, he fined him 500 weight of tobacco to the Lord of the Pro-
vince, and to remaine in the Sheriff's custodie untill he found sufficient
sureties for his good behaviour in those kinds in times to come.'' *

The second case we will cite of a public accusation, trial, and
punishment for an infringement upon religious liberty was that
of Dr. Thomas Gerard, a Catholic, one of the most prominent
and influential men in the colony, son of Sir Thomas Gerard, of
England, who is said to have been the first English Catholic
(even prior to Lord Baltimore) who conceived the idea of
planting a Catholic colony in America as an asylum for English
Catholics, and who had held offices of the highest trust and
power in the colony. This case occurred in 1642, seven years
before the passage of the Toleration Act. The Protestants of
the colony were inconsiderable either in numbers or in zeal for

* Papers relating to the Early History of Maryland. By Sebastian F. Streeter. Md. Hist.
Soc. Fund Publication No. 9. Baltimore, 1875. Pp. 216.

1884.] BANCROFT' s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 25

their faith, so that it was not until some time after the year 1649,
or over sixteen years after the foundation of the colony, when
they had a minister of their own. But provision was made for a
chapel for their use, and services were no doubt therein perform-
ed by the lay members. The very title to the land on which the
Protestant chapel was built was held by a Catholic gentleman
a fact which is cited to prove that there was no member of the
colony of any consideration except Catholics. Dr. Gerard was
accused to the council by the Protestants of " taking away the
key of the chapel and carrying away the books out of the chapel."
Although this act of an ardent Catholic is attributed to a zeal
for suppressing this movement of the Protestants to form a con-
gregation and maintain a chapel, yet it seems also to have been
based upon some claim to the property, although it turned out
upon investigation that the ostensible title was vested in another
Catholic colonist. The House gave a hearing to the accusation
and to the defence, and Dr. Gerard was found guilty and sen
tenced " to return the Books and to relinquish all title to them or
to the house, and pay a fine of 500 Ibs. of Tobacco towards the
maintenance of the first minister as should arrive."

In further proof of the fact that for sixteen years before the
passage of the Toleration Act religious liberty had been pro-
claimed as the law of the land by the direction of Lord Balti-
more, and had been protected therein, we cite the declaration
of the Protestants themselves, in which they acknowledge in
1650, solemnly over their signatures, that they were indebted to
the lord-proprietary for the enjoyment of this privilege. Lord
Baltimore, after the death of his brother, Leonard Calvert, had
appointed William Stone, a Protestant, his lieutenant-governor,
who remained such at the time referred to three Protestant
members of the council ; and at this time also, under the tolerant
policy and laws of Lord Baltimore, a majority of the Assembly
were Protestants. They united in a public declaration, dated
April 17, 1650, from which we quote the following passage :

" We the sayd lieutenant, council, burgesses, and other Protestant in-
habitants above mentioned, whose names are hereunto subscribed, doe
declare and certifie to all persons whom it may concern, That according to
an act of assembly heer, and s.everal strict injunctions and declarations by his
sayd lordship for that purpose made and provided, we doe heere enjoy all fit-
ting and convenient freedome and liberty in the exercise of our religion
and that none of us are any ways troubled or molested, for or by reason
thereof, within his lordship's sayd province."

Upon the subject of this declaration, which bears the signa-

26 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

tures of fifty-five leading Protestant officials and colonists, Mr.
Scharf, the latest historian of Maryland, and a Protestant, says :
" This declaration proves that the religious toleration they en-
joyed was not due alone to the act of 1649, but to the uniform
policy of Lord Baltimore and his government." This document
is also valuable as a declaration from the most authentic Protes-
tant source that the political power in the colony had been held
in Catholic hands.

In further proof of this fact, if proof be needed, it may be
mentioned that Lord Baltimore was the absolute proprietor of
the province, and, subject to the Indian title, which he honestly
and honorably acquired, was the absolute owner of every inch
of land in the colony. He was also empowered by the charter
to create courts of law and appoint the judges. The common
law of England was the law of the province, and this he could
have administered through his lieutenant, the council, and the
courts, and did so administer the same, without the Assembly or
legislature; and if we may judge from the subsequent experience
of Maryland, and of our own experience at the present and for
some time past, such administration without the aid of legisla-
tures and congresses is more advantageous for the common-
wealth.

But Lord Baltimore's proprietary rights and his ownership
of the entire landed estate enabled him absolutely to control the
whole destiny of the province. He could have withheld his
sales and grants of land from all except Catholics, and thus have
secured a solid Catholic colony, and neither the Episcopalians
nor members of any other sect could have obtained a stand-
ing or a foothold therein. No church or chapel except Catholic
churches or chapels could have existed in the province except
by his consent, for not a foot of land could have been secured
except by his consent. We have already seen that his govern-
ment required even a private citizen who was a Catholic to relin-
quish title to the Protestant chapel and pay a fine of five hundred
pounds of tobacco towards the minister when one should come.
Lord Baltimore, on the contrary, threw open his colony as a
refuge for all, and men of every faith flocked in, refugees from
persecution in England, Virginia, and New England ; and had
they felt and manifested the same noble virtue of gratitude dis-
played by the Maryland Protestants of 1650 the later history of
Maryland would have reflected more credit upon their memories.
The fact that religious toleration was introduced into Mary-
land under proclamation from the lord-proprietary is frequently

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 27

referred to in official documents and in the histories of Mary-
land. General Johnson, in The Foundation of Maryland, referring
to the Conditions of Plantation of 1636, writes": " He," Lord Bal-
timore, "had, in some proclamation' or public declaration, before
then published as inducements for colonists that they would be
granted liberal donations of lands and be 'secured in the enjoyment
of their religion ; for the first clause of these conditions (1636) re-
fers to his former promises, and declares that by this latter docu-
ment he provides for fulfilling them." In 1751 the policy of re-
quiring Catholics to pay on their lands double the amount of taxes
exacted from Protestants led to a spirited controversy between
the upper and the lower houses of the legislature. In one of the
documents addressed by the upper house to the lower house the
following passages occur :

"After the charter was thus granted to Lord Baltimore, who was then
a Roman Catholic, his lordship emitted his proclamation to encourage the
settlement of his province, promising therein, among other things, liberty of
conscience, and an equal exercise of religion to every denomination of Christians
who would transport themselves and reside in the province, and that he
would procure a law to be passed for that purpose afterwards." . . . "The
grant to Lord Baltimore, who was a papist, his lordship's promises and de-
clarations, the confirmations of them by acts of Assembly, and the oaths we
have recited, we hope will amply justify our assertion that the Roman
Catholics were promised and allowed an asylum here."

Mr. Scharf, the most recent Protestant historian of Maryland,
says:

" As we have already shown, the evidence leads to the conclusion that
the colony, though containing many non-Catholics, was a Roman Catholic
settlement originally, and so continued until 1649, when the great Tolera-
tion Act was passed. But this act introduced no new principle nor polity
into the government of the colony : it was but the legislative sanction and de-
claration of a principle and policy practised from the beginning. And these
facts, that Maryland thus tool^the lead in religious freedom, and was the
first community in modern times in which the civil was effectually separat-
ed from the ecclesiastical power, not only do high honor to its founders
but are of deep importance to the history of the world."

Mr. Bancroft himself, in this " the Author's Last Revision,"
vol. i. p. 162, though he omits all reference to the proclamation of
religious liberty by or under the direction of Lord Caecilius of
Baltimore, which he must have found frequently referred to in
his researches, expressly acknowledges that religious toleration
in Maryland had its origin through the benignity of the administra-
tion. He says :

" Toleration grew up in the province silently, as a custom of the land.

28 BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

Through the benignity of the administration no person professing to be-
lieve in the divinity of Jesus Christ was permitted to be molested on ac-
count 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, Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance."

With such an admission how is it consistent, how is it just, in
Mr. Bancroft to change his account of the foundation of Mary-
land, as written in fifteen editions, to the meagre, insinuating, and
incriminating account given of the same events in his " Centenary
Edition " of 1876 and in " the author's Last Revision " ? Is it just
to attribute mercenary motives to a Catholic who, holding power
in his own hands in an age of persecution, gave Protestants an
asylum from Protestant intolerance?

The following passage from a small brochure by the Rev. E.
D. Neiil, Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony, must have formed
the only basis of Mr. Bancroft's alterations of his history of the
foundation of Maryland, though utterly unsustained by autho-
rity, and though the means of refuting its gratuitous assertions
were within the easy reach of Mr. Bancroft. After citing Lord
Baltimore's letter to Wentworth, stating that the colony con-
sisted of two of his brothers, very near twenty gentlemen, and
three hundred laboring men, the Rev. Neill writes: "These
laboring men were mostly Protestants, as they took the oath
of supreme allegiance before sailing; and of the twelve who died
on the voyage ten were Protestants. Thomas Cornwallis and
Jerome Hawley, who went out as councillors of the colony,
were adherents of the Church of England."

Now, in order to test the accuracy of the first point made in
this passage, that the laboring men were mostly Protestants be-
cause they took the oath of supreme allegiance, let us examine,
firstly, How many laboring men were on board, and how many
took the oath ? Secondly, Was the oath one of supreme allegiance,
involving allegiance to the king of England, both in temporal and
spiritual affairs? Thirdly, Was the oath such as Catholics could
not take, and does it follow that all who took the oath were Pro-
testants ? Fourthly, What were the facts connected with the
twelve deaths on board, of which ten were of Protestants? Fifth-
ly, Were the two councillors, Cornwallis and Hawley, Protestants
or Catholics ?

Now, in regard to the first of these inquiries, the number of
laboring men on board was three hundred, as stated by Lord Bal-
timore himself, than whom no one on earth could have been
better informed on the subject. In his letter to Wentworth,

1884.] BANCROFT" s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 29

dated January 10, 1633 quoted by the Rev. Neill himself in his
Terra Maria, p. 60, and found also in Stafford's Despatches and
Letters, vol. i. Lord Baltimore states :

" I have, by the help of some of your lordship's good friends and mine,
overcome these difficulties and sent a hopeful colony into Maryland, with
a fair and favorable expectation of good success ; however, without any
danger of any great prejudice unto myself in respect that many others are
joined with me in the adventure. There are two of my brothers gone,
with very near twenty other gentlemen of very good fashion and three
hundred laboring men well provided in all things."

Now, how many of these took the oath ? It is related by the
Rev. Neill himself and by historians for he is none such that a
considerable number of the men were on shore and were board-
ed among the inhabitants there under contract by Mr. Gabriel
Hawley. The rest of the men were on the ships. The number
that took the oath are reported by Edward Hawkins, " the Lon-
don searcher" the very official who went on board and adminis-
tered the oath in his report to the Privy Council. He reports
the number as one hundred and twenty-eight. His official re-
port is as follows:

"According to your lordship's order of the 25th day of this instant
month of October, I have been at Tillbury Hope, where I found a ship
and pinnace belonging to the Right Honorable Cecil Lord Baltimore,
where I offered the oath of allegiance to all and every the persons aboard,
to the number of about one hundred and twenty-eight, who took the same ;
and inquiring of the master of the ship whether any more persons were to
go the said voyage, he answered that some few others were shipped who
had forsaken the ship and given over the voyage by reason of the stay
of said ships."

The oath was administered on the 25th of October, 1632, and in
the following January, 1633, Lord Baltimore wrote to Went-
worth that he had sent out his two brothers, twenty gentlemen,
and three hundred laboring men.

It thus appears that only one hundred and twenty-eight took
the oath out of three hundred, thus leaving one hundred and sixty-
two who did not take the oath. It is evident that the answer of
the ship's master, that there were only a few others, and these
had abandoned the voyage, was deceptive. For it is recorded
by all historians that the others were kept together on shore,
awaiting the sailing of the vessels, it not being convenient to
keep so many men on shipboard during these delays, and that
they, together with the Jesuit fathers who accompanied the
colony out from England, came on board afterwards at the Isle

3 o BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. [April,

of Wight. The Rev. Neill himself makes this statement at page
89 of liis Terra Marie : " After the oath was taken the vessels
proceeded to the Isle of Wight, when Father White and others
who had not taken the oath had an opportunity to come on
board." This disposes effectually of the statement that a majo-
rity on board took the oath, unless we admit that one hundred
and twenty-eight are a majority of three hundred. Using the
same method of argument adopted by the Rev. Neill, we are
justified in concluding that a majority viz., one hundred and
sixty-two out of three hundred of the laboring men were Catho-
lics.

The second and third inquiries are as to the character of the
oath taken by the colonists : Was it an oath of supremacy as well
as of allegiance, and could Catholics take the oath then and
there administered?

The oath of allegiance was freely taken by the Catholics of
England ; the oath of supremacy, by which the king or queen of
England was recognized as the spiritual sovereign also, or head
of the church on earth, they refused to take, and suffered pains
and penalties, confiscation and imprisonment, banishment and
death, rather than take it Lord Baltimore, when he went to Vir-
ginia on a visit before planting his colony, had both oaths pre-
sented to him : he offered to take the oath of political allegiance
to his king, for there was nothing in his religion to prevent a
Catholic from taking the oath of temporal allegiance to a Protes-
tant sovereign ; but the oath of spiritual supremacy he refused
to take, because, according to the Catholic faith, this is due alone
to Christ, the head of the church in heaven, and to his Vicar, the
Sovereign Pontiff arid successor of St. Peter. The Rev. Neili
misrepresents this part of the history of the Maryland colony.
The oath of spiritual supremacy was not administered to or ta-
ken by any of the Maryland colonists before sailing, either Catho-
lics or Protestants. The oath administered to the one hundred
and twenty-eight colonists on board the Ark and Dove was the
oath of political allegiance only, which had been taken by Catho-
lics before that time and since the same oath in substance that
has been taken, with the permission of the church, by the Catho-
lics of France, England, and Ireland down to recent times. It is
true the oath contained clauses disclaiming all right in the pope
to political power in England, or power to absolve British sub-
jects from their political allegiance, or power to depose or mur-
der the king of England, or power to absolve British subjects
from their oath of allegiance to the sovereign of England ; but as

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 31

none of these doctrines are or have ever been taught by the Ca-
tholic Church, there was nothing in any of these declarations,
though couched in distasteful language, that Catholics could not
submit to or accept.

To a better understanding of the subject we will here tran-
scribe the oath administered to the Maryland colonists on board
the Ark and Dove by the London searcher, to the number of one
hundred and twenty-eight, on October 25, 1632, before the sail-
ing of the ships ; and this oath is published in his book by the
Rev. Neiil himself, so that he was not ignorant of its charac-
ter :

" I do truly and sincerely acknowledge, profess, testify, and declare in
my conscience, before God and the world :

"That our Sovereign Lord, King Charles, is lawful and rightful King of
this realm, and of all other his Majesty's dominions and countries, and
that the Pope neither of himself, nor by any authority of the church, or
See of Rome, or by any other means with any other, hath any power or
authority to depose the King, or to dispose of any of his Majesty's King-
doms or dominions ; or to authorize any foreign Prince to invade or annoy
him or his countries ; or to discharge any of his subjects of their alle-
giance and obedience to his Majesty ; or to give licence or leave to any
of them to bear arms, raise tumults, or to offer any violence or hurt to his
Majesty's royal person, state, or government, or to any of his Majesty's
subjects within his Majesty's dominions.

"And I do swear from my heart, that notwithstanding any declaration
or sentence of excommunication or deprivation, made or granted by the
Pope or his successors, or by any authority derived, or pretended to be
derived, from him, or his See, against the said King, his heirs or successors,
or any absolution of the said subjects from their obedience, I will bear faith
and true allegiance to his Majesty, his heirs and successors, and him and
them will defend to the uttermost of my power against all conspiracies
and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his or their persons,
their crown and dignity, by reason or color of any such sentence or de-
claration, or otherwise j and will do my best endeavor to disclose and make
known unto his Majesty, his heirs and successors, all treasons, or trai-
torous conspiracies, which I shall know or hear of to be against him or any
of them.

" And I do further swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and
abjure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position : that
Princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the Pope may be de-
posed or murthured by their subjects, or any other whatsoever.

"And I do believe, and in conscience am resolved, that neither the
Pope, nor any person whatsoever, hath power to absolve me of this oath,
or any part thereof, which I acknowledge by good and full authority to be
lawfully ministered unto me, and do renounce all pardons and dispensa-
tions to the contrary. And all these things I do plainly and sincerely
acknowledge and swear, according to these express words by me spoke,
and according to the plain and common sense and understanding of the

32 BANCROFT 's HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

same words, without any equivocation or mental evasion, or secret reser-
vation whatsoever. And I do make this recognition and acknowledgement
heartily, willingly, and truly upon the true faith of a Christian.
" So help me God."

That the popes of the middle ages exercised a certain autho-
rity over princes ; that they constituted the tribunal of peace or
court of arbitration among princes, exercised the power of ex-
communicating them (which is purely a spiritual power and is
exercised now by all churches over its members), and even of de-
posing them, is true. But these quasi-political powers exercised
by the popes grew out of no dogmatic definitions of faith either
by the popes or councils of the church ; they grew out of the
political condition of Europe at those times, out of the relations
which Catholic countries and sovereigns, by their own consent
and by the common interests and conventions of the nations,
bore to each other and to the popes. There was a recognized
common law of Christendom upon which these powers were
founded. The circumstances, social, political, international, and
economic, which gave rise to the exercise of these prerogatives
have long since passed away, and with them all claim or pre-
tensions to their possession or exercise. As the history of the
middle ages proves that Christian sovereigns regulated their re-
lations with each other and with their subjects through the ar-
bitration of the popes, whom the}'- thus constituted, as it were,
the chief-justices of Christendom, and that this power was ex-
ercised in the interests of humanity, of justice and liberty, so
also the history of modern times, say for the last three hundred
years, shows that this commonwealth or family of Christian na-
tions has been disintegrated and the exercise of such political
influence by the popes has been utterly discontinued. Arch-
bishop Francis P. Kenrick, of Baltimore, in his learned and pro-
found work on The Primacy of the Apostolic See, disclaims all pre-
tensions on the part of the Sovereign Pontiffs at the present time
to the exercise of these powers ; showing that as the reasons
for their exercise have passed away, so also has the right itself
passed away. This is in accord with an ancient maxim of the
English common law, which is still recognized as good law, that
when the reason which gave rise to any part of the common
law ceased to exist the law also ceased to apply cessante ratione,
cessat quoque lex. The archbishop also shows that no solemn
definitions of the popes or of the church ever claimed that these
powers were vested in the Sovereign Pontiffs.

Several prominent instances in modern times have occurred

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 33

in which the doctrines contained in the oath administered to the
Maryland colonists have been affirmed.

The French clergy in 1682, fifty years after the administration
of the oath cited above to the Maryland colonists, in the reign
of Louis XIV. united in a Declaration which, contained substan-
tially the same disclaimers as were contained in the said oath.
This remarkable document was approved and signed by the
entire French hierarchy, with the illustrious Bossuet at their
head. It sets forth

" That St. Peter and his successors, vicars of Jesus Christ, or even the
entire church, have not received from God any power except in spiritual
matters and those which regard our salvation, and not in temporal or
civil concerns ; Jesus Christ himself declaring that his kingdom is not of
this world. . . . Therefore we declare that kings and sovereigns are not
subject to any ecclesiastical power by the order of God in temporal af-
fairs ; that they cannot be deposed, either directly or indirectly, by the
authority of the keys of the church ; that their subjects cannot be dis-
pensed from the submission or obedience which they owe them, nor ab-
solved from the oath of allegiance ; and that this doctrine, which is neces-
sary to public tranquillity and no less advantageous to the church than to
the state, ought to be inviolably followed, as conformable to the word of
God, to the traditions of the holy Fathers, and to the examples of the
saints." .

This celebrated Declaration of the French hierarchy, although,
in the precise language used, regarded as objectionable to Catho-
lic ears, has been pronounced by the Holv See to contain no
proposition deserving theological censure. Bossuet, who wrote
an eloquent defence of its principles (which he always main-
tained), is justly regarded as one of the greatest prelates that
the church has produced. The doctrine which it annunciates
regarding the political independence of princes, their immunity
from deposition by spiritual authority, and the inviolability of
the oath of allegiance, which could not be dissolved or dispensed
by the church or popes, was held by the most learned and es-
teemed theologians of France, Germany, and Spain. It was au-
thentically approved in 1789 by a joint declaration subscribed
by the great Catholic universities of Paris, Douay, Louvain, Sala-
manca, and Alcala.

In 1826 the same questions, substantially, were raised in the
No-Popery agitation against Catholics in England. In order to
meet the false accusations brought against the loyalty of Catho-
licscharges which had met with their best refutation in the
unswerving and acknowledged loyalty of Catholics in the perse-
cuting reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth the whole English
VOL. xxxix. 3

3i BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

hierarchy united in and published a Declaration of the Catholic
Bishops, the Vicars-Apostolic, and their Coadjutors, in Great Britain,
from which we make the following extracts :

"No power in any pope or councilor in any individual or body of
men invested with authority in the Catholic Church, can make it lawful
for a Catholic to confirm any falsehood with an oath, or dispense with any
oath by which a Catholic has confirmed his duty of allegiance to his sove-
reign, or any obligation of duty or justice to a third person. He who takes
an oath Is bound to observe it, in the obvious meaning of the words or in
the known meaning of the person to whom it is sworn.

" The allegiance which Catholics hold to be due and are bound to pay
to their sovereign and to the civil power of the state is perfect and un-
divided. They do not divide their allegiance between their sovereign
and any other power on earth, whether temporal or ecclesiastical. They
acknowledge in the sovereign, and in the constituted government'of these
realms, a supreme civil and temporal authority, which is entirely distinct
from, and totally independent of, the spiritual and ecclesiastical authority
of the pope and of the Catholic Church. They declare that neither the
pope nor any other prelate or ecclesiastical person of the Roman Catholic
Church has, in virtue of his spiritual or ecclesiastical character, any right
directly to any civil or temporal jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-emi-
nence, or authority within this realm ; nor has any right to interfere, di-
rectly or indirectly, in the civil government of the United Kingdom or
any part thereof ; nor to oppose, in any manner, the performance of the
civil duties which are due to his majesty, his heirs and successors, from
any or all of his majesty's subjects ; nor to enforce the performance of any
spiritual or ecclesiastical duty by any civil or temporal means. They hold
themselves bound in conscience to obey the civil government of this
realm in all things of a temporal and civil nature, notwithstanding any
dispensation or order to the contrary had, or to be had, from the pope or
any authority of the Church of Rome.

" Hence we declare that by rendering obedience in spiritual matters to
the pope Catholics do not withhold any portion of their allegiance to their
king, and that their allegiance is entire and undivided ; the civil power of
the state and the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church being abso-
lutely distinct, and being never intended by their divine Author to inter-
fere or clash with each other."

At the same time with the above Declaration was issued and
published An Address from the British Roman Catholics to their
Fellow-Countrymen, uniting with the disclaimer of the bishops,
and from which we take only one passage, as follows :

"To our sense of the sacred obligation of an oath (i) we daily sacrifice
every object of ordinary ambition ; is it in human nature that we can be-
come perjured men in this solitary instance ? We are accused of idolatry
we disclaim the imputation (2) ; of not keeping faith with heretics we
disclaim the imputation (3) ; of dividing the allegiance which is due to the
king we disclaim the. imputation (4) ; of acknowledging in the pope a

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 35

deposing power we disclaim the imputation (5) ; of believing that a priest
can absolve from sin at his will and pleasure we disclaim the imputation
(6). Each and all of these opinions we most solemnly and unequivocally
disclaim."

This address is signed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal
of England, and by seventy-one other noblemen and leading Ca-
tholic laymen of Great Britain, in behalf of the entire Catho-
lic population of the kingdom. Other cases could be cited in
which similar declarations were made by similar authority, af-
firming the same principles. But we think we have shown
there was nothing in the oath administered to one hundred and
twenty-eight of the Maryland colonists to show that even they
were Protestants. On the contrary, the fact that such an oath
was administered on board the Ark and Dove an oath presented
only to Catholics, on account of the unjust suspicions entertained
ot their loyalty is rather an argument in favor of the parties
sworn thereon being Catholics. It is asserted by historians gen-
erally that the colonists were suspected or regarded as being
Catholics and of having conscientious scruples against taking the
oath of allegiance. And the immediate occasion of arresting the
voyage out and of administering the oath to the colonists was this
suspicion, and another kindred suspicion entertained and express-
ed in regard to them that they were taking out nuns on board
the ships and were going to Spain in connection with some hostile
movement against the Protestant state or interest in England.
It seems hardly credible that such suspicions could have been
entertained or such measures taken in regard to a colony com-
posed of a majority of Protestants. The Protestant authorities
of England seemed to consider the entire colony as Catholic.

All Catholics will unhesitatingly affirm that a belief in the
power of the popes to depose sovereigns is not and never has
been an article of their faith. Any such tenet has never been
promulgated by any Sovereign Pontiff or defined by any oecu-
menical council. It has never been taught in any Catholic cate-
chism or in any approved exposition of Catholic doctrine.
Some scholastic theologians have, indeed, maintained that a tem-
poral supremacy was conjoined by Christ with the spiritual
supremacy conferred by him on his Vicar on earth. But this
opinion has never been received with any degree of general
favor. It has never obtained general acceptance. It has never
been regarded as anything more than a mere scholastic opinion,
a dubious thing canvassed and debated with the utmost liberty
of the schools. ' If adopted by some learned divines, it has been,

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

on the other hand, contested most strenuously and rejected by
the vast majority of Catholic theologians. It is not necessary
to espouse that theory in order to justify the acts or course
of policy adopted by many popes in the middle ages in relation
to the government of Christian states. The prerogative which
they claimed and exercised of discrowning princes, depriving
them of their kingdoms, and releasing subjects from their alle-
giance, was derived, not from a theological opinion, but from a
principle of mediceval jurisprudence which was* universally recog-
nized by kings and people in the ages of faith. The popes, as
the spiritual fathers and supreme pastors of all Christian nations,
were acknowledged and appealed to as the arbiters and judges
in all disputes which arose between the rulers and the governed.
Their decisions were regarded as final and irreversible, and
when they declared any king or other temporal potentate had,
by cruelty, despotism, or gross injustice, violated the compact
with his people by which he had solemnly pledged himself at
his coronation, then the law of nations declared that the ruler
thus condemned had ipso facto forfeited all right to the sovereign
power and position which he had abused, and that his people
were released from all obligation of fealty and obedience to him.
The changed conditions of things in this regard since the divi-
sions of Christendom introduced by Henry VIII., Luther, Cal-
vin, and their followers has caused this prerogative to go into
desuetude, and the means of protecting the people of Europe
from despotism are gone. Europe is one vast armed encamp-
ment, and standing armies of enormous size preserve a grim
peace which is liable at any moment to be interrupted by the
most sanguinary wars ; and philosophers and philanthropists
are striving to substitute for the spiritual arbitrament of the
popes, which was exercised in favor of justice, peace, and popu-
lar rights, such measures as peace congresses and international
codes. But without effect. The Pope is a prisoner in the Vati-
can, and the people and the church are encompassed by a vast
military despotism. Archbishop F. P. Kenrick, in The Primacy
of the Apostolic See, thus disposes of the subject :

"The deposing power continued for a long time to be a subject of bit-
ter controversy, the English government requiring the abjuration of the
opinion in terms that condemned it as impious and heretical, and Rome
sing slow to sanction any formulary that implied censure on the acts of
y pontiffs, or even to relinquish a power which she had once effectually
Jlded for the interests of humanity and religion. Louis XIV. induced
French clergy in the Assembly of 1682 to deny it formally, at a time

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STA TES. 37

when there was a disposition on the part of the pope to exercise it. At
length the excitement of controversy passed away. The oath, abjuring the
opinion, without any offensive censure, was generally taken by the Catho-
lics of the British Empire without blame from the Holy See ; the opinion
was disclaimed by many Catholic universities, and Pius VI., through Car-
dinal Antonelli, prefect of the Propaganda, answering the Irish bishops,
made the following important declaration : ' The See of Rome never
taught that faith is not to be kept with the heterodox ; that an oath to
kings separated from the Catholic communion can be violated ; that it is
lawful for the Bishop of Rome to invade their temporal rights and domin-
ions. We, too, consider an attempt or design against the lives of kings
and princes, even under the pretext of religion, as a horrid and detestable
crime.'"

The next argument used to show that a majority of those on
board the Ark and Dove were Protestants is that whereas twelve
persons died on the voyage and ten of these were Protestants,
therefore the majority of the whole were Protestants. This is
not a sound argument. It is not usual to compute the average
of mortality among men by taking the statistics of deaths on
voyages at sea. The conditions of people at sea are too excep-
tional to justify such a method. The statistics of life and death
can be and are only taken from among men living on land, and
in their homes, and in ordinary life, in order to establish the
usual results therefrom. But there were peculiar circumstances
attending the twelve deaths on the ships. Father White relates
the circumstance thus :

" If you except the usual sea-sickness, no one was attacked by any dis-
ease until the festival of the Nativity of our Lord. In order that that day
might be better kept, wine was given out ; and those who drank of it too
freely were seized the next day with a fever; and of these, not long after-
wards, about twelve died, among whom were two Catholics. The loss of
Nicholas Fairfax and James Barefote was deeply felt among us."

Now, it must be borne in mind that the twelve deaths were
caused by excessive abuse of wine on Christmas day, and only
two of the twelve who died of this cause were Catholics. The
proper iuference is that the Catholics, who were accompanied
on the voyage by their pastors, and who were men of pro-
nounced religious sentiments and were in the daily observance
of religious worship, were from religious principle more tem-
perate, were more restrained by the presence of their pastors
on board, and had also then, as they have now, more respect for
the religious character of Christmas day. The Protestants, on
the other hand, were from the lower social class, felt no responsi-
bility for the character of the expedition, were not restrained

38 BANCROFT 's HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

by any of the influences of religion arising from the presence
of their pastors or the constant observances of religious devo-
tions and prayer. Their accommodations, too, on the ships were
less comfortable, and no doubt less conducive to health ; their
circumstances and means made wine a rarer luxury, in which
they were more apt to indulge to excess when obtained, and
they were less restrained by higher social influences and culture.
If the argument is worth anything it should be logically carried
out, and made to read that as only two out of twelve of the per-
sons who died on the voyage were Catholics one-sixth there-
fore the Catholics on board the ship constituted only one-sixth
of the whole colony, and therefore there were only fifty-six Ca-
tholics and two hundred and sixty-eight Protestants. Such a
method of argument would prove too much. It would be just
as logical to say that whereas one-sixth of those who died on
the voyage from excess in drinking wine were Catholics and
five-sixths Protestants, therefore Protestants are five times more
intemperate than Catholics.

The next question raised in reference to the Rev. E. D.
Neill's assertions is that he claims that the commissioners,
Jerome Hawley and Thomas Cornwallis, appointed by Lord Bal-
timore to accompany his brother, Governor Leonard Calvert,
and to participate with him in the government of the colony,
were Protestants. No authority whatever is given for this as-
sertion. The only support he gives to his assertion is the allega-
tion that they each had several Protestant relatives. This is no
proof that they were Protestants, for several other well-known
persons connected with the colony had Protestant relatives, and
it is also well known that they also, Messrs. Hawley and Corn-
wallis, were related to and allied with prominent Catholic indi-
viduals and of that day. It is also to be mentioned that these
commissioners were among the twenty gentlemen of the colony,
and these have been uniformly described by contemporaneous
and subsequent writers as Catholics. It is also not supposable
that Lord Baltimore, in organizing a Catholic colony, intending
it, too, as a refuge for Catholics, and sending with them his in-
structions for the establishment of liberty of conscience, would
have selected two Protestants as the councillors and associates of
the Catholic governor in carrying these measures into effect,
especially in the very infancy of the colony. As the Rev. Neill
gives no authority for his assertion, it may well be regarded as
refuted by the general improbability of the fact, and the pro-
bability that only Catholics would have been selected in the in-

1 884.] BANCROFT'S HISTOR Y OF THE UNITED STA TES. 39

fancy of the colony for these offices. If two such prominent
men two only among twenty, all the others being Catholics-
had been Protestants, the fact would have certainly been men-
tioned in the narratives and histories of the day. But no such
facts appear. But there are certain historical facts tending
strongly to prove that they were both Catholics, and in a doubt-
ful case these facts completely turn the scale.

These two gentlemen were among the foremost colonists in
carrying the cross and planting it on the landing of the colony,
Governor Leonard Calvert and Messrs. Hawley and Cornwallis
having been the first three persons who took the cross and car-
ried it to its place of elevation. They two united in reciting
with the Catholic governor and with the Jesuit chaplains of the
colony the Litany of the Holy Cross. Father White, in his Re-
latio Itineris in Marylandiam, mentions this fact, and in such a
manner as to amount almost to a positive statement that these
assistants and associates of the governor in the planting of the
colony were Catholics :

"After we had completed the sacrifice [of the Mass] we took upon our
shoulders a great cross, which we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in
order to the appointed place, with the assistance of the governor and his
associates and the other Catholics, we erected a trophy to Christ the Saviour,
humbly reciting on our bended knees the Litanies of the Sacred Cross with great
emotion."

We find also in A Relation of the Successful Beginnings of the Lord
Baltimore's Plantation in Maryland, etc., Anno Domini 1634 (Shea's
Early Southern Tracts, No. i) the following account of the same
event :

" Here we went to a place where a large tree was made into a Crosse ;
and taking it on our Shoulders, wee carried it to the place appointed for it,
the Governour and Commissioners putting their hands first unto it t and then
the rest of the chiefest adventurers. At the place prepared wee all kneeled
dawn and said certain prayers ; taking possession of the country for our
Saviour, and for our sovereigne Lord the King of England."

A preface to the Relation states that it is probable that the
pamphlet was prepared by Csecilius Calvert, second Lord Balti-
more, from letters of his brothers Leonard and George, and that
it is also probable the very language is that of these Catholic
members and leaders in the expedition who took part in the cere-
monies referred to. It is also related by Streeter, at page 109 of
Papers relating to the Early History of Maryland, that Mr. Hawley
took part in the " religious ceremonies" in taking possession of the
ground selected as the site of the first settlement, and christen-

40 BANCROFT 's HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

ing it by the name of St. Mary's. The Rev. Neill himself relates
that Mr. Hawley in England was "one of the gentlemen sewers
of Queen Henrietta Maria " (Terra Maria, page 61) ; and it is well
known that the queen, being a Catholic, was surrounded in her
personal arrangements almost, if not entirely, by Catholics. It is
also related by the same writer, who seems by his unfounded as-
sertions to have led Mr. Bancroft astray, that in an investigation
in 1635, before the Privy Council of England, Mr. Hawley was
accused of having said in the midst of Mass in Maryland that
" he was come to plant in Maryland the Romish religion."
Such an accusation as this could not have been made by the
Privy Council against any but a Catholic. Davis' Day Star and
Streeter's Papers both Protestant writers claim Captain Corn-
wallis as a Catholic. Davis says that Cornwallis breathed the
same spirit with Father Copley, the Jesuit, of Leonard Calvert,
the Catholic governor, and of Cuthbert Fenwick, " a sincere be-
liever in the faith of the old Latin church." He was also the
special patron and friend of Mr. Fenwick, and his general agent
and overseer of his business and property was that same Mr.
Lewis who was tried and convicted and punished for interfering
with the religious sentiments of some of Captain Cornwallis'
Protestant servants, as we have seen in this article. Cornwallis
himself was one of the court that tried Mr. Lewis, and it is
alleged as an evidence of his impartiality and high-minded jus-
tice that he, a Catholic, condemned a fellow-Catholic for his zeal
in behalf of their common faith. It is further alleged, in proof of
the claim that Cornwallis was a Catholic, that his landed estates
in Maryland bore distinctively Catholic names bestowed by
himself. His own homestead was named in honor of the Holy
Cross, and was called " The Cross" and otherwise " Cornwallis'
Cross." Among other estates of his named with Catholic names
may be mentioned " St. Elizabeth," " West St. Mary's Manor,"
and others. Streeter expressly claims him as a Catholic, men-
tioning that he was the son of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, one of the
Catholic noblemen frequenting the throne of King James and
receiving employment there; and this writer gives as his rea-
son for asserting that Captain Thomas Cornwallis, the Maryland
commissioner, was son of Sir Thomas Cornwallis of the estab-
lishment of the Catholic queen of England, was the identity of
their names and their religion, both being Catholics.

Not only does Father White intimate in his Relatio that only
the Catholics united in the recital of the Litany of the Holy
Cross, but it may be confidently asserted that all who joined in
reciting the Litany of the Holy Cross on their bended knees and

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTOR r OF THE UNITED STA TES. 41

with emotion on that memorable occasion were Catholics ; and
that no Protestant, with the views entertained by the Protes-
tants of England at that time, and even now, could have per-
formed that devotion. Upon the strength of this argument we
assert that all the leading men of the colony of Maryland in 1633,
including the two commissioners Hawley and Cornwallis, were
Catholics, as well as a large number, if not a majority, of the ser-
vants and laboring men. What is the Litany of the Holy Cross,
and in what language is it couched?

It is well known that there prevails in the Catholic Church a
religious service which is called the Adoration of the Cross. It
is equally well known that this devotion is regarded and pro-
nounced by Protestants as idolatrous and superstitious. The
following passage from Archbishop Gibbons' The Faith of our
Fathers clearly states the difference between Catholics and Pro-
testants on this subject :

{l In the Book of Exodus we read : * Thou shalt not make to thyself a
graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in
the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the
earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them.' Protestants contend
that these words contain an absolute prohibition against the making of
images, while the Catholic Church insists that the commandment re-
ferred to merely prohibits us from worshipping them as gods " (page 194).

It is equally well known that Protestants, at their secession from
the Catholic Church, revived the demolition of sacred images,
statues, and paintings in the churches which they obtained pos-
session of of which the Iconoclasts of the eighth century had set
them the example and that to this day the churches of Protes-
tants are distinguished from those of Catholics by the absence of
such religious emblems.

With such sentiments, how was it possible for Protestants
at the foundation of the Catholic colony of Maryland in 1633,
when religious controversy and rancor were at a high point, to
kneel before a cross and recite the Litany of the Holy Cross ?
How could they on their knees say, with emotion, Holy Cross,
whereon the Lamb of God was offered for the sins of the world,
deliver and save us ?
Help of Christians, ^ ^ Staff of the lame,

Pledge of the resurrection
from the dead,

Shelter of persecuted inno-
cence,

Guide of the blind,

Way of those who have gone

Consolation of the poor,
Refuge of sinners,
Trophy of victory over hell,
Terror of demons,
Mistress of youth,
Succor of the distressed,

astray, ) ^ Hope of the hopeless,

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

Star of the mariner,
Harbor of the wrecked,
Rampart of the besieged,
Father of orphans,
Defence of widows,
Counsel of the just,
Judge of the wicked,
Rest of the afflicted,
Safeguard of childhood,
Strength of manhood,
Last hope of the aged,
Light of those who sit in dark-
ness,

Splendor of kings,
Civilizer of the world,

Buckler impenetrable,
Wisdom of the foolish,
Liberty of slaves,
Knowledge of the ignorant,
Sure rule of life,
Heralded by prophets,
Preached by apostles,
Glory of martyrs,
Study of anchorites,
Chastity of virgins,
Joy of priests,
Foundation of the church,
Salvation of the world,
Destruction of idolatry,

We give at length the language of this litany, in order to
show that it expresses the extreme Catholic view of such a de-
votion as Protestants consider the Book of Exodus condemns.
The Catholic Church herself, for prudential reasons, only allows
this litany to be recited as a private devotion, and not in her
public services. To the Protestant mind nothing could be more
superstitious and idolatrous than the language of this litany.
But to the Catholics who recited it with Father White on the
banks of the St. Mary's in 1633, and to Catholics equally of the
present day, the matter becomes as clear and lucid as any other
explanation given in the catechisms placed in the hands of our
children. Catholic children well understand that the invocation
is not addressed to the material and senseless image of the cross,
but to the Saviour who died upon the cross for our redemption ;
and that the image before the eyes is merely an aid to the true
devotion and prayer addressed to the Saviour, and to Him alone.
Since the recital of the Litany of the Holy Cross by the Catholic
colonists of Maryland in 1633, an illustrious Protestant scholar,
one who sighed and labored for the reunion of the Christian
churches, the great and learned Leibnitz, has removed all excuse
for the ignorant and senseless declamation which is heard now
on every Sunday in Protestant churches, from ministers claiming
to be educated men, on the subject of " Romish idolatry." For
the information of the Fultons, Newmans, and other learned minis-
ters of our own day we reproduce the following enlightened pas-
sage from Leibnitz's Systema Theologicum, p. 142 :

"Though we speak of the honor paid to images, yet this is only a man-
ner of speaking, which really means that we honor not the senseless thing,
which is incapable of understanding such honor, but the prototype, which

1884.] BANCROFTS HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 43

receives honor through its representation, according to the teaching of the
Council of Trent. It is in this sense, I take it, that scholastic writers have
spoken of the same honors being paid to images of Christ as to Christ our
Lord himself ; for the act which is called the worship of an image is really
the worship of Christ himself, through and in the presence of the image
and by occasion of it ; by the inclination of the body towards it as to
Christ himself, as rendering him more manifestly present and raising the
mind more actively to the contemplation of him. Certainly, certainly,
no sane man thinks, under such circumstances, of praying in this wise :
' Give me, O image, what I ask ; to thee, O marble or wood, I give thanks ' ;
but ' Thee, O Lord, I adore ; to thee I give thanks and sing songs of praise.'
Given, then, that there is no other veneration of images than that which
means veneration of their prototype, there is surely no more idolatry in
it than there is in the respect shown in the utterance of the most holy
names of God and Christ; for, after all, names are but signs or symbols,
and even, as such, inferior to images, for they represent much less vividly.
So that when there is question of honoring images, this is to be under-
stood in the same way as when it is said that at the name of Jesus every
knee shall bend, or that the name of the Lord is blessed, or that glory is
given to his name. Thus the bowing before an image outside of us is no
more to be reprehended than the worshipping before an internal image in
our own minds ; for the external image does but serve the purpose of ex-
pressing visibly that which is internal."

There are some expressions in the writings of Father White,
the Jesuit missionary of the Maryland colony, and of Father
More, provincial of the Society of Jesus in England, which would
seem to favor the view that so great a majority of the servants
and laboring men of the colony were Protestants that it resulted
in making a majority of the whole number of persons in the
colony consist of Protestants ; though the proprietary, the gov-
ernor or he whom he represented, the councillors, and freemen
voting for the members of the legislature, and the legislative
majorities prior to 1650, were Catholics an important fact,
showing that the government of the colony was in the hands of
the Catholics. Father White has been represented as writing,
in the Twenty Cases stated by him to his provincial in England :
" And whereas three parts of the people in four at least are
heretics." But we find on examining the Twenty Cases that his
language was : " And whereas three partes of the people or
foure (at least) are hereticks." This language is obscure and
imperfect: either other words are necessary to complete the
sentence and the sense, or the copy made of the document was
erroneous. No conclusion can be drawn from such uncertain
language. Father More does not quote him as saying "three
parts in four were heretics." Father More appears as saying
in his memorial to Rome on the Twenty Cases " that the affair

44 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

was surrounded with many and great difficulties, for in leading
the colony to Maryland by far the greater part were heretics."
The great mass of evidence showing the fact to be otherwise
than here stated would indicate that Father More may have
been misled or misinformed. He was not pretending to write
historically or with historical precision, but struggling only to
convey a strong picture of the situation and of the difficul-
ties under which the fathers labored. As an evidence of the
want of historical or official data on the part of Father More in
preparing this memorial we may mention that he states in it
that the Assembly of 1640 was "composed, with few exceptions,
of heretics." This certainly was not the case, for it is a fact gen-
erally, if not universally, conceded that the Assembly of 1650 was
the firsf in which the Protestants had the majority. The As-
sembly of 1640 was in session but a very short time, and, after
passing a few laws, was prorogued till 1641. We find among the
laws passed by the preceding Assembly of 1639 one " guarantee-
ing to holy church all her rights and liberties." It is scarcely to
be supposed that a document written at that remote distance
from the scenes referred to, and with such imperfect means of
transmitting information, and one showing throughout the re-
sult of imperfect and inaccurate sources of official and exact in-
formation, can be regarded at this remote day as having been
intended for historical use or as being reliable for exact statistics,
especially when it is at variance with the general current of his-
tory. It is also not probable that Mr. Lewger, the secretary of
the province, could have been guilty of manipulating a Protestant
majority in the Assembly for the passage of laws hostile to the
Catholic Church and clergy, since he was himself a recent con-
vert to that church and a most zealous and enthusiastic member
of it. We cannot but regard this document as either erroneous-
ly copied or as showing a clear case of misinformation. Besides,
it may be mentioned that the Catholic population of the colony
was constantly gaining in numbers from the arrival of new
colonists of that faith, and still more from numerous conversions
of the Protestants to the Catholic Church, as reported by the
fathers in their annual letters. From these letters we learn of
about one hundred and eighty Protestants converted to the faith,
to which number must be added all the Protestants who came
over in the year 1638, making the probable number of accessions
to the Catholic body prior to 1640, by conversions alone, amount
to about two hundred. When it is considered that this increase
of the Catholic population was caused by conversions from the

1884.] BANCROFT 1 s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 45

Protestant population, and that the latter was thus diminished by
the same number, two hundred, the result is a gain of the Ca-
tholic population over the Protestant in that period of four hun-
dred. Upon a review of the whole case, and upon the decided
opinions arrived at by such Protestant historians as Davis in his
Day-Star of American Freedom and of Scharf in his History of
Maryland, we adhere to the old and more probable view that
a majority of the entire number of original persons, who came
over on the Ark and Dove were Catholics, and that the Catholics
retained the majority of the population at least until the year
1650. But, as we have already shown, this question, however
decided, does not affect the main question in the case viz., that
the Catholic proprietary, lieutenant-governor, councillors, and
legislatures, long before Protestants had any show of political
control in the government, had established by proclamation,
accompanied and followed by repeated and strenuous com-
mands, liberty of conscience for all believers in our Saviour
Jesus Christ as the characteristic and uniform law of the land.
In an article by the present writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD
for December, 1875, we adduced many facts showing that the
Catholics were in the majority until 1650. We also showed that
the legislature of 1649, which enacted the celebrated Toleration
Act, was composed of a majority of Catholics. Governor Stone,
though a Protestant, was the immediate appointee and repre-
sentative of the Catholic proprietary, and in his stead simply
presided in the Assembly, but neither Lord Baltimore nor his
deputy in the Assembly voted. As we know of no votes cast
in the Assembly against the act, we assume the vote to have
been unanimous. So that we have to record eight votes of
Catholics in favor of the act viz., those of Messrs. Green,
Clarke, Fenwick, Bretton, Manners, Maunsell, Peake, and Thorn-
borough ; and five votes of Protestants viz., those of Messrs.
Price, Vaughan, Conner, Banks, and Browne ; thus making the
votes stand eight Catholics and five Protestants. But this great
charter of religious liberty did not originate in the Assembly:
it was prepared in England and sent over with fifteen other
laws by Lord Baltimore, by his colonial secretary, Mr. Hatton,
with instructions to Governor Stone to propose them to the
Assembly for their assent ; for the law-making power in the col-
ony under the charter was vested in Lord Baltimore, by and
with the assent of the freemen of the province assembled. It
must be said also to the credit of the Assembly that it was the
first of the sixteen laws taken up and enacted.

46 BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

But not only was the Act of Religious Liberty sent over by
the Catholic lord-proprietary to be proposed to the Assembly,
but an equally interesting fact connected with its history is that,
as we propose to show, the author of this illustrious Statute of
Toleration was a Jesuit. Tradition in Maryland and in England
always attributed this act to the pen of one of the English
Jesuits. This tradition seems to have been appealed to in the
speech mentioned in the following passage from Dr. Oliver's
Biography of the Members of the Society of Jesus of the English
Province, under the title of Father Andrew White ; " Mr. Tho-
mas Kennedy, a Presbyterian Gentleman, and a member of the
House of Assembly in Maryland, has published a speech in
which he asserts that a Jesuit was the author of the First Bill for
Liberty of Conscience in Maryland." Dr. Oliver then suggests :
" Was this Jesuit F. Andrew White ? He may have suggested
such wise policy to Lord Baltimore." The name of this good
and learned Jesuit is already covered with a halo of glory as the
religious leader of the colony on the Ark and Dove, and as the
heroic missionary of the faith among the English Catholics and
Protestants of the colony and the Indian tribes of Maryland, and
as a long-suffering confessor of the faith in England. If he was
the author of this law his name looms up still brighter in the
annals of history. He was quite capable of drawing up such a
document, for he was a man of learning, study, and industry.
He was the author of the narrative of the voyage to Maryland,
and of a grammar, dictionary, and catechism in the Indian lan-
guage. He spent his latter years, including the } 7 ear 1648, when
the act was written, in England, and must have felt and taken a
deep interest in the colony he had loved and served so well.
But without reference to the said tradition or to the passage in
Dr. Oliver, General Johnson, in his Foundation of Maryland, has
made the suggestion that Father Henry More, great-grandson of
Sir Thomas More, and provincial of the English Jesuits, was the
author of the act. Lord Baltimore himself disclaims the au-
thorship in the commission he sent by Mr. Hatton to Governor-
Stone with the sixteen laws, of which this act was the first on
the list ; for he there states that " said laws were proposed to us
for the good and quiet settlement of our Colony and people of
the said Province, and we, finding them very fit to be enacted as
laws, do hereby consent that our Lieutenant, William Stone, shall
propose the said acts or laws hereunto annexed as aforesaid to
a General Assembly," etc. The reasons given by General John-
son for attributing the authorship to Father More of the act
of 1649 are that Lord Baltimore's adviser in the affairs of the

1884.] BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 47

colony in England must have been a Catholic of authority, learn-
ing, and wisdom, and a scholar and a statesman ; he must have
been a person well informed as to the condition and necessities
of the Maryland colony, who agreed with Lord Baltimore in
the policy of mortmain, and yet unfriendly to Mr. Secretary
Lewger, who introduced into Maryland the measures against the
Jesuits ; and he states that Father More answers all these require-
ments. " It would seem, therefore, very probable," he writes,
"if not reasonably certain, that Father Henry More, provincial
of the Society of Jesus in England, was either the author or the
inspirer of the author of the act concerning religion." In
another part of his book, Foundation, he draws a striking con-
trast and parallel between Sir Thomas More's scheme, or rather
dream, of religious liberty in Utopia and the Maryland Tolera-
tion Act, which is another circumstance favoring the claim he
makes in behalf of Father More's authorship of the act.

Father White equally answers all the requirements for an
adviser of Lord Baltimore in England and for the author of
such an act, except that of being a descendant of the illustri-
ous author of Utopia. But there is one fact which adds great
weight to the suggestion of Dr. Okver that Father White may
have been the man : he had spent ten years in the Maryland
colony and knew more about it from personal observation than
any other man in England, and it was during his ten years' resi-
dence and labors in Maryland that the principles of religious
liberty (afterwards embodied in the act of 1649) were intro-
duced into Maryland and became the settled policy and com-
mon law of the province. It is, however, not probable that
Lord Baltimore had but one adviser in England, or that one and
the same hand drew up all the sixteen laws sent over by Mr.
Hatton to Maryland. It is more probable that Lord Baltimore
consulted not only one but several of the English Jesuits, and
not only that he had advisers among ecclesiastics, but that he
had them also among the noble and steadfast Catholic laity of
England. It is quite probable, therefore, that both Fathers
White and More had some part in the authorship of the sixteen
laws including the act concerning religion, and that united
with them in the consultations were such laymen as the Arun-
dels, the Howards, the Norfolks, and the Warwicks.

Our article has already been extended to its proper limit.
But there is one circumstance which we wish to mention as
investing the infant colony of Maryland with another claim upon
the admiration of mankind an incident which should have been
recorded by Mr. Bancroft in his pages. But he has omitted so

48 BANCROFTS HfsrditY OF THE UNITED STATES. [April,

much he should have/said, and has said so much he should have
omitted, that we are not surprised at his not giving credit to
the Jesuits of the Maryland mission for having set up and
worked the first printing-press that was ever worked in any
British colony. Father White first applied himself with unflag-
ging industry to the acquisition of the Indian languages of Mary-
land. He then composed for the instruction of the natives a
Catholic catechism in several dialects. The printing-press he
imported from England, and it is believed that he used it for
the printing of his catechism for circulation among his abori-
ginal flock. A copy of this catechism, printed on the first print-
ing-press ever introduced into an English colony, was found by
Father McSherry among the archives of the Society at Rome.
Father White continued to prosecute his studies of the native
dialects, and prepared also an Indian grammar and a dictionary.
Our brief history of the first printing-press would be incomplete
if we did not remind our Puritan friends that when the Puritans
in Maryland attacked the missionaries and destroyed their pro-
perty in 1655, this precious instrument of early Christian en-
lightenment and education disappeared.

Mr. Bancroft, evidently influenced by an extreme Protes-
tantism, has been getting shut of Catholic passages in his his-
tory, however just and necessary to truth, while another Pro-
testant historian * has adorned his pages with glowing tributes
to Lord Baltimore and the Catholics of Maryland. We con-
clude by inserting one out of many such passages :

"Toleration in Maryland first arose in the breast of George Calvert,
first Lord Baltimore,

' Clarum et venerabile nomen,'

and was embraced with equal nobility and generosity of soul by Caecilius,
the father of the province. The peculiar provisions of the charter, while
they by no means prescribed toleration, yet, by making the province a pa-
latinate, placed it in the power of the proprietary to carry out his liberal
policy without molestation. The proprietary's spirit was caught by the
first colonists, and the beneficent working of the policy was felt by all.
When dissensions and civil war in the mother country and at home seemed
to threaten the overthrow of what had proved so great a blessing, the
proprietary and the legislature, in which both faiths were represented, did
what they could to secure toleration by making it the law of the land.
The time was to come when narrower counsels were to prevail and the
ancient glory of Maryland to grow dim fora season; but nothing can rob
Calvert and his band of colonists of the fame of founding the first settlement
where conscience was free, and where, while persecution was raging around
them, a sanctuary was established in which even Protestants found a refuge
from Protestant intolerance."

* Scharf's History of Maryland, vol. i. p. 182.

1884.] Wox2>siro&TJ$$yjjf< 49

THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF WORDSWORTH'S

POETRY.

PART II.

III. Let us turn next to the Wordsworthian philosophy in its
relations with Poetry, Art, and Science. Sternly as that philo-
sophy recoils from the Epicurean, it is never weary of converse
with that Loveliness which it discerns on all sides of us. We
move through worlds of enchantment from childhood to age,
and it is only the dulness of a sensualized nature which hides
from us their glory.

" Beauty a living presence of the earth
Surpassing the most fair ideal forms
Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed
From earth's materials waits upon my steps,
Pitches her tent before me as I move
An hourly neighbor."

To sharpen the edge of those finer imaginative sensibilities
through which alone that beauty can be discerned, and to pro-
mote their enlarged development through a discipline the more
benignant for being severe this, in Wordsworth's estimate, is
the true mission of Art. He denounces all Cynicism, and he in-
culcates no Stoicism except that which hardens us against things
unworthy, that we may have a tenderer appreciation of that
beauty which, latently or patently, abounds in all things good.

" We live by admiration, love, and hope, '
as he affirms ; and his inference is that

" Even as these are well and wisely fixed
In dignity of being we ascend."

What has been said of Virtue he affirms no less both of the
Artist's and the Poet's genius viz., that it is sapped more often
by excess in attachment to things lawful than by the direct
quest of the unlawful. Here, as elsewhere, there is an analogy
between Nature and the Supernatural. As the early Christian
anchorets sought the desert, not that they might be solitary, but
that they might live more closely united with the memories of
Redemption ; so Wordsworth's poetry but flies from thevulgar
world, that it may bask the more in the presence of the eternal
VOL. xxxix, 4

50 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [April,

beauty of 'Creation. Much has to be renounced if the noblest
is to be attained. The best is always within a hand's breadth of
us ; but our hand is too coarse to recognize the good even when
clasped by it. There are, according to Wordsworth's teaching,
two worlds the renunciation of which is as profane as Esau's
selling of his birthright viz., the golden sun-saturated world of
the humanities, and the silver, moon-clad world of the spiritual
imagination. Each of these worlds is infinite ; but we can make
little way into the former unless we rise superior to sensual in-
stincts ; and we cannot pass beyond the threshold of the latter
unless we turn from the pride of life. Scores of sonnets embody
this philosophy, such as " The world is too much with us " ;
" Weak is the will of man, his judgment blind "; " Grief, thou
hast lost an ever-ready friend " ; " If the whole weight of what
we think and feel "; " It is a beauteous evening, calm and free."
To raise a man to the level of his higher capacities through
the aid of an imagination which too often surrenders itself a
vassal to the senses, is, he maintains, the poet's calling a truth
illustrated in such sonnets as " A volant tribe of bards on earth
are found"; "High is our calling, friend "; "From the dark
chambers of dejection freed," etc. There are not a few pas-
sages in Wordsworth's poetry which illustrate his philosophy
in connection with the sister art of painting, such as " Praised
be the Art whose subtle power could stay," etc. He has left
us another, less known and of a later date, which contrasts
painting and sculpture, and points out why the latter was the
delight of Christian ages, while the classic time found a deeper
satisfaction in sculpture. Fortitude, Self-Sacrifice, Purity, high
Aspiration, and a Sympathy profound, these he regarded as the
Angels of all the Arts, not less than of Poetry. Arf was bound
to keep a faithful vigil, and so to illustrate this world as to make
it the prophecy of a higher one. It is in this sense that he de-
mands,

" Is not then the Art

Godlike, a humble branch of the divine

In visible quest of immortality,

Stretched forth with trembling hope ? "

It is in this sense that he reminds a despondent Painter that his
art, like the Poet's, demands a heart, though sensitive, yet
" heroically fashioned " ; and in this sense he tells us that while
Tranquillity was " the sovereign aim " of antique Sculpture, a
loftier*as well as a tenderer mission had been confided to her
" Rainbow Sister " since the day when

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 51

"He who wore

The crown of thorns around His bleeding brow
Wanned our sad being with His glorious light."

But, much as Wordsworth honored Art, it was yet more to
Nature that he considered the allegiance of Poetry to be due.
No one had a loftier ideal than he ; yet no one loved more that
actual world, which is

" The world of all of us, that world wherein
We have our happiness, or not at all,"

and the self-exiled from which he regards as " housed in a
dream." No one was lifted higher by his admiration of what is
high ; yet no one bent with more reverence before Nature's
greatness in its lowliest forms. His own song might have been
described in his lines on the " Skylark." This poem, though it
does not occupy in Wordsworth's poetry that rank which is held
in Shelley's by his " Ode to a Skylark," may be usefully com-
pared with the latter. The contrast illustrates the difference
between the genius of the two men. Shelley's exquisite and
characteristic poem was greatly admired by the older poet,
though for the most part he considered that Shelley's works
were too remote from the humanities. He objected, on the
same ground, to the theme of Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner,"
while he asserted notwithstanding that Coleridge's genius, aid-
ed by his unrivalled metrical faculty, ought to have rendered
him the greatest poet of modern times. In poetic capability,
though not in performance, he ranked him with those great an-
cient poets of Wisdom and Truth who prophesied to their age
and were unsubdued by adversity or neglect ; the poets whom
he thus addressed :

" Hail, bards of mightier grasp ! On you
I chiefly call, the chosen Few,
Who cast not off the acknowledged guide,.
Who faltered not, nor turned aside ;
Whose lofty genius could survive
Privation, under sorrow thrive ;
In whom the fiery Muse revered
The symbol of a snow-white beard
Bedewed with meditative tears
Dropped from the lenient cloud of years.* 1

In Shelley's ode no stanza is more often remembered than
the one which begins,

" We look before and after,
And pine for what is not.'

5 2 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [April,

The last of these two lines is in striking oppugnancy to Words-
worth's poetry, in which there is never a repining note ; while
yet there is no poet who blends so often with the present the
thought of the future and the past. The poem placed first
among his works strikes the keynote of them all :

" My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky :
So was it when my life began ;
So is it now I am a man :
So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die.

The child is father of the man :
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."

Two lines in his " Phantom of Delight,"

" A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet,"

describe the countenance of his own poetry. There exists an
opposite sort of beauty, the excellence of which is that it seems
to have no relations with time such is that of a child's face in
which we note but an untroubled, radiant, all-enjoying present ;
and such, to a large extent, is the beauty of Greek poetry, which
represents the inspired childhood of man's race, the " Juventas
Mundi," the Wisdom of which is instinctive or intuitive. It is
the Wisdom of a world mature that is represented in Words-
worth's strain, of a world that has learned much from the things
that it has suffered, but not learned to despond ; the Wisdom
which has a touch of age in its youthful prime, but which retains
its youthfulness in age. Chaucer wrote like a youth when his
head was white, and Wordsworth like a sage when he was a
youth. For the former the hawthorn bloomed till November ; for
the latter the April groves were touched with September gold.

The dates of Wordsworth's poems illustrate this special
characteristic of them. His " Tintern Abbey " is one of his
finest poems, and its mood is a retrospective mood. He recalls
that time when Nature was all in all to him, and compares it
with the present, when

" All its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures,"

though in compensation for such loss he has learned to hear at
all times

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 53

" The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue."

Who would not have said, " This is a poem of old age"? It
was written when he was twenty-eight. To a period almost as
early belong a large proportion of Wordsworth's poems char-
acterized by a pensive thoughtfulness. * The solemn warning
with which " Lines left in a Yew-Tree " conclude might well
seem to be the voice of age. It was written before the poet was
twenty-eight. " The Brothers " ranks in the first class of Words-
worth's meditative poems. It is the most dramatic of his works
far more so than his drama, " The Borderers " and it is from
a long experience of life that one would have supposed the poet
must have derived that knowledge of character shown in the
long dialogue in which Leonard at once seeks and shuns informa-
tion respecting the brother he had lost in youth. Yet that is
one of the poems which belong to his thirtieth year. The " Lines
written while sailing in a Boat at Evening" and the " Remem-
brance of Collins " are especially marked by a pensive thought-
fulness but they were composed, originally as a single poem, on
the banks, not of the Thames, but of the Cam, at the age of
nineteen. In Wordsworth's genius there was from the first a
mature thoughtfulness as well as a youthful freshness of emo-
tion. He wrote, not as a youth nor as an elder, but as a man.
The seasons were blended in his verse " like two mixed wines in
one cup."

" The Female Vagrant," the meditative sadness of which is so
remarkable, was composed at the age of twenty-four. The most
pathetic of Wordsworth's narratives, which records Margaret,
the deserted wife, might well have been the work of one whose
eye had long " kept watch o'er man's mortality " ; yet its more
important parts were composed at intervals between the poet's
twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth year. " The Sparrow's Nest," a
singular instance of that retrospective observation so often to be
found in Wordsworth's poetry, and so seldom elsewhere,

" She looked at it as if she feared it,
Still wishing, dreading to be near it,"

* To quote them would be impossible here, but the reader maybe referred to " Remem-
brance of Collins," set. nineteen; "The Female Vagrant," set. twenty-five to twenty-eight;
"The Sparrow's Nest," aet. thirty-two; "Yarrow Unvisited," aet. thirty-three; "Stepping
Westward," aet. thirty-three ; " The Tables Turned," " Expostulation and Reply," and " Lines
written in early Spring," aet. twenty-eight ; " The Poet's Epitaph," " Ruth," "The Two April
Mornings," " The Fountain : a Conversation," aet. twenty-eight and twenty-nine; "Michael,"
" The Old Cumberland Beggar," about aet. thirty.

54 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [April,

was written at the age of thirty-one. Three poems to the
Daisy belong to Wordsworth's thirty-second year ; " Yarrow
Unvisited " belongs to his thirty-third year, as do also " Stepping
Westward," " To a Highland Girl," and the poems written
after visiting Burns' grave. To his twenty-eighth year belongs
" Simon Lee " and the well-known lines,

" I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds

With coldness still returning ;
Alas ! the gratitude of men
Has oft'ner left me mourning."

" Michael " was written when Wordsworth was thirty years
old, and "The Old Cumberland Beggar" about the same time.
The great ode on the " Intimations of Immortality" was begun
when he was thirty-two, and the second part added when he was
thirty-four. The circumstance that Wordsworth's most charac-
teristic poems were produced early has given rise to some very
rash generalizations. Some critics have erroneously inferred
from this fact that his later Poetry cannot include any of the
greater specimens of his art. They forget that the greatest
Poets have ever possessed both that which is especially charac-
teristic of each, and also that which is held in common by all
the first-class Poets. Some of Wordsworth's unquestionably
characteristic poems are not great poems ; and some of his great
poems are but in a lesser degree characteristic.

It is, however, only when they are taken collectively that
"the meditative might " which belongs to these poems can be
fitly measured and weighed. They are very diverse, while they
are also in admirable harmony with each other. Yet, large as is
their scope, they represent but a single section of that manifold
Wisdom which belongs to Wordsworth's poetry. They em-
body only the " heart-wisdom " with which common life, inter-
preted by the aid of sympathies as wide as humanity itself,
was ever enriching him. In a special sense Memory was to
him " The Mother of the Muses." All incidents connected with
human affections had for him a meaning, and the present was
ever interpreted by the past. " Memory," as he tells us in the
poem which bears that name, has not only "a pen to register,"
but also a pencil, which, though it often " smooths foregone dis-
tress," yet also

" Like a tool of Fancy works
Those Spectres to dilate
That startle Conscience as she lurks
Within her lonely seat."

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 55

We have so to live that that pencil's touch may never affright us :

" Retirement then might hourly look

Upon a soothing scene,
Age steal to his allotted nook
Contented and serene ;

" With heart as calm as lakes that sleep

In frosty moonlight glistening,
Or mountain rivers, where they creep,
Along a channel smooth and deep,

To their own far-off murmurs listening"

Such a " mountain river " was Wordsworth's song, and with it
there was ever blended an echo of murmurs from afar. That
particular form of Wisdom, which may be called the wisdom of
experience, as distinguished from the abstruse or the recondite,
belongs, as we have seen, pre-eminently to that portion of Words-
worth's poetry which is also most characterized by the emotional
element. In the case of other poets the works which predomi-
nantly address the intellect have too commonly the chili of age
about them. In Wordsworth Wisdom was an essential part oT
his genius, and therefore carried with it that fervor which belongs
to genius in its most vital period. By shallow readers that fervor
is not noted, because it has no irregular movements. It is not
the flickering of the furnace-flame, but the steady and noiseless
heat of a genial season. A great part of it is " latent heat." But
even when its presence is scarcely observed, its absence, could
it be withdrawn, would at once drain from the poem all that
we recognize as characteristic. The wisest thoughts are often
far from being the most striking thoughts. Th'e startling
thought boasts its originality, and kindles in the reader a
transient excitement ; but if it be not a true thought it has no
part in that Wisdom which, as Wordsworth affirms of Beau-
ty, " dwells in deep retreats." Proportioned thought is wise
thought ; and proportion tends to diminish apparent size. A
poem is wise from what it assumes as well as from what it proves ;
from what it suggests as well as what it expresses ; from the
attractions it renounces as well as from the things it attains ; from
the degree in which its thoughts, when least pretentious, plainly
belong to the household of wisdom and confess her lineage. The
wisest poems are often those which make no parade of wisdom,
but which carry with them a fragrance that belongs to a climate
on which she has left her searching yet healing breath. She
has passed that way, and you see the majestic footsteps she has

5 6 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [April,

left behind. Such are the great majority of Wordsworth's son-
nets. On the surface what predominates may be imagery, nar-
rative, or emotion, but beneath it there is ever Wisdom.

A poem may be " of reason all compact" when the reader
who confounds reason with discussion exclaims, " I see no rea-
soning here ! " Reasoning is not Reason ; at best it is a tran-
sient act of Reason, not her permanent condition. Argument
is the watch-dog that keeps her gate; it is not her household
nor the sacred store in its charge. The allegation of a dis-
tinguished French critic that Wordsworth is not a thinker
because he is a contemplatist is the assertion that a man
does not think because he dwells habitually amid the most ar-
duous heights of thought. That high region was the native
land of Wordsworth's poetic genius, as a large class of his
poems demonstrate ; but his poetic art was commonly exercised
through a different though a kindred power, by which, without
compelling feebler natures to breathe " the difficult air of the
iced mountain-top," he brought down the lofty to the lowly, and
showed men the light divine in the face of familiar things. Had
Wordsworth been the ascetic as well as the contemplatist he
would never have been the poet ; he might have been something
higher, but the world would have lost by the change. For-
tunately for poetry, he loved as much to look on field-flowers as
on the stars. Whoever reads that beautiful philosophic poem, one
of some half-dozen pieces especially typical of his genius although
he classes it among his " Poems of the Fancy " " Who fancied
what a pretty sight " will discover with what an unpremeditated
grace he could suggest his philosophy in connection with every-
day objects. Dryden, who was more given to reasoning than to
reason, has been called by Landor " the Bacon of the rhyming
crew." But while we admire the skill with which dialectics are
wedged into verse in his " Hind and Panther," we cannot resist
the thought that the polemical discussion might have been bet-
ter carried on in prose, and that poetry more thoughtful has often
found for itself a more tractable theme. Bacon himself has left
us many a passage, such as the celebrated one beginning, " It is
indeed a heaven upon earth," or his triply-repeated " Sanctus,
Sanctus, Sanctus" of science, which, though not clothed in
metre, leaves as far behind in poetic imagination as in sublime
thought the highest flights even of the author of " Alexander's
Feast." The most thoughtful poet does not labor to nail down
reluctant minds upon unwelcome convictions, but makes Persua-
sion do a happier work. He does not demonstrate Truth denied,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 57

but indicates Truth never before suspected in such a fashion that
it can never again be ignored. His wisdom is this : that he
walks through the world God has made, with open eyes, and sees
in it heavenly meanings, authentic memorials of what the Divine
Maker saw in it when he pronounced his work to be " very
good." He may wander far afield, but wherever he strays his
eye, obedient to his heart, turns instinctively to every object
which Truth has touched, and finds on.it the seal of Beauty.
Those who follow his eye discern in their degree what it has
discerned. In all things they find Wisdom and Truth conjoined
with Beauty.

That wisdom is neither the wisdom of the schools nor of the
world, but of life the life of the humanities. It is not the Wisdom
of a faculty, but of a man, and its chief seat is the heart of man. It
is drawn to the objects around it by sympathy even more than by
intellectual appreciation. It could not see in them the truth they
reveal, if it did not profoundly feel their pathos. The true poet
is a Seer, and that he sees aright is proved when that emotion
felt by him is elicited in others by the truthfulness of his poetry.
Before this seer ever hang two fair visions, the world of Hu-
manity and the world of Nature ; and he interprets the material
by the moral. In both those worlds he sees a common divine
design, however clouded by human imperfections ; and the re-
semblance which both retain to their great Original makes each
appear to him as in some sort a reflection of the other. In his
poetry both those worlds are imaged ; and in proportion as that
poetry is the result of a genuine inspiration, they are in harmony
with each other, and they adumbrate, if they do not venture to
express, an image of Him who is higher than each. The unwise
poet sees in the things around him, whether natural or human, not
the Truth that sustains them, but, reflected in them, his own pas-
sions, his vanities, his prejudices, his false traditions, his fantastic
aspirations that is, his own image. Those who share his illu-
sions find in his verse no less a mirror of themselves, and applaud
their False Prophet. But, as illusions change with time, a later
poet " prophesies " the <; deceits " which flatter the illusions of a
later day. The permanent poets are those who have been in vital
sympathy, not with the illusions or exaggerations of their day, but
with the Truth of things, and who have grown wise by reverent
converse with that Truth. They may have possessed little book-
learning ; they may never have aimed at setting forth a doctrine or
enforcing a moral. But while they watched each gesture of their
teacher, Nature, "as the eyes of the handmaiden watch the hand

5 8 BY-WAYS. [April,

of her mistress," they unconsciously indicated the Truth of which
they were vigilantly observant. But they could only indicate it
to those who, like themselves, though in a lesser degree, were
capable of discerning it. Those who have learned from these
Poets call them "masters," but they had sought only to be the
servants of Nature that is, of Truth. Their power excites ad-
miration, their pathos draws tears ; but each tribute belongs not
to them, but to Nature. It is their greatness, not that they have
stolen from Nature, much less that they have superseded her,
but that she has shared with them her heritage ; not that they
have substituted their petty art for Nature, or taught the frivo-
lous to pass her by, but that she has accepted them as her inter-
preters and the ministers of her gifts.

BY-WAYS.
I.

THERE might be a little difficulty in finding Allingtown on
the maps of Massachusetts. It lies in one of the many nooks in
her jagged coast, a small village, respectable but obscure, whose
population is made up chiefly of the families of retired sea-cap-
tains and "men who followed the sea." It had been called ori-
ginally Allingstown, and had been but a fishing hamlet with a
few straggling houses ; but as time went on, and it grew steadily,
it dropped the possessive and became Allingtown.

The years which increased the village swept away in their
course, one by one, the Allings who gave it its name, till at last
there were left but two, Miss Experience and Miss Verity Ailing,
who lived in gentle old-maidenhood, the last of a numerous
family. Allingtown had a street known as High Street, which
ran from the harbor up over the hill, on the brow of which stood
" the Ailing mansion," not unfitly so called.

It was a great, spacious house, broad and dignified, with heavy
rafters across its ceilings and brass-handled, mahogany doors. It
overlooked the harbor, and had a flagstaff in its front-yard stand-
ing up like a mainmast, where old Captain Ailing had had the
gratification of running up the colors on the Fourth of July, the
22d of February, and election days after he had been " laid up
in dry-dock," as he expressed his declining years. Miss Expe-

1884.] BY-WAYS. 59

rience and Miss Verity still ran up the colors on the prescribed
days and kept the old house " well calked and seaworthy," in
religious observation of their father's dying request. At the
other end of High Street, down where the smell of cordage,
marline, and fish mingled in the harbor breeze, stood the grocery,
post-office, and candy-shop condensed in one low, rambling corner
house. Here Silas Saunders, familiarly known as Si, diversified
his daily duty of distributing the one mail and weighing out
small quantities of his wares to the villagers, by distributing also
the village news to the veterans of the sea who congregated
there, it was a proof of his high social qualities that, in spite of
his never having shipped for a voyage, no one in town enjoyed
a greater popularity than Si Saunders. Another shining light of
that portion of the community was little Bart, or Bartholomew,
Ives, a person who had a reputation as a wit, and, like many
greater folk, lived on his reputation. It was he who had dubbed
the general meeting-place " The Home for Little Wanderers " a
flight of fancy which the wanderers themselves considered to be
of the greatest brilliancy. On a morning in June Si Saunders
sat upon his high stool, which was tipped back on two legs, his
hands thrust deep into his pockets, eyeing with languid interest
a man who had just entered. Bart Ives sat nursing his knee,
with his eyes in the same direction. The new-comer was tall
and lank, and loose-jointed to an extent that put one in mind of
the wire-hung figures to be seen in museums.

"I expect, 'Liphalet, that Mis' Finch's boarder's come ?" re-
marked Si. " Well, ye-es," drawled Eliphalet in a tone that
seemed to imply that she was only partly come. He knew too
well the value of news to give it away unasked. "Young?"
asked Bart. " Ye-es, she's young," said Eliphalet. " How's she
off fer looks ? " queried Si. " I calculate you'll think she an't
bin left out when they was distributing," said Eliphalet. " It
don't make sech a sight o* difference whether she was or not,"
said Grandsir Cooper from his place beside the molasses-barrel ;
" I think ef a woman behaves herself, and looks good, that's
enough."

" There's where you're right, Grandsir," said Bart emphati-
cally ; " an' I, for one, am glad to hear you say so." The three
men laughed at this sally, to appreciate the wit of which it was
necessary to be previously acquainted with certain gossip about
Grandsir's past days. " Eldrige's her name, an't it?" continued
vSi. " Ye-es Miss Honor Eldrige," answered Eliphalet.

" Honor ! I want'er know ! " exclaimed Bart. " Kinder

60 B Y- WA YS. [April,

cur'os name, now, an't it?" "Well, her name's Honoria, as I
understand it," said Eliphalet ; " but she's got ' Honor ' marked
on her things. I kind'er lifted the lid of one of her books an'
see it there." " Is she a perfesser of religion ? " demanded a
bilious-looking man who had not spoken before. " Well, there's
religions an' religions," remarked Eliphalet significantly, "an*
there's them as perfesses religion, yet an't Christians."

" Why, 'Liph, the young woman don't worship golden calves,
I expect," said Bart smartly. Eliphalet turned his eyes slowly
upon him. " I don't know as it makes much difference whether
she worships a calf or not," he drawled : " she's an i-dolater."
" Fer gracious sake ! " cried Bart. " Yes, she's a papist, an*
she's a-going to that meeting-house down there along-shore, fer
I heard her ask Mis' Finch where 'twas," said Eliphalet, with an
approach to energy. " Jerusalem ! " cried Si, tipping his stool
up straight and taking his hands out of his pockets. "Why,
'Liph, Mis' Finch is a member in good an' regular standin',
an* she hadn't ought " " S'sh ! here she comes," whispered
Bart.

A soft rustling of skirts came around the corner ; a figure clad
all in white, with a beautiful face and quick, springing step, came
into the store. " Are there letters for Miss Eldrige? " she asked
in a clear, sweet voice. " No, ma'am, there an't," said Si prompt-
ly. " Thank you. Eliphalet, Mrs. Finch wants you to kill the
white hen, and told me to ask you to hurry home," said Honor,
with an amused glance at "the Widow Finch's" factotum.
" Ye-es ? Well, I'll go. Mornin'," said Eliphalet, and slowly
sauntered homeward. Honor walked away toward the shore.
" It's a pity, too, seems if," said Grandsir Cooper, " fer she's as
pretty-spoken a woman as I ever see."

" Yes," said the bilious man sharply, " an' more's the pity ! "
"Well, I declare for't," said Si. " I s'pose they don' know better,
some of em." " That's so, Si," said Bart, on whom the beautiful
face had evidently made no slight impression. " An' I don*
know as we've any call to meddle." A silence fell on the group
after that, broken only by the entrance of little Dick Haskins,
who bought a stick of peppermint candy.

Meanwhile the object of all this interest walked on, uncon-
scious of the conflicting emotions which she had aroused.
Honor Eldrige had come to Allingtown for the rest and seclu-
sion of which she felt the need. She wanted to think, she
said, and room to think in. She had reached a time and place
in her life where she felt that a choice must be made of the dis-

1884.] BY-WAYS. 61

position of the rest of it. She had been impressed with the
feeling that there was work in the world for her to do, and she
chose Allingtown to spend the summer in, with an instinctive
desire to get away from all her friends and accustomed sur-
roundings, in order to leave herself alone and watch the result.
Her father had been dead since her childhood ; she had been
motherless since her eighteenth year, and she was twenty-five
when she went to Allingtown. She had not married, though
her youth and beauty made it seem a probable event, nor had
she ever doubted her lack of vocation to a religious life. It told
plainly her character that her name of Honoria was shortened
by all who knew her into Honor ; she was Honor Eldrige to
all her little world. She walked along the shore, past the
fishermen's dories pulled up on the sand, past the lobster-cars,
and the nets spread out in the sun, down to a more lonely
part of the beach where were huddled together a small group
of the cottages of fishermen a little settlement of Portuguese
families, with one French fisherman's house in the midst of them.
Not far from here, built on an overhanging promontory of
rock, stood the little church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea. A
very plain little wooden structure it was, but thither Honor
bent her steps with a sense of going home.

The priest who served had also the charge of two outlying
parishes, and went from one to the other in the charge of his
scattered flock, unmindful of his wasted form and failing health,
which told so plainly of the fatal disease that had laid its hand
on him. Not a brilliant man in any way, nor one that could, by
his eloquence, convert the world, but one of those devoted and
heroic priests whose number and virtues are at once the glory
of the Catholic Church and the wonder of the outside world.

II.

Honor came home refreshed in body and soul. Mrs. Finch
met her in the doorway. " Miss Experience and Miss Verity
Ailing have bin here to see you," she remarked in a tone of
dreary monotony. " I told 'em you was out, so they said they'd
come again. They'll be asking you to tea next," she added, as
though that were the end of things to be endured. "I don't
think I shall mind that," said Honor cheerfully, misled by the
doleful tone. "Mind it? I should think you wouldn't. There
an't no better folks nowhere than the Allings, an' ef Miss Verity
an't a church-member I don't expect you care."

62 B y- WA vs. [April

Mrs. Finch was not a cheerful person, but it was to be re-
membered that she was " the Widow Finch," and her view of life,
surrounded by a Calvinistic community, had not been enlivening.
She was drab all over her linsey-woolsey dress, her eyes, her
complexion, and her thin hair, which she brushed down tight
and knotted behind. However, she was scrupulously neat,
which in New England parlance is almost equivalent to saying
that she was sublimely virtuous, and she made bread that was a
marvel of lightness. Miss Experience and Miss Verity fulfilled
Mrs. Finch's prediction and their own promise by calling again
and inviting Honor to tea. They were charming, old-fashioned
ladies, of a type that is becoming extinct. They wore black
silk dresses with full, plain skirts, Canton crepe shawls that their
father had brought them home from one of his voyages, and
each carried a little black reticule with a smart steel snap, which
held peppermint-drops and their ample handkerchiefs. Honor
found Miss Verity particularly attractive; there was something
in her brave, honest eyes that told the fitness of her quaint old
name. To be invited to tea with the Allings was to be guaran-
teed to the society of Allingtown ; it was the stamp on the metal.
Miss Experience and Miss Verity were slow and cautious in
giving their approbation to new-corners, especially to the sum-
mer boarders who came and went. But the mother of the
Misses Ailing had been a Chandler, and the Chandlers and El-
driges were connected, and, though Honor was a Catholic, it was
a case of noblesse oblige they must do their duty.

Honor walked slowly up the High Street in the latter part
of a beautiful afternoon. The branches of the elm-trees met in
the middle of the street ; the roadside bloomed with daisies ; the
wash of the incoming tide could be plainly heard from the har-
bor below. Miss Experience and Miss Verity stood on the
broad door-stone to meet her : to go down into the yard would
have been undignified, to stay within doors inhospitable; to
stand on the door-stone was the happy medium which Miss
Experience and Miss Verity, doing all things right, struck.
They took Honor in through the spacious hall ; the broad
staircase ran up at the back, and turned at a square landing
half-way up. A large hair-cloth sofa, with claw feet, stood on
the right, a great mahogany table on the left ; far away at the
end was the long, cherry-wood clock. Two models of ships sat
in their rests suspended over each parlor door.

" Yes," said Miss Experience as Honor's eyes rested on
them, " those were my father's ships. This is the Experience, the

1884.] BY-WAYS. 63

first he ever commanded. She was named for me, and sailed
for Barbadoes. The men mutinied on her second trip back, and
my father was severely wounded. This one was the Truth.
Verity would not have her called for her directly. She kept her
name for" " Sister Experience," interrupted Miss Verity,
with something very like a blush, " Miss Eldrige is weary from
her walk ; if you will take her into the parlor. I will bring her a
glass of wine."

" Sister Verity, I thank you for reminding me," said Miss
Experience. " Be so good as to come this way, Miss Eldrige,
and pardon my forgetfulness." She threw open the door un-
der the model of the good ship Truth, and Honor followed her
meekly, inwardly wondering much for what Miss Verity had
kept her name, and calling up mental visions of a gallant sailor
lover. The light streamed in faintly through the closed blinds ;
the air of the unused room struck chill and a little musty on
Honor's face. Miss Experience walked across the long parlor
and folded back the middle division of the blinds on the end win-
dows. The light showed a velvet carpet in medallion figures,
brocaded satin furniture rather faded, and wall-paper that repre-
sented a tiger-hunt in the jungles of India. Miss Verity came
in bringing a little silver salver, on which lay the glossiest of
damask napkins, a shell-like china plate with a gilt band and
spray of flowers in the centre, and a delicate Bohemian wine-
glass with a tiny decanter to match, filled with home-made cur-
rant wine.

" I hope that you do not object to wine, Miss Eldrige," she
said. " It did not occur to me to ask you. This is of our own
making, and we have always been accustomed to use wines on
our table. I cannot make up my mind to its being an iniquitous
manner of life, though I am assured many people so consider it."
" Indeed, Miss Verity, I think your currant-wine would dispel
such scruples," said Honor, "and your sponge-cake would melt
the heart of a cynic. May I beg the recipe ? " Miss Verity
smiled with intense gratification: it is a short-cut to a woman's
affections to ask for her recipes. " My dear child," said Miss
Verity, " I am quite ashamed to offer you that, for it does not do
credit to that rule. It was made from one that came from my
mother's mother, who was a Bradford. I have an entire book of
her cooking rules, and it would give me the greatest pleasure to
let you copy them."'

"Are you interested in curiosities, Miss Eldrige?" asked
Miss Experience. " If you are, you might enjoy looking at this

64 B Y- WA vs. [April,

cabinet." Honor rose and crossed to her side of the room. " I
should like it very much," she said. " Oh ! what is that ? " she
cried ; for, lying amongst the sharks' teeth, coral, and other relics
of Captain Alling's voyages, she spied a tarnished silver crucifix.
"It is something that belonged to a young French sailor who
sailed under my father," said Miss Experience a trifle stiffly.
Miss Verity came quickly across the room and stood by Honor's
side. " It is something in which you will be specially interested
as a Catholic," she said. " It belongs to me, and the story of
its young owner's death has made me feel always that I did not
know enough of Roman Catholics." " Oh ! tell me, please,"
cried Honor, turning a shining face toward Miss Verity. " Ex-
cuse me first, Sister Verity," said Miss Experience ; " I wish to
speak to Deborah."

" Well," said Miss Verity, " I cannot explain the feeling
better than by telling you that it has always seemed to me to be
a blot on Christianity that in all the sects there is such a lack
of zeal. I suppose that is why this young man's death so im-
pressed me. Be that as it may, he had shipped with my father
for his health, which was but poor. When that was re-estab-
lished his intention was to join the Jesuits and be a missionary
to some heathen land. My father became very fond of him
during the voyage, and always spoke in the highest terms of his
virtue and Christian character. When they were half-way over
a terrible storm arose, and a wave, sweeping over the deck, car-
ried off a little child of about five years that my father had
brought from India. Bonaventure saw him go, and hastily
threw off his outer garments to spring after him. My father
laid his hand upon his arm to detain him. * Why, my boy,' he
said, * no creature can live in such a sea, and you cannot save
the child.' ' I can baptize him when he rises/ cried Bonaven-
ture, ' and my missionary work is here. Let me go, captain ! '
He thrust this crucifix, which he wore around his neck, into my
father's hand and sprang from his grasp before he could prevent.
They saw. him rise up from the water, seize the child alive, and
hold him up high above his head in triumph. Then a great
wave came and swept them both from sight. The ship sailed
around the spot all night, but, though the body of the child was
found, the young apostle never rose again." Miss Verity's voice
shook, and she touched the crucifix with reverence. " God
knows," she said, " whether or no he died in vain, but such an
end shames all the lives I ever knew." Honor took the crucifix
from her hand and kissed it tenderly. " Pray for me," she

1884.] BY-WAYS. 65

whispered. " Dear Miss Verity," she added, " ' greater' love
than this hath no man.'" ".Yes, I know," said Miss Verity,
" and I cannot believe as Experience does of a faith which can
produce such a youth."

" Ah ! " cried Honor. " Then he has not died in vain. Come
with me, Miss Verity, and I will show you a life in our priest
here that is like his death." " Then I will," said Miss Verity.
" Miss Verity," said Deborah, the tall, angular maid-of-all-work,
entering, " Miss Experience sent me to bid you to tea." " Come,
my dear," said Miss Verity. " But first let me ask you to take
this crucifix and wear it, as he did. It is in the wrong place
here." Honor took it and laid it in her bosom. Together she
and Miss Verity left the room, but Honor's heart was throbbing
with joy and surprise. " Here is my work," she said to herself.
" Who knows but that it was God's hand that led me to Al-
lingtown, and, when I thought I came to rest, he wanted me
here?"

III.

Together with a growing friendship for the Allings, though
more especially for Miss Verity, Honor began to be known and
loved by the little fishing colony near the church. She would
wander down on the rocks at half-tide, and sit by the hour with
the music of the waves in her ears. The little, dark haired and
eyed Portuguese children would swarm around her, for the
beautiful lady did far more than teach them catechism and tales
of the saints : she had a pocket that was filled with bright can-
dies, and which was inexhaustible. More than in the others
Honor was interested in the little daughter of Antoine Bertier,
the solitary French fisherman. His wife had given her life for
the little Antoinette's, and the child was growing up alone, with-
out a mother's care, and with little of her father's, who had a
hard battle to wrest from the waves enough to support him-
self and the little one.

Accordingly Honor pitied the child and was kind to her,
and Antoinette returned her a sort of adoration. The doleful
Widow Finch began to feel something very like admiration for
her boarder, but showed her weakness only by combating
nearly everything Honor said. As for the group which haunted
the post-office, Honor made a conquest of every man, beginning
with Eliphalet who saw her more frequently than the rest
through being the right-hand man of the Widow Finch and
VOL. xxxix. 5

66 BY-WAYS. [April,

ending with the bilious man, who was blessed with a hysterical
wife, and whose children, being much neglected, Honor had
ministered to. "Mis' Finch's boarder" was, accordingly, very
kindly looked upon by the Allingtown people, and her inter-
course with Miss Vefity spoken of hopefully, as a possible means
of reclaiming her from error.

Meanwhile Honor was cherishing precisely opposite hopes ;
she had taken Miss Verity to church with her and shown her
the life of zealous self-sacrifice led by the priest whose days
were so plainly numbered. What the effect of this had been
Honor could not tell, for Miss Verity grew reticent, and never
spoke again to Honor as she had in telling the story of the cruci-
fix. And so the days of Honor's summer in Allingtown glided
by in peaceful companionship with the sea, the flowers, the lit-
tle children, and the simple folk around her. June slipped into
July, and there came one of those weeks of intense heat that
sometimes fall upon the unprotected heads of sojourners on the
New England coast. Day after day dawned without the longed-
for easterly breeze that was to cool Allingtown. The sea lay
motionless, like a sea of glass; the sky above was white and
cloudless ; the sun seemed to drop down the west at night,
scorching the tree-tops, and the twilight and starshine brought
no relief. The molasses in the barrel by which Grandsir Cooper
sat in Si Saunders' store was found to have fermented, and
Grandsir himself said that there had never been a spell of such
weather in Allingtown, though old Captain Barnes considered
the summer of '25 to have been hotter. Miss Verity succumbed
to the heat, and was ill in her own gentle and dignified way,
Miss Experience taking care of her. Honor, too, was rather un-
well, and felt that oppression of spirits, and sense of being walled
in without future hope or present fulfilment, that comes upon
one in such tropical days in a northern clime.

On the seventh day of the heat Honor lay upon the bed in
her little white room in languid weariness. The snowy muslin
curtains hung motionless in the windows, but down in the west
were piled ragged-edged clouds which seemed to promise a
change in the weather at last. Honor lay and thought. " After
all," she said, " I was mistaken in thinking that there might be
work in Allingtown for me to do. There has been no change
in Miss Verity, and I am as far from arriving at any conclusions
as when I came. Well, Father Lufton used to say that if God
wished us to do something he would be sure to let us know of
it ; so I ought not to be uneasy." She laid quietly a few mo-

1884.] BY-WAYS. 67

merits, watching the curtains, which were beginning to sway
gently. " The breeze is coming," she thought, and thought no
more. How long she had slept she did not know, when there
came into her slumber a sound of pounding and roaring. She
lay still, with closed eyes, struggling back to consciousness with
a dim sense that such a noise was unusual, when she heard her
name, "Miss Honor!" called in such a tone that she instantly
sprang to her feet fully awake. The room was quite dark ; she
c6uld scarcely distinguish objects across it, except by the con-
stant flashes of lightning. Outside the sky was yellow and
green, yet no light came from it, and the roar of wind and rain
was deafening. Honor groped her way to the door ; Mrs. Finch
and Eliphalet stood there, looking anxious. " Per land's sakes ! "
cried the widow, " I begun to think you was struck." " What's
the matter?" cried Honor. "Has anything happened?"
"Tony Bertier's out in the storm in his dory," said Eliphalet.
" He would go'n spite er warnin's, an* no livin' thing could stan'
such a sea. Ant'nette's cryin' fer him an* fer you. She's mos'
crazy ; though how such a mite could understand beats me.
They can't do nothin' with her, fer she can't speak a word of
English, she's so scared, except your name an' ' Papa.' ' " I'll
go to her," said Honor quickly, " if you'll take me."

A look of relief came over Eliphalet's face, for he had a
warm heart under his uncouth form, and he was sorry for the
child. " Well, you're the right stuff ! " he said emphatically ;
" an' Si was right an' I was wrong, an* I ask your pardon. He
said you'd go." " Go down and wait, Eliphalet," said Honor,
with a white face, " and I will be ready in ten minutes." She
hastily wrapped herself in her " storm-dress," as she had called
it, and, taking a bottle of brandy, hastened away. It took some
courage to face such a storm as was raging, and Honor walked
rapidly in absolute silence, in which she could hear her heart
beating. A knot of men surrounded poor Antoine's cottage
when she reached it, and they uncovered respectfully when she
came and made room for her to pass. Antoinette sprang into
her arms with a loud cry. " Ah ! ma belle dame," she cried.
" Pauvre petite Antoinette ! " Honor held her fast. " Poor in-
deed," she said, as she kissed her and poured brandy through
the little white, set lips, " for there is no one now in all the
world but strangers to pity. you." The fury of the storm was
spent, the wind lulled, and soon the sun broke through the
drifting clouds. The little tree-sparrow broke into song, the
flowers lifted up their heads brightly ; there was nothing but the

68 B F- WA F5. [April,

uprooted trees 'and seething ocean to tell of what had been ; but
the father of little Antoinette was gone beyond the call of her fee-
ble voice, and Honor still sat in the little cottage and held her close.

There was considerable conjecture afloat in the village as to
what was to be done with Antoinette ; the pastor of the " first
church," which stood at the head of the common facing High
Street, made it a subject of " special prayer," and called a
meeting after the prayer-meeting to discuss it. " You see, my
brethren," he said, " that we should take some action in the
matter. I have no authority for saying that it is so, but it
seems to me not improbable that this papist young woman who
as even now sojourning with Sister Finch will be likely to take
the child 'away with her. It does appear to me, my brethren,
that in the death of her two parents, but more especially in the
violent taking-off of her father, we may discern the hand of the
same Lord who guided the infant Moses into the household of
Pharao. By this merciful dispensation of divine Providence
the young Ann may be snatched like a brand from the burning."
The brethren concurred most heartily in this reasoning, but at
the same time no one seemed to be ready to risk scorching their
fingers by snatching the brand.

At last one very lean and hard-featured sister arose and ad-
dressed the meeting. " No one seems to take it upon themselves
to respond to Parson Bewgel's call. I don't pretend to be no
better'n other folks, an* the land knows I han't got much of this
world's goods to boast of, but I know that it's as little likely that
a rich man'll go to heaven as that a camel '.11 go through the
eye of a cambric-needle, an* I thank the Lord fer it. I feel it im-
pressed upon me that I'd ought ter care fer the orphan child,
ef I be poor, ef nobody else will ; besides that, I calculate to have
some girl bound out to me to learn the tailoring business, an' I
guess she'll more'n save her keep she don't appear very hearty.
So ef nobody else of our people'll take her, / will." At the same
.time that Sister Flint was expressing her willingness to take
poor little Antoinette Honor was sitting beside Miss Verity's
high-posted bedstead discussing the same question. " It seems
to be my duty, Miss Verity," she said. " I cannot help thinking
that this is the work God has given me to do, especially because
if I do not take her she will fall into the hands of some one here
in the town and lose her faith ; and that, you know, dear Miss
Verity, would be a fearful thing." Miss Verity blushed on her
linen pillow-case. " I think it is your duty, Honor," she said,
" and you had better see about it to-morrow morning."

1884.] BY-WAYS. 69

IV.

The following day Honor waited on the selectmen of the
town to arrange the future of Antoinette Bertier. The doctor,
a big, gruff, good-natured man, represented the august body.
" You are too late, my dear young lady," he said. " Mrs. Flint
has already applied for the child, and the matter has been
settled." Honor looked aghast. " You seem to be sorry," said
the doctor; " why do you care ? A child is not such a desirable
piece of property for a young lady to possess." " It is not that,
but I must have her," cried Honor. " Don't you think Mrs.
Flint will give her up?" "Can't say, I'm sure," said Dr. Hart
gruffly. " You must settle it between you. Look* here ! " he
added, with a sudden change of manner, " I don't mind helping
you. That woman's name feebly expresses her nature. Poor
little Antoinette will be half-starved and worked to death.
There is not a vulnerable point in Mrs. Flint's feelings, except
her purse. If you go to her and offer money for her bargain
that is, if you care enough to do it I am sure you will get the
child." " I'll go at once," cried Honor, " if you will tell me
where she lives." " I will send my boy with you. Here, Jimmy,
take Miss Eldrige to Mrs. Flint's house." " I thank you more
than I can say," said Honor gratefully, putting out her hand.
The doctor shook it heartily. " Wait till you find out what a
scrape I've helped you into before you say that," he said. "I
declare, I should like to make a diagnosis of your case, for I
never saw a girl just like you before."

Honor laughed and hastened away. She found Mrs. Flint
finishing a vest, and she looked up at Honor over her spectacles
as she waxed her thread. " Mrs. Flint," said Honor, going
straight to the point with considerable tact, " I hear that you
have decided to bring up little Antoinette Bertier. Now, that^
is very good of you, but I believe that you think it will be quite
a drain upon your income, and it will be some years before so
young a child can be of service to you. Though I may not be
as competent as you to bring up a child well, I am willing to
undertake it; so, if you agree, I will relieve you of Antoinette,
and give you this hundred-dollar bill as a compensation for any
help she might have given you later."

Mrs. Flint looked greedily at the crisp note which Honor
waved temptingly before her as she spoke. But she was a Yan-
kee and had faith in haggling. " Well, no, I guess not," she
said. " Money an't but dross, and I'm sorter set on the idee now

70 B Y- WA YS. [April,

I've took it up. No, I'll keep the child." The eager look in
her eyes did not escape Honor. " Very well," she said, " you
know best, of course ; and, after all, it saves me much responsi-
bility. Good-morning, Mrs. Flint ! " She turned as if to go.
" Hold on ! " said Mrs. Flint. Honor paused, but did not turn
back. " I like to accommodate, and mebbe I hadn't ought'er re-
fuse money when it's offered me by one of your persuasion/' said
Mrs. Flint. "Would you give it to the pope if I didn't take
it?" "It is not improbable," said Honor, with dancing eyes.
" Well, now, when you look at it that way, perhaps it's my
dooty," said Mrs. Flint. " It does seem to me Parson Bewgel 'd
say 'twas even better to keep one hundred dollars from the
. Pope of Rome than ter fetch up that child Protestant. Yes, you
may leave it. I'll give her up." Honor came back to the doc-
tor laughing, but victorious. The matter was arranged, the
necessary papers made out, and Honor went home to her little
room at Mrs. Finch's, no longer without an object in life, but
charged with the care of a human soul.

The little Antoinette was not well ; she lost some of the color
from her cheeks and the elasticity from her step. Dr. Hart
said that she was suffering from the shock of the day of her
father's death and his imperfectly understood absence. Follow-
ing his advice, Honor made arrangements for an earlier depar-
ture from Allingtown than she had at first intended. The little
group at the corner-grocery bade her a regretful farewell. " I
han't had sech an interest in any one's letters sence before I mar-
ried my wife, an' she was away to the seminary," said Si Saun-
ders, as he shook her hand. The little Portuguese bade her
good-by with streaming eyes, and would willingly have left their
brothers and sisters to be in Antoinette's place, going with " the
beautiful lady." The priest blessed her fervently. " Farewell,
my child," he said. " I do not think we shall meet again on earth,
but you may carry away with you the recollection of a summer
well spent, and my last days will be made easier by the many
comforts you have given me."

Miss Experience's good-by was stately as her every action,
but cordial. " You have afforded us many pleasant hours, Miss
Eldrige," she said, "and I sincerely trust that we shall meet
again." Miss Verity kissed her tenderly. " Good-by, my dear
Honor! " she cried. " You have been a blessing to me this sum-
mer, not less than to this orphan child, and I want to write to
you." Eliphalet drove her to the station in an open wagon, and
showed his grief by refusing to let any one help him with the

1884.] BY-WAYS. 71

trunks. Mrs. Finch bade her farewell in a characteristic manner.
" Here's some bread and butter an' cheese to eat in the cars,"
she said. " An' I made this batch o' doughnuts particular fer the
little 'un. An' I jest want'er tell you that, ef you want ter come
ter Allin'town nex' summer, I'll find a place fer you ef I have ter
sleep in the barn." The locomotive puffed and snorted, the train
quivered all over and got under way. The last glimpse Honor
had of the little town Eliphalet was waving his hat on the plat-
form, and over beyond the High Street the sea lay shining back
to the sun ; then a sudden turn in the road shut it from her sight.
Honor had much to occupy her during the following autumn
and winter, and she had little time to think of her new friends in
Allingtown. Sometimes she wondered that Miss Verity did not
fulfil her promise of writing ; but, though she felt a great desire
to hear from the good little lady, her many other cares drove the
thought from her mind. In the latter part of March a letter
came directed in a neat, old-fashioned hand, and bearing the Al-
lingtown post-mark. " Miss Verity ! " Honor cried as she tore
open the envelope. " How glad I am that she has written at
last."

" My dear Honor," the letter ran, " you may have wondered at my
silence. I have waited to know exactly what to tell you, though I might
have said much when I bade you farewell. The village news is incon-
siderable, and every one in whom you would be interested remains the
same except myself. I have undergone the greatest of changes, of which I
write to tell you. What I saw in you in this little church here and in our
saintly father impressed me profoundly, coming as it did in addition to my
previous half-formed inclination which the death of the young French-
man had given me. I did not like to say this to you when you were here,
though I might have done so.

" I have been to the church a good deal this winter, and have cultivat-
ed my slight acquaintance with the priest, thereby greatly grieving my
good sister, and occasioning, I am certain, much talk amongst the town-
folk. At last oh! how can I tell you? Well, the father had failed in
health considerably during the severe weather. One stormy night in
February there came a call for him to go to give the last sacraments to a
dying man. His housekeeper vainly tried to restrain him, telling him that
it would surely end his days. Our saint answered: ' Our Lord would have
died for this one man ; I must follow him/ He went, and arrived there
safely and in time ; but going home, worn and weakened by buffeting the
storm, a terrible hemorrhage overcame him, and he sank in the snow. He
was found there in the morning and carried home, where he lingered a
few days and died not before he had baptized me, however, who pre-
sented myself to him immediately. I could not fail to recognize the fruit
of the same teaching in these two deaths and in your life, as well as in this
life that has just ended so sublimely. Now I am a Catholic, and I cannot

72 NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. [April,

realize my present position nor what has come to me. Sister Experience
has said little after the first announcement I made to her of my intention.
She has too fitting a sense of her duty to let the outside world know of the
coldness which I may tell you exists between us. I hope the news I send
you may be as welcome to you as I believe it will be, and that you are
yourself well and happy. Our father sent you by me his dying blessing
and gratitude for your kindness to him. Present my affectionate remem-
brance to little Antoinette, whom, I hope, is well. Believe me with senti-
ments of affection

" Your sincere friend, VERITY ALLING."

Honor laid down the letter with streaming eyes and smiling
lips. ".My dear father," she whispered, " and my dear Miss
Verity. Come here, my Antoinette," she said, as the child ran
into the room. " God is very good, my darling, and he raises up
saints everywhere," she cried, as she snatched her up in her
arms. " He feeds his flock sheltered safe in the fold, and when
he sees one of his sheep or his little lambs who has lost her way
.he himself goes softly down the by-ways to bring her back."

NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS.

THE term pueblo in the Spanish language signifies people.
The plural of pueblo is pueblos. It is also the term in com-
mon use to designate bodies of Indians, of manners, customs, and
history unlike those Indians who are known as savages or bar-
barians and lead a predatory and roving life as wild tribes not
yet reduced to the ways of civilized men. The Pueblo is in-
cluded in the race of the North American Indians only from a
mistake made in the beginning and perpetuated through time.
There is no distinction of race more perceptible than that which
exists between the Pueblo and the lawless freebooter who from
time immemorial has been his enemy.

The long, low, grass-grown mounds which lie in the se-
questered valleys and beside streams in the remotest regions of
New Mexico are all that now remain to trace the outlines of
many of those cities whose very names are forgotten and whose
last burgher died four hundred and ninety years ago. Those
mementos of a history upon which mankind can but speculate,
and which is eternally lost, are the walls which protected the
homes of the remote ancestors of the Indian farmers of the val-
ley of the Rio Grande. The Pueblo is the small remainder in

1884.] NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. 73

North America at least so it seems of the great people whose
historic king and god was Montezuma, who founded the Mexi-
can capital, who built the colossal temples of Central America,
who had a written literature and a religion not utterly pagan,
and who were found by the Spanish conquerors a brave and
prosperous people.

In contradistinction from the Indian as we usually know him
here in the West wild and ferocious, roving and homeless the
Pueblo is essentially a farmer, and was found so by his con-
querors. All his inclinations and tastes are peaceful. In his in-
timate knowledge of his business, his laborious patience, his
industrious contentment in what the sunshine brings and the
soil yields, he is the model farmer of America, and reminds one
of all that has been said and written of the patient husbandman
of Egypt and China. It is astonishing to note that he is an un-
conscious teacher of those whose ancestors were his conquerors.
The whole curious routine of Mexican husbandry is borrowed
from the Pueblo. His plough is made of two pieces of wood, the
one mortised to the other at such an angle as makes at once the
coulter and the beam. Sometimes, indeed, it is only the crotch
of a tree found suited for the purpose. Fastened to this are
the long-horned, gaunt, patient oxen, yoked together by a
straight piece of wood bound with thongs to the horns. As
one sees the bro\vn-faced son of toil, holding his rude plough
by its one straight handle, walking beside the lengthening mark
which can scarcely be called a furrow, through the. low field
yet wet and shining from recent inundations, urging his beasts
with grotesque cries and a long rod with a sharpened point,
one can hardly help thinking that the rude wood-cuts which
illustrate Oriental agriculture in the Bible commentaries have
walked out of their pages and are here before him.

" The Pueblo," wrote my friend Dean Monaghan, at one time editor of
the Kansas Magazine, now American consul to Havana, " has modelled the
universal architecture of the country where he dwells. The low houses of.
sun-dried brick, with earthen roof and earthen benches and beds and floors,
had an origin far back of the Conquest, and, though somewhat modified
by it, are by no means the result of Spanish ideas of taste. But the Pueblo,
a farmer by nature, had from time immemorial been surrounded by his
enemy, the Apache. Therefore the cluster of houses which formed the
common village was each one a castle. The Pueblo made no doors, and
when he and his family retired for the night they climbed a ladder to the
roof and drew the stairway after them."

The Pueblos, once so numerous and powerful, at present in-

74 A r ^^ MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. [April,

habit twenty-six villages, situated principally in the valley of
the Rio Grande ; and the whole population, as computed in the
Catholic Directory for 1883, is laid down at ten thousand souls
a low estimate, but not far from the truth. These are every-
where the nuclei of a farming community. A number of the
pueblos I have visited have large orchards of peaches and apri-
cots, with rich clusters of grapes as well as low-lying fields.
All these, with immense pains and labor, are surrounded with
almost inaccessible walls or fences. The Pueblo shuts in his
life from the world and delights in isolation. His curious house
and closely-fenced garden are not so from mere motives of
fear. It may have been so in olden times, but not now. He
is bent upon isolation amid the thousand changes which en-
croach upon him, and he humbly passes away to join his fathers
without a memento, a monument, or a word of history. The
predatory Apache, the conquering Spaniard, the Yankee, peer-
ing curiously over his garden-wall, have been there in vain ; he
clings to ancient habits, intensely occupied with the details of
the humblest of all lives, and, most of all, content. With all this
it will appear strange to no one that, although a Catholic at
heart, he still clings to his ancient faith that in the light of some
radiant morning the immortal Montezuma, high-priest of the sun
and king of the faithful, riding upon an eagle, will come again
from the east bringing deliverance with him.

I visited the pueblo of San Juan at harvest-time. All was in
a bustle. Far down the sandy valley stand the long lines of yel-
low walls surrounding the fields with their golden harvest, while
at the right glitter the slimy pools of the Rio Grande under the
noonshine. The settlement, with its village and church in the
centre, is large and pretty ; the fields are east of the pueblo, and
the space between it and the river is filled with luxuriant gar-
dens. On every hand are evidences of unwonted activity.
The cumbrous carts, with frame-work of osier, and wheels made
of a section of some large alamo, howl dismally upon their oilless
axles as they pass you by on the roadside, to return freighted
with yellow bundles. In the fields on either side the reapers
wade slowly along, patiently decapitating each yellow stalk.
They use no machinery, but, the simple sickle in hand, they go
on cutting by handfuls.

Some distance ahead a cloud of dust and straw is tossed high
in the air. You hear curious noises: you are in sight of a primi-
tive threshing-machine. Around a circular space some twenty-
five feet in diameter tall poles are set in the ground, and be-

1884.] NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. 75

tween these, from one to the other, are stretched strips of raw-
hide. Within the ground is bare and hard, and the newly-cut
wheat piled there is being trodden out by some twenty unbridled
burros. The little urchins kick and halloo in the straw outside
the enclosure, like urchins in a straw-pile anywhere in the world,
and men and women in the centre of the ring so work upon the
sensibilities of the burros with kicks and shouts, and sundry long
poles, that they go as fast and furious as mediaeval witches. To
a man unaccustomed to such things there is ever something in-
describably ludicrous in the long ears and solemn countenances
of the beasts. As you watch these thus treading out the wheat
you see that they are intent, with their long ears laid backward,
upon revenging upon each other with their flying heels the
thwacks of their masters. Sometimes, instead of donkeys, it is a
flock of sheep or goats which are used as a threshing machine.

Yet a little further and the scene is different. The children,
with the revengeful burros and the sheep and the goats, have
vanished altogether, and a few stoical persons are occupied in
an operation often spoken of in Holy Writ they are winnowing
the wheat. They stand by the fence, old men and old women,
and anon with a small broom sweep up each scattered grain as
it falls beyond the heap.

The Pueblos anciently formed four distinct nations speaking
as many languages namely, the Piros, Teguas, Queres, and Ta-
gnos or Tanos. But the villages of the latter have gone to ruin
and the population passed away, or if any of them remain they
have been incorporated with other pueblos. The Pueblos still
live in rather small communities, distinct from the Mexican
population, and are governed by their own local customs and
laws. Each village is distinct from others, and there is no com-
mon bond of union between them. Their officers are a governor,
a justice of the peace, or alcalde, a constable to execute the laws,
a council of wise men, and a cacique, generally the oldest man of
the pueblo, if not incapacitated by age, who can bring any one,
even the governor, to punishment, if deserved. These are the
civil officers ; generally there is also a war-captain, who attends
to military affairs.

Such a thing as a member of a pueblo not almost cheerfully
submitting to a deserved punishment is unknown. I remember,
two years ago, the governor of the pueblo of Tejugne, a fine
young man, had the misfortune, while transacting some business
in Santa F6, to get intoxicated, and in that state to become up-
roarious. He was arrested by the police and lodged in jail.

7 6 NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. [April,

The next morning the council of wise men called upon the au-
thorities of the city, obtained his release, and in silence returned
to the pueblo ; there he was judged by the cacique and con-
demned to flogging. A few days after I met him and asked
him : " Well, how did you fare ? " " It was my fault, padre ; I
deserved it." And that was all.

In religion they are Catholics. Many pueblos, and many
members of each pueblo, follow conscientiously and most ear-
nestly the tenets of the mother church. There is no doubt,
however, that some of them mix up old superstitions with the
faith in which they have been brought up. It is a known fact
that there are many who believe that Montezuma will come
one day in a chariot of fire to deliver them from the yoke of the
Spaniards. There is no doubt either that in some pueblos it
may be in very few there is still kept an estufa with a huge
serpent, fed on the flesh of animals, particularly of the rabbit ;
that the Montezuma fire is kept by a few appointed for that pur-
pose. Still, all these things are dying away. Among them, as
among all peoples, you find unbelievers who fulfil only exteriorly
the duties of Christianity. Of late years great efforts were made
to pervert the Pueblos to Protestantism. Sectarian schools were
established, and some children were even sent East, tho'ugh
under the promise of placing them in Catholic schools. God
alone knows what efforts the venerable Archbishop of Santa Fe,
the Most Rev. J. B. Lamy, and his clergy have made, and at what
expense, to preserve them from ravenous wolves. Thank God !
there is a change in the administration, and we hope that an era
of candor and impartiality will dawn upon the Pueblos. We ask
no favors, but only insist that, as they are all Catholics, their faith
be not tampered with.

The Pueblos, as we know them, are a quiet and orderly peo-
ple, and form a meritorious class of the population of the Terri-
tory. They are industrious and frugal, and live in harmony with
each other and the surrounding Mexican population. A few
hundred acres of land belong to each pueblo, which for purposes
of cultivation is parcelled out to the respective families. They
raise grains, vegetables, and fruits, manufacture some wine, and
possess considerable flocks and herds. They cultivate by means
of irrigation. They have retained in a great measure their abo-
riginal costume, and dress either in skins or woollen goods of
their own manufacture. Their food is simple and wholesome,
consisting mainly of beans, pepper (chile), and corn-meal, which
are prepared in a manner peculiar to themselves. Like the

1884.] NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. 77

Mexicans, they have the tortilla and the atole. The tortilla is
simply a cake of dough dried up in a pan, and the atole is a mix-
ture of corn-meal with water, to which a little salt has been
added.

Not a few persons believe that the Pueblos, or, as they are
often called, the sedentary Indians^ of New Mexico were reclaim-
ed from a wild state and settled in villages by the Spaniards.
No doubt they were reclaimed from a very wild state ; many
of them were cannibals ; all, or nearly all, offered human sacri-
fices. The horrors and immoralities of their sacrifices amidst
dances cannot be written. These horrors and this immorality
the Spaniards could not, of course, tolerate, and this was the
principal cause of so many risings of the Pueblos against their
masters. At every rising they returned to their idols, their
dances, their estufas, and their Montezuma fires. As to their
having been placed in villages by the Spaniards, no one believes
it who has read the history of the country. The conquerors
found them in villages, and even cities, some of them large enough
to be compared by old chroniclers to the city of Mexico. The
Seven Cities, Cibola, Tiguex, Cicuye, Quivira, Jemez, and hun-
dreds of others are names of cities well known.

At the time of the cession of New Mexico to the United
States which passed over the sedentary and solitary Pueblo,
as the gentle breeze upon the surface of yonder lake a change
was made in their political status. Whereas until then they
had been more or less under the subjection of Mexico, now the
government of the United States fixed the land which each
pueblo should possess at three miles square. But they have
not the power of selling or alienating their lands ; they are the
perpetual usufructors of their land, and no more. As for the In-
dian, whether his Tata was in Mexico or in Washington made
but little difference.*

The Pueblo, although quiet and contented, has, however, one
great anxiety : it is about his religion. He has stood firm
against all attempts to meddle with it; and to-day I see that as
the new agents visit the Pueblos one after another to get ac-

* The donation of lands to the Pueblos dates as far back as 1523, two years after the Con-
quest, when Charles V. of Spain authorized the viceroys and governors to grant a certain quan-
tity of land to each village, and this was done to conciliate so powerful a people. In 1533 the
mountains, pastures, and waters were made common to both Spaniards and Indians. In June,
1587, Philip II. confirmed to each pueblo, or village, eleven hundred varas square of land, which
was afterwards increased to a league square. Many decrees were afterwards given for the
same purpose, but forbidding the Indians the sale of their lands, the fee simple remaining with
the crown of Spain, from which it passed to the government of Mexico, and subsequently to
the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

7 8 NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. [April,

quainted with them, the first question the Pueblos ask is about
their religion ; and when the agent tells them that their religion
shall never be interfered with, that it is protected by the Tata
in Washington, they applaud and form joyous dances around
him. However superstitious he may be, the Pueblo is a Catho-
lic and desires to remain so. May the government give us the
means of instructing them better, of doing more for them, and
it will have conferred a great blessing upon its Indian children.

It would be interesting to inquire about the probable origin
of the Pueblo Indians and whence they came. There are two
theories on this subject : the one, that they are of Aztec origin ;
and the other, that they are the remains of a Toltec colony. Ac-
cording to a common tradition, when the Aztecs peopled New
Mexico they came from the north or northwest, and only
reached- their new homes in the valley of Anahuac after a
period of one hundred and fifty years, halting from time to time
and building villages and cultivating the earth. Castafieda is of
opinion that they came from the northwest. If such is the
case and I see absolutely nothing to the contrary some of the
migrating Aztecs must have remained in New Mexico and not
moved on with the main body. There is a tradition among
them that they are the people of Montezuma, and, as I remarked
above, many of the Pueblos even to-day expect him to return
and restore them to their primitive state. Such Pueblos keep
the estufa, or stove an underground room where, they say, is
kept constantly burning the fire of Montezuma until he returns,
and yearly some three or four young men are elected to keep
that fire burning. It is said that they are forbidden to leave the
estufa in daylight, although they may come out at night ; they
are forbidden the use of marriage if in that state, and the en-
trance of any house, not excepting their own, is forbidden them.
These are all hearsays, because it is impossible to gain any de-
tails from the Indians. At certain epochs, too, the entrance to
their pueblo is forbidden to every stranger, and it is surmised
that at those times those who are only nominal Catholics engage
in their old pagan dances. All these things were practised by
the Aztecs of Mexico.

Baron Humboldt contends that the language of the Aztecs
differed materially from that of the Pueblos of our times, with-
out, however, deciding the question ; whereas Albert Gallatin is
of opinion that they are of Toltec origin. The fact of the dif-
ference of language may be ; still, there seems to be very little
doubt that the Pueblos and the Aztecs of old are one and the

1884.] NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. 79

same race ; the similitude of their manners and customs, their
modes of building and living, would argue an identity. As for
their language, it is no argument, as in the lapse of time many
words are dropped off and new ones coined, particularly since
they have been commingling with the Spaniards.

But what became of all these inhabitants of the country so
powerful and numerous at the time of Coronado, when the pro-
vince of Tiguex alone is said to have held forty thousand ?

"The most reasonable conclusion," says Bandelier,* "that can be ar-
rived at is that they were exterminated by the Spaniards upon their re-
occupation of the country. Though history is silent as to the complete
operations of the Spaniards upon their return to New Mexico, yet it is a
fact established by documentary evidence that a relentless war was waged
against the Indians, and a number of tribes are spoken of as being en-
gaged in certain battles, of which tribes we know nothing at the present
day; and in some instances it is stated that some tribes sued for peace and
promised obedience to the rule of the conquerors, for which they received
grants of lands that they at present occupy. The inhabitants of Gran
Quivira, Abo, and Quarro would be among the first that the Spaniards
would meet on their reoccupation of the country, and there is every reason
to believe that they were exterminated by the incensed invaders."

I doubt very much this last statement, as we have exactly the
route followed by Vargas from El Paso to Santa Fe when he
came to reoccupy the country. He carried before his army
wherever he went a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary ; and
wherever he camped he built a little adobe oratory, where he
placed the Madonna. I have seen such oratories, particularly
the one situated near Agua Fria, five miles from Santa Fe, and
respected to-day by the Mexicans under the name of los palacios.
His route led him by the Rio Grande, and when, reaching Santa
Fe, he found the city occupied by numerous Indian troops massed
upon the plaza, he established his camp on the spot where now
stands the chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, and there he built
a palacio, which he left under the care of some soldiers. He
attacked the Indians ; the day was consumed in this battle, with-
out success on either side. He then, with his followers, made a
vow to have annually the statue of Mary carried from the
church to the palacio, if he should gain the victory. The next
day he drove the Indians upon the loma northeast of the city,
and finally routed them. This now continues to be fulfilled to
this day, and yearly, on the third Sunday after Pentecost, the
statue is carried with great pomp and chanting from the ca-
thedral to the church of Our Lady of the Rosary, where it is left

* Historical Introduction to Institut Archiologique. Note on Gran Quivira, p. 33.

80 'NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. [April,

ten days, and then brought back, accompanied by a vast multi-
tude of people. What became of the thousands of Indians mass-
ed in Santa Fe to resist him we cannot tell, but no doubt many
of them perished by the sword, and the grass-grown mounds
that we meet at every step tell the silent story of past valor,
activity, and life. It is only to be regretted that so few facts can
be determined with certainty. It is hoped that the efforts now
made by the Historical Society of New Mexico will unearth
many facts hidden from the historian.

Let us now briefly survey the ethnography of New Mexico,
as established by the- investigation of the years 1540-43. We
find the sedentary Indians of New Mexico agglomerated in the
following clusters : i. Between the frontier of Arizona and the
Rio Grande, from west to east : Zuni, Acoma, with possibly La-
guna. 2. Along the Rio Grande, from north to south, between
Sangre de Crist o and Mesilla ; Taos, Picuries, Tehua, Queres, Ti-
guas, Piros. 3. West of the Rio Grande valley: Jemez, including
San Diego and Cia. 4. East of the Rio Grande: Tanos, Pecos.
Around these " pueblos " then ranged the following wild tribes :
in the northwest the Apaches, in the northeast the Teyas, in the
east the Querechos, in the south t\\e Jumanos and the Tobosas.

If now we compare the localities of 1540 with the present
sites of the pueblos of New Mexico, it is evident that the Zuni,
Tiguas, Queres, Jemez, Tehua, and Taos still occupy, if not the
identical houses, at least the same tribal grounds. The Acoma
have chosen new localities. The Piros have removed to the
frontier of Mexico; the Pecos are extinct as a tribe; of the Tanos
and Picuries a few remain on their ancient soil. Mr. Bandelier*
says of New Mexico :

" It is the only region on the whole continent where the highest type
of culture attained by its aborigines the village community in stone or
adobe buildings has been preserved on the respective territories of the
tribes. These tribes have shrunk, the purity of their stock has been af-
fected, their customs and beliefs encroached upon by civilization. Still,
enough is left to make of New Mexico the objective point of serious, prac-
tical archaeologists; for besides the living Pueblo' Indians, besides the
numerous ruins of their past, the very history of the changes they have
undergone is partly in existence, and begins three hundred and forty years
ago with Coronado's adventurous march."

One industry I did not mention above ought not, however, be
forgotten : it is the manufacture of pottery. Nearly all the pot-
tery used in New Mexico is of Pueblo manufacture. The vases

* Institut Archtologique, p. 28.

1 884,] NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. 81

and other articles they make are of classic and Biblical shapes,
and in passing- by fountains and streams throughout New Mexico,
looking at the women carrying jars of water gracefully poised
on their heads, you may daily and hourly see Vernet's beautiful
picture of " Rebecca at the Well " repeated in life. Sometimes,
however, although always with classical paintings, the objects
manufactured are grotesque, and are even wanting in decency.

"The ancient Indian and Pueblo work of this description," wrote the
late Col. James F. Meline,* ''is said to have been finer than the modern,
and I am satisfied of the fact from inspection of the fragments I gathered
among the ruins of the old pueblo of San Marcos. The geometric figures
and designs prevail of late years. Nevertheless they still possess and use
the elements of decorative art, as applied to pottery, precisely as we find
them among the ancient Greeks and Egyptians the lines straight or spiral,
waving, inverted, arched, involute or evolute, the scroll and cross carved,
fillet and trefoil. The repetition of all these well-defined and antique forms
is certainly not accidental, but how and why they happen to be found
here is a question that can hardly be discussed by a cavalryman on a
march."

The question has puzzled more men than the " cavalryman
on a march." It is a serious question to ask : Who are the Pue-
blos? We can answer pretty readily, and without much fear of
mistake : They are Aztecs. But who were the Aztecs ? Here
commences the difficulty. Should I be allowed an opinion, I
would say that they may possibly be the ten lost tribes of Israel,
or parcels of such.

A strange phenomenon is to behold the ruins of large pue-
blos, which certainly contained hundreds, even thousands, of in-
habitants, at points now entirely destitute of water, and to
which water cannot be brought from any present source, the
nearest water being miles away. Such is the case with Gran
Quivira, once a large pueblo, of modern date, built by the Fran-
ciscans a pueblo of vast proportions, and at the distance of fif-
teen miles from any available water. This Quivira is not the
same as the one sought for so long by Coronado and Espejo, and
not found. The Indians of that Quivira told Coronado that they
passed through Taos seventy-five miles north of Santa Fe, where-
as the Gran Quivira is about the same distance southeast.

Of course many theories have been broached. One is a
theory held by the Indians themselves. They have a legend that
when Montezuma disappeared he told them water would be
wanting until his return, and that then only they would have

* Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, p. 232.
VOL. XXXIX. 6

82 f NEW MEXICO AND HER PUEBLOS. [April,

water. But, passing over these fables, I say that the phenomenon
is no uncommon one in this region. I have seen several such
cases ; one in particular at La Cienega, ten miles from Santa F6,
in the Cerrillos district. At that point a stream of water, fur-
nished by two springs and running to the distance of about a
mile at all seasons of the year, which has never been known to
dry within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, has, within the
last few years, entirely disappeared ; and even digging to a con-
siderable depth in the bed of the late springs fails to find the
stream, or the channel by which it has so mysteriously disap-
peared.*

" To those at all familiar with the cretaceous formation of the south-
eastern portion of New Mexico, and who have seen the numerous rivers
that flow hundreds of inches of water within a few yards of where they
make their first appearance, and the total disappearance of these streams
within a few miles ; who have seen the water flowing in caves and subter-
raneous streams, and the fact that the whole country is cavernous, can
easily imagine the possibility of a stream acting upon its cretaceous bed,
and eventually wearing a channel to connect with some immense cavern,
and disappearing at once from the surface beyond all reach of human
power." t

Let us hope that men with knowledge and means will under-
take the history of the pueblos in New Mexico, and thus bring
to light facts of the highest importance for this fair country,
which at no distant time is destined to be the health-resort of
thousands who are suffering in the crowded cities of the East,
whereas here, with a climate that can be compared with no
other climate ; with high mountains, snow-capped, and bases cov-
ered with the pino real ; mountain rivers with water as clear as
crystal, filled with the sparkling trout ; amidst countless ruins of
the most interesting character, both the mind and the body can
find ample and agreeable employment.

* Bandelier, p. 32.

t Willison's General Description in field notes of the survey of 1872 made in New Mexico by
the United States.

1884.] ARMINE. 83

ARMINE.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

NEVERTHELESS Egerton was right in his instinct Armine
had been the topic of conversation between M. de Marigny and
D'Antignac, though the former, in his slight hesitation, had felt
no inclination to allude to the fact. Nothing, indeed, could have
been farther from his intention ; yet when he spoke of the hour
spent alone with his friend it was impossible not to pause for an
instant over the recollection of the discussion which had for its
subject the person to whom he spoke, and the nature of which
would so greatly have amazed that person. For he had greeted
D'Antignac by saying :

" I have come because I hoped to find you alone, and because
I wish to tell you of a decision at which I have arrived."

" A decision relating to yourself? " D'Antignac asked, full of
interest at once.

" To myself yes," the vicomte answered. " And also relat-
ing to another in whom your interest is as great as in myself to
Mile. Duchesne."

D'Antignac looked at him silently for an instant. Then he
said in a grave tone : " You are thinking of marrying her, is it
not so?"

" Yes," the other answered quietly, " I have been thinking of
it for some time, but I have now passed that point. I have re-
solved upon it that is, I have resolved upon offering myself, un-
less you believe that there is no hope for me."

" My dear friend," said D'Antignac, " I not only believe, I
know, that there is no hope for you, and I wish that I had spoken
sooner to tell you so."

The calm positiveness of his tone startled the vicomte. " How
can you know ? " he asked.

" By a very simple means," D'Antignac answered. " Egerton
told me some time ago that Duchesne had given him an embar-
rassing and painful charge that with his last breath he bade him
tell Armine that she should on no account marry you."

The blood sprang to De Marigny's face, and he lifted his
head with a gesture of unconscious haughtiness. " How could
he have dreamed of such a thing ?" he said quickly.

8 4 ARMINE. [April,

" By his knowledge of her possible claim upon Marigny,"
D'Antignac answered, " and by his belief that such a plan would
suggest itself to you as a mode of compromise. It was a natural
conclusion on his part."

" On his part, perhaps so ; but on mine can any one imagine
that it would be natural on mine?"

" There are many people who would readily imagine it," an-
swered D'Antignac ; " but not any one who knew you well, even
if he did not know the position Armine has taken, which renders
compromise wholly unnecessary."

" There is no question of it at all," said the vicomte. " And
however anxious I might be that she should accept whatever is
rightfully hers, I should certainly not think of endeavoring to be-
stow it upon her in this manner. There can be no doubt that in
the majority of cases our French mode of marriage serves its
purpose admirably ; but it has never commended itself to me
personally. I have always felt that if I married I must know
much more of, and feel much more for, the woman I marry than
the majority of Frenchmen think at all necessary. Long ago I
had my dreams of what that woman should be, but as I grew
older I perceived that such dreams were not likely to be real-
ized." He paused a moment, then in a somewhat altered tone
went on : " And yet I have found them realized, for I do not
think I ever dreamed of an ideal more sympathetic, more gentle,
or more brave than this girl who has so strangely come into my
life."

" So strangely indeed," said D'Antignac, " so against all ordi-
nary rules of probability, that it seems as if you had been brought
together for some more than ordinary purpose. Considering
this, and considering, too, how entirely she is fitted to fulfil all
your dreams, I am tempted to think that possible of which you
have spoken; and yet I know that it is not possible."

"Why not? "asked the other. "On account of Duchesne's
prohibition? I do not regard that as of any importance."

"You may not; it is natural that you should not," D'An-
tignac answered. " But I am sure that Armine will regard it as
.of very great importance,"

"Has she been told of it?"

" Not yet. Egerton came to me in great perplexity, and I
advised him to defer telling her. It seemed unnecessary; and
I knew that it would make intercourse with you more painful to
her."

" If she had been told it might explain her reluctance to hold

1884.] ARMINE. 85

such intercourse," said the vicomte thoughtfully. " I have al-
ways felt that it was not in herself that the motive of reluctance
lay, but in some influence strong enough to dictate her conduct."

" The motive lay in her father's command. When they were
at Marigny he forbade her ever speaking to you again. Her feel-
ing is so strong on this point that even if she did not hear of his
dying charge I do not think she could be persuaded to consider
the idea of marrying you."

" You ought to know her better than I," said the vicomte.
" And yet"

He paused. At that moment there came to him the recollec-
tion of Armine as he had seen her last, and the touch of the hand
which in answer to his appeal had been laid in his own. He re-
membered how that appeal had influenced her, how he had been
able to strike a chord to which all the deep feeling and all the
sweet reasonableness of her nature responded ; and he could not
doubt that he might do so again, that again he might point out
that the first duty which she owed to her father was the duty
of not perpetuating hatred by allowing it to exercise any influ-
ence over her conduct, and that again the delicate hand might be
laid in his but with another meaning. It could not be said that
these thoughts were written on his face, yet D'Antignac, regard-
ing him, saw that he was not discouraged, and that there was
even something.of a smile in the deep, dark eyes.

" You do not agree with me," he said. " You have hope? " ''1

" I may be mistaken," M. de Marigny answered, " but, yes,
I have hope. I am never with her that I do not feel as if I under-
stood all that she is feeling, so complete is the sympathy between
us ; and therefore I believe that I can induce her to regard this
command of her father's in its true light."

" And do you think that it alone would influence her to refuse
to marry you ? "

Again the blood mounted to the vicomte's face. " No," he
said quickly. " Do not understand me as meaning to imply any-
thing so presumptuous. I only mean that if she bases a refusal
on this, which you seem to consider the chief obstacle, I should
hope to be able to overcome it. She may refuse on other grounds
altogether. I cannot tell, and certainly I have no great reason
for hope."

There was silence for a minute or two. D'Antignac was evi-
dently reflecting, and when he spoke it was to say meditatively :
" If you have no great reason for hope I have very little ; yet I
believe that such a marriage would be for the happiness of you

86 ARMINE. [April,

both, and therefore I am anxious that no effort should be spared
to make it possible. So it is a question with me whether it would
not be well for you to learn what Armine herself, uninfluenced

thinks of it, and how she feels toward you, before she hears of

her father's prohibition."

" What would be gained by that ? "

"This: that if she considers your proposal favorably, and
above all if she entertains any regard for yourself, you will
have a powerful advantage in combating her feeling about her
father."

" That is true," said the vicomte ; " but would I not also bring
upon her a worse struggle than if she knew of the prohibition
from the first ? I fear so. Think, mon ami, of the nature which
we both know so well though you far better than I of its deep
feeling, its capacity for suffering, and its loyalty of instinct !
Think, then, of the result if she should conquer the influence of
what she already knows to have been her father's feeling suffi-
ciently to entertain my suit, and to yield the heart without which
consent would be to me valueless, only to hear then of this com-
mand from the grave ! You know what she would suffer ; and I
cannot be in any degree accountable for such suffering, even if I
might so gain my end."

" You are right," said D'Antignac. " And I in my eagerness
for the happiness of you both was wrong. But I warn you that
if she hears of the prohibition before she hears of your suit the
latter will be hopeless."

" Then," said M. de Marigny, " since we are agreed that it
will not be right to wait until afterwards, there is but one alter-
native that she hears of both at the same time ; and you, my
dear D'Antignac, are the person best fitted to inform her, if
you will undertake the office for the sake of our old friend-
ship."

" I know of nothing within my power which I would not
undertake for the sake of our old friendship," D'Antignac an-
swered ; " but you are, after all, following the conventional cus-
tom of French marriages in not pleading your own cause."

" I shall not be backward in pleading my cause when the
time to plead it comes,'* said the vicomte ; " but I have two
reasons for asking you to undertake this duty first, because I
do not wish to omit the least respect due to the woman I desire
to marry ; and, secondly, because only in this way can she hear
of my suit and of her father's prohibition together; while at the
same time she will learn, from one whose opinion has the ut-

1884.] ARMINE. 87

most weight with her, how far that prohibition has, or ought
to have, binding force on her conscience or conduct."

D'Antignac shook his head. " You overrate my influence,"
he said. " On that point she will listen to her own feeling
rather than to my voice, even though we may consider it the
voice of reason. You could ask nothing of me that I would re-
fuse, however, so I shall undertake the duty ; but I earnestly
urge you not to hope for a successful result."

"I am willing to leave the result to God," said the vicomte
quietly. " Nothing happens by chance. So when one has
prayed and has put one's affair in the hands of a friend whom
one can trust in the fullest sense, one should be resigned to
failure, if failure come. That does not sound like an ardent
lover, perhaps. Yet, if not an ardent, I think that I should
prove a tender one. And a man who cannot trust God seems
to me hardly deserving of trust himself."

" It should be easy to trust Him for everything," said the
man whom He had so heavily smitten. "And I will try not to
,set my heart too much on the hope of earthly happiness for two
who are worthy of it."

There was little more to be said after this, and the conversa-
tion was soon ended by the entrance of other habitues, until the
circle grew to that which was found by the party returning
from Notre Dame. Nor did the arrivals cease then. While the
vicomte was still talking to Armine at the tea-table the door
opened, and a lady, with that appearance of exquisite elegance
only to be seen in Frenchwomen of high rank, entered, followed
by an elderly, rotund gentleman. Mile. d'Antignac went for-
ward quickly to meet them, and M. de Marigny, turning to
Armine, said : " That is my sister Mme. de St. Arnaud. I am
glad of an opportunity to make you known to each other. You
will allow me to do so?"

" Oh ! no," said Armine, shrinking involuntarily. " Pray do
not think of it ! Madame de St. Arnaud is a great lady ; what
has she to do with me, or I with her ? "

" She, at least, has something to do with you," the vicomte
replied, with a smile. " She has heard the story of the kins-
woman who has lately been added to our house."

The quick, pained look which the girl gave almost startled
him. " Can it be possible you have told her that f " she said.
" Oh ! I am sorry I am very sorry ! "

" Why should you be sorry ? " he asked, struck by the
genuine distress of her tone.

88 ARMINE. [April,

" Because it was so useless," she 'answered ; " because I
hoped that the matter might rest as if it had never been known
to any one, or as if Mr. Egerton had regarded my wishes. But
I thought that you promised ! " she added in a different tone
a tone of unconscious trust and reproach which went straight
to the heart of her listener.

" Whatever I promised," he said gently, " I have certainly
intended to fulfil. But I do not think that secrecy was in-
cluded in the bond. And in telling my sister I had a reason,
which you will know later. And, since she is anxious to know
you, surely you will not refuse to know her ? Believe me, she
is not in the least formidable."

" She may not be," said Armine, glancing across the room
at the graceful, high-bred woman talking to D'Antignac with
a charming air of affectionate deference, " yet she and I can
have nothing in common, so I beg you to excuse me."

" You told me once that you and / had nothing in common,"
said the vicomte, " but I hope I convinced you that we have
much in common. The same is true of my sister. I think I
may safely promise that you will find her very sympathetic."
" I do not doubt it," said the girl, " but there may be rea-
sons why one should not even seek sympathy from those whose
lives lie far apart from our own. No " as she saw the vicomte
about to interpose " do not speak again of what we discussed
and settled the other day. Nothing can be different from what
it is, and nothing could be more painful to me than to be pre-
sented to the Comtesse de St. Arnaud as an intruder into her
ancient house."

" It was in a totally different character that I wished to
present you," said M. de Marigny in a tone full of restrained
feeling.

" I am sure of that," she said quickly. " Do not misunder-
stand me or think I am not grateful for the honor you wish
to do me. But I hope you will forgive me if in order that
there may be no question of it I leave you now."

She rose as she spoke, with the evident intention of retreat-
ing through a door behind her, but paused as if reluctant to
go without a word of assent from him.

He smiled a little and held out his hand. "I doubt," he
said, " if you could do anything which I would not forgive.
I will press nothing that is painful to you. My sister must
wait for another opportunity to know you, and I reluctantly
bid you good-evening, if it is your pleasure to leave us."

1884.] ARMINE. 89

" You are always kind," she said in a tone which robbed
the words of their conventional meaning and gave them a deeper
significance. " It is merely an accident that I am here I
have never been present before on one of the occasions when
M. and Mile. d'Antignac receive their friends and it is not
the place for me. I should have retired earlier but for this"
she indicated the tea-equipage "but now I am at liberty
to say adieu."

Her eyes gave emphasis to the gentle salutation. Then she
lifted the porttire behind her and disappeared.

CHAPTER XL.

" WELL," said Miss Dorrance when she next met her friend,
" I hear from mamma that you and Mr. Egerton went amica-
bly together to Notre Dame, after all. I hope that you en-
joyed yourselves."

"That depends, upon your definition of enjoyment," an-
swered Miss Bertram. " We heard a good sermon which
was what we went for."

" A good sermon ! " Miss Dorrance lifted her eyes to
heaven. " What an idea to spend a beautiful, bright Sunday
afternoon in hearing a sermon ! "

" It was certainly more appropriate to spend it in the
Bois," said Sibyl, with a laugh. " Well, we went afterwards
to M. d'Antignac's."

" Where you found the usual ' feast of reason and flow of
soul,' of course."

"That is a very hackneyed quotation," said Miss Bertram,
" but it; describes exactly what we found what is usually to
be found in the D'Antignac salon. I date an era in my life
from the day I first entered that salon."

" An era of what kind ? " asked her friend curiously.

" Of enlarged ideas, for one thing," was the reply.

Miss Dorrance made a slight but very expressive grimace.
" I think your ideas were quite large enough before," she ob-
served ; " a little too large for convenience, in fact. One
should consult convenience in one's ideas, as in everything
else, in my opinion. One might as well wear clothes too large
for one as to have ideas ridiculously unsuited to one's circum-
stances and surroundings."

" If some of us fitted our ideas to our circumstances and
surroundings they would certainly be small enough," said

90 ARMINE. [April,

Sibyl. "I cannot flatter you that metaphor is your forte, my
dear Laura. The narrowest circumstances need not prevent
our entering on that heritage of great ideas which is, thank
God ! open to us all."

Miss Dorrance glanced round the artistic, luxurious room
in which they were sitting. To her the phrase used had but
one significance. " Your circumstances are certainly very nar-
row," she said drily.

" They are not very wide in the material sense which is
probably what you mean," answered Sibyl " but in the spiri-
tual and mental sense they have been narrow indeed."

" You are flattering to your friends."

" To my friends ? " said the other, with a slight smile.
" Oh ! no. I was not speaking of my friends, who are few
as one's friends must always be but of the large number of
indifferent people who form one's acquaintance and make
one's social atmosphere. And what has my atmosphere been ?
Simply that of a society bent on frivolous pleasure, measuring
everything by a material standard, and not even redeemed
from inanity by intellectual activity. Is it any wonder that
when I entered another atmosphere, where people are not
weighed by the amount of money or the number of fashion-
able acquaintances they possess, where all that is best in one
is quickened and all that is noblest brought forth, that I felt
as if I had passed into another world?"

In her energy speaking, as she was, from her heart the
speaker probably forgot who was her listener. Laura Dor-
ranee's eyes opened wider and wider, until it was evident that
only lady-like decorum prevented her from expressing her
feelings by a whistle; and at Miss Bertram's last words she
shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of one who gives up
a hopeless matter.

" Exaltte is no word for you, my dear," she said. "You
have soared far beyond any region where I can follow. Poor
Cousin Duke! What will he do? The clouds are not a
congenial region to him either."

Miss Bertram looked haughty, as she usually did at allu-
sions of this kind; but she made no reply, and Laura went
on :

" He was disconsolate on Sunday. At least he was very
disagreeable, and I believe that is usually a sign of disconso-
lateness. He had hardly a word for any of us. I never saw
him in such a bad temper before."

1884.] ARMINE. 91

" It is a good thing, then, that I did not accompany you,"
observed Sibyl quietly.

" What shameful affectation ! " returned the other. " As
if you did not know that that was the matter ! One must
confess it was provoking, after arranging an afternoon's plea-
suring with the lady of one's love, to be coolly thrown over
for a sermon at Notre Dame."

" I wish that you would be kind enough to spare me such
remarks," said Miss Bertram coldly. " They are exceedingly
disagreeable and in very bad taste."

"How can the truth be in bad taste?" asked Miss Dor-
ranee, nowise abashed. " And a truth that you must know
as well as I ; for how can you help knowing that Cousin Duke
is in love with you ? though I have told him that he might as
well go to the Louvre and adore the Venus de Milo. But
nobody ever listens to warning in a case of the kind." She
ended with a shake of the head.

Despite her vexation Sibyl could not restrain a laugh.

" From your tone one would think you had been delivering
such warnings for half a century," she said. " But of all
people who could possibly be in need of them, I should take
Mr. Talford to be the last. It is absurd even to utter the
word 'love* in connection with him."

" He is not enthusiastic or romantic," Laura admitted,
" but I really think you do him injustice in believing that he
is not capable of being in love. He certainly is in love with
you."

To which Miss Bertram replied, " Nonsense ! " and, rising,
walked across the room, saying : " If you want me to go
shopping with you I will go, on condition that you do not
allude to this subject again."

It was a condition Miss Dorrance was willing enough to
accept for the sake of having the benefit of her friend's taste
in the shopping which is the apparently inexhaustible occupa-
tion of American women in Paris. But Sibyl soon found that
it is not possible to thrust a subject aside because one person's
lips have been sealed upon it. When she returned home
after several hours spent among magasins and modes, who
should she find in the drawing-room, quietly talking to her
mother and evidently awaiting her arrival, but Mr. Talford.

She was too much a woman of the world to make any
change in her usual manner of greeting him ; but, this greeting
over, she did not bestow much attention on him. " I am

g 2 ARMINE. [April,

tired to death ! " she said, sitting down with an air of exhaus-
tion. " I do not know that shopping has ever been reckoned
among the most fatiguing things of life ; but in my experience
there is nothing to compare with it for tiresomeness. After
two or three hours spent among chiffons of all descriptions
and in deciding between innumerable varieties of styles, I feel
absolutely overcome with mental as well as physical fatigue."

" One may perhaps be permitted to say that you do not
look so," observed Mr. Talford, with a smile.

"It is only a proof, then, of how far looks may belie
feelings," she replied, not very well pleased " for surely
when I say that I am tired he ought to take leave ! " she
thought.

On this, as on many other subjects, however, Mr. Talford
differed with her. When a young lady with the most charm-
ing color imaginable and every appearance of vigor declares
herself tired to death from that which is generally held to be
the most fascinating amusement of her sex, few men would feel
bound to very strict credulity ; and credulity was not this
gentleman's failing. He only answered, with a smile : " Then
I should recommend you to refresh yourself at once with a
cup of tea which may be an interested suggestion on my
part, since Mrs. Bertram has promised me one."

" And I have only been waiting for Sibyl's arrival to order
it," said Mrs. Bertram, ringing the bell.

Tea was brought in, and Sibyl resigned herself to make
the best of Mr. Talford, since it was very plain that he had
no intention of departure. And, as a means to this end, she
dismissed Laura's assertion with regard to him from her mind,
saying to herself that a man of so little sentiment and so
much sense had no doubt long since understood her manner
and accepted the conclusion rising from it. Moreover, her
mother's presence was a shield ; so, with an agreeable con-
sciousness of safety, she forgot her fatigue and was talking easily
and pleasantly when a ring of the door-bell was followed by
the appearance of a servant summoning Mrs. Bertram from
the room.

Sibyl longed to telegraph with her eyes, " Come back im-
mediately " ; but the fear of betraying any sense of danger de-
terred her. And, after all, she said to herself, what was there
to fear? She had been alone with Mr. Talford often before
without his indicating the least intention of falling at her feet
or committing any equivalent absurdity. Why should she

1884.] ARMINE. 93

suspect him of any such intention now ? Laura's nonsense had
infected her, she thought, and so, leaning back carelessly in her
chair, a lovely picture in her becoming out-door costume, with
her tea-cup in her hand, she went on talking lightly of the many
topics which, like motes in the sunshine, fly about Paris.

But presently she began to observe that Mr. Talford was
somewhat absent-minded and replied a little at random which
was not remarkable, since he was in fact saying to himself, " Shall
I ? or shall I not? Is it worth while? or is it not?" Per-
ceiving his failing attention, Sibyl's power of talk also failed,
and, finishing rather disconnectedly a story that she was tell-
ing, she began to cast about in her mind for an excuse to end
the t$te-d-tte. But it was too late.

" I wonder," said Mr. Talford, looking up as she paused, " if
you will forgive my wandering attention when I tell you that
it was because I was thinking of you that I did not listen to
you."

" The wandering attention does not matter in the least,"
she replied, with a heightened color. "Raconteurs are born,
not made, and the birthright was not mine ; but I thought
that story of Gambetta so good, when I heard it the other
day at M. d'Antignac's, that I was led to attempt to repeat
it. Eh bien, let us talk of something else. Who is the favorite
for the Grand Prix ? "

" I am not even aware whether there is a favorite for the
Grand Prix," replied Mr. Talford. " My thoughts just now
are set upon quite another prize. My dear Miss Bertram " he
paused slightly " I think that you must know what I feel
for you."

The thing was inevitable. Sibyl recognized it and resigned
herself. " If he will force the matter I can only get over
it as soon as possible ! " she thought. Aloud she answered
with sufficient self-possession :

" Why should you think so ? Does one often know with
any certainty what others feel or think regarding one ? And,
indeed" (hastily), " it is much better not to know, but simply
to take it for granted that one is moderately liked and appre-
ciated."

" Moderately liked and appreciated you could not possibly
be," said the man, who had gone too far to draw back now
under any discouragement. " You are made to inspire strong
feeling. You certainly must be aware of that, at least."

" I do not think I can plead guilty of being aware even

94 ARMINE. [April,

of that," she answered. "And I cannot say that I like the
idea. Moderate appreciation is as much as I desire. But"-
with a last effort to escape " personal discussions are always
unpleasant. Pray let us change the subject."

Mr. Talford grew a little pale his first sign of emotion.

" This," he said quietly, " is mere fencing. You know
what I wish to say to 3 r ou. You know that I love you."

The words were uttered. But it is safe to say that their
effect astonished Sibyl as much as himself. She had intended
to refuse his offer in whatever form it might be couched,
courteously though decidedly ; and she was not prepared
for the sudden impulse which made her answer, with some-
thing akin to scorn :

" No, Mr. Talford, I neither know nor believe anything
of the kind. You may wish to marry me, but I am quite sure
that you do not love me."

The unexpected nature of the reply and the quick flash in
her eyes so much astonished Mr. Talford that he had at the
moment no thought for resentment. "And may I ask," he
said after an instant's pause, " how you can possibly be sure
of such a thing?"

" How can I be sure of it ? " she repeated, with the same
ringing tone of faintly-veiled scorn. " Because, Mr. Talford,
I know you ; because throughout our whole acquaintance you
have been revealing yourself to me you have been reveal-
ing your absolute want of faith in all that elevates human
nature and makes love possible. You have been declaring,
even with a sort of pride, that you have no belief in honor, or
nobleness, or virtue. Neither heroism nor holiness exists for
you neither the soul of man nor the majesty of God. You
hold yourself to be simply an animal, and you hold all men
and women to be like you. Am I not right, then, in saying
that it is impossible love should exist for you? For love
means all that you deride it means honor, and faith, and re-
spect, and a share in the immortality of the soul in which it
is born. These things are empty names to you ? Well, so is
your love to me."

She had not known how far the force of suddenly-aroused
feeling would carry her until she reached this point, and,
with the last words, paused her eyes glowing, and her whole
face full of eloquent expression. If Mr. Talford had not
been a man who kept himself well in hand and was not easily
thrown off his guard by sudden surprise, this most unexpected

1884.] ARMINE. 95

arraignment would certainly have confounded him. As it
was, after a moment of absolute astonishment he answered
with sufficient quietness :

" If I understand rightly, you mean to assert that you do
not believe in my love for you because I do not believe in cer-
tain fancies that have captivated your imagination. But does
it not strike you that the one fact has no connection with the
other fact? If I have no faith, for example, in the existence
of the soul which no man has ever been able to prove
what has that to do with the positive fact that I love you,
whom I see and know ? Let us put such questions aside.
They are only of importance to fanatics, and I am sure that
you are not one of those."

" I am certainly not a fanatic," she answered, " but one
need not be a fanatic to perceive that to deny the existence
of the soul is to deprive love of all its dignity. I know,"
she went on, " that many men are inconsistent enough to
combine with such denial a belief in the spiritual side of our
nature. But you, Mr. Talford, do not. You glory in your
materialism, and in your own mind you have dragged all
creation down to the level on which you live that dreary
level of universal scepticism which refuses to acknowledge
the existence of anything noble or elevated. Do you com-
prehend, then, what I mean when I say that the word love
on your lips has no meaning to me, or else a meaning which
I disdain ? "

" I fear that I do not comprehend," he answered, after
another short pause of astonishment ; " but that is no doubt
owing to the grossness of my materialism and my lack of spiri-
tual conceptions. My dear Miss Bertram, all this, if you will
pardon me, is folly ! Pray let us talk like sensible and prac-
tical people. Let me beg you to consider my offer on some
other ground than that of unreal sentiment."

The scorn came again into her eyes as she looked at him,
and into her voice when she spoke.

" Shall we consider it on the ground of your income, of
the establishment you could afford, or the jewels you could
give?" she asked. "There are women you will find them in
numbers who can be bought by such things ; but if you im-
agine that I am one of them, I can only say that you have
never made a greater mistake in your life."

" I have been very far from imagining it," he answered ;
" but in what I did imagine I find that I have made even

9 6 ARMINE. [April,

a greater mistake. I thought you a woman of the world,
whereas it seems that you are"

" A visionary ? " she said, as he stopped. " Yes, to you no
doubt I am."

" I have always been aware of the visionary element in
your character," he went on, " but I thought your practical
sense was strong enough to keep it under control. And I
still think it would do so but for associations which have un-
fortunately surrounded you of late."

" Those associations have saved me from much," she said
" from hopeless dreams or despairing scepticism ; but they
have not saved me from accepting you, Mr. Talford, for that
I could never have done. You may believe this ; and I should
be glad if you would believe also that I am sorry to cause you
even a transient disappointment."

She rose as she spoke, with an air of ending the interview,
and he rose also ; but he did not go. Despite her last words
he could not believe that he had indeed offered himself in vain.
And it was human nature or at least masculine nature that
her refusal should have roused him to keener interest than he
had thought possible before. So, standing face to face with
her, he said:

" It is not a transient disappointment which you inflict.
Whatever else you refuse to credit, believe that. And if you
would give me leave to prove the love in which you have
so little faith, I think I might convince you that it is worth
as much as the love of any dreamer might be."
& His evident earnestness touched her a little. She had not
given him credit for any genuine feeling; but it seemed that
it was genuine feeling which spoke now in his tone and
glance.

" If it is not a transient disappointment I am sorry," she
said; "but you must carry away no mistaken impression. I
can never think of marrying you. But it may console you to
know that, if 1 were capable of such a thing, I should no more
please you than you could satisfy me. You have been 'at-
tracted by me because you think that I would make a brilliant
woman of the world and be a credit to your taste. You have
judged me, as you judge all things else, on the surface ; and
consequently your judgment is mistaken. Unless I killed the
better half of my nature I could never make what you desire
and, indeed, it is doubtful' if I could make it then. I might
forget spiritual things, but I could never be content with ma-

1884.] ARMINE. . 97

terial ones. I should eat out my heart with impatience and
scorn if I were condemned to such a life as you would wish
your wife to lead. Life to me is worth nothing if it has not
some noble purpose. That sounds to you like idle folly, and
I only speak of it in order that you may understand how far
apart our natures and our lives lie."

Her voice had lost all its accent of disdain, and was only
grave and gentle as she uttered these words; but both voice
and manner expressed a remoteness which the man before
her had a fine enough perception to realize. She spoke to
him as to one on another plane of existence altogether; and,
feeling this, he also felt that farther effort was vain. His suit
was hopeless ; there only remained for him to escape with
what dignity he might.

" If this is your final decision I can only bow to it," he
said. " It is useless to speak of my regret regret for you as
well as for myself, since I am quite sure that you will obtain
nothing of value from the visionaries to whom you have sur-
rendered yourself. But there only remains for me to bid you
adieu."

He bowed with all his usual composure, and left the room
without giving Sibyl time to utter a word had she been in-
clined to do so. But she only stood quite still where he left
her, until the sound of the outer door closing told her that he
was gone.

.> . .

CHAPTER XLI.

" I HAVE had difficult things to do in my life," said D'An-
tignac to his sister the day after M. de Marigny's request,
" but I hardly think I have ever had anything more difficult
than the affair I have undertaken now. It would not be easy
under any circumstances to tell Armine of Gaston's proposal,
but to tell her in the 'same breath of her father's positive
command to the contrary if the matter were not so serious
one might call it absolutely absurd ! "

"I do not think," said Mile. d'Antignac calmly, "that I
should tell her of her father's command at all."

" That would be at least an easy means of escaping diffi-
culty," said her brother, with a smile; "but would it be an
honorable one?"

" And by what possible law of honor are you bound to be
the executor of M. Duchesne's wishes?" she asked.
VOL. xxxix. 7

9 8 ARMINE. [April,

" I am not bound to be the executor of his wishes at all,"
D'Antignac answered. " But since I have prevented Eger-
ton who is so bound from telling Armine of them, I am
obliged to take the duty upon myself, or else be guilty of
letting her make an important decision m ignorance of what
might affect that decision."

" There are too many fine scruples in this matter, in my
opinion," said Helene. " You acknowledge that the command
was a mere ebullition of groundless hate, yet you feel bound
to tell Armine of it, in order that she may have an oppor-
tunity to sacrifice her own and Gaston de Marigny's happi-
ness. I confess that I do not understand your point of view.
/ should suppress it, and feel that I was doing perfectly
right."

" I am quite sure that you would do nothing of the kind,
if the responsibility were laid upon you," said her brother.
" But you forget that it is not wholly laid upon me. There
is Egerton. If I did not speak, he would."

" Then he is very foolish," said she. " Leave him to me.
I will make him hear reason."

" My dear Helene," said D'Antignac, " one who did not
know you as well as I do might think that you were really
desirous to conceal this thing "

"And so I am really desirous," she interposed. "I should
not call it concealing, however. I should simply call it ig-
noring."

" Unfortunately, changing the name does not change the
nature of a thing ; and whatever you might call it, it would
be concealment of which there can be no question."

He spoke quietly, but with so much decision that Helene
said nothing more for a minute. But she was in earnest in
the view which she advocated. " What possible purpose can
such a disclosure serve ? " she said to herself. " Or, rather, is
it not plain that it will very well serve the purpose of Du-
chesne, which certainly nobody should wish to serve?" And
so she observed presently :

"If there is such a thing as defeating the designs of
Heaven, I should say that you are about to defeat them. For
Armine will never consent to marry M. de Marigny when
she hears of her father's prohibition ; yet such a marriage
must have been intended. How else can we account for the
manner in which they have been brought together?"

" I confess that the same idea has occurred to me," said

1884.] ARMINE. 99

D'Antignac. " But it is not safe for us to decide with regard
to the designs of Heaven. We cannot .tell for what end these
two have been permitted to know each other. A marriage
would be very romantic, and, as far as we can judge, would
insure their happiness. But happiness is not the end of life."

" It is a very good thing, however, if one may possess it
with the blessing of God," said Helene.

" With the blessing of God one cannot well miss it," her
brother answered.

"You always contrive to silence one," said she. "But I
am sure you would be as glad as I if the sad morning of
Armine's life could turn into such a noonday as Gaston de
Marigny's bride would have."

11 1 should be inexpressibly glad," D'Antignac replied
in a tone of deep feeling. " But I am sure of this : that the
clouds of the morning have done her no harm, and that her
noonday is safe with God. He will give her what is best."

" And meanwhile you intend to tell her of her father's com-
mand ? "

" I must."

To this there could be no answer, and Mile. d'Antignac
went away saying to herself that, after all, perhaps Raoui
was right, yet mourning over the certain defeat of De Ma-
rigny's hopes. " And it would be such an ideal marriage ! "
she thought, as Egerton had thought before her ; for, except
D'Antignac, no one knew Armine so well as herself or recog-
nized so clearly all the possibilities of the girl's nature. Then,
with a turn of reflection, she blamed M. de Marigny for pre-
cipitation. " He should have waited : he should have given
her time to forget and to become attached to him ! " she
said to herself ; and then suddenly she remembered Armine's
tone and look when she had spoken once or twice of the
vicomte, and, with a pang of inconsistent apprehension, thought,
" What if she is already attached to him ! It may readily be - r
and if so, how terrible that will make the struggle! O
my poor Armine ! are you never to know any peace ? "

As she asked herself this question Armine, with a very
peaceful face, entered D'Antignac's chamber and advanced
to the side of his couch with a note in her hand.

" It is from Miss Bertram," she said, answering his look
of interrogation. " She sends me some books which she
promised, and makes such solicitous inquiry for you that I.
thought you should see what she has written."

IOO

ARMINE. ' [April,

D'Antignac took the note and read with a smile the
dozen or so lines traced in Sibyl's characteristically bold
handwriting, then he handed it back. " Make my grateful
acknowledgments," he said, " and tell her how little I am ex-
hausted by the society of my friends. And when you have
written, come back," he added, as Armine turned away.

She returned in a few minutes, and, sitting down in her
accustomed seat by the couch, went on speaking of Miss Ber-
tram.

" I am so much interested in her," she said, " that, if you
will pardon me for making a suggestion to you who always
know without suggestion what is best for people I wish
you would explain to her something of those problems of life
which once troubled me, and which you made so clear. She
is very clever, but she seems to be drifting on a sea of opin-
ions, without rudder or guide."

" My dear Armine," said D'Antignac, " I think that you
are perhaps a better guide for her than I am. For one thing,
she knows that you speak with the advantage of practical
knowledge that you have seen face to face all that has fasci-
nated her from afar."

" But what weight can my knowledge or opinion have ? "
cried the girl quickly. " O M. d'Antignac ! how can you say
such things ? Do I know anything save what you taught me ?
And if, by that means, I hold some truths, have I your power
of sending them home to the heart? Ah! no; you humble me
when you talk so ! But I think Miss Bertram is worthy of
your attention."

" Every immortal soul is worthy of our attention," he said ;
" but if mental gifts constitute any peculiar claim which I
do not grant Miss Bertram certainly possesses it. She in-
terests me also very much. She is exceedingly brilliant, and
more sympathetic than brilliant people often are. The basis
of her character is very noble ; and where there is so much
sincerity and so much earnestness the attainment of truth
is only a question of time. Do you not know that haste often
defeats its own end ? Let us do what we can and be con-
tent to imitate the patience of God. This soul will come to
.him at last. Have no fear."

" I have none when you speak so," she answered. " But it
is sad to see a mind groping in darkness when one knows where
light is shining." '

" If it is groping toward the light we need only lead it

1884.] ARMINE. 101

gently and pray much," he said. " The end is certain. But
now, my Armine, it is of yourself I wish to speak of your life,
your future."

She looked at him with something startled and a little appre-
hensive in her eyes. I .. i!

"What can you have to say of my life?" she asked. "Is
there any reason why we should think of it? "

" There is a very strong reason," he answered. " You are
called upon to make an important decision, one which will in-
fluence your whole life "

She interrupted him quickly. " If it is of anything connected
with Marigny, that you are speaking," she said, " let me tell
you that it is useless. Everything has been settled. I am to be
troubled no more about that."

He could not refrain from smiling.

" I might play upon words and tell you that what I am speak-
ing of is certainly connected with Marigny, though not with that
to which you allude," he answered ; " but it is a matter too im-
portant for trifling. My child, have you ever thought of mar-
riage?"

Still larger and more startled grew the dark eyes. She did
not answer for a moment ; then she breathed, rather than said,
one word, " Never."

"Never!" repeated D'Antignac, somewhat surprised. The
word would not have meant much from most girls' lips ; but
from Armine's he knew that it meant a great deal, for she never
spoke carelessly or at random. " And yet," he said, " you must
know that it is the state on which the vast majority of the human
race enter."

" Yes," she replied, " but.it has nothing to do with me. Why
should you speak to me of it, M. d'Antignac? "

" Because one who is deeply attached to you and fully worthy
of you one who seems to have been brought by the providence
of God into your life asks permission to offer you the devotion
of his heart and life."

He paused, but she did not speak. No soft flush of color rose
to her face, nor did any light of expectant happiness come into
her eyes. The last still kept their grave, startled look, and for
the rest she sat as pale and still as a statue. After a moment
D'Antignac extended his hand and laid it gently on hers.

" Shall I tell you the name of this man ? " he asked.

" It cannot be ! " she answered, with something like a gasp.
" It is impossible that it can be "

io2 ARMINE. [April,

" The Vicomte de Marigny ? Yes, it is he."

She looked at him for a moment longer, as if unable to be-
lieve, then suddenly sank on her knees and buried her face on
his couch.

D'Antignac did not break the silence which followed. He
did not understand her, but if this emotion was the expression of
gratitude or happiness he felt a pang of keen pity to think of the
blow which was in store for her, and which he knew would fall
with such crushing force. He waited, therefore, in a state of
painful suspense for some sign which should tell him what she
was feeling and what it would be best for him to say. For, well
as he knew the girl, and accurately as he had foretold her course
of action in other cases, he was absolutely at a loss to conceive
what her impulse would be now.

It seemed a long time to him before she lifted her face ; but
in reality the clock had not marked more than the passage of a
minute when she raised her head and looked at him with a
strange, bright look which absolutely startled him. For did it
not mean happiness, and must he not dash that happiness with
pain? " O my poor Armine ! " was his inward ejaculation before
she spoke. But when she spoke how soft and even and proud
her voice was !

" I can hardly believe what you have told me, but since you
tell me it must be true," she said. " But how can I tell you what
it has made me feel ? Yet I think you will understand ; you will
know that it is not of myself that I have thought, but of him.
That he should offer his heart and his life to me that is incom-
prehensible save on the ground of his own nobleness. And this
nobleness is it not something for which to be grateful to God
to have known such a man, and something also of which to be
proud that he has found in me me, so poor and unworthy
anything to attract his regard? It is an honor which I shall
never forget never while I live, M. d'Antignac. But I do
not think of that as I think of what it is, in him, to put aside
all question of worldly advantage, and be willing to give his
name and rank to the daughter of one who, to him and to the
world, was only an obscure Socialist, with not even a right to the
name he bore ! "

" Then," said D'Antignac, divided between pleasure and pain,
" am I to understand that you will accept him ? "

" Accept him ! " she repeated. " No. Can you think that I
would do him such an injury as that?"

" An injury, Armine, when he loves you ! "

1884.] ARMINE. 103

"Does he? "she said softly, as if lingering a little on the
thought. " I must believe that he does else he never would
have asked this but that is no reason why I should do him so
great an injury as to think, even for one moment, of marrying^
him."

" But how would you be doing him an injury? " asked D'An-
tignac, anxious to learn what was in her mind.

She looked at him in surprise. "Can you ask?" she said.
" Do you not see ? Whatever he does must, from his rank and
position, be done in the face of the world ; and what would the
world say of such a marriage ? It would bring scorn and disap-
proval upon him ; it would lessen, perhaps, his influence among
those whom he desires to lead ; it would burden him with one
who did not belong to his order and who was strange to his
life. O M. d'Antignac ! you must see that such a thing is impos-
sible, and that only one who too little considered himself would
ever have thought of it."

" I can answer for M. de Marigny," said D'Antignac, " that
in this matter he has considered himself very much. He has
thought of the happiness of his own life, which he believes that
such a marriage would secure, and not at all of the opinion of
the world, which is not worth a thought."

" It is for one in his position," said Armine. " His life's
work is in the world ; and, in order that he may do it well, men
must respect as much as they admire him. He must do no-
thing to lessen his own power to serve a great cause, nothing
which can give his enemies an opportunity to accuse him of
inconsistency or folly. You know this, M. d'Antignac, and you
know the world ; you know what would be said of him if he mar-
ried one whose political surroundings have been such as mine."

D'Antignac did not deny this, but he replied : " There would
be no need for any one to know who you were. You belong
now to the house of Marigny."

" Even if that were possible, which it is not," she replied,
" what would you think of me if I could forget my past and
deny my father ? And what would my father think, M. d'An-
tignac ? Could I take such a step without asking that question ?
And you know what the answer would be. Can I forget that
I disregard his commands whenever I speak to M. de Marigny?"

" Have I not told you," said D'Antignac, " that such com-
mands have no binding force upon you ? "

" By the letter of the law, perhaps not," she answered ;
" but feeling takes no account of law."

ARMINE. [April,

" But it should ! " said he, " else it may fall into wild ex-
travagance. Your father was, unfortunately, filled with an
unreasoning- hatred of M. de Marigny, and you only perpe-
tuate that hatred by observing his commands."

" His commands have nothing to do with my decision in
this matter," she said. " If he had never spoken of M. de
Marigny I should still feel that I could never do him the in-
jury of suffering him to unite his life with mine."

She spoke calmly, but so positively that D'Antignac felt
sure she would not be moved from this position unless,
indeed, De Marigny could exert an influence which even her
resolution would not be able to resist. That he might exert
such an influence D'Antignac began to believe possible ; and,
this being so, was it not necessary that she should hear of
her father's last charge ? He said to himself that it was ne-
cessary, and he was nerving himself to the effort of telling
her when she spoke again :

" Yet this reason, though sufficient in itself, is not the only
reason why I must decline the honor which M. de Marigny
offers me. I might be tempted oh ! yes, it is possible that I
might be tempted, despite my better judgment and the mem-
ory of my father, if I had not already devoted this poor life
of mine to another purpose."

" To another purpose ! " repeated D'Antignac, somewhat
startled. "What do you mean?"

" Can you not tell ? " she said. She was still kneeling by
him, and, as she clasped her hands with the old familiar ges-
ture that always indicated her deepest and most earnest feel-
ing, there was a light on her face that made her look like a
saint at prayer. "I told you once that I have in me some-
thing of my father's spirit that my heart is with the poor
and the suffering, and that, like him, I wish to cast my lot
with them and to count nothing too much to do if I may
bind up a few wounds or wipe away a few tears, if I may
even in the least degree lessen the misery and the despair
that is in the world. For I am not like those who have never
thought of these things, whose lives have been cradled in
softness and in ignorance of the wretchedness that lies all
around us. The sound of it has always been in my ears, the
sight always before my eyes, and I could not, if I would, for-
get it. My father mistakenly but most devotedly spent his
life in laboring to relieve this wretchedness, and I desire to do
the same/'

1884.] ARMINE. 105

" How ? " asked D'Antignac, though he felt sure what the
answer would be.

She looked up at the crucifix with an exquisite smile. "'If
thou wouldst be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast and give
to the poor, and come follow me.' That is what I would do,
M. d'Antignac."

Their eyes met in a gaze in which soul was laid open to
soul, and words were unnecessary. Never, perhaps, was sym-
pathy more full, understanding more complete, between two
human beings than between these two at this moment. All
that one glance asked the other answered, until at length
D'Antignac said :

" It may be God's will. But you must decide nothing
hastily. To whom have you spoken of your desire?"

" To no one," she answered. " Do you think that I would
speak to any one before I spoke to you ? "

"And how long have you thought of this?"

" How can I say ? The desire was with me long before it
took positive form. Perhaps the first time that it took such
form was when you said to me have you forgotten ? that I
might be intended to make reparation for my father's war
against religion, to atone by prayers for blasphemies, and by
good works for evil deeds. The suggestion was like a ray of
light an inspiration from heaven. It was what I had longed
for to aid, to labor, to atone and thus the way was made
clear to me. It has been growing clearer ever since. Yes-
terday some words in Notre Dame seemed spoken to me. If
the evil of the age is only a perversion of its true impulse,
then what my father so passionately desired to serve hu-
manity and to lessen its ills is within my reach. I may
work for his end, I may in some sort fulfil his purpose and
atone for his errors. And more even than that " her eyes
filled with radiance as she lifted them again to the crucifix
" while I strive to relieve the misery of humanity I shall
touch, relieve, reach Him. Who could have dreamed of it, if
he had not said it ? Surely, if the world would only think of
it, we should have again the ages of faith, when the noblest
and the greatest felt themselves honored to serve Christ in
his poor ! And to do that to spend one's life doing that
O M. d'Antignac ! is it not better than the sweetest cup of
happiness which the world can offer to one's lips ? "

If there was exaltation in her look as she asked the ques-
tion, it was not the exaltation of a visionary, but of one who

io6 ARMINE. [April,

had counted the cost and knew the meaning of that of which
she spoke, and to whose lips that cup of human happiness
had been held in sparkling- brightness only a little while be-
fore. For a moment D'Antignac could not speak. Then he
extended his hand and laid it on her head with the solemnity
of a benediction.

" It is God's will," he said. " May he bless and sustain
thee, sister of my heart !"

CHAPTER XLII.

D'ANTIGNAC had not long to wait before M. de Marigny
came to hear Armine's decision. If, as he had said of him-
self, he was not an ardent lover, he was at least sufficiently
impatient to desire to know his fate without delay, and in the
mingling of fear and hope which occupied his mind in the
interval, to the exclusion of other subjects, he learned more
than he had known before of the deep hold which this feel-
ing had laid upon him. Never, as he had said to D'An-
tignac, had he been so stirred, attracted, charmed, by any
nature as by this which had so unconsciously revealed itself
to him. But more even than the charm was that im-
pression of strength united to infinite gentleness with which
Armine had so strongly impressed Egerton, together with
an idealism and a keen spiritual perception which made a
type of character as unusual as it was elevated. The vi-
comte said to himself that if she once laid her hand in his,
the world, with its accustomed shallow judgment, might
think that he had given all, but that in truth he would re-
ceive as much as he gave if not, indeed, far more.

But would she ever put her hand in his to aid him in the
battle to which his life was pledged, and to be his com-
panion toward eternity ? He had little hope of it so little
that his heart grew heavy as he went to hear the result of
his suit. The man who had hated him in life would even
in death defeat his desire of that he felt almost sure. Yet
when he remembered how Armine had yielded to his in-
fluence and acknowledged the force of his arguments when
it was a question of friendly intercourse, his spirit mounted
again, with an impulse of hope. For he felt within himself
the power to overcome her scruples, if she would only lis-
ten to him. But would she do that ?

Asking this question, he mounted the steps to D'An-

1884.] ARMINE. 107

tignac's door. But when he entered the room nothing in
his appearance indicated anxiety. He greeted his friend
with his usual composure and talked for several minutes of
the affairs of the day before there was any allusion to Ar-
mine. Then it was D'Antignac who opened the subject.

" I have fulfilled your wishes, Gaston," he said after a
pause, " and I am sorry for your sake to tell you that
Armine declines your offer."

The vicomte grew a little paler. This was no surprise
to him, but even more pain than he had anticipated. He
did not speak for a moment. Then he said in a low tone:

" You say that you are sorry for my sake. Do you
mean that you do not think it would be for her happiness
to accept my offer?"

" No," D'Antignac answered. " I believe that, as far
as human happiness goes, it would be for her happiness in
the highest degree. And" his voice changed a little
" I think that she believes so, too."

" And yet ? " said the vicomte. Unconsciously he
closed one hand with nervous force, as he said to himself
that if that were true the dead Socialist should not from
his grave hold them apart.

" And yet she refuses even to consider your offer ? " said
D'Antignac. " Yes, for two reasons. In the first place, be-
cause she believes that she would do you an injury by accept-
ing it. Nay, hear me out! And, in the second place, be-
cause she has chosen something better than the happiness of
life."

In the tumult of his own feeling it was natural that M. de
Marigny should not have understood the meaning of the last
words. He looked at his friend with a flash of resolution in
his eyes. " Let me see her," he said. " These are no reasons
at all."

" I think you will find them strong ones," said D'Antignac.
" The first, though you may not recognize its force, is very
strong to her. The second must be strong even to you."

" The second what does it mean ? " said the vicomte. " That
she will sacrifice the happiness of life to her father's com-
mand ?"

"She has not heard of her father's command," answered
D'Antignac calmly. " I found that there was no need to pain
her uselessly by telling her of it. Her resolution is taken with-
out regard to that; and you need not feel that the obstacle

io8 ARMINE. [April,

which stands between you is hate. On the contrary, it is
love."

" Love ! " repeated M. de Marigny.

" Yes, love," said D'Antignac. The word came from his
lips with a force of penetrating sweetness, and as he looked at
the other there was infinite affection in his tranquil glance.
<l Love which is strong enough to renounce the happiness and
the ease of life in order to serve Christ in his poor, to bind up
the wounds of humanity and strive to lessen its ills. That is
the love which stands between you. And this being so, I know
you well enough to be sure that you will say, ' Fiat voluntas
Dei?"

There was a moment's pause, then M. de Marigny said
slowly : " You mean that she is going to enter the religious
life ? "

"Yes, I mean that," D'Antignac replied. "And much as
I desire, much as I would do, to secure your happiness, I do not
think that either you or I would dare to bid her pause on the
path where God calls."

. " Not if it is indeed God who calls," said the vicomte after
another pause. " But people mistake sometimes, and it seems
to me that her position just now is one which would make
such a mistake possible. She has hardly emerged from the
shadow of a deep grief, and she has a belief that some insupe-
rable obstacle her own scruples or her father's commands
stands between her life and mine."

D'Antignac smiled slightly. " After all," he said, " you do
not know Armine. It is no recoil from the world on account
of grief or disappointment which recoil can never constitute
a true vocation that is leading her, but a strong, inflamed de-
sire to give her life and her effort to lessen in some degree the
misery of the world, to help the sick and the suffering, to atone
by prayers and good works for those blasphemies and evil
deeds of which she knows so much, to work by the aid of the
true light for that purpose toward which her father struggled
in darkness, and to win at last the infinite reward of hearing,
'Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto
me.' As far as I am able to judge, God's purpose with regard
to her is clear. By a way which we could never have imagined
he has prepared her soul and led it to himself. For this is no
new resolution on her part. The desire has been with her long,
growing ever clearer, and naturally of late taking more definite
form. I will speak frankly and say that I think she would have

1884.] ARM IN E. 109

loved you had God not claimed her heart. But what he claims
we must yield, even if it rends our own hearts to do so."

" Sometimes one has no alternative," said the vicomte, whose
eyes were full of pain as they looked out of his pale face.

D'Antignac regarded him with an expression of exquisite
sympathy, yet with the calm assurance of one who knows what
the end will be.

" You have an alternative," he said quietly. " The sacri-
fice need not be passive on your part. You spoke a few min-
utes ago of seeing Armine. If you insist upon seeing her it is
possible that you might induce her to change her resolution
for human nature is weak, and happiness allures us all or at
least you would make the struggle hard to her. For she said
that she might be tempted to forget her own scruples and her
father's commands, and to accept what you offer, but for the
voice of God bidding her rise above the common joys of life
to taste the divine joy of sacrifice. You may draw her back
from the higher to the lower path, or you may bear a willing
part in the sacrifice. That is for you to decide."

The vicomte rose to his feet. " You will think poorly of
me," he said, " that I hesitate, and yet I do so weak is human
nature ! Give me a little time. Let me ask what is God's will.
I will return to-morrow."

" I have no fear," said D'Antignac as he held out his hand.
"Go, and God be with you."

And, indeed, his face, as he lay back on his pillows after
M. de Marigny had left the room, was not that of one who
had fear; it was rather radiant, as of one who anticipated cer-
tain triumph. "So this is what it meant!" he said to him-
self as he lifted his glance to the crucifix. " We, in our blind-
ness and short-sightedness dreamed of human happiness for
them, while God was preparing an opportunity of sacrifice.
Benedicti vos a Domino ! "

Meanwhile M. de Marigny, having left the house, was
walking away from the river along the Rue du Bac. He had
no definite purpose in view, but had turned his face in this
direction merely as a matter of instinct, his apartment being
in the Rue de Grenelle. He had no intention, however, of
going there or anywhere else in especial ; his impulse was
simply to be alone and struggle with the temptation that as-
sailed him the temptation to bear down all opposition by the
strength of his will and seize the happiness for which nature
longed. And this temptation was stronger because the hap-

ARMINE. [April,

piness so desired seemed to be united with the highest aspi-
rations of his nature. What he felt for Armine bore not even
the faintest resemblance to vulgar passion. It was allied to
his most exalted hopes and touched his most tender sympa-
thies, so that to resign it seemed like resigning the better
part of himself, or at least an influence capable of aiding that
better part in all it might desire or undertake. And when
we are called upon to resign not the lower but the higher,
not the thing which we acknowledge to be bad but the
thing which we know to be best, then indeed the struggle is
hard, the resistance strong.

The man walking so quietly along the Rue du Bac was in the
midst of this struggle when a familiar voice said : "Bon jour,
M. le Vicomte." And looking up he found Egerton before him.

" I have just left my card at your apartment," said the
latter. " I regretted not finding you at home."

" I regret still more not having been at home," said
the vicomte. " If you have no engagement, perhaps I may
induce you to retrace your steps."

" I have no engagement at all," said Egerton ; " but you are
no idler like myself. It is possible that you may have."

" An engagement no," said the vicomte. And then he
paused. He had all the habitude of a man of the world, all
the power of putting aside whatever he might be feeling in
order to fulfil any social claim or duty that presented itself.
But just now he felt as if the effort required would be diffi-
cult. His pause said this, and Egerton understood it at once.

"But you intended to do something else which is equi-
valent to an engagement," he said. " I cannot think of in-
terfering. I shall give myself the pleasure of calling another
day. Au revoir"

" Stop an instant," said the vicomte, laying a detaining
hand on his arm. "You are right. Though I have no en-
gagement, there is a reason why I will not insist on your ac-
companying me to my apartment. But I will ask you to ac-
company me somewhere else. Will you come?"

" Willingly," answered Egerton.

" Without asking where I shall take you ? "

"Oh! I have perfect confidence, and am prepared to fol-
low wherever you lead."

The vicomte smiled a little. " I wish you were indeed
prepared to follow where I am about to lead," he ' said.
" Perhaps in time. Aliens ! "

1884.] ARMINE. in

They walked on along the Rue du Bac, and presently M.
de Marigny paused before a large building, mounted a high
flight of steps, and opened a door. Egerton followed, and
found himself, somewhat to his surprise, in a church which
bore a strong resemblance to a convent chapel. There was
a screen dividing it, but within the space set apart by that
screen were no feminine forms. Those that were to be seen
were masculine young men in the dress of seminarians.
There were only two or three, and they were kneeling quietly,
absorbed in prayer. On the outside of the screen M. de
Marigny also knelt, and Egerton, after meditating some min-
utes on the scene which was not without its strangeness in
contrast to the tumultuous life of the street a few feet away
began to look around him, and then perceived at one side
some newly-erected tombs or tablets below which wreaths
of immortelles were placed. He moved toward them and
read the inscriptions, which were brief and simple, only
telling that at a recent date those to whom these memorials
were erected had suffered martyrdom in China. .

As the young man stood looking at the words which said
so little yet told so much, it flashed upon him where he was
within the walls of the Mission Etrangeres, the nursery of con-
fessors and martyrs ! He had heard of it, but vaguely as
one hears of something afar off yet here it was in the very
heart of the hurrying, pulsating life of Paris ! One had but
to turn aside from the busy, brilliant streets, to open a door,
in order to stand on holy ground by the graves of martyrs
and in the presence of those who would to-morrow go forth
to follow in their footsteps, to take up their labors and per-
haps meet their reward. Egerton looked from the marble
tablets, with their brief story, to the men in the flower of
youth kneeling before him men who had forsworn all the
sweetness of life to prepare for an existence of infinite hard-
ship and toil, with the probable crown of a cruel death and
asked himself if it could be that they were of the same race
and nature as himself. He thought of his own idle, luxurious
life, of the lack of faith, lack of purpose, lack of good which
characterized it ; and, as it rose before him, shame filled him like
a passion. Yet not shame alone. The desire to reach those
loftier heights of feeling and action where other men trod,
the longing for spiritual light, overpowered him. Faith
faith to believe all things, to hope all things, to dare all things
was what he asked. And while he stood outside the great

112

ARMINE. [April,

household of God, wishing, longing for this faith, here was
the record of what men of his own generation had endured
for it. Was their sacrifice extremest folly or sublimest wis-
dom ? He answered the question when he knelt and said al-
most unconsciously : " Holy martyrs of Christ, pray for me ! "

How long Egerton knelt he did not know, but he never
forgot what he felt during those moments. With almost the
vividness of a vision he saw the cruel torments amid which
these men had laid down their lives, following in the foot-
steps of their Lord, preaching his Gospel and bearing his
cross even to the very height of Calvary. And then, in con-
trast, he felt all the infinite peace of this spot where they
had gained the strength for that supreme sacrifice. Here the
offering had been made, here life and all its sweetness was re-
nounced, here every tie that binds man to earth had been
severed. Surely it was a spot in which to form great and
generous resolutions ! Surely those who could not, even from
afar off, follow such heroes might at least catch some faint
spark of their spirit here, and grow ashamed of their own
selfish lives and careless hearts.

The young man was still kneeling when M. de Marigny,
after a considerable lapse of time, finally approached him. He
rose then, but, before turning away, stooped to take one im-
mortelle from the wreaths near him. After .they left the
church a minute or two elapsed before either spoke. Then
Egerton said slowly :

" That is a wonderful place to make one think. I shall
not soon forget it. After all, sacrifice is the supreme test of
religion. * If any man will come after me, let him take up
his cross and follow me.' How entirely all modern religious
systems ignore that! And yet without sacrifice there can be
no religion in any vital sense."

" The religion which does not demand sacrifice is no reli-
gion at all," said M. de Marigny ; " and when it is demanded
well, then one learns how much or how little one's faith is
worth. It is, as you have said, the supreme test." He paused
a moment, then added : " Do you know anything of the writ-
ings of Lacordaire?"

"Not much, but something," Egerton answered. " M.
d'Antignac gave me a volume of his Conferences not long ago.
I have found them magnificent."

" There are sentences in his writings which recur to me

1 8 84.] A RMINE. 1 1 3

strongly now and then," said M. de Marigny. " In the church
yonder I thought of this : ' When you desire to know what a
person is worth, sound his heart, and if it does not give forth
the sound of sacrifice, though it be clothed with the kingly
purple, genius, birth, or fortune, turn your head aside and
pass on; it is no longer a soul with whom you ought to have
any intercourse.' '

"I fear," said Egerton, "that if that test were applied
few of us would prove worthy of intercourse."

" One should apply such tests to one's self before one ap-
plies them to others," said the vicomte simply. " It was to
myself that I applied it. ' When you desire to know what a
person is worth, sound his heart, and if it does not give forth
the sound of sacrifice ' It is a hard test, but one that never
fails. And if one is humbled by the result well, that too is
a good thing. One learns the measure of one's own weak-
ness. And yonder is a good place in which to gain strength.'*

" It seems to me a good place in which to gain all that is
essential for life or death ; and certainly the power of sacrifice
is essential for both," said Egerton. " But one smiles to hear
you speak of the measure of your weakness, M. le Vicomte.
What would you think if you could know the measure of the
weakness of others?"

" It is enough to know the measure of one's own," said
the vicomte. " I have learned it to-day. Yet there is this
comfort, that a sacrifice which cost little would be worth
little ; whereas to resign the desire of one's heart that is a
great privilege. The struggle was sharp," he went on, speak-
ing as if to himself, " but it is over. Fiat voluntas Dei."

Egerton made no comment plainly the words were not
intended for him and they walked on silently for some time.
Then at the Rue de Grenelle he paused.

" It is astonishing," he said, " how many things that look
like mere accidents the result of veriest trifles have seemed
since I have been in Paris to form part of a harmonious whole,
and to lead me by devious ways in one direction. For instance,
my meeting you this afternoon has resulted in an impression
that I do not think will pass away. And so I have to thank
you before bidding you adieu."

" Do not go," said the vicomte. " Come with me to my

apartment. Nay, do not hesitate! The mental struggle is

over which made me disinclined for your society an hour ago.

In the place where we have been one could not, for very shame,

VOL. xxxix. 8

ii4 AN IMPUDENT FABRICATION EXPOSED. , [April,

refuse any sacrifice that God demanded. But pain remains,
even after the struggle is over. So come and let me have the
best medicine for pain in the world that of trying to do an-
other a little good. One who has advanced as far as you
have should halt there no longer."

" Then tell me what to do," said Egerton quietly.

TO BE CONTINUED.

AN IMPUDENT FABRICATION EXPOSED.

A GOOD definition of the word fabrication is "a built-up lie."
At any rate, it applies exactly to a statement about our Catholic
schools, of which statement the joint builders are Mr. Dexter
A. Hawkins, of the New York bar ; the Hon. John Jay, ex-Minis-
ter to Austria, and grandson of John Jay of Revolutionary fame ;
and the Rev. Thomas B. Thayer, D.D., editor of the Universalist
Quarterly. They have jointly fabricated an outrageous false-
hood about Catholic schools, and we shall endeavor to give to
them the credit respectively due to them for it. Mr. Hawkins
laid its foundation and put it into shape to receive suitable al-
terations, additions, and ornaments, so that others might give it
what we may call the finishing touches.

Mr. Hawkins derived the following information from the
United States census of 1870:

Total foreign-born population of the United States 5,567,229

Number of those among them who cannot write 777,^73

or about fourteen per cent, of the whole number.

Now, this is the " raw material " of truth, to be combined
with falsehood in order to produce the desired false conclusion.

Mr. Hawkins goes on to say, " most of whom [the foreign-
born population] came from Ireland and England " lie the first
" countries up to that time dependent upon parochial schools "
lie the second, so far as Ireland is concerned. " Hence, at
that date, our foreign population may be justly taken as the
fair average product of the parochial mode of education " lie
the third, or rather a whole series of lies mixed together. For
proof of this we need only say :

First. According to the census the Irish constituted only one-
' third of our foreign-born population.

1884.] AN IMPUDENT FABRICATION EXPOSED. 115

Second. We do not know what Ireland depended upon in
regard to education. We think she had not much to place any
dependence upon certainly not on the landlords, who had the
money, nor on the government up to 1831; for the penal laws
imposed a fine of twenty pounds on any Catholic opening a
school. Higher education was forbidden to Catholics, and they
had to go to the Continent to get it, at great expense and dan-
ger of fine and imprisonment.

Third. Ireland has had no system of parochial schools. She
has been obliged to put up with private schools, often called
hedge-schools, supported by the people themselves.

Fourth. Illiteracy is not the product of schools of any kind,
but rather the product of the want of schools. The people who
cannot write are those who never had schooling of any kind.

There will be more illiteracy, no doubt, in any country where
the parent must pay directly for the schooling of . his children
than in one where he has nothing to pay, because more children
will in that case not go to school at all. This does not show,
however, that pay-schools do not give a good education. The
education may be much better, though not so many enjoy it.

To say that either the parochial mode of education or the public-
school mode of education produces illiteracy is absurd nonsense on
its face. This playing a juggle between results of parochial sys-
tem of education (which may be understood, as you like it, for the
effect on those who do not attend school as well as on those who
do) and the product of the parochial mode of education is only an
adroit dodge to insinuate a lie.

To say that the product of the parochial-school mode of educa-
tion in Ireland may be taken as the fair average product of the
parochial mode of education everywhere is absurd. Even if
there had been parochial schools in Ireland, which there were
not, it is absurd, but doubly so since there have not been enough
to speak of. Since 1831, now more than fifty years, the National
government schools have been established, and, in spite of grind-
ing poverty and of having something to pay though not much
the illiteracy of Ireland has almost disappeared.

Ireland has depended upon private schools, not upon parochial
schools. So have our Southern States depended on private
schools, helped out by public schools. The white people of the
Southern States have not been ground down to the state of
poverty of the people of Ireland. On the contrary, they have
had an excellent chance to get a living. Yet the census of the
United States shows a much larger proportion of illiteracy

ii6 AN IMPUDENT FABRICATION EXPOSED. [April,

among the white population of the Southern States than among
our foreign-born population.

Illiteracy among our foreign-born population 14 per cent.

Illiteracy among our white population in the Southern States,

from 10 to 14 years of age 29.6 per cent.,

more than double.

Now, combining his small modicum of truth, that fourteen per
cent, of the foreign population could not write in 1870, with his
monstrous farrago of lies, false assumptions, and double-meaning
expressions to be taken interchangeably with each other as con-
venient such as " results of " and " product of," and parochial-
school " system " and parochial-school " mode of education,"
Mr. Dexter A. Hawkins produces this very astonishing tabular
statement :

Illiterates. Paupers. Criminals. Inhabitants.

Parochial system 1,400 410 160 to the 10,000

Public-school system in 21 States 350 170 75 " 10,000

Public-school system in Massachusetts. 71 49 n " 10,000

He uses the word system as a blind to produce the impression
that Roman Catholic schools produce illiteracy, pauperism, and
crime. This is evident from his subsequent proceeding, in which
he gives this table :

American paupers in New York City i per cent.

Irish paupers " " " 3$ "

remarking : " The Irish were all substantially educated in the
parochial schools," to which we reply by an old proverb : " Tell
that to the marines."

A little later he goes on to say: " In other words, a child
trained up in the parochial school is during life more than three
and a quarter times as likely to get into jail as the child trained
up in the free public school." We think if Mr. Hawkins had his
deserts he would be more than three and a half times as likely
to be in jail as the child trained in a parochial school. For
mendacity, intended to provoke prejudice, hatred, and violence
.against a whole class of one's fellow-citizens, is a great crime,
though it may not come under the statute.

We now come to the Hon. John Jay. This gentleman has an
honorable name, inherited from his grandfather, who signed the
Declaration of Independence. He has also filled the office of
ambassador to Austria. It must be supposed that he has good
ability, good education, and that he is capable of seeing w hether
a thing is proved or not ; also, when he makes important state-
ments to the detriment of his neighbors, that he has been careful

1884.] AN IMPUDENT FABRICATION EXPOSED. 117

to see that his statements are true and proved. Mr. Jay has riot
done this. A statement is to the detriment of Roman Catholics ;
Mr. Jay accepts it at once, and declares that it has been shown
from the United States census that such and such things are
true. We can understand how Mr. John Jay can be blinded by
intense, narrow prejudice to accept against Catholics what he
would hoot at if alleged against any one else.

But now here is something else which we cannot understand
how any honorable, or even decent, man could do. He has
deliberately altered Mr. Hawkins* cautious statements about
school systems, and says that Mr. Hawkins has shown from the
United States census of 1870 the comparative number of illite-
rates, paupers, and criminals to every ten thousand inhabitants
produced respectively by the Roman Catholic parochial schools,
the public schools in twenty-one States, and by the public
schools in Massachusetts. This is a false statement by the
Hon. John Jay of what Mr. Hawkins has said. The honor-
able gentleman has taken the dishonest liberty of materi-
ally altering Mr. Hawkins' statement and substituting for " pa-
rochial system " " Roman Catholic schools."

Mr. Hawkins stated his table as follows :

Illiterates. Paupers. Criminals. Inhabitants.

Parochial system 1,400 410 160 to the 10,000

Public-school system in 21 States 350 170 75 " 10,000

Public-school system in Massachusetts. 71 49 n " 10,000

Mr. John Jay writes it down thus :

Illiterates. Paupers. Criminals. Inhabitants.

Roman Catholic schools 1,400 410 160 to the 10,000

Public schools in 21 States 350 170 75 " 10,000

Public schools in Massachusetts 71 49 n " 10,000

and fits it to go on its travels throughout the country.

And he goes on and alleges another utterly ungrounded
falsehood which Mr. Hawkins did not dare to do more than
insinuate that " the Roman Catholic schools in the State of
New York turned out three and a half times as many paupers as
the public schools." Mind you, Mr. Hawkins does not pretend
to have any knowledge whatever of the Roman Catholic schools
of New York or of the United States : he is sophisticating and
falsifying about Ireland. Yet Mr. Jay makes the above asser-
tion about our schools here on Mr. Hawkins' authority. Mr.
Hawkins* lie had pretty large proportions, but it was disguised ;
it insinuated what it did not dare to say. It was modestly con-
scious that if it spoke right out it would be detected ; if exam-
ined, it had something specious to fall back upon.

ii8 AN IMPUDENT FABRICATION EXPOSED. [April,

But Hon. John Jay alters and enlarges and fabricates to suit
himself. He states the lie in all its nakedness, without an effort
to disguise it. And he tells another falsehood in telling it,
for he states that Mr. Hawkins says it, when he does not say it.

We are sorry for Hon. John Jay for his own sake, for the
sake of the honorable name of his ancestor, and for the sake of
our country, which he has represented in Austria. And we tell
him plainly that the cause of truth, which he thinks he is serv-
ing, is not served by mendacity.

Rev. Thos. B. Thayer, editor of the Universalist Quarterly,
has assumed all the statement of Hon. John Jay, whom he es-
teems a " wiser man " than himself a proof certainly of his own
childlike simplicity. He prefaces it with this statement, which,
considering that Mr. Hawkins drew all his inferences from our
foreign-born population, and that his investigations and compari-
sons were drawn from Ireland for many years back up to this
date (1870), is enough to excite a horse-laugh : "But we need
not [go abroad] to ascertain the results. Investigations and com-
parisons [in our own land] have already revealed the moral, edu-
cational, and political difference in results between Protestant en
lightenment and Catholic ignorance, between our public-schools
and the parish-schools of the church, as the following will de-
monstrate with sufficient emphasis." Then follow Mr. Hawkins'
statement, as amplified and altered by John Jay, and the state-
ment that the Roman JCatholic schools in New York " turned
out " three and a half times as many paupers as the public-school
system, winding up with " these facts afford strong support to
the charges often made " about Roman Catholic schools, etc.

Rev. Mr. Thayer and the Hon. John Jay have committed a
grave fault. They have professed to advocate God's cause, and
they have done so by falsehood. They have dishonored God,
and really advocated the devil's cause. The best thing they can
do is to repent. Faith alone will not justify them ; they must en-
deavor to restore what they have dishonestly taken. They have
made a public accusation of their neighbors which is an unmitigat-
ed falsehood. Let them make public confession. A murderer is
expected for the good of his soul to confess his crime before he
is hanged. Why should not the murderer of the reputation of
others do likewise before he appears at the last tribunal to answer
for his deeds ?

Let them procure a copy of the United States census of 1870,
also Mr. Hawkins' pamphlet, which he no doubt will cheerfully
furnish on application at No. in Broadway, New York, and then,

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPEKE. 119

like honest men, make a clean breast of it. Thus they will make
reparation for the wrong-, deter others from the like nefarious
courses, receive, as it is to be hoped, the forgiveness of God, and
also the forgiveness of the writer of this, though, it must be con-
fessed, with much difficulty, inasmuch as the task of showing them
up has been a most disagreeable one, and one in which he has
had much trouble to avoid exceeding the bounds of a just and
Christian moderation and yet do anything like justice to his sub-
ject.

THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE.

" SORROW is better than laughter," said the Preacher. Yet
he said again, " There is a time to laugh." What a support to
the heart of man is in the tears which come to his eyes, both
when they come from grief and when they come from joy !
The subtile influences which console for one and subdue the
exuberance of the other are closely blended in the depths of
our being. So it is that sorrow is oftener followed by smiles, and
laughter ends with sighing. The writer, therefore, who under-
takes to represent the life of man must study these elements
with equal care. Plato tells us of a discussion that took place
in Athens between Socrates and Aristophanes, in which the
former maintained that a good writer of tragedies ought to be
able to write comedies also. Yet it was two thousand years
before the full force of the argument was illustrated. A few
reflections preliminary to considering Shakspere in this view
seem proper.

Greek tragedy, originating in religion, designed to inculcate
fear of the gods, especially of fate, had no place for scenes ex-
cept of the solemn, the awful, and the terrific. A brave man
struggles with fate, bravest of all because he knows that he
must struggle in vain, but struggling on in obedience to his
native impulsions of courage, honor, and justice, and, when
vanquished, leaving behind the name of one whom nothing ex-
cept fate could have overthrown. Such was the burden of
Greek tragedy. Its achievements were indescribably great, and
they stimulated the very highest endeavor. Greek comedy
also, in its very first intentions, had elements of the religious.
Curious as it may be, yet such were many of the scenes in honor
of Bacchus. But among the refined Greeks comedy seemed

THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

to have had for its object to make a contrast, more or less
pleasing, with the solemnities of tragedy. If it had been the
habit of the tragic muse to employ for its heroes, even some-
times, other than the most illustrious, perhaps the genial and
generous humor which was unknown to Greek dramatic
writing might have come in earlier. But neither the tragic nor
the comic poets seemed to care much for the multitude. It is
interesting to consider what has been the tendency of the sen-
timent of pity. Love travels mainly on a level or downward.
Pity, like worship, tends upward. Tragedy dealt with demi-
gods and legendary heroes with (Edipus and Orestes, with
Alcestes and Medea, with Andromache and Antigone. How
have the multitudes, forgetting their own and one another's sor-
rows, wept at those of the great ! Now, to relieve men's minds
from such painful solemnities the comic poets, in an age less
religious, less heroic, less fond of individual greatness, or with
contempt because the latter had passed and without expecta-
tion of its return, began to select from among contemporary
characters those who would but could not, and yet claimed to,
be heroes, and contrast them with the mighty who had lived.
Such comedy was merely satire. It railed at contemporary
life in comparing it with that of purer times. It laid bare not
only the weaknesses but the meannesses of the human heart,
for the purpose of burlesquing the noble virtues which tragedy
represented. It seemed at last almost avowedly depreciatory
of those views. tf As tragedy," says Schlegel, " by painful
emotions, elevates us to the most dignified views of humanity,
comedy, on the other hand, by its jocose and depreciatory view
of all things, calls forth the most petulant hilarity." What
words ! For a " petulant hilarity " is an hilarity in which there
is no enjoyment and from which can proceed no profit. In
such representations there was abundance of wit. Attic salt,
flung mercilessly upon the excoriated flesh of the upstart and
the braggart, would make them writhe in agony, and while the
spectators would shout they would also curse with laughter.
Humor humor, which is so much broader and kinder than wit
seems not to have been known. Instead of being intended for
the production of the innocent indulgence in careless pastime
while contemplating such absurd and ludicrous conjunctures as,
with little or no evil, occur in ordinary life, comedy seemed to
have been intended, though in a most doubtful way, to be an-
cillary to the serious purposes of tragedy. In one of the theatres
last night Sophocles had excited to weeping the men and women

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 121

of Athens by recitals of the sufferings of CEdipus and his children.
To-night Aristophanes will lead them into a house in another
street and exhibit his Birds in Council, in which the mannikins of
the time are put in contrast with the great of Grecian story.
They have become so contemptible that the birds of the air have
supplanted them in the conduct of sublunary affairs. Even the
fair Iris with heavenly wings, though bearing divine messages,
is chided for passing beyond the aerial conclave. The loud
laugh will arise, but it will be a " petulant hilarity," with none of
the healthfulness that comes from genuine comic feeling.

This difference between tragic and comic writing, rather this
resemblance between them, continued almost until the coming
of Shakspere. In " the Sacred Comedy " following the Miracle
Plays of the middle age the character that made the fun was
the Devil himself. Our ancestors laughed as well as they could.
For man cannot always be serious. He must laugh sometimes,
if it can be for nothing more ridiculous, at a pleasant conceit of
seeing the great enemy fall into his own pit, and beaten, and
pinched, and made to roar with pain and discomfiture. When
the time came in England for another sort of fun upon the stage
and it seems wonderful how slow it was in coming it broke
forth abruptly and about as broadly as any who were fond of
the broadest might ever care to see. When an ecclesiastic of
a former age sometimes, as in the opinion of Bishop Bonner,
verged upon too great liberties with the Devil and the Vice
in the sacred comedies, a check was placed upon such perfor-
mances, and finally their suspension was ordered. But by the
middle of the sixteenth century such salutary restraint had
ceased to be in vogue, and it seems almost incredible that a
play so unmixedly coarse as " Gammer Gurton's Nedle " to open
the ball of modern English comedy should have been composed
by a Doctor of Divinity, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity,
prebend of Westminster, Master of St. John's and Trinity Col-
leges, Cambridge, Archdeacon of Sudbury, Bishop of Bath
and Wells. But bishops in the line of Parker were not what
they used to be in the old line. This one fell into a humorous
vein and, for a preacher, showed extraordinary familiarity with
the lowly and the gross in English society, and as hearty an
appreciation of them as any who could ever have aspired to a
gown, not mentioning lawn sleeves and the mitre. There was
some frolic for the boys of Eton College when their head-mas-
ter, Nicholas Udall (he a preacher, too, in the Parker succession),
let them present his " Ralph Royster Doyster " ; but how must

122 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

the bigger boys at Christ Church, Cambridge (where it was
first put upon the stage), have roared at the hair-pulling of
Dame Chat and Gammer Gurton, and the more than coarse
scurrilities of Dickon and Hodge ! Yet such as these were
not only the best but the only. Such a people would not have
listened half an hour to such as the " Captivi " of Plautus or
the " Andrea " of Terentius. They were not the people to pick
out the fun, what there was, from beneath Greek or Latin roots,
but must have it pouring forth fresh, if muddy and most foul,
in homely vernacular for portraying scenes in contemporary En-
glish life. What that life was under Tudor rule it fills a delicate,
modest mind with painful astonishment to contemplate. Both
the tragic and the comic went to their highest heights and
their lowest depths, and the pieces which came upon the stage,
in order to be waited upon for their close by an English au-
dience, must be made to have no stint of blood from murders
of every kind, and, in the after-piece, no sparing of the nastiest
words of scurrility. Let us see how that consummate young
genius Marlowe whetted keener the hatred for the Jew :

" I walk abroad a-nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls :
Sometimes I go about and poison wells. . . .
Being young I studied physic, and began
To practise first upon the Italian ;
There I enriched the priests with burials,
And always kept the sexton's arms in use
With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells.
I filled the jails with bankrouts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals ;
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hang himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll
How I with interest tormented him."

In this terrible piece there is neither pity from Christian to
Jew nor from Jew to Christian. War to the last blood, anguish
in extreme, that can neither be increased nor diminished these
were what our ancestors three hundred years ago wished to see
when war and anguish were to be mimicked upon the stage.
Not that they were without compassion for

" Hem that stode in gret prosperite
And been fallen out of her high degree,"

but they insisted upon seeing the blood and hearing the shriek.
They preferred witnessing the murderous combat to hearing it

* Barabbas in " The Jew of Malta."

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 123

recited. The counsel of Horace to the Pisos would have been
wasted upon them. He who wondered how the Romans of the
foretime had endured the rudeness of Plautus, and were not
shocked at the unnatural murder coram populo of the children of
Jason, would never have been seen, had he lived in that time, at
the Globe or Blackfriars. For that public relished such as these
beyond all else. If Progne is to be changed into a bird and Cad-
mus into a snake, if Clytemnestra is to be slain at the bath and
the parricide to be pursued by the Furies, that English public
demanded to see how these interesting things were done. And
then they were ready, having had enough of horrors, for the jest ;
and the broader was this, the shouts were louder and heartier.
They must have both. " An action," says Mr. Hallam, " pass-
ing visibly on the stage, instead of a frigid narrative, a copious
intermixture of comic buffoonery with the gravest story, were
requisites with which no English audience would dispense."
Illogical, unreasonable as such demands seemed, they were the
foundation of the greatest dramatic literature of the world. The
wits who sought fame or livelihood must conform to them.
Fond as it was to shed tears of pity, it was needful to wipe them
away in time and afford a channel for those of hilarity. These
two great wants of the human heart, so nearly connected, so
necessary to each other, this English people, rough and unstudy-
ing as they were, first asserted upon the stage in the alternate
sequence in which they prevail in daily life. He was but half a
philosopher who did nothing but weep ; less than half was he
who only laughed.

It is interesting to study the development of this dramatic
literature, and see how it made ready the way for the coming
of Shakspere. Dreadful indeed were the things in tragedy, and
revolting the obscenities in comedy. Some of the latter are the
more extravagant, but the more venial, because they were
brought out, as in the case of poor Massinger, with reluctant
hands and only for the purpose of obtaining food and raiment for
the hungry and ragged, and shelter for the houseless. Others,
like those of Beaumont and Fletcher both gentlemen born, and
sufficiently prosperous were congenial to the minds which ap-
plauded the tastes and habits of the age. The greater genius
of the two died young. The other, son of the dean of Peter-
borough who was rewarded with a bishopric for his insults to
Mary Stuart in the very article of her death, survived long and
worked up a vast amount of filth that was most cordially relished
for too long a time.

I2 4 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

Added to the rudeness of the times, that made such coarseness
endurable and even preferred, were the contemporary rise of
Puritanism and the extremes to which hostile parties will some-
times urge their principles and conduct. The playgoers laughed
the heartier at the Four Ps of Heywood, the Mother Bombie of
Lyly, thinking of the not inconsiderable public outside who
believed it to be a sin to laugh at all. The satyr that these merry
spirits brought out from the woods, instead of being exhibited in
his best attitudes according to the precept of the Roman critic,
was exhibited in his worst, because there were those to main-
tain that the satyr should never have been taken from his native
wilds. Yet that same Heywood could excite to weeping in "A
Woman Killed with Kindness," while Lyly could rise to delicate
humor in " Midas," " Endymion," and " Campaspe."

More decent than those aforementioned was Ben Jonson,
more serious, more brave ; but, lacking the pathos of the tragic
muse and having to turn to the comic in order to be allowed to
live at all, it is sad to see how his saturnine nature struggled
between the classicism which he reverenced and the modern
broadness of humor which he despised, and for which he could
not forbear to substitute the satire of Menander and Plautus. He
could rouse to laughter, bat it was such as ^brought no relief to
the heart. In " Volpone," for instance, the characters intended to
excite laughter, instead of being ludicrous, are villanous to a
degree that is shocking to humanity. The laugh that arises
from beholding them has the bitterness of disgust and the eager-
ness of revenge. When the great rascal is caught and is writh-
ing with the pain of punishment the audience scream with
laughter ; but it is such laughter as we might indulge withal if
perchance we should see a brute of a man insult a woman upon
the streets, and immediately thereafter assaulted by a true man,
and beaten, and kicked, and cowhided, and set on by the dogs.
Yet the witness of such scenes does not good to the heart
wherein it most needs good. Thus, Ben Jonson, though rising
to the full dignity of the Romans, both in his tragedies and his
comedies, yet, in want of pathos for the former and humor for
the latter, went behind those whom he should have preceded.

Interesting struggles those were in the modern English
drama. The buskin beginning with solemn, stately " Gorboduc,"
the sock with " Ralph Royster Doyster," and " Gammer Gurton's
Nedle " how wide apart were these, apparently how irreconci-
lable ! Writers like Sackville might be disgusted to think how a
reasonable public could gather pleasure from the talks of Hodge

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 125

and Doctor Rat, and yet desire to hear tell the sufferings of the
great of all times. But that people intended to have all their
wants gratified. They meant to laugh with the gay and weep
with them that wept ; and inasmuch as prim pietists, becoming
more numerous and more prim, found fault with comic scenes of
even delicate kinds, and public opinion excluded women from
theatres, not only as actors but as spectators, they will make
their fun the coarser and their laugh the more uproarious.

The theatre is the repertory of the best literature of the ages.
From Sackvilie, from Still and Udall, the playwrights must
study the temper of the pits and learn both when it is the time
to weep and the time to laugh. Tragedy, having so noble pre-
cedents, easily led the way. Comedy comedy such as it was and
ought to become, generous as gay, sympathizing as ludicrous ;
comedy that was to lead to laughter that brought neither pain
nor anger had to work its way and be developed with the tastes
and manners of society. In ancient times it had made men
laugh the laugh of contempt, scorn, hatred, and satisfied revenge.
Its newest laughs were for the actions and sayings of the lowly
and the vulgar. The time was not yet, but it was coming fast,
when it can invite gentlemen and ladies to come together to its
recitals, in listening to which they can laugh without pain and
without blushing.

In the lives of the playwrights what blending of the serious
with the sportive will one see who studies them closely ! How
often will he find cheerfulness among the serious, and especially
seriousness among the sportive ! Charles Reade, in Peg Wof-
fington, makes Mrs. Triplett, on retiring from the stage at night,
take from her person the finery, lay it upon the table with dis-
gust, and then regard with affection a cold sausage that she has
taken from her pocket. We smile at the drollery, but simul-
taneously we feel the tenderness and the sweetness of pity.
Many a time has the London comic dramatist, standing in the
street in rags, almost hatless and shoeless, certainly dinnerless,
or sitting in prison hard by, heard a thousand voices roaring to
the fun himself had created. Fortunately for mankind, it re-
quires not a habitually gay temper nor felicitous circumstances
to promote humorous compositions. On the contrary, it is he
who has the profoundest knowledge of the sadness of the hu-
man heart who can most skilfully touch the chords that vibrate to
humorous impulsions. .Before Shakspere the drama was made
up mostly of tragedy the bloodiest and the broadest farce. It
was reserved for him to unite pathos and humor as they are con-

126 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

joined in human life, and lift each as high as human language
could exalt. These observations we have made preliminary to
the consideration of what we propose to style the comparative
delicacy of Shakspere. Of his sadness, and of the predominance
of the serious over the sportive in his character and writings, we
shall speak in another article.

When Shakspere came to London English comedy knew little
, more than the farce. The delicate humor which springs out of
the pleasant phantasies of persons in polite society had been in-
troduced rarely and with, timidity. Men who had. wept at a tale
of grief desired for the after-piece or the interlude the relief
which was to come from a great, broad joke. Whatever contri-
butions were made to the enjoyment of the playgoers by the
young actor who, having married too early and not well, had
left his native Stratford, little of them has been transmitted be-
yond the fact that he preferred and sufficiently well sustained
the parts of old men. His heart already, it seems, had learned
to find its best sympathy among those who, having tried this
life, found it unable to fulfil its early promises. He went to the
stage as another man goes to another business to make money
for present uses and to lay up for those of his advanced age.
Finding that there was more money in running the theatre than
acting upon its boards, he took that business. Examining the
plays that were offered, whenever he bought, his experienced sa-
gacity detected what should be subtracted, what added. When,
for want of those sufficiently suited to his purposes, he undertook
to write them throughout, his genius, so all-sided, found soon
how to intermingle the serious with the gay as he had seen them
intermingled in the habitual intercourse of daily life. Like all
great minds, he had, besides, what Goethe properly styles
reverence for mankind, for superiors, for equals, for inferiors. He
respected men sufficiently to know that they could be raised by
discreet means to appreciate humor that was delicate as well as
what was rough and broad. The world was a stage: let the
stage be the world. Not all who go to festive scenes are gay,
nor all at funerals subdued with sadness. On the contrary, such
is the constitution of the human heart that some seriousness ren-
ders more enjoyable a season of gayety, while often on solemn
occasions irresistible is the impulse to smile at the sudden occur-
rence of ludicrous accidents. How inexpressibly sad the death
of Ophelia ; yet who but kindred and lovers can forbear to laugh
at the chattings of the diggers of her grave? Just as men are
most fond to do what is forbidden, so are they most prone to seek,

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 127

as relief from a surfeit of grief, something that comes from the
sportive. Wise, therefore, and benignant is he who provides such
relief, and of a kind that will elevate instead of degrading.

To such a mind as Shakspere, we do not doubt, such as " Gam-
mer Gurton's Nedle " were unmixedly disgusting. All remember
the touching melancholy of that complaint, in one of his sonnets,
against

"The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds."

The rougher things in his plays are doubtless attributable to the
exactions of an age behind his own aspirations exactions more
powerful because of the examples in the houses of kings and
courtiers. The manager of a theatre, he must provide whatever
is demanded ; but, if only occasionally and by degrees, he will
lead his audiences to something higher than they have seen, and
educate them to its appreciation by making it ineffably beautiful.
He will give the rude jest when he must ; but whenever it is pos-
sible he will substitute the delicate mirth of gentleness, and thus
give tone to a reasonable mean between the tragic and the far-
cical. How merely fanciful are most of his comedies ! For as
yet the comedy of intrigue was little developed. It was plain to
see that it was a serious, even a sad, mind that, in spite of all this
exquisite sportiveness, saw beyond it into the melancholy that
was yet more exquisite, and felt that that was the r61e in which
was to be done its greatest work.

Let us look at "Twelfth Night." How fanciful this play!
Yet for this we have an apology in its first words, the sweetness
of which none but the very coarsest could fail to enjoy :

" If music be the food of love, play on ;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again ! it had a dying fall :
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor. Enough ; no more :
Tis not so sweet now as it was before :
O spirit of love ! how great and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into- abatement and low price,
Even in a minute : so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high-fantastical."

These are the words of the duke, who, for the time, is in love

128 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

with Olivia, who will not hear of love until her mourning be
over for the death of her brother. What contrast between such
words and thoughts and those when Cesario, his confidant,
proves to be Viola in disguise ! Imperiously, but with sweetest
airiness, does fancy play amid the affections of all the leading cha-
racters. Viola takes the disguise of a boy. Olivia becomes en-
raptured with this boy and will not listen to the duke. Viola
finds herself in love with the duke, who, when he ascertains her
sex, retires from Olivia and thinks he has never loved before.
The reappearance of Sebastian, Viola's brother, more than com-
pensates Olivia for her disappointment, and the endings seem like
the realization of those fond dreams in which the young of both
sexes indulge on the dreamy season of Twelfth Night.

Amidst all this play and interplaying of the serious and the
gently sportive what glorious fun there is in the talks of Sir
Toby Belch and Aguecheek, the clown, Maria and Malvolio!
Entertainment there for all boxes, dress-circle, pit, and gallery
polite ears and vulgar. Some of the words for all are to become
immortal, some for the poet to dream about and seek in vain to
imitate, and some for the costermonger to recall over his pipe
and mug of ale, and roar at the recital.

The thoughts we are presenting are well illustrated again
in " As You Like It." There is genuine grief in the exile of the
banished duke, and genuine remorse in the tyrant, his brother.
Between them and the lowest characters comes in Jaques, in
whom the elements of seriousness and sport are so blended as to
leave us in doubt what manner of man the author meant he
should be regarded. When we hear him moralizing on the
seven stages of human life we feel that Socrates nor Plato could
have talked more wisely. When we hear his reflections
" Under an oak whose antique foot peeps out,"

and his "similes" upon a wounded stag, we are touched with
tenderness. When we see his ambition for a " motley fool," and
hear him say,

" I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation, nor the
musician's, which is fantastical, nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the
soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's, which is politic, nor the
lady's, which is nice, nor the lover's, which is all these : but it is a melan-
choly of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many
objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my
often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness,"

we feel, what exquisite characterization! How immense the
gap between this and the classical drama ! Subtle, yet natural ;

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 129

like many a man of culture who, partly in imagination, partly
in reality, wearied with superabundance of books and courts
and travel, indulges in thoughts ever shifting between the ear-
nest and the jocose, claiming to sadness, but a sadness all his
own. In reading this play it is most pleasing to notice the
stream of melancholy pervading it ; losing itself here and there
among such as Touchstone and Aubrey, and reappearing among
the gifted, giving tone and adding sweetness to the, abounding
humor that allows a mind tired of business, or seeking relief
from the pain of recent witness of tragic scenes, to sport as it
pleases, to laugh aloud or smile archly, and sometimes, if so
disposed, to sigh, yet not with pain.

Whenever we read " Midsummer Night's Dream " we wonder
anew that one, at the very time of the creation of such as Bot-
tom, and Snug, and Flute, and their likes, could have created
such as Oberon and Titania. In this most poetical of human
productions, Shakspere, persistent to his purpose to let the
stage picture human life, represented it not only as it is when
we are awake, but while we sleep and are dreaming of things
impossible. A midsummer night's dream when the night, is
brief, the woods and meadows serene and silent, inviting not
only to sleep but to dreams !

Wise, benignant is the king, Theseus, a royal lover, on the
eve of marriage with the queen of the Amazons : noble words
to his espoused, to Herrnia and the rest of his court ; wise words
as he discusses the lunatic, the lover, and the poet.* But what
we notice more especially at this time is the interlude of the
Dream, the waywardness of the fairies in sporting with these
high-born men and women and among themselves. It is a poor,
dull mind that does not sometimes dream beautiful dreams.
Who has not sometimes dreamed of having been endowed with
gifts of most excellent greatness ; of being admitted within the
inner places of all that is most fair and lovely, and discoursing
as with the tongue of an angel ? Yet if one could reproduce such
a vision it might not surpass this in which we hear language,
such as no other human tongue could have uttered, sounding
upon the ear as if in very deed it had been whispered to the poet
by the gentle spirits which he had invoked.

And then to awake and find it has all been a dream ! What
shall we do next? Shut our eyes and bring back the airy, sweet
visions? Ah ! no. They will not come again to-night ; perhaps,
in such ineffable beauty, never more. What shall we do, then,

* Act v. scene i.
VOL. XXXIX. 9

I30 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

after having been to the highest heights? Why, we must even
see what fancy may have put into the heads of clowns. The
courtiers tell the monarch what these poor fellows have pre-
pared to contribute to the celebration of the approaching nup-
tials, and they advise him that it

" Is nothing, nothing in the world."
Even the gracious Hippolyta begs

" Not to see wretchedness o'ercharged." .

But a wise king values too much the faithful service of his
lowest subjects to find fault with the ru'de terms in which it is
expressed. Thus he speaks to his bride :

" I will hear that play ;
For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.

The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
Our sport shall be to take what they mistake :
And what poor duty cannot do,
Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.
Where I have come, great clerks have purposed
To greet me with premeditated welcomes ;
Where I have seen them shiver and look pale.
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practis'd accent in their fears,
And in conclusion dumbly have broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,
Out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome ;
And in the modesty of fearful duty
I read as much as from the rattling tongue
Of saucy and audacious eloquence.
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity."

We are glad the good king did not refuse the rendition of
" Pyramus and Thisbe." Irresistibly funny as it is, when it
threatens to become tiresome he has the discretion to limit the
players to a Bergomask dance, omitting the epilogue.

Such was the device, a great, broad joke, full of absurdities
and incongruities, with which this wisest, most generous, most
humane of poets let down from the contemplation of the fanciful
and the impossible. But it is " The Merchant of Venice " where-
in is to be seen the most delicate intermingling of the earnest
with the different shades of humor, from the broadest upward
and upward, refining and refining until it grows into sadness and
even approximates the tragic.

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 131

Already had the Hebrew been made famous in the drama by
Marlowe. But Barabbas had been drawn, in accordance with
legends of too credulous times, reciting enormities practised in
secret by the Jews upon Christian peoples. Barabbas, therefore,
was a monster. Now, it comported not with the nature of Shak-
spere to represent a character so monstrously, incredibly cruel
and vindictive. For the purposes of his comedy he sought to
represent the Jew what ages of various fortune had made him.
In Shylock we see something of what has been wrought through
immemorial persecution. But Shakspere, who was too great to
despise anything which God has made in his image, while he
allows the thoughtless to laugh, leads the thoughtful to pity this
man not only for his misfortunes, but for his wish for revenge,
attributing this in part to influence of generations of outrages,
and in part to the causeless insultings of the merchant-prince
who was known to have especial hate for the " sacred nation,"
and,

" There where merchants most do congregate,"

had often railed upon this especial Jew. Even in the act of bor-
rowing the money upon the fatal bond there are insults that a
man with the blood of a true man would find difficult to endure :

" SHY. Signor Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances :
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well, then, it now appears you need my help :
Go to, then ; you come to me, and you say,
' Shylock, we would have moneys ' : you say so ;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard,
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold : moneys is your suit.
What should I say to you ? Should I not say
' Hath a dog money ? Is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats ' ? Of .
Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness,
Say this :

' Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last ;
You spurned me such a day ; another time
You called me dog ; and for these courtesies,
I'd lend you thus much moneys ' ?

I3 2 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

"ANT. I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends (for when did friendship take
A breed for barren metal of his friend ?),
But lend it rather to thine enemy."

Now, when a man has to take such as this, we expect him,
whether Jew or Gentile, to try to find something adequate to
give in return. The poet most adroitly throws in other things
to subdue the ruthless insistence of the penalty of the forfeited
bond. The Jew loses from his house, his heart, the faith of his
fathers, his only child, Jessica, only pledge of the beloved, de-
parted Leah. The groundlings shout at the exploit of the bold
Lorenzo, and hoot at the dog of a Jew as he curses in vain, and
all, except Launcelot Gobbo, rejoice that another is added to the
true faith. But the generous consider how piteous is the desola-
tion of the parent's heart when his only loved, his fully trusted,
has robbed him, fled from him, and been joined with the perse-
cutors of his race. Yet we are spared the pain of resentment
against this filial impiety partly by her conversion to Chris-
tianity, but mostly by the childish simplicity which keeps her
from comprehending the depth of the sorrow into which the
father has been plunged by her elopement. The most stringent
adherent for the claims of parental control might relent to some
degree while listening to her childlike talks with Gobbo, and
seeing her afterwards yielding to the sweet influences of song
when she, so newly married, says :

" I am never merry when I hear sweet music."

These preliminary things help to subdue our scorn for the
creditor's claim. The most indignant hearer may attempt, but
will attempt in vain, to answer quite successfully his arguments
drawn from the analogies of the treatment of his own nation of
what should be a Christian's sufferance by Christian example.
It is such as these that, while the dramatist approximated the
pathos of tragedy, served to keep him on the hither side, and
thus create that delicious, delicate enjoyment when, being upon
the verge of weeping, one experiences the sudden relief of gentle
laughter. Here was the subtlest essence of high comedy.

But the groundlings must have the unmixed. Though they
shave laughed at the tortures of the Jew, yet it was not the laugh
of heartiness and of health. For this the author provided the
good Gobbo, or good Launcelot, or good Launcelot Gobbo.
What an invention ! Unique in the history of comic literature

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 133

this compound of earnestness and fun, of conscientiousness and
knavery. He cannot be convinced that Jessica's conversion is a
matter for congratulation, not even on moral grounds :

" Yes, truly," says he to her after the marriage "yes, truly ; for, look
you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children : therefore, I
promise ye, I fear you. I was always plain with you, and so now I speak
my agitation of the matter : therefore be of good cheer, for truly I think
you are damn'd."

Nor on economical :

" JESSICA. I shall be saved by my husband : he hath made me a Chris-
tian.

" LAUN. The more to blame he. We were Christians enow before ;
e'en as many as could well live, one by another. This making of Christians
will raise the price of hogs ; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not
shortly have a rasher on the coals for money."

Here is the most ludicrous of all those curious characters who,
having

" Planted in their memory
An army of good words,"

" for a tricksy word
Defy the matter."

This is the extreme of the humor of this play. As for the
means, it is pleasing to study how they play between, lifting
from Gobbo to Nerissa, and thence to Jessica and Lorenzo, and
thence to Portia and Bassanio. Shakspere has been often praised
for the compliment he paid to the female sex in the creation of
Portia. A rich orphan, to whom, perhaps of all ladies, the choice
of a husband is most difficult and dangerous, her conduct in the
midst of the suits that are paid to her is the very perfection of
high-born ladyship. What wit and what wisdom have come to
this beautiful heiress ! How well she understands, and how play-
fully, talking with her maid, she cuts into pieces the Neapo-
litan prince, the County Palatine, Monsieur Le Bon, Falconbridge,
the Scottish lord, the Duke of Saxony's nephew ! (act i. scene
ii.) In the treatment of the princes of Arragon and Morocco,
men of real worth and serious, honorable purpose, her deport-
ment is our best ideal of that which a true gentlewoman employs
in the presence of a gentleman upon whom, though not unworthy
of her love, it is not possible to bestow it. When Bassanio ap-
pears and wins the prize we may search through all romance in
vain for a subdual so complete, so frank, so delicate, so ineffably
sweet.

134 THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. [April,

" You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am : though for myself alone
I would not be ambitious in my wish,
To wish myself much better ; yet, for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself ;
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich ;
That only to stand high in your account,
I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account ; but the full sum of me
Is sum of nothing ; which, to term in gross,
Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn ; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn ;
Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Myself and what is mine to you and yours
Is now converted ; but now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o'er myself ; and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours, my lord : I give them with this ring."

Amid the first transports of the accepted lover news comes
of the forfeiture of the bond of Antonio. At once is seen how
orphanage, leaving her to the care of herself, has developed
beyond the time her discretion, her sense of gratitude and justice
and honor. Not a moment's delay will she allow to Bassanio,
whom she urges to fly to the comfort and rescue of the friend
who suffers in his behalf a fitting preparation for the difficult
part which is to be happy in its ending. Such is the felicitous
blending of the numerous colorings and shadings of sportiveness
which have made " The Merchant of Venice " the greatest of the
comedies.

A few words about Sir John Falstaff will end this article.
In the view we have been taking of Shakspere we can find apt
and touching illustration even in old Sir John, in the thread of
seriousness which, beginning though late, runs along in that
great web of humor, and finally absorbs the end that, all tangled,
is torn from the loom of his life. Amidst all the fun in act i.
scene ii. (" King Henry IV.," Part II.) there is a touching sadness
in the talk with the little page whom, out of the drollery of a
contrast with his gigantic stature, the prince has assigned to him :

" FAL. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my case ?
" PAGE. He said, sir, the party that owed it might have more diseases
than he knew for.

1884.] THE DELICACY OF SHAKSPERE. 135

" FAL. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this
compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to
laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me," etc.

This sense of humiliation and approaching friendlessness and
abandonment exhibits itself at sundry times. The bold words he
employs, the rude jests, show occasionally that he understands
that his wit and humor are his only capital, and that he suspects
that they will not last him to the end. It is really melancholy to
witness his last attempt to hold to the prince who is now king,
and hear his talk with Shallow, his creditor, after the heartless
repulse, avowing his assurance that his majesty has snubbed him
in public merely for the sake of appearances, and that he will
surely send for him in private. All the things occurring hence-
forth in rapid succession draw us with genuine pity to him who
has been so ruthlessly and shamelessly forsaken. The sudden
reformation of the youngster of a king with the new-born, intem-
perate zeal of fresh reformers generally ; the poor spite of the
chief-justice, who, when he has an opportunity, returns and
inflicts a punishment greater than was required, and all because
Sir John had been witness of his own humiliation all these lead
us to feel, for the time being, that the old knight, so ill-treated,
is worth more than the king and the cjiief-justice put together.
These last words to the latter, " My lord, my lord," are
piteous in the extreme. But the dignitary passed on, and the
appeal was not uttered or was unheard. The career of the
knight was over. A mere jester, a man without heart, might
have lived on. Yet even to those more vulgar companions,
Hostess and Pistol, Nym and Bardolph, when they hear that he
is sick, they know that he is sick unto death.

" NYM. The king hath run bad humors on the knight; that's the even
of it.

" PISTOL. Nym, thou hast spoke the right ; his heart is fracted and cor-
roborate.

"NYM. The king is a good king; but it must be as it may : he passes
some humors and careers."

And the Hostess tells of his playing with flowers, and babbling
of green fields, and calling upon the name of God ; and Bardolph
wishes he might be with him in Arthur's bosom, whither the
good woman has consigned him " an it had been any Christom
child " ; and Pistol's manly heart, yearning the while, exhorts
Bardolph to be blithe, and Nym to rouse his vaunting veins, and
they all know that the matter with Sir John was. " the king killed
his heart." We may make our pocket-handkerchiefs wet with

NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

laughter over such condolence of these droll " lambkins." And
so we laugh sometimes at the poor verses of " his aunty " or " his
grandma," following announcements in the morning papers of the
death of " Little Johnny " or " Little Jimmy." But both are the
best evidences such uncultured hearts believe they can give of
the sadness they feel, and their most fitting tribute to the dead.

We have thus endeavored to call attention anew to the delicacy
of Shakspere as shown in his exquisite portrayal of life among
the gifted and the courteous, and his thoughtful compassion in
the representation of the ignorant and the rude.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF VINCENNES.
In four parts: I. Tradition and History. II. The Bishops of Vincennes.
III. The Priests and Congregations. IV. The Institutions of the Dio-
cese. By the Rev. H. Alerding, Rector of St. Joseph's Church, In-
dianapolis, Ind. Crown 8vo, pp. 636. Printed for the author, Indian-
apolis. 1883. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co., New
York.)

The first white man to enter the country now the State of Indiana was
a Catholic and a Jesuit, and Father Alerding has gathered all that he could
find concerning the first planting of Christianity in Indiana. The title-
page of his History gives a fair idea of the author's arrangement. There is
a difference between Father Alerding and Dr. J. G. Shea on some of the
minor points of the early history. The labors of the first priests, and of
those early bishops, Brute, La Hailandiere, Bazin, and of St. Palais, the pre-
decessor of the present occupant of the see of Vincennes, are sketched in a
frank, unaffected manner. An interesting and instructive chapter is that
which recounts the persecution and unjust conviction of a laborious and
worthy priest on an infamous charge.

To one of the early priests, Father Pierre Gibault, according to Judge
Law, as quoted by Father Alerding, the United States are " more indebted "
(next after Clark and Vigo) "for the accession of the States comprised in
what was the original Northwestern Territory than to any other man."
It was Father Gibault who in 1778 induced the Catholic settlers of Vin-
cennes to take the oath of allegiance to the United States rather than to
England, and that at a time when England was allowing liberty of con-
science to the Catholics of Canada, and while John Jay in New York was
doing all he could by his fanatical attempts to exclude " papists " from the
privileges of citizenship in New York to discourage Catholic nations
from assisting the struggling colonies. The volume contains some excel-
lent portraits of the bishops of Vincennes.

CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. By Brother Azarias, B.C.S., Presi-
dent of Rock Hill College, Maryland. New York: E. Steiger & Co.
1884.

1 This pamphlet is as neat and delicate of form as the style of Brother

1 884.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 1 37

Azarias. The dedication reminds us of the time when the author seemed
about to depart for the world of spirits, and although, to the great advan-
tage and joy of all his friends, but especially of his pupils, his life has been
prolonged, he appears to have brought back with him, and he diffuses
through his beautiful essay, something very spiritual from that border
which he approached so nearly. He speaks as it were from experience
when he says : " Wise indeed were it that we all learn in time the language
which must be ours throughout eternity."

The Christian Brothers have a vast number of our boys and youths
under their excellent and thoroughly Christian instruction. Not only in
their schools of primary and intermediate education, but also in their col-
leges, both teachers and pupils are every year gaining increased credit and
reputation. They are sending constantly a considerable number of alumni
into the ecclesiastical seminaries. It is a great privilege enjoyed by these
young men to have the highest lessons of spiritual wisdom conveyed to
them in such charming and attractive language, by a teacher like Brother
Azarias. We trust that he may long be spared to his order and to the
church, and may continue to write, as well as to teach and govern his in*
teresting and promising juvenile charge.

URIEL ; or, The Chapel of the Angels. By the author of Lady Glastonburys
Boudoir, T/ig New Utopia, etc. London : Burns & Gates ; New York :
The Catholic Publication Society Co.

This fascinating story will not be put down by a reader who once be-
gins it until it has been read through. The writer has struck a new vein.
There is a great deal of the romantic, something of the preternatural, and
a deep tinge of the supernatural in the conception of the characters and
events which made up the plot, and yet, though improbable, the incidents
are not impossible, there is no straining for effect, and the background on
which the characters and scenes are depicted is naturally represented.
The ordinary and the uncommon, the real and the ideal, are so skilfully and
easily blended together that there is no startling shock produced, the
story proceeds after a simple and natural fashion, and on the whole, while
one is reading, it seems as if everything might have happened as the writer
narrates. The characters are admirably drawn, and, for a wonder, the true
hero of the story is neither handsome, graceful, of noble birth, or in any
way remarkable except for his sterling worth and unselfish devotion. We
never heard of the author before, but we desire to see more choice pro-
ductions from the pen which wrote Uriel.

CONSTITUTION AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S NA-
TIONAL UNION OF THE NINTH ANNUAL CONVENTION, held at Brook-
lyn, New York, June 27 find 28, 1883. Richmond : Catholic Visitor
Print. 1883.

Whatever is undertaken by young men, or in their behalf, for the
interest of the Catholic religion, is of great importance. The young men
of the Catholic Church, as a class, are of the greatest importance. More-
over, there is no class of members of the Catholic Church presenting so
many and so great difficulties to be met and overcome, in order that they
may be brought under the controlling influence of religion and induced to

138 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

do the work for which their youth and energy give them such a great
capability.

One way in which it is sought to effect a good work in them and to
accomplish a good work through them is that of associations. The object
of the Union is to combine local associations for the furtherance of their
common object. It has been in existence since 1875, under the following
successive presidents : Mgr. Doane, Mgr. Preston, Bishop Ryan of Buffalo,
Bishop Keane, and the Rev. James H. Mitchell. At the Ninth Convention
forty-nine societies, existing in fourteen dioceses, were represented. These
different societies vary a good deal in the particular manner and scope of
their organization, and the objects of their efforts are quite numerous.
One object proposed is to unite young men in a pious sodality for common
religious exercises, and especially the regular reception of the sacraments.
Another is the prosecution of charitable and beneficial works of various
kinds. A third, intellectual improvement and literary enjoyment by
means of libraries, lectures, and literary entertainments. A fourth is com-
bination, for the defence and advancement of Catholic interests. A fifth is
physical culture, and a sixth innocent social recreation. This is not a
minute and exhaustive enumeration, and for particulars we must refer
those who are interested to the pamphlet of the convention. Our sym-
pathies and best wishes go with all the honorable and zealous efforts of the
young men of the National Union and of all similar associations.

MY VISIT TO DISTRESSED IRELAND. Richard F. Clarke, S.J., formerly
Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, Oxford. New York : Benziger
Bros. 1883.

In these days, when Irish affairs are among the most prominent topics
of the hour, when the present efforts to provide remedies for Irish misery
occupy the attention of every thoughtful man, when these efforts have met
with the most varied criticism, such a volume as the one before us is most
opportune. We do not hesitate to say that it should be studied by all who
have an interest in the subject, by all who would give to the matter the
benefit of candid, unbiassed judgment. The book has many merits. Its
author is a man of ripe scholarship. He has earned distinction at Oxford,
and as an able writer is well known in England. Hence the value of his
book as a work coming from one who has already gained a reputation, and
who is therefore not liable to commit himself to any opinion without care-
ful research and mature consideration.

But the book has a value beyond this : it is written by a thorough
Englishman, by a representative of that nation whose writers are generally
hostile to Ireland. " I ask my Irish readers," he says, " to remember that
I am a loyal Englishman, loving my country. I ask my English readers to
remember that I am but stating those things which I have seen and'heard."
The value of the book is therefore much enhanced when we learn that, far
from being blind to the misery he saw in Ireland and inimical to the mea-
sures her truest representatives have employed to remedy this misery, the
author's opinions are remarkably in harmony with the settled convictions
of the Irish leaders themselves.

These considerations cannot fail, we think, to make the book valuable
to every lover of Ireland, to all who love the cause of justice ; while it is

1 884.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 1 39

written in a spirit and temper, and with a sincerity calculated to lessen the
prejudice of the many intelligent and well-meaning but wholly misin-
formed men among the enemies of Ireland and her people. Prejudice is
always the result of ignorance or misrepresentation. His countrymen are
ignorant of the real state of affairs in Ireland ; hence he says : " My visit to
Ireland was undertaken in order that I might form on the spot, so far as I
could, a well-balanced opinion of the cause of Irish distress and destitu-
tion, and might lay before those who are interested in the subject the re-
sults I gathered there." In order to gain a deeper insight into the real
condition of the people, he did not traverse the whole of Ireland, but con-
fined himself to a small area in the county of Mayo, where he learned
"the land was the poorest, the poverty the greatest, the country most
uneasy and unsettled." The misery and want he witnessed would be too
long a task to detail here. It is sufficient to say that his pictures of the
real state of affairs are vivid and graphic, never over-wrought or highly
colored. He gives the reader a truthful, but at the same time a calm, al-
most a judicial, statement of all he beheld. He candidly admits that a
good Irish landlord is a rara avis ; while, in some passages resembling the
utterances of Mr. Healy in pith and energy, he accuses Irish landlords as
a class of being the greatest obstacle to the union of England and Ire-
land on fair and equitable grounds ; ^and this_is all that many of the Irish
patriots demand.

CROMWELL IN IRELAND. A History of Cromwell's Irish Campaign. By
the Rev. Denis Murphy, S.J. With maps, plans, and illustrations. 8vo,
pp. xxviii.-478. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. (For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co.)

Whoever believes that character is transmitted to one's descendants
will, after finishing this book, have anything but a favorable idea of the
landlords of Ireland to-day, for here one can see their ancestors as they
really were as infamous a lot of treacherous scoundrels as ever were per-
mitted to harass a Christian people. They were not all Englishmen, or
Anglo-Irishmen, by any means. One of the worst was the man known in
the traditions of the Irish as Murchadh an Totdin, that is, Murchadh " of the
Burnings," otherwise " Black " Murchadh (or Morrogh) O'Brien, ances-
tor of the present Marquis of Inchiquin. A strange character he was, too ;
a Catholic by birth and training, then a Protestant and ally of the Puritans,
and then on his death-bed in England in 1674 a Catholic, leaving word to
have Masses said for the repose of his soul. A man of enormous energy,
indomitable courage, great abilities, quick wit, and apparently destitute of
any such thing as conscience, he was altogether the. sort of hero to delight
Carlyle.

In fact, Father Murphy has drawn for us here a whole gallery of por-
traits. There is that man of true genius, the great Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill,
having all the qualities of a great statesman, skilful general, and withal a
good man. One of the picturesque characters of the period was the
Bishop of Clogher, Heber MacMahon. Like the famous Odo, Bishop of
Bayeux, the bishop of Clogher knew how to fight, and he fought for his
country and religion with so much effect that on the death of Eoghan
Ruadh he was chosen, with Ormonde's approval, as "general of all his
majesty's forces of horse and foot of the province of Ulster." Oliver

140 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [April,

Cromwell himself will be better understood from the history here given of
his achievements. He was, as his career in Ireland shows, a man to win
victory under the most difficult circumstances. Then there is James But-
ler of Kilkenny, Earl of Ormonde the "great Ormonde "he has been called
a man who, with a deep hatred for the religion of his fathers, was yet
diplomatist enough to enjoy whenever he wished the support of his Ca-
tholic countrymen. He is a type of those singular beings, scarcely to be
found outside of Ireland, yet unfortunately plentiful there, who hate their
own country and pass a good part of their lives in bringing their country
further and further into subjection to its enemy.

Every reader of Irish history knows that in 1641 Ireland could have
regained its independence if its inhabitants had been united. They were
not united, yet it is foolish to find fault with them for this. The country
then contained, for all practical purposes of war, three very distinct nations
whose traditions naturally kept them separate : the " old Irish " that is, the
people of Gaelic race, the Macs and O's ; the "old English " that is, the de-
scendants of the Anglo-Norman invaders; and the " new English " the
new colonists, that is, dating since Elizabeth's or James I.'s reign. The two
first were mainly Catholics, the last mainly Protestants. Even this hardly
represents the division. Father Murphy in a note quotes Cox's Hibernia
Anglicana : "First there was an army of all mere Irish, not an English
papist among them, commanded by the bishop of Clogher ; and another of
mere English, all papists, under General Preston ; and, secondly, there was
an army of old English and Irish under the Lords Mountgarrett, Taaffe,
etc. ; and an army of new English, commanded by the Earls of Ormonde,
Inchiquin, etc. ; and, thirdly, there was an army of papists under the Nun-
cio, and an army of Protestants commanded by the Marquis of Ormonde."
That was the state of things while Ireland was fighting against Oliver
Cromwell, who landed in 1649.

But to find fault with the Irish of to-day for this disunion of more than
two centuries ago is to indulge in the emptiest of platitudes. The de-
scendants of the Anglo-Normans felt themselves justified by the traditions
of their families in opposing a separation from England. They belonged
to the race and were the descendants of those fearless knights who may
be said to have originated the very conception of loyalty, not merely to
some particular government, but to an idea. As Catholics they were will-
ing to make alliance with their ancient enemies, the Gaelic Irish, against
their common foe, the Puritans. But they would go no further. They
held at one time the Eastern seaports, and they commanded the commer-
cial facilities of Ireland. They would fight in defence of their religious
liberties as Catholics, but they would not fight against England. They
were the descendants of the flower of those Norman adventurers who had
set up a throne for their duke in England, and they had no wish to give up
what they had spent centuries in fighting for. To-day the Anglo-Norman
element of the Irish people is as nationalist in sentiment as the Gaels, and
perhaps more determined. But it is a mistake to condemn the people of
the English Pale of two centuries ago for not thinking as their descen-
dants now think. Even the descendants of the new English are now more
Irish than many of the Irish of the Mac or the O'. " Glorious Tipperary,"
the most " rebellious " county in Ireland, has no more unflinching na-

1 8 84.] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 1 4 1

tionalists than those who are the descendants of the Puritan troopers
planted there by Cromwell's son-in-law, Ireton.

Oliver Cromwell left his mark on Ireland, and there is perhaps no
name so much hated as his by the Irish people, and most justly. To
this day, in the belief of the uneducated, every ruin in Ireland, whether
church, monastery, or castle, was the work of his hands. What he really
did is bad enough without charging him with more. But the track of an
English army, whether in Ireland, in India, or our own country before the
surrender of Yorktown, has nearly always been marked with outrage, ruin,
and massacre. The horrors of Drogheda in 1649 have been repeated in our
day. It is needless to say that if Cromwell when victorious spared any
Irish Catholic's life he never spared a priest's, if he could help it. In his
summons to the governor of Kilkenny to surrender that town, he writes,
March 26, 1650: "As for your 'clergymen/ as you call them, in case you
agree for a surrender, they shall march safely away, with their goods and what
belongs to them ; but if they fall otherwise into my hands, I believe they
know what to expect from me." " Whoever examines even his [Crom-
well's] brief career in Ireland with impartiality must admit the truth of
Clarendon's saying, that he was a great, bad man."

Speaking of Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill, Father Murphy says that "in
the forty battles which he fought against the English, only once did he
suffer defeat. No treachery or inhumanity ever sullied his victories. At
the battle of Benburb, gained with far inferior numbers by his skill and
gallantry, three thousand Scots were left dead on the field, and many more
were slain in the pursuit. 'The Lord hath rubbed shame on our faces
till we are humbled,' wrote their general, Monroe. On the side of the
Irish only seventy fell."

As the garrison of Kilkenny marched out for the surrender, "with their
commander, Sir Walter Butler, at their head, they were complimented by
Cromwell for their bravery ; he said that they were gallant fellows, that
he had lost more men storming that place than at Drogheda, and that he
should have gone without it were it not for the treachery of the towns-
men." But the truth was that an Englishwoman named Thornton, living
in the town, was the only treacherous one, and her treachery consisted
in betraying, after the surrender, the hiding-place of some distinguished
ecclesiastics, who were dragged out and despatched by the roundhead
English soldiers.

The volume is full of interest. There is life and movement from first
to last. Besides, for those desiring to familiarize themselves with Irish
history, it is indispensable. As its author says : " It is a portion of his-
tory but little known. It lies for the most part in a few books, some of
them difficult of access by reason of their scarcity, others written in a
language not intelligible to the greater number of readers."

On account of the complicated orthography and pronunciation of Gaelic
names, Father Murphy, like Sir Walter Scott and other Irish and Scotch
writers, sticks to the supposed phonetic system which corrupts them into
forms supposed to be pronounceable by English readers ; so that Eoghan
Ruadh (the " Ruddy ") appears as " Owen Roe," just as Scott wrote Rob
Ruadh " Rob Roy," and Ruadhri Dubh (the " Dark ") " Roderick dhu," etc.
Except the Oriental and Slavic languages, there is no other civilized Ian-

142 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [April,

guage that has been subjected to such a humiliation. Suppose we should
write French proper names, names of persons and places, according to an
Englishman's idea of their sound !

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND HER MARRIAGE WITH ,BOTHWELL. Seven
Letters to the Tablet. Revised, with a preface and notes, and a
supplement. By the Hon. Colin Lindsay. London : Burns & Gates.
Edinburgh : William Patterson. New York : The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co.

Since the time when the character of Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland
has been cleared from the greatest part of the cloud of aspersions which
malice and fraud had gathered around it, the one dark spot obscuring it
has remained her marriage with Bothwell. The Rev. Father Joseph Ste-
venson, in a recently-published History of Mary Stewart by Claude Nau, al-
though in general favorable to Mary, yet felt himself obliged to lay to her
charge one grievously sinful and immoral act. This was that, yielding to
the pressure put upon her, she consented to contract with Bothwell a union
which she knew to be no valid marriage, Bothwell being already the lawful
husband of a lady then living viz., Jean Gordon. Mr. Lindsay has under-
taken to prove that Father Stevenson was mistaken. The first point of
his defence of Mary is that Bothwell's pretended marriage with Jean Gor-
don was null and void, so that a true marriage between him and Mary was
possible. The second point is that Mary never consented to marry him,
and that the form of marriage which was gone through was utterly invalid,
on account of the violence to which Mary was subjected and the total want
of free consent on her part. Father Stevenson has admitted the conclu-
siveness of Mr. Lindsay's proofs, and has fully retracted his own previous
statements. This last remaining doubt concerning the complete moral
spotlessness of Mary's character having been removed, the heroic and un-
fortunate queen has now, by her generous and able advocates, Petit,
Strickland, Hosack, Meline, and Lindsay, been completely vindicated, and
her innocence triumphantly established.

JOSEPH HAYDN : The Story of his Life. Translated from the German of
Franz von Seeburg, by the Rev. J. M. Toohey, C.S.C. Notre Dame,
Ind. : J. A. Lyons. 1884.

This book is quite properly called the story of the life of Haydn. It is
not, strictly speaking, a biography, but a series of pictures or sketches
based upon the principal events of the life of the great master. The char-
acters introduced are well and clearly drawn, though we regret, for the sake
of verisimilitude, that they are somewhat over-given to prophecy and long
speeches. We also have to pardon an occasional slip in the reverend
translator. Nevertheless we find it a very attractive and interesting book,
all the more so, perhaps, because it does not follow the ordinary biographi-
cal method and does not bother us with dates. The bright, cheerful tem-
perament of Haydn, which seems to have been unclouded by his early trials
and poverty, is charmingly portrayed. In this sunny disposition of his we
find a clue to what would otherwise be a mystery to those who are lovers
of the True in music as in the other fine arts. The most significant thing
in the whole book is this remark of Haydn :

"The people of Vienna do not like my church music, and perhaps they

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

are right. In this I am peculiar. In the Kyrie I prayed to God, not as a
despairing sinner or one that feared reprobation, but calmly and with
resignation ; and I considered that an infinite God will surely deal merci-
fully with a finite creature and will forgive dust for being dust. These
thoughts made me joyful, and I could not contain my joy, so that I wrote
my Miserere as an allegro."

Above all, the book is to be commended for the spirit of piety which
permeates it, making it edifying as well as entertaining reading. The cha-
racter of Haydn himself especially, as here depicted, calls forth our warm-
est admiration and enthusiasm. The book merits a large circulation.

LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS SOLANUS, APOSTLE OF PERU. By a priest of the
Order of St. Francis, Province of the Sacred Heart. St. Louis, Mo. :
B. Herder. 1883.

This is a neat little volume containing the history of the life and mira-
cles of the apostle of Peru. He was a son of St. Francis of Assisi, and, like
him, he would draw all men to Christ ; would have them all put on that
yoke which Truth itself has said is light and sweet. He sought the wild
tribes of the New World, and among them spent the best years of his life.
The western coast of South America was the seat of his labors, and there
he is now especially revered ; yet his memory should be dear to all of us,
since he is one of those who have been made " the friends of God."

PRUSIAS : A Romance of Ancient Rome under the Republic. By-
Ernst Eckstein. From the German by Clara Bell. New York : W. S.
Gottsberger. 1884.

Mr. Gottsberger brings out his books in a very tasteful and attractive
style, and some of them are of a very excellent quality. Eckstein's ro-
mances are after the manner of Ebers, whose best works are master-
pieces. Prusias has for its subject the great servile war, between the
epochs of Sulla and Julius Caesar, in which Spartacus was the principal
figure. Prusias, who turns out to be Darius, a brother of Mithridates, and
is a purely fictitious character, is represented as the author and leader of
the insurrection. His character is strongly drawn, but the drawing is
essentially damaged, in an artistic as well as in a moral point of view, by
his disgusting liaison with Nasvia. There are other fictitious characters
introduced, and the story sometimes deviates from the historical record.
Yet it is easy to separate the imaginary from the real narrative, the pure
romance from the description of historical events of a most intense and
tragical interest. There is much dramatic and descriptive art displayed
in this romance, and the reader, who naturally expects that all the persons
who excite his sympathy will come to a sad end in company with Prusias
and other principal personages, is agreeably surprised to find some of
them happily escaping from the melee, with good prospects of living pros-
perously ever after.

There are some serious lessons to be learned from the generally truth-
ful picture which Prusias presents to our view of the last days of the
Roman republic. One is, the nameless horrors and enormities of heathen
tyranny, slavery, and moral corruption. Another is that insurrection and
revolution are not the remedy for social and political evils, but the causes

144 NEW PUBLICATION'S. [April, 1884.

of new and worse disasters. The highest and best lesson is given in the
dying speech of Prusias when he was about to be crucified :

" At last sooner or later you will again hear the mighty truth pro-
claimed that All Men are equal. In that day the legions of Rome will
vainly strive against the march of the Inevitable.

" He will appear in the East rising from the well-spring of eternal light ;
He will come a Deliverer who will finish the work that I, weak and erring,
have failed to accomplish. The man who desires to triumph over all the
demons that haunt the human soul must himself be superior to their
temptations ; and He, the Mighty One, whom my eye foresees veiled in
clouds of glory, will renounce all to conquer all. He too, perhaps, may
die on the cross, condemned by a darkened world, but his work will not die
with him."

PRIMERS FOR THE PEOPLE. Edited by Eugene L. Didier. No. r. A Primer
of Criticism. i8mo, pp. 46. Baltimore : The People's Publishing Co.
1883.

In this little pamphlet, after beginning with " A Glance at American
Literature," Mr. Didier indulges in what may be frank, if not very good-
natured, criticism of several well-known American writers Henry James,
Jr., William D. Howells, Edmund C. Stedman, George W. Cable, Richard
H. Stoddard, and Richard Grant White. Each of these Mr. Didier regards
as very much over-estimated. Nor is Mr. Didier satisfied with Christian
Reid, who has given the readers of this magazine, as well as many thou-
sand others, hours of great delight.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION INTO LATIN, chiefly on the rules of syntax.
Collected and arranged by the Rev. P. J. Miiller, S.J., Professor of
Latin and Greek in Canisius College, Buffalo, N. Y. Square crown
Svo, pp. vi.-37i. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustef & Co. 1884.

Father Miiller has prepared, in this handsomely-printed book, a manual
for translating English into Latin. Though Father Muller's English is not
so idiomatic as, perhaps, it might have been if revised by one to whom
English is the mother-tongue, there can be no doubt that the industrious
student who translates all these sentences into Latin will become a good
Latinist. The references in the lessons are to the Latin grammar of Dr.
Schultz, published by the same house.

CLAVIS RERUM. Norwich : F. A. Robinson & Co.

MARTIN LUTHER : A Study of the Reformation. By Edwin D. Mead. Boston : Geo. H. Ellis.

JOHN ADAMS, THE STATESMAN OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. By Hon. Melen Chamber-
lain.

REPORTS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ORPHAN ASYLUMS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK FOR THE
YEAR 1883.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE VOTE ON PRISON CONTRACT LABOR POLLED NOVEMBER 6, 1883, with
comments from various sources.

SADLIERS' CATHOLIC DIRECTORY, ALMANAC, AND ORDO FOR THE YE\R OF OUR LORD 1884.
New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF ST. VINCENT'S HOSPITAL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
from October i, 1881, to January j, 1883.

QUARTERLY REPORT OF THE CHIEF OF THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS, TREASURY DEPART-
MENT, WASHINGTON, for the three months ending September 30, 1883.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIX. .MAY, 1884. No. 230.

THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE.

THE Catholic Church, as is well known, has always pro-
chimed, and enforced on the consciences of her children, the law
of monogamy and the law of the indissolubility of marriage.
These are not merely human laws, civil or ecclesiastical, but di-
vine laws, coeval with the origin of the human race and the
institution of marriage. Marriage was instituted in the begin-
ning, by the Creator, as a union between the first man and the
first woman, made by a bond which was not to be broken ex-
cept by the ending of that earthly life to which it belonged. It
began in Paradise, in the primitive, perfect state of original
righteousness in which the first human pair were constituted.
It remained, after the fall, in the state of reparation which was
inaugurated by the promise of the Redeemer. But, like all
other human things, marriage was subject to the consequences
of the fall, and therefore it underwent a change for the worse ;
so that by degrees its law of unity was impaired by the intro-
duction of the custom of polygamy, and its indissolubility by the
practice of divorce. These departures from the primitive law
of marriage were tolerated under the imperfect and initial dis-
pensations of divine, primitive law given to the patriarchs and
to Moses. They were restricted and ameliorated, but not for-
cibly suppressed, by an economy of divine leniency and compas-
sion for human weakness which awaited a better time for the
promulgation of a more perfect moral law.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the fulness of his power, when he

146 THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. [May,

introduced his New Law, enacted with a new and more strin-
gent obligation the laws of monogamy and the indissolubility of
marriage, raising marriage to the dignity of a sacrament ancj
conferring upon it a new hallowing sanction and sanctifying
power. The Redeemer and Restorer of human nature brought
back the matrimonial union of the baptized children of his church
to the primitive ideal perfection of marriage in Paradise, with a
superadded grace suitable to the changed condition of men and
women who are not in the original state of integrity of nature.
It is by virtue of this legislative authority of Jesus Christ that
the church, as his representative and the medium through which
he promulgates his moral law, proclaims, and enforces upon her
own subjects, the laws of monogamy and the indissolubility of
marriage.

There is no other absolutely firm and certain basis of a moral
and religious law prescribing monogamy and forbidding poly-
gamy, or of a law forbidding divorce for grave causes.

It is not difficult to prove the thesis that monogamy is much
better than polygamy ; that it is far more conformable to the
natural law ; that it is, even, in certain states of civilization, the
only form of conjugal relation which can or ought to be tolerated.
But all rational arguments which can be adduced fall short of
proving that monogamy is prescribed and polygamy forbidden
by the law of nature, absolutely, at all times, and under all cir-
cumstances. It is easy, also, to prove that it is much better that
marriage should be as enduring as life, and that divorce is an
evil, which becomes a very great social disorder when it is fre-
quent. But it is impossible to prove by rational arguments that
the bond of marriage is so indissoluble by the law of nature that
it can never be really broken for any cause or by any authority.

The Natural Law does not make itself known so explicitly,
fully, distinctly, easily, and universally, through the dictates of
reason and conscience, and with a common consent of mankind,
that it can suffice as a complete, unerring practical rule. It
needs to be declared, supplemented and extended by a positive
law of divine origin and having a divine sanction. It is only by
a positive law that monogamy can be efficaciously prescribed
and polygamy forbidden. Positive law is equally necessary for
efficacious prohibition or restriction of divorce. And these laws
must have a foundation in a manifestation of the divine mind
and the divine will, in order to have the needed moral power
over the consciences of men.

There is a further and even more stringent need of positive

1884.] THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. 147

law in respect to the persons who can be joined by the bond of
marriage, and the conditions which make the contract valid and
binding-. There are dictates of the law of nature in respect to
these things. But these general dictates need to be made more
explicit, and to be applied in a more particular manner to in-
dividual cases, in order to make a practical rule. For instance,
the nearness of kinship which impedes or nullifies a contract of
marriage, the defect of age or dominion over one's acts making
one incapable of contracting, are matters which need to be de-
fined and determined. In proportion as human society emerged
from its originally narrow limits and became extensive, complex,
and highly organized, the necessity and the comprehensiveness
of legislation grew and developed, until that part of ethics, and
of jurisprudence both civil and ecclesiastical, which relates to
marriage has swollen into vast proportions. The magnitude
and complexity of this great department of the social and poli-
tical order of civilized life creates a corresponding need, attended
by an equal difficulty, of a clear and complete manifestation of
the law of God, the rule of morality, the religion, which must be
the governing principle of the whole, in view of the highest end
of human society. Rational philosophy is impotent to meet this
demand. The moral law of Christianity is alone adequate to its
fulfilment.

The Protestant theory of the constitutive principles of the
Christian religion and the Christian church destroys the basis of
this moral law of Christianity. There is no other positive divine
law besides that which Jesus Christ enacted and promulgated.
Take this away, and any once Christian nation which has suffered
the deprivation reverts gradually of itself to its old condition
of heathendom. This is precisely the theoretical and practical
character of Protestantism. It reduces Christianity to the level
of a mere opinion. It is the opinion of an individual, or of a
voluntary sect more or less numerous, or of the ruling power in
a nation which exacts submission from its subjects on the maxim,
Cujus est regie, illius est religio.* It brings down the church to
the level of an unorganized, divided aggregate of imperfect and
local associations, existing in and dependent on the state, with-
out autonomy or independence, and wholly incapable of defining
or proclaiming the law of God with certainty and authority,, so
as to lay an obligation of obedience on the consciences of men.
On this theory the Lord Jesus Christ was merely an ethical
teacher, whose doctrine is known to us by the relation of some

* The religion of a country is determined by its ruler.

148 THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. [May,

of his disciples and the exposition of others, as recorded in cer-
tain writings which are to be vouched for, interpreted, and ex-
plained by learned scholars.

Such a view takes from Jesus Christ the character and office
of a legislator, and from Christianity its essential nature as a New
Law of God. The Old Law was given to the Jews, and it has
been abrogated. Jesus Christ is the author of a New Covenant,
and a New Law of universal and permanent obligation. All that
is over and above that natural law which is from the beginning
everywhere binding upon all, as the reflex of the eternal law,
receives its obligatory force from the edict and enactment of the
sovereign law-giver Jesus Christ. So that, in the case of mar-
riage, no positive moral law exists, beyond what nature itself
prescribes, except that law which emanates from Jesus Christ.
He did not promulgate his law by a written code or by any
public solemn proclamation. Where, then, is the text of this
law to be found ? To what documents can any Protestant sect,
any Protestant teachers of religion and morals, appeal as being
or as containing an authentic manifestation of divine laws pre-
scribing a certain and obligatory rule of public and private
morality, of civil and ecclesiastical legislation, and of individual
practice, in respect to the unity of marriage, the conditions of its
validity and binding force as a contract, and its indissolubility ?

The only documents they can appeal to are contained in the
New Testament, unless they choose to consider the laws of
Moses, or some of them, contained in the Pentateuch, to be moral
laws of universal and permanent obligation, and as such con-
firmed by the authority of Jesus Christ, with certain modifica-
tions. For a rule defining prohibited degrees of kinship some of
them may, like Dr. Pusey, refer to the Old Testament. But for
a strict prohibition of polygamy, and a prohibition of divorce
with such exceptions as they allow, they can only refer to the
New Testament. But in this part of the Holy Scriptures there
is no code of law, and but few single and particular enactments
in the form of law, to be found. There are historical ac-
counts which give, in an abridged form probably, some instruc-
tions of our Lord Jesus Christ, in which he declares what are
some of the moral precepts of the New Law. It does not ap-
pear, however, that he was then and there speaking as a legis-
lator. But, even if he was, a narration of the fact that he at such
a time, and in the presence of certain persons, promulgated a
law, is not itself the written law. Neither are the expositions of
the law, accompanied by injunctions and exhortations to keep it,

1884.] THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. 149

which are found in the Apostolic Letters, the very law itself.
The law is presupposed as existing-, in every historical ac-
count and every exposition, although these may be taken as evi-
dence and as commentary, especially in the case of unwritten
law. In so far as the instruction given by the Lord Jesus Christ
to the founders of his church respecting marriage is made known
by the Gospels and Epistles, it is unquestionably an inculcation
of the law of monogamy and the law of indissolubility as guid-
ing principles and rules of the ethics of Christian society. But
it is nowhere distinctly affirmed, that among those peoples to
whom the law of Christ has not been proclaimed every union
sanctioned by custom and law is null and void which has been
formed by a man with one or more women, besides the one to
whom he was first married, during her lifetime. It is not even
distinctly prescribed that every such union must be broken off
as an indispensable condition of receiving baptism. Hence it is
no matter of surprise that some Protestant missionaries have
questioned the necessity or expediency of compelling heathen
converts who have been living in polygamy to renounce it.

In respect to divorce, while there can be no doubt that it is
condemned in general terms in the New Testament, yet there
are some texts which according to a purely exegetical rule will
bear more than one interpretation. On such ambiguous texts
Protestants found their doctrine respecting divorce. But their
private opinion, against which even critical and exegetical rea-
sons of great probability can be alleged, and which is utterly
overthrown by an appeal to the traditional sense which has pre-
vailed from the beginning, is no sufficient basis for a law.

When it is question of impediments nullifying a contract of
marriage, to what rule can Protestants refer? They have no
resource except to leave everything to the civil law for the de-
termination of the dictates of the law of nature, and the enact-
ment of positive laws prescribing the condition of valid mar-
riages.

Thus it is that Protestantism, by its principle of private judg-
ment on the naked text of Scripture as the only rule of deter-
mining the teaching and precepts of Jesus Christ, has swept
away all legislative authority from Christianity. In its very es-
sence the Protestant Reformation was a revolution, a rebellion
against all authority in religion and morals. It leads necessarily
to piire rationalism. And whatever doctrinal or moral power
it has heretofore retained, in virtue of ideas and sentiments still
remaining in its adherents as an heirloom from the old Christi-

150 THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. [May,

anity, is fast passing away. They are busily at work undermin-
ing and discrediting the authority of the very Scriptures to
Avhich they appeal, and of which they used to boast, as constitut-
ing the very religion of Protestants. The positive moral law of
God made known by revelation is done away "with by the Pro-
testant principle. Nothing is left but the natural law as under-
stood and applied by the light of reason. Society is abandoned
to itself and its civil law. The fatal results to morality, espe-
cially in the instance of marriage, are now showing themselves.
Protestantism introduced an active principle of disease and death
into Christian society, like a tubercular deposit in the lungs.
The disintegration, corruption, decay, and dissolution virtually
contained in it extend not only through the system of Christian
doctrine and ecclesiastical order, but through the entire moral
order and all parts of political and social organization. This
destructive principle is the implicit denial of all legislative power
and action in Jesus Christ which is involved in the explicit de-
nial of all authority in religion over the private judgment of indi-
vidual Christians.

It is time now to state more fully the reason of that law of
monogamy and the indissolubility of marriage which the Catho-
lic Church proclaims, and enforces upon the consciences of her
own children. This is a divine law. It has its foundation and
its primary principles in the law of nature. It is a restoration
of the original and most perfect constitution of the natural con-
nubial union sanctioned by the primitive positive law of the
Creator. The author of the law is Jesus Christ. The promul-
gation of it was made by him orally to the apostles, who were
also enlightened and instructed concerning its meaning and ap-
plication by the Holy Spirit, so 'as to make them inspired and
infallible organs of the Divine Majesty in proclaiming this law
to the whole world. The apostles, under their head, St. Peter,
were made into a supreme teaching body having infallible
authority within the domain of faith and morals, and plenary
legislative and judicial power over the baptized members of the
church in respect to all things pertaining to religion and mo-
rality. The law which the apostles received from Jesus Christ
they proclaimed with the faith, by preaching and instruction, to
the entire congregation of the faithful whom they gathered into
the church. It was imbibed bv the faithful and became their

unwritten, common law, the universal Christian tradition and
rule of morals. In a special manner it was inculcated on the
bishops and clergy as the rule of their teaching and government.

1884.] THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. 151

The law of Jesus Christ became a concrete and living law in the
very constitution of the church, and in the lives and conduct of
its worthy members who acted in conformity to the doctrine and
precepts of the apostles. In so far as this law was a strictly
divine commandment, of permanent and universal obligation,
apostolic authority was limited to a mere commission of pro-
claiming it in the name of God, without any power of alteration
or dispensation. But in so far as Jesus Christ delegated his law-
giving power to the apostles, they had authority to enact addi-
tional, ecclesiastical precepts, and to prescribe rules, which might
be altered or abrogated by the same authority, and from which
dispensations could be given in individual cases. The office of
promulgating the law of God by the authority of an immediate
divine revelation from the mouth of Jesus Christ or the inspira-
tion of the Holy Spirit, ceased with the original apostles. But
the authority to proclaim this law as a received tradition from the
apostles, transmitted to their successors by their oral and written
teaching, was permanently established by a divine ordinance in
the church. St. Peter, who possessed the plenitude of apostolic
authority, transmitted the same to his successors in the Roman
See, whose colleagues in the episcopate are co-judges and co-
legislators with him in that spiritual domain which embraces all
matters pertaining to faith and morals. The perfect and incor-
ruptible preservation and proclamation of the divine and un-
changeable law of Jesus Christ, by this supreme authority in
the church, is guarded and guaranteed by the gifts of indefec-
tibiiity and infallibility in teaching the revealed truth and law
committed to the charge of the apostles by Jesus Christ. The
necessity for legislation, the exercise of the judicial office, and of
ecclesiastical government in general, within tne domain of the
spiritual order, is provided for by the institution of a perpetual
and supreme power in the church, with which Jesus Christ has
promised to be present by the Holy Spirit to the end of the
world.

This is, then, the reason of the commandment which the
Catholic Church gives to all her children to observe the law of
monogamy and the law of the indissolubility of marriage ac-
cording to her doctrine. The church has received this law of
monogamy as a divine and unchangeable law of Jesus Christ
through her apostolic founders, with a commission to proclaim
it to all the world. Those who are ignorant of this law without
any fault on their part need not be considered as guilty of sin,
if they live in polygamy according to the law of their country.

152 THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. [May,

But when they have the faith sufficiently proposed to them they
are bound to believe and be baptized, to obey the Christian law,
and to cease from all connubial relations except the one which
this law sanctions. The Christian law cannot tolerate the con-
tinuance of polygamy even for a time, or in any single instance,
where it already exists. Much less can it tolerate, and much
more severely must it condemn, an alteration or violation of the
law of monogamy in a community where the whole social and
political order has already been founded upon this law.

The indissolubility of the bond of marriage under this law of
monogamy springs from the same principles of the law of nature,
and is founded on the same reasons in the divine, positive law,
with the law of monogamy itself. In the New Law of Christ
there is, besides all the natural reasons for the unity and indisso-
lubility of marriage, a supernatural reason derived from the sac-
ramental dignity with which marriage has been adorned. The
sacramental marriage of baptized Christians is a sacred sign,
representing the union between Jesus Christ and his one, only
spouse, the Catholic Church. There is, therefore, a reason de-
rived from the sacrament for the sole and exclusive right of both
parties over each other during life, which is mutually given and
received in a valid contract of marriage, and by the consumma-
tion of. the same becomes irrevocable. This is a divine law
which the apostles received from Jesus Christ, and which the
Catholic Church proclaims and enforces under penalty of pri-
vation of the sacraments and exclusion from the kingdom of
heaven. Let it be observed that the sacrament of marriage
is inseparable from the contract when validly made by baptized
persons. This is what is called matrimonium ratum. Such a
contract is by its essence a sacrament. No discredit is cast upon
the honorable and lawful marriage of the unbaptized, or upon
the validity and binding force of the contract by which it is ef-
fected. But there is an additional sanction and benediction of
God which makes Christian marriage a more sacred thing in
itself, and its bond, after it has been consummated, is, by a special
law of Jesus Christ, absolutely indissoluble. The bond of legi-
timate marriage between unbaptized persons, can be dissolved,
after one of them has been baptized. But this release is not
allowed except for the gravest causes. The pope can dissolve,
for sufficient cause, a matrimonium ratum sed non consummatum,
though this power is seldom exercised. In the case of marriage
ratum et consummation there is no power on earth, civil or ec-
clesiastical, which can grant a divorce a vinculo for any cause.

1884.] THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. 153

Separation can be permitted for grave causes, and may be ad-
visable or even necessary. But, hard as the case may sometimes
be for certain individuals, the law of the indissoluble bond which
makes another marriage impossible for either party, while both
survive, must be observed.

It is, moreover, the divine prerogative of the church to de-
termine what degrees of kinship or other impediments shall
make a contract of marriage null and void, or render it unlawful
for certain persons in certain cases to contract a marriage which
will nevertheless be valid. So, also, the church judges of matri-
monial causes and determines cases of conscience, both within
the secret tribunal of penance and outside of the same.

There is no legislation, however, no matter how perfect it
may be, which can, of itself, secure the moral well-being of a so-
ciety, shut out evils and disasters from families and communities,
or compel individuals to be good and happy. Laws must be
voluntarily observed, reason and conscience must govern the in-
terior domain, the divine law must be written on the heart, the
free-will of man must concur with the divine operation in the
order of nature and with the grace of God, in order that the
true ideal of the person, the family, the state, and the church
may become real and concrete. There must be a thousand
moral, persuasive, and attractive influences at work, around the
mere letter of the law and the organ of authorit} 7 , exercising a
far greater power than that of commandment and compulsion.
Catholic religion, with its holy examples, its vital forces, its in-
structions, sacred allurements, high hopes and motives, its super-
natural excitement and vigor emanating from the Holy Spirit,
surrounding with a sphere of universal extent and activity the
material centre of its positive institutions, produces in a living
reality that actual well-being and happiness whose ideal is. set
before the mind in an abstract form by the doctrine and law of
the church.

Christian civilization is a product of the Christian religion.
It is the improved and elevated condition of the earthly and tem-
poral life of humanity regenerated by Christ in its individual
members,. its social order, and its civil and political principles
which are the spirit of the organic constitution of the state.
Christendom was a commonwealth of Christian nations, with a
common faith and a common law, united in the communion of
one Catholic Church under one spiritual head. The autonomy of
nations, the distinct, independent authority of legislative, judi-
cial, and executive authorities in the state, parental dominion in

154 THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. [May,

the family, personal right and liberty in the individual, were not
impaired by the unity and authority of religion and moral law,
or merged in the universal and spiritual supremacy of the Catho-
lic Church. Christian society was constituted in a unity not
simple but composite, with distinction but not separation of the
constituent parts of the whole. The unit of the society was the
Christian family, under the dual head made one by the sacra-
ment of marriage, which was thus a sacred bond of the whole
social and political order, and the pure well-spring of life and
perpetual increase in each portion and in the whole of the Chris-
tian commonwealth. It is only in the perfect Christian society,
where ecclesiastical and civil law, parental authority, the social
code with its traditions and customs, and the general conscience
and moral sentiment are in agreement and combination, that the
Catholic Church can apply and bring to bear completely in its
utmost efficacy the benign power of her laws and counsels and
sanctifying influences upon marriage and the family. Where
they have full scope and are obeyed they suffice to produce all
the good that is possible, and to avert or remedy all incident
evils except those which are unavoidable. Young people are
educated and guarded in innocence and are trained to subject
their passions to reason, conscience, and the law of God. They
are taught due obedience and respect to their parents, and their
parents are instructed to respect their rights and liberty and to
pay due regard to their feelings and wishes. They are restrained
from marriages which are unsuitable or premature, dangerous
or imprudent. The contract is made public, with due formali-
ties, decorous observances, religious rites, proper official sanction
and attestation, and sacramental blessings. Every safeguard that
can be given to the marriage once concluded is afforded. No
external force or influence can compel persons endowed with
free-will and subject to temptation to abstain from sin and folly.
Therefore the innocent are exposed to suffer from the evils
which sinners bring upon those whom they injure as well as up-
on themselves. It is vain to expect any ideal state in this world
in which there will be no sin or misery, since the liability to sin
and the propensity to sin are irremediable defects in the present
condition of human nature. Nevertheless the Catholic Church,
in so far as human frailty and malice have permitted, has
wrought her divine work of the regeneration of individuals and
society in the direction of an actual attainment of her ideal scope
and end. The greatest obstacle to the progress and consumma-
tion of this work which she has ever met has been the pretended

1884.] THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. 155

Reformation. This disastrous movement, so far from being a
healthful outcome of the sound religious and moral force in
Christendom struggling for renovation and for victory over evils
and disorders, was just the reverse. It was an outbreak of the
very principles and elements of corruption by which all these
evils and disasters were caused, into revolt against the church
herself and the genuine Christian religion. And it was not only
an ecclesiastical schism, but a moral, social, and civil schism as
well. It has given a wound, which of itself tends to be deadly, to
the organic structure of society in Christendom. The parts most
immediately and dangerously affected by it are those nations
which have been severed from the external communion of the
Catholic Church. But those which have remained in this com-
munion have also suffered severely. Among the chief of the
evils from which all have suffered and are suffering is an en-
croachment of the civil power on the liberties and rights of the
church and of the conscience of individuals. This interference
and tyranny began with the origin of civil Christendom, but it
obtained its utmost sway only when the schisms of the East and
the West opened a free course to its encroachments. Its rude
hand has been laid with special ruthlessness upon the sacrament
of matrimony. Civil legislation, first divorcing itself from reli-
gion, next tries to divorce the civil contract of marriage from the
natural and the sacramental sacredness of its divine institution.
The results are before our eyes in ,our own country, and, more
than in other parts, in New England. Marriage, as an institu-
tion and state of life based on a law of monogamy and perpe-
tuity, is seriously impaired and more seriously threatened. Le-
gislatures and courts have made bad work, and are puzzled how
to repair it. This is not entirely their fault. The evil is due in
great measure to the moral degeneracy of a large portion of our
people, and to their misfortune in lacking an authoritative reli-
gious teaching. A misuse of power by the state in this and other
times and countries, by encroachment or bad legislation or bad
administration, should not, however, be considered as a reason
for denying its possession of any legitimate power.

St. Thomas lays it down that " matrimony, inasmuch as it-
is for the benefit of the community, is regulated by the civil law''
Upon which Perrone, who is a great authority on this subject,
remarks : " The theory of St. Thomas is general, wherefore the
marriages of Christians as well as all others ought to be subject
to the political power, and to be directed by civil laws. No
Catholic calls this in question, provided it be understood in a

156 THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. [May,

right sense." * The nature, essential properties, and the bond
of Christian marriage, as well as the validity of the sacramental
contract as between particular persons, fall under the determina-
tion of the church, to which Christ has committed the custody
of the sacraments. But there are many things of an extrin-
sic sort, such as causes of dowry, inheritance, succession, civil
rights and penalties, which pertain to the civil tribunal even in
strictly Catholic nations. Much more necessity exists for legis-
lative and judicial control in a community which has not a
public conscience directed by the Catholic moral law. Such a
state of things is abnormal and unfortunate in a society deriving
its origin, life, and civilization from Christendom. Yet it is
necessary to do the best which can be done, under the circum-
stances, -for the preservation of what Christian morality still re-
mains, and the prevention of further inroads of heathen immo-
rality.

All who make any profession whatever of religion, whether
Christian or Jewish, and many who make no such profession, are
agreed in sustaining monogamy. It is within the province of
the civil law to enforce it as necessary to the welfare of the com-
munity, even upon those who have no conscience on the matter,
and are devoid of all religious and moral principles, and upon
Mormons who openly uphold polygamy. In order to really and
efficaciously sustain monogamy and to suppress and punish
polygamy, the law must respect and protect the obligation and
perpetuity of the marriage contract. The only power which can
enable and compel those who are entrusted by the people with
authority to administer law to take this course is the common
sentiment and will of the community. This depends on the
moral sense or conscience, which depends on religious belief,
which has no basis of credibility except in Christianity, which
has no logical, metaphysical, or physical completeness and con-
sistency except in the Catholic Church.

There is a great deal of Christian belief and Christian morality
in that great multitude of persons, calling themselves in a stricter
or looser sense Christians, who are out of the visible communion
of the Catholic Church. Not only have they received all this
from the Catholic Church, but it is in great part owing to the
continued existence and influence of the church that they retain
what is still left to them of the inheritance of their forefathers.
If the Catholic Church did not exist, or they were totally sepa-
rated from its moral influence, they would be very different from

*De Matrim. Christ. , lib. ii. sec. ii. cap. i. art. i.

1884.] THE CATHOLIC LAW OF MARRIAGE. 157

what they are, and the logical consequences of their principles
would work themselves out much more rapidly and extensively
than they have done or are doing. In the one instance under
particular consideration the presence of the Catholic Church
with her teaching and example, and the large number of Catho-
lics living in one community with their fellow-citizens, in our
republic, make a great impediment to the spread of the epidemic
of divorce. It is the same in respect to the fundamental disease
of infidelity and atheism, with its dire attendants of immorality,
nihilism, dynamite, maniacal and despairing madness, idiocy,
tending toward the death of civilization and the destruction of
humanity. The great impediment to its spread and universal
prevalence is the Catholic Church. It is our firm conviction
that the Christianity remaining in connection with Protes-
tantism is waning away so fast that within one more century
it will wholly disappear. The sign of failure is marked on the
discontented brow of Protestantism. Its pretence of purifying
Christian doctrine is resulting in a decomposition of all re-
vealed and natural religion. Its pretence of reforming morals
is taking effect, as we might suppose any undertaking begun
by such men as its fathers were must do, in the undermining
of marriage, the very basis of all social and political well-being.

Intelligent and eminent men, not Catholics, but who have
adopted semi-Catholic principles and doctrines, not in England
only, but in Europe likewise, have clearly apprehended and dis-
tinctly affirmed the fact that the so-called Reformation was at
least a blunder and has proved a failure. Stahl, Leo, Guizot,
not to speak of those who have written in English, read us this
lesson in the main, though with variations in respect to their
own particular theories. It would be easy to set forth from the
works of writers of this class, in forcible arguments and strong
language, the two main positions we have proposed as the scope
of our remarks : First, that there is no renovation or even
preservation of civilized society possible except by its Christian
regeneration. Second, that this regeneration can be effected
only by the Catholic Church.

They fail and come short of the truth by their imperfect un-
derstanding of the real essence and properties of the Catholic
Church. Their church is an ideal institution, a reconstruction,
a work of human ingenuity, compromise, and voluntary confed-
eration, and therefore a merely imaginary structure, an ens ra-
tionis, a castle in the air. Nevertheless, in this yearning after a
complete and satisfying Christianity, at once a doctrine and a

158 HONG-KONG. [May,

law, proceeding from the mouth of Jesus Christ ; a rule for the
individual mind and will, and for all social and political order as
well as for the universal spiritual society ; there is a manifest
drawing towards the genuine authentic church really estab-
lished by the apostles, unchanged by the lapse of centuries and
immutable. Those who have a sincerely Christian mind and
will must in time all find their way back to the church which
their ancestors deserted. The rest must eventually be swept
entirely off the Christian ground. Which of these opposite di-
rections the nations of nominal Christendom will take, in their
collective capacity, we will not venture to predict ; but the
choice will determine their whole future destiny.

HONG-KONG.

THE passengers on either of those fine steamers, the Coptic and
the Arabic, or on one of the boats of the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company, after rolling about for nearly three weeks in a tempes-
tuous ocean for the mild Pacific frequently belies its name
experience a delightful change when their vessel has ploughed
her way through the smooth, muddy waters of the Yellow Sea;
" Golden Sea " the Chinese call it, but that's a little euphemism
they have to beguile you into believing that these unsightly
waters, discolored with the mud that the great Yang-Tsze River
empties into them, are beautiful. They enter the placid Formosa
Channel, and, steaming close into the mainland, see, perhaps, on
the one hand the lofty peaks of Formosa jutting above the banks
of white clouds, outlined in a deeper blue against the blue sky ;
on the other the hills rising cold and red abruptly from the water
and cut by deep gorges made by torrents that in time of rain
rush down their sides ; see, partly hidden within the indentations
of the coast, the fishermen's villages, whose thousands of boats
ride the calm waters of the bays and dot the expanse of the ocean
for miles around ; now and again see rambling walled towns,
white with whitewash, climbing the bleak hillsides, the peculiar
omega-shaped sepulchres of the Chinese scattered over the
slopes outside the walls, and through the gaps in the mountains
may possibly catch a glimpse of the propitiatory pagoda sharply
rising from a deserted plain, and fancy they hear the endless
tintinnabulation of its swaying bells. And now steaming across

1 884.] HONG-KONG. 1 59

the innocent-looking China Sea, passing between bold islands
that seem to be covered merely with moss, sharply rounding
others, the vessel leaving a tortuous wake whose comparatively
turbulent waters set a little junk a junk probably not more
than a foot and a half long, made of straw and decorated with
red and golden papers, that some Chinaman has set adrift
to propitiate a god violently bobbing in what to it is an awful
sea, they enter the magnificent harbor of Hong-Kong and won-
der why it is that these seas, now so peaceful and having such
varied scenery, have such a bad reputation. In disposition they
are womanish seas now all sunshine and smiles, soon to be all
clouds and tears ; and, as with women, one wants never to see
them in clouds and tears.

This is the approach to the Isle of Sweet Waters, and, barely
before the steamer has had time to drop anchor, she is sur-
rounded with hundreds of sampans, her decks filled with China-
men eager to do a stroke of business, thrusting their cards into
one's hand whether he wants them or not. If the passenger looks
these bits of pasteboard over he will find they tell him a little
story. He has shoemakers' cards, stating where he can get the
best calf-skin and the best patent-leather boots of the latest Euro-
pean styles ; he has hatters' cards, and cards of tailors who will
make him a whole suit navy blue, fast color for five dollars ;
and of painters who will paint his portrait for two dollars or sup-
ply him with a painting of the good ship he has just sailed in for
a dollar and a half; he has wine-merchants' cards, and the paste-
boards of general ship-chandlers and sail-makers who are ready
to fit him out with a yacht. He knows where to hire the best
steam-launch ; he knows where to buy a good umbrella, and
he knows who has the cheapest and best cigars. He realizes
at once that the Chinaman can adapt himself to circumstances,
and that, in the few years he has been brought in contact with
the European, he has learned how to supply him with all the
necessaries and with some of the luxuries of his life ; and, if the
admiring passenger's stateroom port be not closed, he may pos-
sibly further realize that some of his wardrobe is missing, having
been dexterously lifted through the port whilst he was acquiring
his diverse information, the thief failing to leave his card. .

Round about the ship is the land-locked harbor. On all
sides rise the bare mountains. Hong-Kong itself rises with
sides so steep as to appear almost vertical. One would suppose
that a harbor thus shut in with high mountains would show
very deep soundings. But the fact is otherwise : in all parts of

160 HONG-KONG. [May,

it there is good anchorage in eight fathoms of water. Ships of
all maritime countries ride safely upon its bosom, and men-of-war
of all nations lie side by side in the utmost good-will and
friendship. Many noisy little steam-launches cut its blue water.
No large junks nor lorchas are to be seen, but hakka-boats with
two or with three masts, carrying yellow bamboo sails, move
lazily along ; huge iron lighters, heavily laden, are laboriously
rowed to the docks ; hundreds of sampans continually pass to
and fro, and at intervals, falling softly on the ear, is the mea-
sured stroke of the man-of-war's men as they lustily pull off to
their ship. Beyond this scene, beginning towards the west in
godowns, mills, and foundries, from whose tall chimneys the
black smoke curls and rolls up the mountain, the town skirts
along the water's edge, a solid mass of buildings, growing more
scattered and half hidden by trees the higher they creep up the
hills, and rounding the eastern point of the island in a few strag-
gling buildings close down by the water. Above the town the
mountain shoots up to a height of eighteen hundred and twenty-
five feet, ending in Victoria Peak, the highest of many such
peaks, which is supplied with a pole having cross-trees and
ropes, whereon are displayed the signal-flags of vessels entering
the harbor to the town spread out below. In front of the town
a smooth granite wall rises vertically from the water to the level
of the roadway, which, as there are no docks but such as are of
a temporary character, is unbroken throughout the three or four
miles of its length. The road above is the great business street
of the city, the Praya taking its name, most likely, from that of
the quaint old Portuguese town of Macao. In it are all the great
hongs, steamship-offices, ship-chandlers' shops, sail-makers' lofts
in short, all places whose business has to do with foreign traffic.
All day long there is a handling of bales and boxes as the lading
and unlading of ships go on ; coolies are groaning under the
weight of great chests of opium, marking time as they step with
a curious low, guttural click in the throat ; jinrikshas are drawn
rapidly thitherward and hitherward ; above the heads of the
busy throng of humanity sedan-chairs are seen worming their
solemn course along, and here and there in the moving mass
gleam the crimson turbans of the Sikh policemen ; swinging from
davits that spring from the coping of the granite wall, a line of
row-boats adds further strangeness to the strange scene.

We observe all this from a small wooden pier known as Ped-
dar's Wharf, the only landing-place for all comers into the city,
save those arriving by the P. and O. boats, these steamers having

1884.] HONG-KONG. l6l

a dock some distance down the Praya. Directly in front is the
main cross-street of the city, Wyndham Street, which from its
very commencement begins to rise as it runs its zigzag- course to
the " peak." At its foot a number of Chinamen are playing bat-
tledore and shuttlecock with their feet. Every day this game is
so played, and, as far as my knowledge extends, at this place only,
to the exclusion of all other places in Hong-Kong.

A block beyond the Praya, running parallel with it, is the
Queen's Road, the great thoroughfare of the city. At its intersec-
tion with Wyndham Street stands a tall clock-tower of granite and
wood. It is the central and most prominent figure of the town.
For the new-arrival, and for many of the residents, it is the start-
ing-point for all expeditions either over the island itself or on
the bosom of its beautiful harbor. The corners of the streets are
occupied by the club-house, lawyers' offices, the Hong-Kong
Hotel, and the post-office. Graven deep into the stone over an
archway of the latter is this sentence : " As cold water is to a
thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country " the infallible
truth of which statement is proved by a few months' residence
within the community. The Government-House, the different
consulates (save the American and the Italian, which are in the
Praya), the barracks, the City-Hall with its Theatre Royal, the
hotels, banks, brokers' offices, telegraph-office, and the stores for
general supplies are in the Queen's Road, which runs the- entire
length of the town. Its eastern portion is almost exclusively
occupied by Chinese, who have been gradually obtaining posses-
sion of the properties and crowding out the foreigners, until now
they have, in almost an unbroken line, stores extending on either
side of the street to within a couple of blocks of the club-house.
The club-house itself was bought in 1881 by a Chinaman, a Mr.
Hing Kee, for one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars
quite a little sum to pay for such an unpretentious building ; but
as the mountain has to be cut away, the rock blasted, and the
foundations levelled for almost every house that is built, the cost
of buildings becomes enormous.

To write of Hong-Kong and not speak of Hing Kee were to
neglect a prominent figure of the community. Associated with
a Pars,ee, he is proprietor of the Hong-Kong Hotel, the princi-
pal and best hotel in t the city though " best " is but a relative
term, the hotel not having reached the acme of excellence. He
is commissariat for the government barracks, owner of nearly
every steam-launch in the harbor, and excels " Mr. Isaacs " in
that he has six wives and doesn't want the seventh. Has six

VOL. XXXIX. II

1 62 HONG-KONG. [May,

wives by report, for few foreigners know any thing for a certainty
regarding his domestic affairs. Among his own people he is
known as the Compradore, and he is the compradore of Hong-
Kong. In disposition he is genial and free, always ready for
business, and always greeting those of his acquaintance with a
smile and a hearty shake of the hand ; but there is no such thing
as social intercourse between him and the foreigners. There is
no such thing as social intercourse between the foreigners and
any Chinaman. Perhaps each race looks more or less disdainfully
upon the other ; in the eyes of either the other is a barbarian
worthy of little consideration ; but such intercourse as there has
been, and still is, has tended to soften these prejudices, so that
now the Chinaman that one meets at the treaty -ports of his coun-
try is probably not the typical Chinaman, or the Chinaman that
walked those streets, say, thirty years ago. He is less supersti-
tious, more liberal in his ideas, less actuated by hate for the
usurping foreigner than he was in days gone by, or than those in
the interior of the country are at this day ; and, meeting him day
after day, conversing with him for many speak English fluently
and write it in such hand as to strike the foreigner with admira-
tion doing business with him, one grows to like him and comes
soon to recognize that the facetious descriptions of him with
which current literature is familiar are for the most part libels.
Some faces there are among the Chinese that glow with the light
of intelligence. Some faces? There are many such. Let once
the type become familiar and the power of the intellect is fully
recognized. For the most part it is among the coolie class only
that faces appear dull and wooden. In many respects -they are a
highly-educated people, having out of their hundreds of millions
of population few, if any, above a certain age unable to read and
to write their language. It is a fact worth noting that, although
the art of printing was discovered in China, it is the only country
of its dignity without a daily newspaper. This notwithstanding,
one is constrained to admit that they are decidedly a reading peo-
ple. It is by no means an uncommon sight to see a coolie loung-
ing in his chair reading with a monotonous sing-song the pro-
found pages of Confucius, or starting into a romance from what
should be the end, and, reading in lines running lengthwise of the
page, ending at what should be the beginning. Many "of the
Chinamen in Hong-Kong have been abroad, either in England or
America* Some have been educated at foreign schools and col-
leges, and so have come to learn foreign ways and to use foreign
slang with an astonishing readiness and vigor. A friend one

1884-] HONG-KONG. 163

day, passing into the Canton club-house, which at the time was
deserted of foreigners, was somewhat amazed to hear the words,
" How is that for high ? " Stopping in doubt whether such an
expression could come from a Chinaman in the sacred city of
Canton, he was soon convinced that such was the case, for di-
rectly came the voice again, saying : "Way up, an't it?" Ap-
proaching the speaker, he said: "You must have been in Ame-
rica lately ? " " You bet ! " was -the response ; " I'm a Yale boy,
I am."

One does not long dwell in Hong-Kong without conceiving
a great admiration for this people. He finds them a singularly
sober and industrious race. They have a reputation for smok-
ing opium, but the idea that men outside the country have of
this vice is much exaggerated. Among the coolie class and the
sampan people one will smell the fumes of opium, but the habit
of smoking it is by no means general. Drunkenness, too, is so
rare among them that one is safe in saying a Chinaman does not
drink. He has samshoo, but one may dwell for years among them
and in the time not see one man intoxicated by its use. , He is a
miracle of thrift. He has no Sunday, no holiday ; there is no day
of rest for him ; but throughout all the year, day after day, from
sunrise till dark, he is at work till a certain period in February
brings him his new year. This he makes a festive time of three
days' duration ; celebrates it with explosive crackers and noise,
attractively displays his wares in his shop, but neither for love
nor money will he sell anything until his holiday is over. He
pays all his debts at this time and starts the new year afresh.
Herein is where the European, it is said, could copy to his ad-
vantage. But only too often is the .Chinese new year an awk-
ward period to the foreigner, for if he owes a Chinaman money
that Chinaman will haunt his doors twenty times a day until he
is paid. He is not to be put off by saying " No got," for the
Chinaman is a " fellow of no delicacy," and will spread out his
hands in the true Oriental fashion and say : " Must catchee ; you
no sabe China New Year."

There is a class of women about the streets of Hong-Kong
and presumably about the streets of all Chinese towns that, if I
understand the case rightly, have had some misfortune happen
to their feet, which are neither large nor small. Something has
gone wrong in the attempt to make them small-footed. This
failure for which they were in no way responsible, of course,,
and which still leaves them with feet about six inches long (smalt
enough in all conscience) places them almost, if not wholly,

164 HONG-KONG. [May,

without the pale of society. They cannot be married ; inheriting
nothing, they have no money, so they wander about the streets
carrying a small stool on which to sit whilst they sew for the
coolies. This is one of the hideousnesses of the Chinese civiliza-
tion.

From the Queen's Road the streets, with the exception of
Wyndham Street, lead up the hill by long flights of granite
steps extending for several blocks, after which they become fine
roads, lined with trees, ferns, and flowers, back from which are
the residences, built far apart and facing the harbor, with finely-
cultivated lawns and gardens. From these streets with steps
others spring at almost any angle, and, having a general direction
eastward, ramify through a large Chinese town called Tai-ping-
shan, which, like all Chinese towns, is hung with red and with
gilt signs, hundreds of paper lanterns, and has the proverbial
filthiness and the aromatic smell of the burning joss-sticks for
ever present to the nostrils.

Above this Chinese town, running parallel with the Queen's
Road, though taking a long curve as it winds about the moun-
tain, is one of the most beautiful roads in Hong-Kong. On it
are situated an Italian and a French convent, many fine and
costly residences, together with the estates of some few land-
scape-gardeners, whose well-kept, sloping lawns with their pro-
fusion of rare tropical flowers, and the fine views that in places can
be had of the harbor with its ships and junks, give great beauty
to this level road, one of the few level roads in Hong-Kong.

Behind this road, on the outskirts of Tai-ping-shan, is an open
lot that the authorities have set apart as a recreation-ground
for the Chinese. Here on any day of the week are to be found
disreputable-looking story-tellers haranguing a crowd ; here are
itinerant doctors with their prescriptions and charms ; here are
jugglers in short, here are anybody and everybody having a
trick to show or a sword to swallow, a story to tell or a pro-
pensity to pick pockets. Here occasionally scenes take place
that could happen in no other country but China. Once while
listening to a story-teller spin a yarn of which I understood
nothing, but drew my enjoyment of the tale from the grave or
merry faces of those around me, I observed a fellow tying to-
gether the queues of a couple of Chinamen whose backs were
towards him. Having tied them to his satisfaction, he quickly
snatched the hat from off the head of one of them and made
away with it. Then there arose a yell, and the man that was
robbed flew in pursuit of the thief, but was suddenly brought

1 884.] HONG-KONG. 1 65

back when he had reached the length of the pigtails. Then
there was another yell from the other poor fellow who was al-
most scalped by the violence of the pull on his pigtail, and they
both fell to the ground " two souls with but a single thought,"
etc. The hat was never recovered by its owner. It was a good
hat, too one of those big bamboo things that serve at once as a
hat, an umbrella, and a market-basket.

The various captains of the merchant fleet in port congregate
in Hing Kee's hotel, at the corner of the Queen's Road and
Wyndham Street. Here the Englishman's idea of the manner
in which Americans speak is realized to the full. It is not
exactly the so-called American language, that is heard, but the
conventional Yankee's nasal drawl, and "tan't" and " an't," in
linked sweetness long drawn out, creep constantly into the con-
versations. The dining-room of the hotel is for the foreigners'
use only. Pendent from its ceiling, running lengthwise of the
room, are four or five large punkahs that are kept moving to and
fro during meals by coolies on the balconies. Cards placed
about the walls state that no guest will be allowed to entertain
his Chinese friends at the tables in this room, the hotel having
other rooms for that purpose. Mr. Hing Kee himself entertains
his friends at the tables in the other rooms.

Westward on the Queen's Road, passing foreign and some
native shops in this instance I mean by " foreign " Indian and
Japanese as well as European we come to the City-Hall with
its museum of curios and its Theatre Royal. The area in
front of the building is embellished with a fine large fountain
with couchant lions at its four corners. Immediately in front of
the stage in the theatre the balcony swells into a small semi-
circle forming the governor's box. The lower floor is the pit
and is not a fashionable part of the house. In this theatre are
witnessed the amateur performances of certain members of the
regiment and the performances of itinerant opera-troupes, that
are generally so short-handed that one man is obliged to sing the
parts of three or four characters ; a piano is the sole instrument
in the orchestra, and the chorus is made up of any outside people
that can and are willing to sing. Eight o'clock being the din-
ner-hour of the community, the performances always begin at
nine. Carriages are never ordered, but as the audience emerge
from the building they find about its doors numerous chairs
(each with a lantern), into which they step and are lifted up and
borne homeward on the shoulders of the coolies like so many
conquering heroes.

166 HONG-KONG. [May,

Hard by the City-Hall, on the opposite side of the way, is the
Government-House. The governor annually gives a ball, to
which are invited all those residents that have called at the
house during the year. As the time for the ball approaches
there is quite a little shower of cards about the house. The
regiment also annually gives a ball. These balls, with the an-
nual races, in which everybody takes an interest, and the fitful
performances at the theatre, constitute about all the amusements
of the people.

It is a strange community, this of Hong-Kong, by no means
stable even as to its residents. No white man calls it "home."
One is here through the force of circumstances, accepting the
decree of Fate merely that he may make money, return to his
native land, and enjoy the pleasure of spending it. But to many
the opportunity to return has not yet come ; they have been
here now many years. The wife has come out from home and
joined the husband in his exile. Children have been born to
them, and have grown to manhood and to womanhood seeing no
place in the outside world save the strange country of China
round about them. And to the children this city is not home ;
they never speak of it as such. London is their home, or New
York City, and shortly they mean to cross the wide stretch of
their country on a train drawn by that stupendous engine, the
locomotive, an idea of which they have gathered from illustra-
tions in books and their parents' talk. It is a community of
friends and acquaintances, each bent on one object, and the object
not pleasure. When a new face is seen on the streets the ques-
tion goes around : " Who's he ? " with perhaps its answer : " Oh !
he's So-and-So's new manager, just out from home." Again, an old
and familiar face is suddenly missed from its accustomed haunts,
and one will ask : " Why, what has become of Brown ? I haven't
seen him for a month." " Oh ! he's gone home." " Gone home !
Happy man, Brown." Everybody here lives to go home.
Whether he be the child that is born here, the comer of yes-
terday, or the resident whose years of stay upon the island have
begun to whiten his hair and to set deep wrinkles in his face,
it is the one object of his life. And here in this valley, be-
neath the cedars and the willows, many little mounds with
granite stones and marble shafts mark the final resting-place
of those poor, hopeful souls who, after years of exile, have, in
one sense anyway, at last "gone home." It is a sorrowful place
to visit, and the writings upon the stones tell pathetic stories.
Many of those that here find graves have lost their lives by

1 884.] HONG-KONG. 1 67

wreck on the coast or have been killed in engagements with
the Chinese, and the monuments have been raised to their
memories by brother officers and shipmates. But the most pa-
thetic of all these monuments are the wooden crosses and
ships' wheels that the skilful ship's carpenter has deftly and lov-
ingly carved, the crew being too poor to provide other memen-
toes.

Though many nationalities are represented in the city, its
society is eminently English. There are few American residents,
probably not more than twenty-five or thirty, and but one Ame-
rican house this a large one, however. There are possibly a
thousand Englishmen, many Germans, Portuguese, Spaniards,
some few Japanese and Armenians, many Parsees and Indians, in
addition to a great Chinese community.

If one is not sufficiently familiar with ethnological science to
enable him to distinguish the members of one Indian race from
those of another, he can always pick out a Parsee by the style of
hat he wears. It starts vertically from the head for an inch
or so, then turns abruptly back at an angle of sixty degrees,
and so runs on the anterior portion for seven or eight inches,
when it is suddenly cut off at right angles, which makes the pos-
terior portion, which is parallel with the face, only about three
or four inches long. The top is left open, save that inside and
directly upon the head rest several folds of silk. Were not the
hat itself made of purple silk it would look for all the world like
an old-time coal-scuttle.

A Parsee never smokesthis is a matter of religion with hint
but he enjoys a long glass of brandy-and-soda. As the Jews
have come to be regarded, so the Parsees, one and all, are re-
puted rich. Let one dress as meanly as he may, still he is re-
puted to have money. They are the Jews of the East. Their
native home is Persia, though, for a thousand years but few have
lived there. They have made a home for themselves in and
about Bombay, but many are scattered in towns throughout the
whole coast from Corea to Arabia. Their religion is not the re-
ligion of India neither Brahmanism nor Buddhism but the an-
cient religion of Persia as given to the Persians by that highly
mythical personage, Zoroaster, and set forth in the Zend-Avesta.

Men of three distinct nationalities perform the police duty.
Some few are Englishmen, many are Chinese, but by far the
greater number are Sikhs. These latter make the best policemen
in the world. Tall, agile, graceful, athletic, the Sikh is not
afraid of a fight, but on occasion will arrest any man, be he the-

1 68 HONG-KONG. [May,

biggest, burliest, roughest kind of a sailor. The general calm
repose of his face, his noble carriage, the military air with which
he paces his beat with shouldered musket, seem to show that he
has a soul worthy of more exalted duty ; yet there are none in
Hong-Kong that are not policemen. It is with stoical indiffer-
ence the Sikh leads a Chinaman to the place where the crime was
committed some petty larceny sets him in the stocks, hangs a
board about his neck whereon the story of his crime is set forth
in the Chinese character, and, never exchanging a word with his
prisoner, paces before him from six o'clock to six o'clock. It is
a severe punishment to the Chinaman to be thus held up and the
tale of his offence told to a gaping, curious crowd, many of whom
he knows to be no better, and some few he recognizes far worse
than himself.

As the roads, with two or three exceptions, run either up or
down hill, there are few horses and carnages, probably not a
dozen in the whole place. The ordinary means of conveyance
are jinrikshas and sedan-chairs. The jinriksha looks very much
like an overgrown baby-coach, or an undergrown two-wheeled
doctor's carriage with a man instead of a horse in the shafts. In
many Chinese towns, and in Shanghai also, a curious sort of
wheelbarrow having a squealing, whistling wheel for it is rarely
lubricated is in ordinary use as a conveyance ; and it is a re-
markable fact that the barrow-man prides himself on his social posi-
tion, holding the jinriksha coolie in contempt, because in his
eyes the latter placed himself on the level of the brute in that he
pulls a carriage like a horse. There are not many of these jin-
rikshas in the island, the hilly roads making them a dangerous
sort of vehicle, and the few there are, barring private ones, are
quite mean-looking. The coolies that draw them, and the chair-
coolies also, finding an intoxicated sailor wandering about, will
follow him for hours through the streets, and in the end have
him arrested, laying a claim to so many hours' fare.

The sedan-chairs, at least those in use by the Chinese the
foreigners having made several alterations for the better in
those they use are much like the ancient sedans of Europe, save
that they are carried directly upon the shoulders, thus giving the
occupants rather an exalted position and a broad view of the
surrounding country. If the poles are long and springy, and the
coolies know how to walk in unison, as they generally do, the
motion is pleasant ; but if the coolies fail to keep step the motion
becomes jerky and not agreeable. The chair in use by the for-
eigner the private chair is supplied with a movable top having

1884.] HONG-KONG. 169

both bamboo shades and oil-cloth curtains to shield the occupant
from the rays of the sun and to ward off the rain. The seat and
the foot-rest swing- upon straps from the poles ; the back is also
movable, so that when the occupant stretches out the chair fits
him in every part. The coolies are provided with uniforms,
generally white trimmed with rows of colored braids, the style
of decoration showing by whom the coolies are employed.
Often the wide, flowing sleeves are embellished with the name of
the master, or as near as his name can be got in the Chinese
character.

Perhaps the most grotesque, and, were it not for its solemnity,
I might say the most amusing sight also, is a foreign funeral. A
hearse leads the van ; then, if the route be a level way, a carriage
or so, followed by a line of jinrikshas and chairs all sorts of
jinrikshas, all sorts of chairs : private jinrikshas, private chairs ;
outside jinrikshas, painted in green, having large numbers on the
sides ; outside chairs with green oil-cloth tops, having large
numbers on their sides; high chairs, low chairs; chairs with
tops, chairs without tops ; bamboo chairs ; chairs with swinging
seats followed by a few walking friends of the deceased, make
up this procession on its way to Happy Valley.

A Chinese funeral is altogether a different affair. If the
Chinaman was poor, four coolies carry upon their shoulders the
cumbrous coffin, made of four heavy slabs of wood five or six
inches thick each slab having a half-round side, thus a cross
section of the coffin would show a quarter-foil. Preceding this
a band of barefoot coolies with screeching fifes, tom-toms, and
crashing cymbals ; following it the chair (empty) he is sup-
posed to have used when he travelled in the Middle Flowery
Kingdom. I say " supposed," because the chair is generally a
hired one. On either side of the coffin and the chair the family
and the mourners the latter also hired dressed in sackcloth
(white muslin, which, to avoid expense, is often in a single piece
and by some mysterious process is wrapped about each and
every one of them) and with wildly dishevelled hair, giving vent
to the most lugubrious sobs and howls, each supported by two
coolies, who seem to be making strenuous efforts to keep them
from falling flat upon their faces and easing themselves of their
superabundant sorrow by kicking.

The club is almost exclusively composed of the English and
American part of the community. There is also a German club,
whose building of brown-stone and fancy brick is much hand-
somer than that of the English, and contains a fine little theatre

170 HONG-KONG. [May,

in which good music is often heard. But it is at the English
club-house most of the men of the community meet, pass the
news of the day, and occasionally do a big business transaction
outside of regular business hours. It has a large and good
library, and the tables of its reading-room are supplied with the
newspapers of the world, the pictorial weeklies, and the English
magazines none of the American.

Meeting here so frequently members of the community, one
comes to know many of them more or less intimately and learns
the little pursuits they take pleasure in following. Almost as a
matter of course a large number are eager hunters of Chinese
old china, much money being in this way given for old cracked
blue-and-white ware. Some are interested in bric-a-brac of all
kinds having the least Japanese or Chinese flavor " gods,"
bronzes, brasses, old armor, swords, bows and arrows, curious
silk robes, etc. The collecting of shells is prosecuted with in-
terest, and many new species are found in Hong-Kong and the
islands near by. Shells curiously carved with Chinese figures
of men and women are displayed for sale in the shops. Often
while the bivalve still occupies it the Chinese place little brass
"gods" of about an inch in length within the shell, which, act-
ing as an irritant, causes the occupant to pour out a liquid, which
in time, hardening, fastens the gods to the shell, showing them in
bas-relief in natural pearl. Nature also at times performs curi-
ous freaks with the shell. A fish is caught by the bivalve, the
nacre is poured about it, and, hardening, the fish shows in relief,
held to the shell by a mass of covering pearl. These latter shells
are rare and valuable. Those beautiful pieces of amber that we
sometimes see, in which a fly or other insect has unluckily and
suddenly been imprisoned and so has remained for years in per-
fect preservation, are made artificially by the artful Chinaman.
Not knowing this, one is readily deceived when he goes to buy,
and is more likely to get the artificially made specimens than the
natural, though the artificial is true amber and the insect a per-
feet fly or spider, or whatever it may be, placed within in such a
way as not to be told from nature's own handiwork.

The climate of Hong-Kong is tropical, but the thermometer
shows neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. In summer the
mercury rarely rises above 85 and in winter rarely falls below
45 ; but as the atmosphere is laden with moisture, it feels as
though the mercury ranged from 150 in mid-summer to o in
mid-winter at any rate, it is hot in August, and an overcoat or
a cheerful grate-fire of Nagasaki soft coal is a pleasant thing to

1884.] HONG-KONG. i;t

have in December. I am not sure this climate is as enervating
as that of some of own cities, yet one will have to live in it a
long time before he feels fully acclimatized. The people dress
for it, wearing white in the summer months, with a coat that
buttons to the throat, broad-brimmed sun-hats, and umbrellas.
The glare of the sunlight on the yellow roads has a deleterious
effect upon the eyes, and many people suffer from cataract. Al-
though affection of the eyes is common in Asia (principally
ophthalmia among the natives, caused by flies that fringe the
eyelids while the person is asleep), cataract may be no more
prevalent in Hong-Kong than in other cities of the world, but
in the limited community the attention is attracted to it, and
as a preventive almost all wear darkened glasses. Notwithstand-
ing the August heat, and although brandy-and-water is taken
almost continually and is considered a cooling drink, there
is no such thing as " sun-stroke." Hong-Kong is the Island of
Sweet Waters, and its water is of the best in the world, clear as
crystal and as cold and sparkling ; yet there is many a man in the
city that has never tasted the water without its being largely
diluted with Lafitte or good old Glenlivet. There is a supersti-
tion, held even by the intelligent classes, that death is somewhere
hidden away in it unless exorcised by the " spirits of Bordeaux."
But it is not the thermometer that interests the people : the
barometer is the instrument they keep their eye on. They
glance at the barometer as people elsewhere glance at the clock,
merely through force of habit. The island of Luzon is the hot-
bed of typhoons, and in the summer of 1881 probably no less
than ten telegrams came to Hong-Kong from Manila, each stat-
ing that a typhoon was raging about Luzon. Of these ten
typhoons Hong-Kong got the " tail end " of no less than three.
When these telegrams arrive the weather-wise keep a strict
watch upon the signs and portents ; and as the wind rises, the
sky changing to a leaden hue and taking on a greasy look, the
barometer rapidly falling, the typhoon-gun at the harbor-mas-
ter's office is discharged. Then the steamers in harbor get
under full steam, the sailing ships place out extra anchors fore
and aft, the small boats and sampans hurry away to safe bays
beyond the hills of the mainland. Ashore the flag-poles are
lowered, typhoon-bars are placed at the closed windows, and
everything got in readiness for a gale that frequently fails to
come with much force not with such force as "the stranger
within the gates " expects and wants to see, and, seeing once,
never wants to see again.

172 HONG-KONG. [May,

Wyndham Street is the only road leading to the " peak," all
other roads running up the hill either swerving after a short dis-
tance and winding about the mountain, or converging into this
one and so continuing on up. There is some talk of building a
tramway from the city to the mountain-top, but as yet it is only
a possibility of the future. There is some doubt whether such a
road would pay, since it is more novel to go up a mountain seated
in a sedan-chair borne on the shoulders of stalwart coolies than
to take a tramcar and be hauled up by a stationary engine. It
requires four coolies to carry one up, good walkers making the
highest point in thirty-five minutes ; but if the coolies are hired
and the occupant of the chair be a stranger there is much more
hard breathing on the part of the coolies than is necessary, which
is a strong hint to an impressionable heart to order to be set
down while they rest a little.

If one does not mind exertion it is well to walk, for then he
has a better opportunity to observe the varied scenery and can
loiter on the way as much as he pleases. And it is well worth
the loitering, for the whole mountain-side for a third of its height
is laid out into a beautiful garden where bloom all the rich and
rare flora of the tropics. The road for some distance is paved
with concrete and on either side lined with curious trees, pro-
minent among which are bastard banyans, a common tree in the
country. Between the trees, growing from the dank grass, and
hanging from the crevices in the gray rocks forming the sides
of the way, are ferns of a thousand kinds. Peeping out from
among these ferns, struggling for a share of the almost hidden
sunlight, are flowers innumerable. The pathway has many turns
and angles, every turn disclosing new and unexpected beauties.
Beyond the rocks and ferns on either side of the road low walls
topped with iron railings enclose the most beautiful botanical
garden in the East, containing many strange and rare trees and
a banyan so truly magnificent as to be at once the pride of Hong-
Kong and the envy of all the world beside. In more than one
respect is it a curious tree ; there never yet was a stranger pass-
ing under its shade that did not mentally ask why its boughs
were so propped with poles. Everybody knows what a banyan-
tree is, and expects to see many limbs hanging from its branches,
entering the ground ; yet, when people do see those of this tree,
for a moment or so they take them for props. The reason of this
is that when the root first reaches the ground it is encased in
bamboos, so that when it is strong and hardy and the casings re-
moved it is as straight as an arrow. Of a dozen or more roots

1884.] HONG-KONG. 173

that the tree has, but one is crooked and gnarled. These gar-
dens are delightful places for walks in the summer's twilight,
when the band of the Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers is playing soft
music. Beyond the gardens the road reaches a point from which
the harbor with its ships and the black-tiled houses of all Hong-
Kong lay spread out below one. From this point onward to the
peak this grand picture, either wholly or in part, is ever pre-
sent. Over towards the left a large part of the hillside is so
dotted with white that it looks like a great cemetery ; but the
white objects, that in the distance appear so like marble slabs and
tombstones, are but the linen garments of the people the wash-
men have spread out to whiten in the sunlight. It is not a tem-
porary feature of the landscape ; the linen is always there, giving
to the hillside the appearance of a graveyard, and far beyond
hangs suspended in the quiet air the black* smoke from the foun-
dries at Wanchai. A sinuous road winding in and about the
hills, and running on a level for some three or four miles, is the
justly-celebrated Kennedy Road, built a third of the way up the
mountain and named after a former governor at whose instance
it was built. It is the promenade of the community, and on Sun-
day afternoons it is filled with ladies and gentlemen, children
with their ahmas, and with a large sprinkling of gaudily-clothed
Chinese. Afar on the glistening water a great steamer may be
seen slowly moving into the harbor, and here, running close into
the shore, is a white bark with all sail set and bellying to the
breeze, forming a delightful picture in the deep blue of the water;
and as her helm is put hard down, her snow-white sails idly flap
and chafe against the masts as she comes round for the opposite
tack, and for an instant the rays of the powerful sun are re-
flected far up the mountain from her polished guns. As we
turn from this charming scene from around the hill come the
hurried tramp of many feet, and a line of chairs, each carried by
four coolies, suddenly swings by and vanishes down the hill. It
is then we realize that the way is steep and that it is a far easier
matter to get down from, than to get up to, the peak ; but when
at length the peak is reached it fully pays one for his unwonted
exertions.

It is a green island, this of Hong-Kong, filled with many rare
trees and shrubs. Yet when it was ceded to the English it was as
barren as the other islands about it ; but since then they have been
planting it with trees, till now it is a mass of gorgeous tropical
flora. There is no autumn on this island nor winter ; there is
not that exquisite variety of color in the foliage that autumn

HONG-KONG. [May,

gives, nor that bleakness that winter brings; but all the year
round there is a freshness and greenness truly enchanting. As
no rude sportsman is allowed to fire a gun upon the island, the
birds are at peace for all time. They seem to be conscious that
they are safe, and as you pass along their melodies are always
with you. Apparently there is no migration among them, for all
the year round the air is filled with their vigorous songs. It is
the isle of fragrant streams, and in June, when the atmosphere
is heavy with the scent of the flowers and foliage, many small
streams, gathering strength and volume from the rains, come
tumbling down the mountain, and the air is filled with the sound
of rushing waters. And in this month of June, too, the clouds
seem to approach nearer the earth, wrapping the "peak'* and
the peaks of the adjacent mountains in dense fogs till the morn-
ing sun mounting upward drives them away, when they collect
in the gaps of the mountains, like huge rolls of fleecy white cot-
ton, lifting and moving so gradually that they seem to repose
there for days together. Often these same clouds that thus en-
wrap the peak for a change of scene descend upon the harbor,
blotting from sight all vestige of the shipping, save that from the
hills the tops of the masts may be seen protruding from the up-
per strata of fog like so many stake-buoys from the surface of a
river. But for these there is nothing to show that ships are
within this slowly-moving vapor, save that as one looks there is
perhaps a soft, silvery sound borne by the gentle breeze far up
the mountain, and directly from all parts of the harbor, from the
hoarse bell of a steamer to the high jingling bell of a bark, " eight
bells " chimes from out the fog.

Yet with all its beauty one soon grows tired of Hong-Kong.
In a week or so one has seen all there is to see, the novelty has
worn off, and a sense of being in a manner imprisoned begins to
grow upon him. He feels that he is on an island from which
without much effort there is no getting away. He can make a
short run over to Macao or go off to Canton, but the beauty of
the one, the strangeness and novelty of the other, soon pall upon
him and fail to bring any sensation other than weariness. He
cannot travel into the interior of the country ; he miist stay by
that great highway of China, the water ; and at night, as he lies
thinking of this state of things, most likely, a whistle in the harbor
changes his whole current of thought. He know it is but a
steamer's whistle, yet its sound transports him to home ; he sees
the green ^fields, the waving corn, the luscious fruit in the gar-
dens, and near by the fleeing train rattling o'er the track and

1 884.] KA THARINE. 1 7 $

vanishing in the long perspective of the rails. In the morning
he is suffering from " homesickness," which in a few weeks passes
away, and he settles down for a secluded life in Hong-Kong, but
ever looking forward to the time when he shall go home.

KATHARINE.

A NEW ENGLAND STORY.

FORTY years ago there was still remaining in the heart of one
of our Eastern cities an old family graveyard, a relic of colonial
times. Originally it had been a long way out of town, but the
city, which in its infancy clustered all in a heap about what are
at present busy and bustling wharves lined with the steamboats
that have replaced the sloops and other primitive river craft, had
climbed up the hills, cut away the woods, and laid out streets
through what were once open meadows or the grounds sur-
rounding the country-seats of the old colonial aristocracy. The
general burying-grounds, belonging to the various religious de-
nominations, lay beside each other on one of the many hills on
which the town was built, and were still beyond the limits of the
city proper, yet so little beyond that already there was talk of
buying cemetery grounds some miles farther off and removing
them altogether. But this private burial-place, the property of
an old Dutch family now nearly extinct, still held its own, though
for many years no interment had taken place there. Its owners,
two maiden sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Overbeck Aunt
Katy and Aunt Leespat the generation next younger than them-
selves called them had turned deaf ears to all proposals to buy
and alter the disposition of the grounds. Reasoning with them
having proved useless, the affair was by general consent allowed
to wait the limit of their lives for its final settlement, when the
next heir promised himself to turn an honest penny and oblige
his neighbors.

Meanwhile the town had grown up all about it. Streets ran
past two sides of its time-stained wooden palings ; at one end was
a blacksmith's forge, with its resounding anvil and its heart of
glowing coals ; on a fourth side a long, rambling brick house,
two of whose lower windows gave directly on the untrimmed
grass and rank burdocks of the graveyard. Another small and

KATHARINE. [May,

high window looked into it from the kitchen, built on at the back
years after the erection of the main structure.

When she climbed up on the table which stood under this
window Kitty Danforth could just see the fence which enclosed,
in the upper end of the bury ing-ground, two graves, set apart
from the others for some reason which she could not divine.
The long, grassy space with its defaced and darkened grave-
stones, on many of which the names were half obliterated, the
weeds growing high and rank about them, the few trees near
the street, had a sort of fascination for her which was quite un-
mixed with fear or with any sentiment of respect for the dead.
More than once she had escaped out of the low windows of the
long dining and sitting room, when they stood open in the sum-
mer time, and enjoyed a good romp in and out among the tombs
before she was discovered and brought back. " You ought to
be ashamed to be racing like that over dead people," was said
to her at such times, to which Kitty answered : " Do you think
they care ? " And when, after her school-days began, her play-
mates, coming down the hill with her in the late afternoons,
would sometimes say, " I should not like to live so close beside
a graveyard ; don't it make you afraid to go to sleep in the
dark?" Kitty would open wondering eyes. "I am never afraid
of anything," she said. " And after people are dead what can
they do to you ? "

Kitty was now seven years old, and already her great plea-
sures were to read and to romp, as her mother and Aunt Re-
becca Forrest declared, the one in a prophetic spirit and a some-
what querulous, old-maidish tone, and the other with a sense that
although little girls should not be quite so much like boys, yet
there was still abundant time for better things.

" That child is a perfect tomboy, Eliza," Aunt Rebecca said
one day when she saw her flying headlong down the hill on her
way from school, leading a shouting troop behind her. " She
ought be made to behave herself."

" Kitty," said Mrs. Danforth, turning to the child as she came
in with her cheeks red, her dark eyes shining, and her hair in a
tumble under her loosened hood, " how often have I told you not
to run so in the street? Little girls should walk and act like
ladies."

" And not scream like hawks," added Aunt Rebecca, " nor
turn in their toes like parrots. Just see how she stands ! "

" I had to run," said Kitty, between explanation and indig-
nation. " We were all Indians, and my name is Thayandanagea,

1 884.] KA THARINE. 1 77

and I was running the gauntlet. And I had to turn my toes
in, too, for all Indians do. The book I read last night said
so."

" Well, Thayandanagea," answered her mother, smiling,
" when you come into the wigwam you must remember to turn
them out again and to knock the snow off out on the stoop.
Go back into the hall and take off your hood and your rubbers,
and come and sit down to your patchwork. You have hardly
time to make your block before tea."

To make a block every afternoon had been Kitty's daily ob-
ligation for more than two years ; there was always one lying
ready for her on the top of mother's work-basket, neatly turned
down and basted for her overhand seam, when she came in from
school. She had a great pile of them in the under-drawer of
the high red bureau with brass handles which stood in the
corner of the sitting-room, beside the door which opened into
the hall. Sometimes she spread them all out on the rag carpet,
with empty spaces as big as themselves between them, to see
how many quilts they would make when they were joined, and
also in the hope of beguiling from mother those stories of the
past in which Kitty delighted, and which the sight of the bright
bits of chintz was always likely to evoke. Her patchwork was
a sort of family history to Kitty, and much more interesting in
that light than in the plodding business of making the separate
blocks. That one with the turkey-red ground, spotted with
tiny green and yellow roses, which she always put in the centre,
was made of a scrap of the dress mother wore when she was
taken, at six months old, to assist at Aunt Jane Richards' wed-
ding. Aunt Jane was father's aunt, having been grandfather
Danforth's sister, but she was mother's godmother as well a
degree of relationship which it puzzled Kitty mightily to un-
derstand.

" What made her your godmother ? " she asked one day.

" Oh ! she stood for me when I was baptized," replied her
mother.

" But I haven't any godmother. Why don't everybody have
one? And what is it to be baptized? Have I been?"

"Yes," said her mother; "and a fine squalling you made
about it, too. I had to take you out of church directly it was
over."

" Oh ! " said Kitty, with a gleam of intelligence, " I suppose
this is the mark of it." And she turned up her sleeve to look at
a round white scar above her elbow. " I thought the doctor did
VOL. xxxix. 12

178 KATHARINE. [May,

that in the house for fear of small-pox. And why hadn't I a
godmother ? "

" No," said Mrs. Danforthf laughing, " it wasn't your bap-
tism that made that scar. And you 'have no godmother because
we are Methodists."

" But how did you get one? Isn't Aunt Jane a Methodist
too?"

" Now she is, but when I was a baby all our folks were Epis-
copalians, and Aunt Jane too."

"I don't understand at all," said Kitty, " What is an Epis-
copalian, and why do they have them ? Do Episcopalian little
girls have them now ? I never heard of anybody's godmother
except yours."

" Oh ! it is their nonsense," said her mother, "and their hold-
ing on to old Catholic mummeries and superstitions."

Kitty had never yet got beyond that point in the solution of
the mystery, and had many speculations about it in her small
head whenever Aunt Jane came down the hill to pay her fort-
nightly visit, arrayed in black silk, laid across her thin and nar-
row chest in a multiplicity of folds, at the meeting of which
showed, ever since her widowhood, her chemisette of crinkly
white crepe. Kitty's memory did not recall Aunt Jane before
her widowhood, although one of the ineffaceable recollections of
her own short past was of a walk up the long Hawk Street hill
which still looked endless and dangerously steep to her childish
eyes holding on to father's forefinger, and of seeing in the par-
lor at Aunt Jane's, after that walk was ended, a long red box
in which Uncle Richard Richards was lying with a silver
dollar over .each eye.

Nowadays she sometimes climbed the same hill when she
went with her mother on alternate Fridays to see Aunt Jane.
Mrs. Danforth was a home-keeping body and seldom went out
of her own door on week-days except to pay these visits, and to
go to class-meeting every Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.
Kitty had once accompanied her to class in a little room which
adjoined the larger one where Sunday-school was held, and into
which a narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs led down from the
church above. The minister was sitting at a small table with
his .back to these stairs when Mrs. Danforth and Kitty entered,
and perhaps a dozen women sat with sober, unsmiling faces on
the narrow bench which ran round three sides of the room.
The minister started a hymn, which the class-members took up in
more or less musical voices. Kitty for the first time heard her

1884-] KATHARINE. 179

mother try to sing, in a thin, weak voice which did not keep the
tune at all, but went off in little, unexpected squeaks where the
lines ended. Then the minister prayed, and afterwards the
women rose, one after the other, beginning at his left hand, and
made speeches of varying lengths which were both unintelli-
gible and uninteresting to Kitty, whose mind, ever since she be-
gan to see what was going on, had been filled with the thought
that mother's turn would soon come, and with wondering what
she would say and how she would say it, and whether the minis-
ter would call her sister, as he did the others. When at last she
felt her mother rising from her place, and looked up under her
bonnet, she saw a faint flush on the cheeks usually so colorless
and yet so bright, and heard her say in a tone not much above
her breath that she " felt to bless the Lord for what he had done
for her soul." Kitty suddenly felt herself grow hot from head
to foot with an unaccountable shame, and a burning wish that
mother wouldn't talk out so before all those people. And, al-
most before her wish was fully formed, Mrs. Danforth sat down
again, having made the shortest and lowest-toned recital of her
"experience " of any person present. Class, Kitty learned after-
wards, was the most disagreeable to her mother of all her re-
ligious duties, and the only one which she recognized as impos-
ing on her any obligation to speak in meeting. She never again
took her little daughter with her, nor, indeed, would the child
have been willing to go. Her curiosity had been fully and un-
pleasantly satisfied the first time.

Going to Aunt Jane's was quite another matter. It was a
pleasure she did not always share with her mother, chiefly be-
cause she had to miss afternoon school whenever she did so a
circumstance which made it all the pleasanter as often as it hap-
pened. Friday-afternoon school was a weariness to Kitty. It
always ended in a mysterious exercise in which all the boys and
girls were kept standing for an hour in front of their benches,
repeating certain strange formulas which Kitty knew, years
after, must have belonged to the Westminster Shorter Cate-
chism. She never succeeded in retaining any of it in her me-
mory, but had to be prompted every time to each word by little
Miss Merrifield, who complained much of her stupidity in this
regard. " It is no great matter," said Mrs. Danforth once in
Kitty's hearing, after the usual complaint had been made at the
time of paying the quarterly bill ; " I am not anxious to have-
ner learn the Presbyterian catechism." Perhaps she took Kitty
with her all the more frequently after that. At least the child

i8o KATHARINE. [May,

thought so, and felt in consequence a certain disrespectful grati-
tude to the catechism.

Aunt Jane Richards lived in a white two-story, clap-boarded
house with solid green shutters, a low stoop painted yellow, and
a green door with a brass knocker. Since her husband's death
another old lady had come to live with her, and the two kept
house all alone, without a servant, although Aunt Jane owned
this house and others besides it and had money in the bank. She
had it also in a box in the mahogany bureau which stood in the
passage between her bed-room and the parlor. Kitty knew that,
because she had seen her go there to get out the silver dollar
she gave her last New Year's day. She had wondered at the
time if it were one of those she had seen on Uncle Richard's
dead eyes, but had concluded that those were in all probability
buried with him. Kitty liked old Mrs. Armstrong, with her
square, mild, wrinkled face enclosed in a frilled cap tied under
her chin, better than she liked Aunt Jane, whose face was thin,
her forehead puckered, her nose sharp, and her eyes small and
bright. But she liked her pretty well, too, and delighted in go-
ing down-stairs with her into the kitchen, and sitting perched up
in the high window- seat beside the cat to watch the process of
putting the pan of raised biscuits into the oven and waiting for
them to come out again, high and brown and hot, ready to be
eaten with butter, and smoked beef, and cheese, and quince pre-
serves. The warm milk and water which Kitty called tea never
looked so nice as when she drank it out of Aunt Jane's thin, pink
china cups, though it often tasted better. And she liked better
than all to sit on her carpeted stool on the rug behind the high,
polished wood stove, reading, while mother, with blue ribbons in
her lace cap, stitched a wristband by the window, and the two
old ladies in their black haircloth rockers, knitting in hand,
talked with her about the next conference, or the visit of the
presiding elder, or the new minister's family, and other things of
the sort that Kitty's ear was familiar with, though her mind was
indifferent to them.

There were not many books at Aunt Jane's, and not very in-
teresting ones as a rule ; but all books were agreeable to Kitty,
though some were undeniably more agreeable than others.
What she read there oftenest was an old copy of Fox's Martyrs
with leather covers and woodcuts and queer f's, and some of the
pages discolored with water and others entirely missing. The
horrors described in it made Kitty tremble, although she had
said truly that she was never afraid of anything. She asked her

1884.] KATHARINE. 181

mother once why people did such wicked things to other peo-
ple, though how they could bear to do it was more puzzling to
her still. She was told in answer that it was done by Catholics
to punish Protestants, " people who believe as we do," for not
believing otherwise. " Believing what ? " asked Kitty. " No-
body could make me say I believed a thing if I didn't no, not
if they made me drink water until I burst." That was the
torture which had struck most forcibly her young imagina-
tion.

Within the last few months there had been a change in the
Danforth household. The maid-of-all-work whom Kitty remem-
bered from her infancy, who had, indeed, come to Mrs. Danforth
in the early days of her marriage, and rocked the cradles and
wept beside the coffins of the two children who preceded Kitty,
had at last gone away to a home of her own, having married a
Scotch baker with three grown-up sons. The history of this
maid, partly known and partly fancied, was also one of the trea-
sures of the little girl's memory. Her thoughts often went back,
in her solitary playtimes in the garret on rainy days, to the time
when Margaret, then a child not much older than herself, was
left fatherless and motherless to fall into the hands of old Mrs.
Daniel, down on the Nazareth road below the city, by whom she
had been cruelly ill-used and despoiled of the little that had been
left her by her parents. In Kitty's fancy Mrs. Daniel was a sort
of fabulous monster, an ogress tempered by the Biblical asso-
ciations connected with her name. " Only," she said to herself,
" it was Margaret who was in the den, and Mrs. Daniel fed her
to the lions."

" After my mother's death," the girl had once said to her, " I
never had a friend nor heard a kind word until I came into this
house."

And now, although she had gone out of it, she was still not
far away. From the parlor windows Kitty could look straight
down Hubbeli's Alley, at the end of which, behind a grass-plot
and one or two young trees, was the one-story double wooden
house, painted yellow, in one half of which Margaret now worked
harder than ever for her new master. Sometimes, but not often,
Kitty was allowed to pay her a visit on Saturday afternoons, and
enjoyed herself much, curled up on the chintz-covered lounge
reading Dombey and Son, of which the successive numbers, in yel-
low paper covers, lay on the little table where Margaret's ready-
made sons had left them. But she ran home when John came
in to his supper the big, burly man with red whiskers dusty

1 82 KA THARINE. [May,

with flour, a general mealiness, indeed, pervading him from head
to foot.

"I think he is cross to Margaret," Kitty told her mother, who
sighed and said she feared there was trouble in store for the poor
wife.

"She certainly won't have much difficulty now in keeping
her vow," she added, " nor much merit either."

Margaret's vow ! That also belonged to Kitty's bits of know-
ledge. The girl had been converted and joined the church a
year or two after coming to Mrs. Danforth, at the same time, in
fact, with her mistress ; and when the new down-town church had
been started, with Kitty's father as chief contributor and most
zealous promoter, Margaret had determined to give all sKe could
save from her wages into the sinking-fund, and vowed that she
would never again buy a silk dress until the building was out of
debt. She had a stiff black silk at the time, and a watch with a
thin gold chain which had been her father's, and which old Mrs.
Daniel had surrendered to her when, before her death, conscience
made her send for the girl and ask pardon for the worse than
cruelties inflicted upon her in her youth. She looked very nice,
Kitty thought, when she sat in the pew on Sundays.

11 Now she will earn no more," said Mrs. Danforth, "and
John Marshall will drink up all that might be saved. If she
manages to get a clean calico to wear to church after what she
has are worn out she will be lucky. What possessed her to
marry that drunken old Scotchman is beyond me ! "

Her place had been taken by another Margaret Mag Ban-
nan, Kitty called her the first Irish girl she had ever seen.
What rosy cheeks she had, and what shining rows of teeth; what
curling lashes fringed her gray eyes, and what waves of black
hair rolled behind her ears ! Kitty liked to look at her, and to hear
her sing as she went about her work. Once, when all the rest of
the folks had gone to evening prayer-meeting, the girl had sung
her a long ballad about " Alonzo the brave and the fair Imogen,"
which went far towards altering the child's opinion that there
was nothing to be afraid of in living so near to graves. When
she was alone at night afterwards she sometimes thought of it
and kept her sleepy eyes fixed on the lamp, lest it should burn
blue and betray the presence of a ghost. But still she was more
curious than afraid.

It was now the eve of Christmas a day to which Kitty had
never been taught to attach any special importance. For her
there were but three great days in all the year : Fourth of July,

1 884.] KA THARINE. 183

when the ringing of bells wakened her at dawn, and cannons
roared, drums beat, soldiers passed, and father took her at night
to see the fireworks in the Capitol Park ; Thanksgiving, with its
turkey and pumpkin-pies and company to dinner; and New
Year's, when she hung up her stocking and found it in the morn-
ing full of candies, with one of Aunt Anne's olekoeks in the toe,
and when there were callers until bed-time, and a table spread
with fruit-cake and nuts and oranges in a corner of the parlor.
But with Christmas she had, as yet, no associations. To-night
Margaret was putting her to bed a task usually performed by
her mother or Aunt Rebecca Forrest. But mother was busy this
evening, and Aunt Rebecca was away on a visit.

" She has gone to Orange County," explained Kitty to the
maid, as she sat on grandmother's chest behind the dumb-stove
which brought up a little heat from the fire down-stairs " to
Orange County, to visit our relations. I don't know if that is
where oranges come from, but I suppose so. We have a great
many relations there, for mother's grandfather was brought
there when he was a little boy no bigger than me. His father
and mother had come away from France because they were
Huguenots." Kitty made three syllables of the word and sound-
ed both of the final letters.

" And what are Huguenots?" asked Margaret, all attention.

" Protestants, don't you know ? Just as we are. The Catho-
lics were very wicked and wouldn't let them stay at home."

" Sure, you come honestly by the black drop," said Mar-
garet, pulling off Kitty's shoe, " if it's been in the family all that
time."

" The black drop ! What is that ? "

" It's only a way I have of speaking, honey," replied the girl,
bethinking herself. " And what are you going to do to-mor-
row?"

"Just what we did to-day, I suppose. Why?"

" And won't you go to church ? "

" To-morrow will be Tuesday," said Kitty. " People don't
go to church on Tuesdays."

" Not on Christmas ? Troth, then, it's haythens ye are, and
not Christians at all."

" Why," said Kitty, " do Irish people go to church on Christ-
mas ? Are you going ? How can you, when it's ironing-day ? "

" 'Deed I am, then, before daylight. I hope there'll be a
moon, for it's dark the streets will be at four o'clock ! "

" Mag," said Kitty, "you have to sleep in this room while

1 84 KATHARINE. [May,

Aunt Rebecca's gone. Mother said so. Wake me up and take
me with you to-morrow morning. I don't know how the moon
looks on the snow ; I always have to go to bed at seven o'clock."

" The mistress 'ud be angry," said Margaret.

" No, she wouldn't," protested Kitty. " You could wrap me
up and put on my rubbers."

" I'd be afraid, then," said the girl ; " and besides, you'd be
too sleepy. It's hard enough to get you up at seven o'clock, let
alone four." And she lifted Kitty up and deposited her in the
high bed as she spoke.

" Mag," the child went on, as the blankets were tucked about
her, " what is Christmas, anyway? "

" Sure, it's our Lord's birthday. Didn't you know that? Go
to sleep now ; the mistress'll think I'm never coming down to the
dishes ! "

" The Lord's birthday ! " thought Kitty, as she lay awake in
the dark. She had had a birthday herself last Friday, when mo-
ther had given her seven little slaps and a new red merino dress,
and father seven great kisses and seven new copper cents. Pen-
nies Kitty called them, just as she called twenty-five of them
two shillings, and the little silver piece which mother had offered
to exchange for six of them, if she would put it in her tin sav-
ings-bank, a sixpence. Kitty had declined the silver, for she sel-
dom had money to spend, and her soul had for days past been
hungering for Goody Twos/toes and the Babes in the Wood, of which
she had read and re-read the first pages as they lay displayed in
the toy-shop window. Four of her pennies went for them, and
one for one of Mrs. Taylor's red and white striped Jackson balls,
so that her savings-bank was only two cents richer by reason of
her birthday. That the Lord had a birthday also was an idea
unfamiliar to her, although she remembered now that father
had read that chapter about the stable in Bethlehem, and the
angels singing in the sky that very evening, as they sat around
the table after tea for night prayers. Her mind went back and
dwelt upon it until she fell asleep.

When she awoke there was a light burning on the bureau
and Margaret sat on the floor pulling on her stockings. Kitty
awoke as healthy children do, with her wits all about her, and
her thoughts went back at once to her wish the night before.
Slipping out of bed, she went up in her bare feet behind the
girl.

" Do dress me and take me along," she begged. " I will put
on my own shoes and stockings."

1 884.] KA THARINE. 185

" Sure, I suppose it can't hurt you, for once," said good-na-
tured Margaret. " But you must be quiet and make haste. I
heard three o'clock strike before I got up, and it's a long walk
we'll have."

The moon was not down yet, and the stars were shining in
the clear December sky, when they came softly out of the hall-
door. But the street-lamps were all out, and no one seemed to
be stirring in the neighborhood except themselves. When they
got down by Kane's Walk, and Kitty saw the shadows of the
bare branches of the trees on the untrodden snow behind the
palings of the enclosure in front of the great house, and the icicles
sparkling in the pale light, she said nothing, but she drew a long
breath ot pleasure and reflected that people lost a great deal by
sleeping at night instead of in the daytime.

At last they reached the church, a large one in the lower
part of the town, not far from the building where Kitty was
taken every Sunday, and as yet almost the only one of its kind in
the entire city. The vestibule was dark, and there was a close
smell which the child found unpleasant. The church was .al-
ready nearly filled, and they took seats far back toward the en-
trance, under a side gallery. Those were the days of whale-oil
lamps, and the body of the building was ill-lighted and gloomy.
But up at the farther, end there was such a blaze of sparkling
candles as Kitty had never seen before. Everything was strange
to her the queer, monotonous singing, of which she could not
understand a word ; the odor and smoke of the incense ; the
ringing of the bells, and the incessant shuffling of feet and cough-
ing inseparable from a large crowd of people of all ages collected
in the cold of an early winter morning. But at last, at the sound
of one of the bells, a perfect silence fell and every head was bent
except that of Kitty, who still sat on the bench and looked
straight before her. But only for a moment. Then a sudden,
strange emotion of awe possessed her, and she, too, sank down on
her knees by Margaret's side and dropped her head in her hands.
Nor did she lift it although she had a vague consciousness that
people were moving all about her, and that even Margaret had
left the pew until at last the girl touched her and said it was
time to go back home.

" What ails you, Kitty dear?" she asked as they came out of
the porch. " Have you been asleep, that your eyes look so
wild ? "

" No," said Kitty, clinging fast to her hand. " But what was
it, Mag ? "

1 86 KATHARINE. [May,

" What was what ? "

"What the man in the gold cloak was doing? What was
that he held up in his hands when the bell rang and all the peo-
ple kept so still ? "

" It was the Blessed Sacrament," said Margaret.

"And what is that?"

"The Lord himself," said the girl slowly, adding presently,
in a lower and much quicker tone, " Sure. Protestants are hay-
thens."

" You said that last night," said Kitty. " But heathens live a
long way off, and we send missionaries to them. I belong to the
missionary society, and I put a penny in the box the first Sunday
of every month. And you are a Protestant yourself, aren't
you ? "

" The Lord be praised, I'm not ! " said Margaret promptly.

" What then ? I thought everybody was Protestant in this
country."

" Faith, it's not quite so bad as that," said Margaret, laughing.
" I'm a Catholic, and so were all the people in the church this
morning."

Kitty was amazed. She said, with some hesitation and after
a pause :

" But they are all very wicked. They burn up Protestants,
and put them on racks, and break all their bones. I read about
them at Aunt Jane's. And we send missionaries to them, too."

" 'Deed you do," said Margaret bitterly. " There was one
of the black lot came to me father, and he dyin' o' famine, and
offered him a tract and a piece o' mate on Friday, and nothin' at
all the rest o' the week because he wouldn't ate that. Don't
you believe all you hear, Kitty darlint. 'Tisn't Catholics only
that know how to burn folks up an* tear 'em in pieces. Many's
the wan of. me own blood that's had that same sauce served to
'em by Protestants, bad cess to them ! "

Kitty was silent, as she usually was when an entirely new
idea came to her. It was only after it had lain in the young
darkness of her mind, and been turned over and over, that
it fructified into speech. And, moreover, what she had felt in
the church was yet stranger to her than the new thoughts in-
spired by what her companion was saying as they walked quickly
through the still dark and silent streets. Margaret undressed and
puti, her back in bed again when they reached home, and she slept
souiidly until daylight. But when her parents learned of her
"orht adventure Margaret fell into disgrace and was sent away.

1 884.] KA THARINE. 1 87

And gradually the remembrance of it faded in the mind of the
little girl, leaving only a vague impression, which lay there like
a late-germinating seed.

CHAPTER II.

IN the summer following Kitty's seventh birthday her father
had a fall as he was getting out of the buggy in which he usually
drove himself to and from his place of business, and broke one of
the bones of his right leg. The surgeon who was summoned,
being momentarily engaged, sent a callow student to make ready
for his impending visit, and the young fellow practised surgery
according to his lights which were, indeed, not special, but
common to his time by binding up the injured member in cold
compresses and applying pounded ice. The circulation, so effec-
tually interfered with at the start, avenged itself by retarding the
healing process, and the patient was kept in-doors for many un-
necessary weeks. Yet, despite her pity for her father, Kitty tho-
roughly enjoyed at the time, and ever after remembered with
pleasure, the period of his confinement in the sick-chair which
was nightly extended into a couch. A revolving and removable
desk which had been fitted on to one of the arms held the books
and writing materials with which he solaced himself for this sud-
den interruption of the course of a busy life. Kitty had come
honestly by her love of books, having inherited it from both fa-
ther and mother. But whereas the latter of late years read little
except denominational religious publications and an occasional
novel, protesting always that Ivanhoe and The Spy were vastly
preferable to Pickwick and Oliver Twist, and that none of them
were to be compared in the matter of entertainment to the Scot-
tish Chiefs or The Children of the Abbey ; while she studied Pol-
lok's Course of Tune with great diligence and thought it a sub-
lime poem, superior in some respects to Paradise Lost with
which, notwithstanding, she had an acquaintance capable, on oc-
casion, of extended and apposite quotation her husband's tastes
were of a wider and more critical sort. As ardently religious
as his wife, his devotion burned with a more variable and im-
pulsive flame, kindled rather by his emotional than his intel-
lectual nature. He had " experienced religion," as the phrase
went, at the time when he had been subjected to his keenest sor-
row the loss of a passionately-loved and only son. His Method-
ism was the accident of his surroundings, but by temperament
he was devout. By temperament, also, he was pleasure-loving

1 88 KATHARINE. [May,

and artistic ; but, with the exception of one passage in his youth,
when, after having been driven from home by a harsh father for
some trifling rebellion, he had for a time become a strolling
player, this part of his nature had been granted small scope.
The actor's life had soon disgusted him, and he had settled down,
some years before his marriage, to hard labor at a mechanical
trade, abandoning it for a partnership in manufacturing on a lar-
ger scale about the time of Kitty's birth. He held a tight hand
over himself, and was, by instinct as well as by principle, as hon-
est as the day, but he was not, like his wife, ascetic and reserved
by natural predisposition. Now, in his enforced leisure, he found
that the prolonged study of Scott's and Clark's commentaries,
and the perusal of Wesley's sermons, the Ladies Repository, and
the weekly Advocate and Journal, left him many hours in which
he was keenly conscious of a mental weariness, increased rather
than diminished by this sort of reading. He turned once more,
then, to the chief favorite of his youth, and, finding in his little
daughter a never-wearied auditor, he read her the plays of
Shakspere. For the evening readings which were inevitable,
and took place, indeed, after the child was in bed, his wife,
the choice being left to her, always demanded " anything but
Shakspere "; but Kitty was enchanted. An admirable reader, a
good mimic, he made the dramas real to her in a way which
solitary perusal at her age could never have done ; but the heavy
volume was, nevertheless, pored over by her afterwards until she
knew it half by heart, and numbered her favorite characters
among the inhabitants of the dream-world in which she lived as
she sat hemming her sheets or learning painfully to knit and
darn when the days of her father's imprisonment were ended.

When the holidays came round this year they brought an-
other notable increase to Kitty's stock of mental furniture, and
one which led directly to a still further enlargement .of her
spiritual experience. Among her gifts on New Year's day was
an illustrated copy of Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, in which the
child took an immense but bewildering pleasure. She sat read-
ing it one night when bedtime came, but, repeated summons
failing to rouse her attention, her mother finally came behind her
and bent over her shoulder to see what she was about before
leading her up-stairs.

" So you like Christian, do you ? " she said, chatting while the
undressing and hair-brushing were going on.

" Yes," answered Kitty, " but I don't understand it all.
What burden was that he had on his back ? "

1884.] KATHARINE. 189

" The book is an allegory," explained her mother. " It de-
scribes what goes on in the soul as if it took place outwardly in
daily life. Christian is man himself all men. His burden was
his sins, which he got rid of, as we all get rid of ours, by repent-
ing and beginning a new life."

Kitty opened wide eyes. "All men? That means women
too, and children. Have I got a burden on my back? Have
you?"

" I had," said her mother. " And you have, because you are
not yet a Christian."

" I never felt it," said Kitty. " How can I get it off ? "

" You must be converted," said her mother, " and then you
must join the church."

" But I don't know how."

" Well," said her mother, " next week the protracted meeting
begins. When people are anxious about their sins and want to
be converted they go to the revival meetings, and when the in-
vitation is given for sinners to come forward they go up to the
altar to be prayed for. And usually they are converted th.en.
I wasn't, but father and Becky were. I. think you are hardly old
enough to try it yet awhile."

" But I am," said Kitty, whose fancy was already busy with
the pack on her back, " and I shall."

" Father," she said the next Monday night, when he got up
at the stroke of seven o'clock to put on his long round cloak ;
Kitty had run under it as usual to feel the dark and have her
usual romp " father, can't I go to meeting to-night ? "

" Why, I suppose so," he answered, " if mother is willing.
But it will be rather late to keep your eyes open."

So Kitty went to her first revival meeting the only one to
which her own good pleasure ever led her. The memory of the
long, low basement room, lighted by ill-smelling lamps fastened
to the square wooden posts which supported the ceiling, and
filled with people standing in the aisles and sitting on the benches,
remained with her long afterwards like a bad dream. Her fa-
ther left her with Aunt Rebecca in a seat near the enclosed
platform one step higher than the floor, which it was customary
to call the altar, and which he himself entered to join the minis-
ter, the trustees, and other exhorters who were already there.
To the preliminary sermon Kitty paid small attention, her mind
being bent, according to its usual fashion, upon her own thoughts.
Her burden her sins she must rid herself of them. As sins
they troubled her but little, perhaps because they were not in

KATHARINE. [May,

reality very heinous. As she reviewed her past she had said to
herself : " I told mother a story the day I was late from school,
because I went home with Sue Thomas when she pretended she
had a doll that talked. But I took it back the next morning.
And I don't get up when I am called ; but I don't think of any-
thing else, unless it's a sin to be a tomboy and race so in the
street."

As a burden, however, they appealed strongly to her ima-
gination, and, with the straightforward simplicity which was
natural to her, she had resolved to act without delay on her
mother's instructions. The sermon ended and a hymn was sung
it was " Come, ye sinners, poor and needy " and Kitty's father
started it in his full, pleasant baritone voice. Then the usual
call was made for sinners to come forward to the altar and the
" anxious-seat." Now was Kitty's time. To the lively surprise
of Aunt Rebecca, who was not in her confidence, the little girl
got up, and, slipping out of the seat, joined the kneeling " mourn-
ers " at the railing. Her father did not see her at first, and
when he did he also experienced an astonishment which, if it
was on the whole pleasant, was not, at least in its earliest mo-
ments, entirely unmixed. The child was, in effect, too small fry
to get much attention where there were so many of her elders
bent on the same errand with more emotional seriousness, if with
no more unquestioning faith. She knelt beside a weeping wo-
man and listened attentively to the advice and the exhortations
addressed her by Moses Hicks, the fat grocer, from whose close
proximity Kitty involuntarily recoiled. But she got up at last
when the meeting was over, not only without any interior satis-
faction, but with an ill-defined dissatisfaction which deepened
into positive self-disgust when, after walking home in silence be-
tween her silent companions, she heard her father say to her
mother, sitting by the lamp with the evening paper :

" Katharine went forward to-night."

Her father seldom called her Katharine, except when she had
been naughty and he was about to reprove her; and now, though
she felt the absence of all minatory intention, the sound of the
unfamiliar name only increased her disagreeable self-conscious-
ness. She would not meet the inquiring eye turned upon her,
and when later her mother asked in a softer tone than usual, as
she tucked her between the blankets, " Well, Kitty, are you a
Christian now?" the little girl answered shortly, " Don't talk
about it, mother! I'll tell you another time."

The question was repeated the next afternoon as they sat

1 884.] KA THARINE. I Q I

alone at their sewing, Kitty in her little arm-chair at her mo-
ther's side.

" Mother," she answered, " there was a woman beside me,
and Moses Hicks came to talk to her. He asked her if she was
sorry for her sins, and she said she was. Then he told her that
all she had to do was to believe that Christ died for her ' lay
right hold of it by faith ' was what he said and they would be
pardoned. And she cried and groaned, and he talked and
prayed, and by and by she shouted and said she * saw the bright
spot ' and felt happy and was saved. And so did other people.
But why did they ? I believed all that and I felt just the same
as ever. I didn't want to cry or to shout or anything. So they
said I wasn't converted and would have to try once more. But
I will never do that again." %

" I tried that way a good many times," replied her mother,
" but it wouldn't answer. I thought you were too much like
me for that, but there's no knowing beforehand."

" How too much like you ? " asked Kitty. " You have got
your burden off, haven't you ?"

" Ah ! " said her mother, " it was never easy for me to believe
what I could not see. When I was young the other girls used
to call me Thomas Didymus, because I would never take any-
thing on trust."

" How was it, then, that you were converted ? " persisted
Kitty.

" Well, it was 'after the first baby died. Grandmother Dan- .
forth vwas a Methodist, and after we were married father and I
used to go to church to please her. I didn't care much where I
went. My father had been an Episcopalian, but after his death
mother went back to the Presbyterians. All our folks down in
Orange County have always been the bluest sort of Calvinists.
But I never could accept that doctrine of election. I don't want
any salvation that isn't free to everybody on the same terms.
Well, after Johnny died your father was in despair, and one of
the members told him it was a judgment on him because he had
begun to stay home Sundays to play with the baby instead of
going to church. So he made up his mind to attend the next
revival meeting, and he was converted the first time he went
forward. So was Becky ; but she isn't like me, and she had
always a very tender conscience. I went and went, but it was
no use. I was like you. I said, ' I believe ail that already,' and
I felt no change at all. But one night when they had all been
praying for me, and I had been thinking of it until I fell asleep,

i 9 2 KATHARINE. [May,

I woke up and found the room all bright with the light that
came from the word ' Unbelief,' written on the wall at the foot
of the bed in letters of fire. Then I saw that really I had never
believed at all. And at once belief came to me and I was con-
verted."

" Mother," asked Kitty after a long pause, " do you think
the word was really there, or did you dream it ? "

" I am not sure," replied her mother. " Perhaps I was only
half-awake at first, and mixed up a ray of moonlight with my
dream. But there was a new light in my mind, at all events,
and the next morning the very sun seemed to shine brighter, the
grass was greener, and all things looked new. And since then I
have really from my heart believed."

"Believed what?"

" How can I tell you ? The creed I learned when I was
little ' I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus
Christ, his only-begotten Son,' and the rest of it."

" I never learned that," said Kitty. " But I believe it."

"Yes," replied her mother, "just as you would believe the
moon is made of green cheese, if you had always been told so.
That isn't saving faith."

"What is?" asked Kitty.

" I don't know at least I cannot describe it. For my own
part, I think people have to wait until their time comes for it,
and then God sends it, if they ask it, in the way that suits each
one best."

" Well," said Kitty, after a long silence, " I know one thing.
What you just told me made me think of it. When I went to
church with Mag Bannan last Christmas she told me, when we
came out, that what I saw up at the other end of the church was
Jesus Christ himself, and I believed her, I felt so strange as if
God were not away off in heaven, but right there."

" He is everywhere," said her mother. " But don't talk
about Mag Bannan and her church. Church indeed ! A nest of
papists! I wish you had never set your foot inside it."

" Papists ! " said Kitty, pondering. " That wasn't the name.
Mag said they were Catholics. Yes, and she said we were
heathens because we don't keep Christmas. Why don't we?
I should think folks would like to keep the Lord's birthday."

"So they would, if they knew when it was. But the Bible
doesn't tell, and nobody is going to take the word of that cor-
rupt church about it. And, Kitty, we won't talk about that at
all. You must wait until you are older."

1884.] KA THA RINE. 193

" Very well," acquiesced the child. " But go on and tell me
something else. What did you mean about Aunt Rebecca ?
What is it to have a tender conscience ? "

" Kitty," said her mother, " you are like the fool to-day.
You ask questions that the wise man cannot answer. I will tell
you a little story. When Becky and I were children mother
lived away down near the river, and the sloops landed just in
front of our door. One day when they were unlading one a box
of lemons broke open and some of the lemons rolled about in
the dirt. Your Uncle Tony and Becky and I each picked up one.
Tony and I ate up ours, but Becky put on a long face as soon as
she had hers in her hand, and went back indoors and sat down,
thinking. Then she came out and put her lemon back just
where she found it."

"She was afraid of stealing," said Kitty. "And you were
not?"

" They were dirty," answered her mother, " and I suppose I
thought nobody would care about picking them up. And I
don't even remember thinking about it until I saw what Becky
did. That is a tender conscience to be quick to know what
is wrong, and not wait for some one else to show you."

""But I wish she had got her lemon," said Kitty. "She
looks so sober always as if she never had anything she wanted.
It would have been nicer if you had put yours back, too, and
then somebody had come and given you each an orange instead.
That's the way it is in the stories. I suppose Aunt Rebecca
always feels sorry because she hasn't any little boy or girl.
When I am big I mean to have a house of my own, and I hope
none of my children will die. I should like a whole lot of
them."

" Remember the maid with the milk-pail," said her mother,
laughing. " Perhaps you'll change your mind when you are
older. And, any way, it takes two to make bargains of that sort."

TO BE CONTINUED.

VOL. XXXIX. 13

194 EVOLUTION IN THE [May,

EVOLUTION IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RE-
SEARCHES.

THE doctrine of evolution, such as we now understand it, has
stood before the gaze of men long enough to enable us to de-
termine the exact value of its conclusions, the amount of truth
they embody, and the admixture of error which obscures them.
From a mere attempt to solve a biological problem it has shot
its branches into every department of science, it has sought to
unravel difficulties which had puzzled the wisest of men in the
past, and it holds up to our eye the alluring hope that the tan-
gled skein of truth will at last run into parallel and separable
strands at its bidding. Little did Malpighi, Bonnet, and Haller
dream, when they first adopted the term evolution in opposition
to the epigenetic doctrine of Harvey, that they had struck the
keynote of a conjecture which was to leave an indelible impress on
the philosophy of the nineteenth century. And }^et it is claimed
to be the unifying generalization which marks the correlation of
mental and physical phenomena and supplies the light by which
we can discern their common source and tendency. Not only is
the progress of the individual from a homogeneous cell into the
most complex condition of heterogeneity the goal of its inquiries,
but it aims at explaining the manifold steps by which society has
emerged from its primitive conditions, and the devious changes
through which state-craft and morality have developed into their
present complex attitude. Thus, there is no problem affecting
human life and human interests which has escaped the searching
influence of this principle, so that it is always worth while not
only to keep well in view its tendency and activity, but to note
the counter influence which researches and discoveries in the va-
rious fields of human inquiry exert upon it as modifying, con-
firming, or diminishing its power. Passing over what evolution
has accomplished at the hands of Spencer and Darwin, we will
view it now as a logical whole viz., as having a necessary begin-
ning, middle, and end. English evolutionism exhibits a disposi-
tion to halt ; it is, so to say, illogically conservative. This dispo-
sition is eminently characteristic of the English philosophic mind,
for no English philosopher, from Locke to John Stuart Mill, has
accepted the entire consequences of his principles. Once the
road to radical and revolutionary doctrines had been reached, the

i884] LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCHES. 195

signal to halt was given ; and so English philosophy, to my mind,
exhibits the curious spectacle of magnificent links powerfully
welded together, but sustaining nothing at the end, giving to the
eye the promise of that hope which it breaks to the ear. This is
especially noticeable in the history of the various phases of the
doctrine of evolution. If ever a principle implicitly contained
within itself the necessary identity of organic life and inorganic
existence, that was the underlying principle of evolution. The
most simple cells consist of well-known chemical elements to
which they may be readily reduced. Wherein, therefore, do they
differ from their component parts ? The conservative evolution-
ists tell us that they possess a potential vitality of which the ele-
ments are devoid. But why may not these elements be lifted up
to the plane of that potential vitality which they enjoy in the
cell ? If we disallow the operation of every other force except
that which is expressed by the term evolution, we cannot logi-
cally deny the possibility, nay, even the entire probability, of
such a transition of inorganic elements into cells endowed with
a vitality we call potential. Many German disciples. of the En-
glish school, having overcome the hesitancy which marked the
conclusions of their masters, have boldly avowed the logical neces-
sity of admitting a continuous and unbroken evolution from the
simplest forms of inorganic matter into the highest and most com-
plex phases of organic existence. Of course the position thus
assumed by the German evolutionist materially increased his
difficulties, but it at least filled him with the gratifying sense of
consistency. This is the view of evolution, regarded in its
totality, which is held by Czolbe, G. T. Fechner, Lotze, and es-
pecially Lange, who recognizes, indeed, how difficult it is to
determine " where and how the transition is effected from the
manifoldness of the collisions of the atoms to the unity of sensa-
tion." Another German exponent of what may be called me-
chanical evolution Radenhausen has endeavored to account
for the existence of the solar system and all the organic life
found therein by a gradual unfolding of the implicit powers
of chemical elements. Thus the German mind, true to its
known characteristics, rushes to conclusions heedless of accom-
panying consequences, not caring what interests may be marred
or overborne on the way. This legitimate outcome of evolu-
tionism is not by any means a new factor in the history of philo-
sophy. It enters into the mystic pantheism of the Hindoos, it
is to be found in the number-theory of Pythagoras. Its feeble
echoes resound in the teachings of the Eleatics. It was virtually

ig6 EVOLUTION IN THE [May,

the system of Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Even Aristotle is
claimed as an evolutionist by Zeller and Lange, though his
theory of first matter and substantial form does not seem to
share much in common with the views of Huxley and Spencer.
Yet it was Aristotle who supplied to Harvey the suggestion of
his theory of epigenesis, wherein he supports the theory of
" equivocal generation." Though he has often been credited
with the dictum, " Omne vivum ex ovo," he in reality held to the
transition of non-living, inorganic matter to the highest types of
organized, living substances. It is not my object to present a
summary of the stages by which the doctrine of evolution has
reached its present status, but to show that its doctrinal con-
geners in the early history of philosophy as well as its latest de-
velopments, of which recent German philosophy has been the
mouthpiece, have not halted at the point where the doctrine of
the transition of inorganic into organic existence becomes a
logical necessity.

When Professor Tyndall rejected this doctrine on the ground
that all attempts at spontaneous generation had failed, he failed
to realize that the whole theory of evolution was thereby im-
perilled. He had already by his writings and experiments con-
tributed so much to the erection of the structure that he did
not deem that danger could frown upon the edifice, and so he
left it, after the fashion of the Islamite's coffin, suspended in
the air. Evolution must rest incomplete, and that, too, at the
niost important point, till it accounts for the bond of union which
allies organic to inorganic substances. Helmholtz and Sir Wil-
liam Thomson felt this necessity and sought to account for it
by means of a theory which few now accept. We therefore
have here a hiatus which evolution cannot cross, a gap it has
failed to fill up ; and whatever facts which science reveals tend-
ing to widen the chasm between organic and inorganic mat-
ter must of necessity detract from the claims of evolution as a
scientific doctrine. Early in the century Schwann pointed out
the impossibility of obtaining the usual products of the fermen-
tative process under conditions wherein the living germ was ex-
cluded ; and yet, notwithstanding the cogency of the reasoning
he employed and the apparent completeness of his experiments,
contemporary chemists, among them the illustrious Liebig, re-
fused to accept his conclusions. Their spirit was opposed to the
views of even those early German evolutionists such as Scho-
penhauer and Von Baer, and Schwann experienced the sadness,
often the portion of bold innovation, of beholding his laborious

1884.] LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCHES. 197

and truly scientific researches go down into the sea of neglect
where lie swallowed up the fruits of .many and toilsome vigils.
Hoffmann, Schroder, and Dusch repeated the experiments of
Schwann under more favorable circumstances, and the results
proved in each case identical. Thus it was established in a gen-
eral way that no change from purely inorganic surroundings to
any condition of organic existence could take place in the absence
of germinal, or, in other words, of already organized, materials.
But the still more careful investigations of Pasteur were needed
in order to complete the proof and in many ways to demonstrate
at least the actual non-transition from inorganic existence to or-
ganic life. Pursuing the labors of Schwann and the successors
of that investigator in the same field of inquiry, Pasteur speedily
reached and thoroughly confirmed the same important conclu-
sions. But pushing beyond the pale of their inquiries, he put
together what they had taken apart, and proved that each species
of fermentation can proceed only in accordance with special
rules governing special cases. With wonderful painstaking and
closest observation, he showed us that throughout the chang-
ing steps which characterize vinous fermentation none but a
vinous result can be obtained ; that, provided effective measures
be adopted for the exclusion of all other fermentative elements,
no progressive metamorphosis can take place except that for
which the elements seem per se to be adapted. So strict is this,
intransibility that no two germinal elements of the same genus
but of different species can cross over from their natural me-
dium. This interesting fact foreshadows for us in the realms
of microcosmic existence what naturalists like Quatrefages hold
to be the truth in the species and genera of zoology. Thus we
find that not only is the transition of inorganic into organic
life experimentally impossible, but that organic elements are
so determined by their primitive constitution that they can de-
velop only into one form of organized being, and are as in-
capable of passing over into other forms as though they were
wholly inorganic. The most interesting experiments of Pasteur
have been conducted with the view of establishing this essentially
distinct character between the various fermentescible elements,
and their success has been attended with most important prac-
tical results. The distinction which is made between fermen-
tations known as chemical and those which possess a purely
physiological character lends additional weight to the objection
which is urged against the transition of inorganic into organic
substances ; for though the former begin with organized germs,

198 EVOLUTION IN THE [Ma)-,

they pass up into higher forms only through the agency of
chemical force, and it is thus we obtain "diastase," "emulsine,"
and " pepsine." No strictly physiological process is discernible
in this species of fermentation ; and no matter how we may
change the conditions, the results remain the same, which shows
that Nature surrounds the processes taking place in her vast la-
boratory with lines of limitations which cannot be passed, and
which consequently stand in the way of an indefinitely progres-
sive metamorphosis. On the other hand, in that species of fer-
mentation known as physiological the chemical force remains in-
operative, and throughout the gradual changes which occur in it
a vital function alone can be observed. All attempts so far made
to modify the normal process of vinous fermentation have not
changed its essential character, but merely reduced its intensity
of action and exhibited it in a pathological condition. Thus, a
German brewer named Oskar Brefeld has succeeded in pro-
ducing saccharomyces in brewer's wort without a trace of alcohol.
The same statements hold good in regard to lactic and butyric
fermentation, and the conclusion is again forced upon us that
Nature constantly conducts her processes within well-marked
lines, and that, as a matter of fact, no such gradations take place
by which one process may merge into another, as is claimed
theoretically by the doctrine of evolution. There is another re-
sult of Pasteur's labors which, though never contemplated by
that savant as calculated to exert any influence on any other line
of thought, yet possesses a decided and interesting bearing on the
doctrine of indefinite evolution. Up to his time two views were
held regarding the nature of fermentation, which, though ex-
tremely ingenious and sustained by a deal of speculative ar-
gument, constantly failed to account for the facts. One view was
that this change was effected by the gases of the air, and particu-
larly oxygen, and consequently that every kind of fermentation
was a chemical transformation. Impressed with this belief, Jules
Gue*rin, a celebrated surgeon of Paris, in the hope of arresting
the fermentative process of putrefaction, adopted every possible
means for the exclusion of the air from contact with wounded
surfaces. He even devised a special apparatus by means of
which the air was pumped away from the vicinity of the wound.
But all to no effect : putrefaction set in as actively as ever. Le-
conte and Demarquay even substituted other gases in the place
of oxygen, especially carbonic acid gas, but the result remained
.as before. The other doctrine which fought for supremacy with
the atmospheric one was that a spontaneous alteration occur-

1884.] LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCHES. 199

ring in organic fluids after their issue from the body made the
change a consequence of the loss of vital power. The experi-
ments made to arrest putrefactive change fared no better when
conducted in the light which this view was supposed to throw
upon the process. The mere empirical treatment of wounds by
the various preparations of coal-tar was found far more effica-
cious than all the attempts which have been based upon scien-
tific theories. This fact strongly impressed Mr. Lister, an emi-
nent English surgeon ; and though he could not at first account
satisfactorily for the results of what was then known as the an-
tiseptic treatment, enough was perceived and understood by him
to convince him that a thoroughly scientific explanation lay
behind the highly interesting accumulation of facts with which
hospital records teemed, and at last the investigations of
Pasteur furnished him the key to the difficulty. It was ascer-
tained that putrefaction was only a species of fermentation
agreeing in its main features with the other fermentative pro-
cesses, and differing from them only in the different character of
the micro-organism which gave it birth. The question then arose,
Whence came the germs which gave rise to putrefactive fer-
mentation ? The blood itself was but the pabulum, the congenial
nidus or habitat wherein a suitable germ could take up its abode
and thrive and multiply. The germ must, therefore, reside out-
side of the blood ; and as the atmospheric air in the majority of
cases was the only medium with which wounds come in contact,
it was shrewdly conjectured that, if the air itself was not the fer-
mentative agent, it might contain floating in its interstices the
germinating elements in question. A number of experiments
were instituted with the view of determining the correctness of
the surmise. The air was in one case heajted to 700 Fahrenheit,
so that it could not possibly hold any germinating elements under
the conditions of potential vitality. A highly fermentescible
substance, one that under ordinary circumstances undergoes pu-
trefactive change in six hours, was brought into contact with this
degerminated air, and after an indefinite period of time no change
was seen to have taken place. Two conclusions, both highly
interesting, followed from this experiment. In the first place,
it gave the finishing stroke to the nearly exploded doctrine
that the putrefactive change was due to the action of the gases of
the air ; and, in the next place, it followed by the logical process of
exclusion that the true germinating material was of an organic
nature, which was held suspended in the air and perished by ex-
posure to an unusually high temperature. Surgery, that human-

200 EVOLUTION. [May,

est of arts, was the first to profit by this unexpected turn of
affairs, and the very discovery which set back indefinitely the
claims of radical evolution has made us indebted to it for one of
the most marvellous innovations in the most exact and progres-
sive branch of modern medicine. The schizomycetes, suppos-
ed to be the special micro-organism which induces fermentation
in putrefying wounds, not only float in the ordinary atmospheric
air, but cling to every material with which they come in contact.
Had M. Jules Guerin been aware of this fact he would not have
contented himself merely with excluding the air from wounded
surfaces in order to prevent putrefaction, but he would shut off
all substances in which the noxious germs could have found a
congenial medium. To accomplish this became the problem to
the solution of which Mr. Lister at once addressed himself. The
treatment of wounds with the different preparations of coal-oil,
and especially carbolic acid, had long been tried with pronounced
success, and their beneficial agency was deemed to be of a directly
curative character. This supposition led to their use in more
concentrated solutions, when it was discovered that, so far from
contributing to healing of wounds, they proved to be highly irri-
tating. This fact puzzled the advocates of carbolic acid and led
even to its partial abandonment, till it occurred to Mr. Lister that
the possible beneficial influence exercised by carbolic acid was
due to its toxic effect upon the schizomycetes with which it came
in contact. This thought inspired the Listerian treatment of
wounds, and each day's experience lends its testimony to the
value of the discovery. Of course the antiseptic idea lay at the
bottom of the principle, but it lay there in the dark, groping for
the light. Men felt that the fermentation of putrefaction had
to be arrested ere sloughing of wounds, pysemia, and the trau-
matic inflammation of internal organs could be prevented. The
theory of evolution, however, stood in the way/, for, they asked,
how could it come to pass that a biological process should be
arrested, since this would imply a halt in the onward course of
beings constantly struggling to emerge from a lower to a higher
grade in the scale of organized existence ? But the fetters had
been partially broken, and the truth was soon fully established.
The supposition that a progressive development from a lower
order of being must necessarily continue was finally abandoned,
and the triumph of Listerism was complete. These results of
Pasteur's investigations possess a pregnancy of meaning that
may not be appreciated at once, but their significance, so far as
they are going to affect the future of the doctrine of evolution,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 201

will be better understood when their relation to that theory will
be more clearly perceived. The French experimentalist never
had in view any possible or probable consequences which his
researches might exert upon any system, nor did this enter into
the scope of his inquiries ; but as a fact the result of his explora-
tions will most surely make itself felt upon the future fortunes of
evolutionism. They will especially tend to confirm the belief of
many eminent naturalists that zoological species and genera are
immutable, and will check the disposition to theorize over and
beyond what the actual facts justify. If each species of fermen-
tation is rigorously confined within its own limits, and has been
proved, under every conceivable variety of experiment, as in-
capable of passing over into any other form, why may we not
consider fair and rational the claim of such zoologists as Quatre-
fages, who maintains that animal forms can undergo only definite
and specific changes ?

Here is a theme whose vastness grows as we contemplate it
a theme which might spread itself indefinitely, and which will
repay the minutest treatment. I feel I have but suggested its
bare outlines.

THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF WORDSWORTH'S

POETRY.

PART III.

IV. We will next proceed to consider the Wisdom and the
Truth of Wordsworth's poetry in its appreciation of Nature.

Our theme is not alone its wisdom, but its wisdom and
truth. There is, perhaps, no poet in whose writings the
relation between these two things is so strong ; and it is in
their joint dealings with Nature that it becomes most appa-
rent. That relation is one of constantly reciprocal aid ; for
it is an antecedent gift of wisdom which opens our eyes to the
truth, that is, to the inner meaning, of those things which sur-
round us, whether in the moral or the material world ; while,
on the other hand, it is the habitual perception of that truth
which sustains wisdom, and by an insensible accretion enlarges
and develops it. Modern poetry has abounded in descrip-
tion ; but that description has often been more striking than
truthful ; while in other cases it has been satisfied with a

202 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [May,

prosaic accuracy, and not risen to the significance and beauty
inherent in Truth. The truthfulness of Wordsworth's obser-
vation came from a faculty higher 'than observation, which
ever taught him what he was to observe, and what he was to
pass by as unworthy of observation. His lines,

" With gentle hand
Touch for there is a spirit in the woods,"

are a type of his poetry, which touches all things material with
a spiritual hand, knowing that within them there is a spiritual
element. Sometimes the faculty which directs the observation
is a meditative imagination, as in the poem on the Butterfly
and the allusion to his sister in childhood :

" But she, God love her ! feared to brush
The dust from off its wings."

Sometimes it is philosophic thought, as in " We are Seven,"
where a child's expressions confirm his deep conviction that
Immortality is with man an innate idea. In many a later poem
the same interpretation of the lower by the higher is as marked,
as in the sonnet on the flowers on the summit of the pillars
before the cave of Staffa :

" Calm as the Universe from specular towers
Of heaven contemplated by Spirits pure."

In his record of the world's early religions (" Excursion," book
iv.) Wordsworth tells us that

" The Imaginative Faculty was Lord
Of observations natural " ;

and it was through the predominance of that faculty in him that
observation became something hardly distinguishable from in-
spiration. This peculiarity of his mind was illustrated in what
it hid from him as well as in what it revealed to him. In his
poem commonly known as " Tintern Abbey " the only object in
the landscape, so minutely described, which he does not see is
the great monastic ruin itself. When he wrote it Nature was
to him "a Passion " ; and his heart did not incline either to the
ecclesiastical or to the ancient merely as such. In his early
days one of Nature's most striking effects remained to him in-
visible :

" Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky)

The Moon re-entering her monthly round,
No faculty yet given me to espy

The dusky Shape within her arms imbound,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 203

That thin memento of effulgence lost

Which some have named her predecessor's Ghost."

The experience of life taught him at last to see it and more:

" Now, dazzling Stranger ! when thou meet'st my glance

Thy dark Associate ever I discern ;
Emblem of thoughts too eager to advance

While I salute my joys, thoughts sad or stern ;
Shades of past bliss, or wishes that to gain
Their fill of promised lustre wait in vain."

Far more often Wordsworth's imagination made him see
what others failed to mark. In all that deeply moves him he
sees at once what exists and what is to be, as in the lines to
H. C. (Hartley Coleridge), at six years old. The first stanza
begins with a vivid picture of childhood; the second shows us
that childhood bent down beneath the sorrowful weight of life.
What the poet could not have foreseen was that in the child
then addressed the childhood was still to live on under that
yoke; that in him "the fancies from afar" would never be
driven away by the cares near at hand ; that gamesome words
would remain the "mock apparel" of "unutterable thought ";
and that " the breeze-like motion and the self-born carol " would
be but the more striking when the locks that they waved were
of silver, not of gold.

But we have already remarked that if Wordsworth's obser-
vation is ever colored or shadowed by wisdom, that wisdom
was no less sustained by his observation. He found aid for
it everywhere now in an effect of Nature, as described in the
sonnet, " One who was suffering tumult in his soul " ; now in
casual incident, as in " Stepping Westward " ; now in the land-
scape's recurrent changes, as in the sonnet, "Hail, Twilight,
sovereign of one peaceful hour." But it was yet more from
what is permanent and universal in Nature that man, according
to Wordsworth's philosophy, was to build up his moral being.
To assist Nature thus to become man's teacher he believed to be
the poet's noblest task.

" I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation ; and, by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures ; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the Individual Mind

204 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OP [May,

(And the progressive powers, perhaps, no less

Of the whole species) to the external World

Is fitted ; and how exquisitely, too

(Theme this but little heard of among men),

The external World is fitted to the Mind ;

And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might

Accomplish : this is our high argument."

Regarding Nature as a teacher ever pointing out to him new
lessons, Wordsworth recurred again and again in memory to
the scene that had touched him once, and thus by necessity ideal-
ized it. Many of his " Memorials of a Tour " are but the growth
of seed sown in his mind during the day's journey. Instances of
this are found in his "Highland Girl," his "Lines on Kilchurn
Castle," the third of his poems on Burns, and the sonnet to Hay-
don. Nor was this an accident. Human incidents alike and
Nature's changeful aspects needed time to sink into his medi-
tative mind and blend with it. The slower the process the
more perfect was the crystallization, and the more definite the
resultant shape. We learn this from himself. The best com-
ment on his poetry is that derived from his own account of their
origin and aim, as in his letter to Charles James Fox. For
hints on these subjects his sister's diary is invaluable. Her
moral mind was a section of his. She had not her brother's
creative faculty, but she had that imaginative sympathy and
moral susceptibility which constitute so large a part of female
genius. She doubtless often observed for him as well as with
him ; and in what she describes we have what he saw.

We must ever bear in mind Wordsworth's philosophy
respecting the external world, in connection with the inner
world of thought, if we would understand his poetry in its rela-
tions with Nature. The most habitual intimacy with her had
in him never subdued a reverence that sometimes amounted to
awe. Near him as nature was, she also remained apart from
him. She had for him something of the supernatural, and could
never cease to be

" The resplendent Miracle."

He tells us that in boyhood he often clasped the trees to con-
vince himself that they had a substantial existence external to
his own mind. The closeness of our intimacy with nature is in-
creased through our enjoyment while inhaling her breath not
alone the fragrance of her flowers, but her winds and rains, the

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 205

smell of the leaves, the grass, and the earth itself. By a strange
fortune, or misfortune, the great Poet of Nature was almost
wholly without the sense of smell. This strange " pain of loss "
may have had for him its compensations. What was denied to
the sense in his fruition of nature may possibly have been added
to his intellectual appreciation of her. Every one must have
observed, when gliding along the water-streets of Venice, what a
saliency is imparted to their beauty by their silence. The ear
remaining unchallenged, the eye seems to have acquired a two-
fold power, and the long line of palace-fronts arrests it like a
vision. That visionary power which Nature ever exercised on
Wordsworth may also have been thus enhanced by privation.
Renunciation of the lower, even when involuntary, intensifies
our enjoyment of the higher. Thus much, at least, is certain : that
in Wordsworth's poetry, as in none beside, the beauty of nature
becomes a moral beauty, and her power a human power. The
brightness of a human face is by it descried in the grove, which,
though just touched by autumn, has not yet lost hold of its
summer glories ; and the gaze that dwells upon it is the gaze of
one who watches the physiognomic changes in a face well loved :

" Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,

The gentlest look of Spring,
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling."

In his delineations Nature ever takes her place side by side with
man. Thus in " Animal Tranquillity and Decay " :

" The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression ; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought. He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet : he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten."

So with " The Old Cumberland Beggar " :

" The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hand his alms along the ground,
But stops, that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old man's hat."

206 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [May,

Who but must share the aspiration :

" Then let him pass, a blessing on his head !
And, long as he can wander, let him breathe
The freshness of the valleys ; let his blood
Struggle with frosty air and winter snows ;
And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath
Beat his gray locks against his withered face.

As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die."

The " Solitary Reaper "is a poem which Wordsworth alone
could have written, such is the sjmipathetic softness with which
Nature and human sentiment are blended in it. To see the
maiden aright you must see " the field," and see that she is
the latest to remain in it, but not too weaned to be solaced by
her song. It lies embosomed among mountains, and

" The vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound."

The poet cannot hear it without remembering how many a
wanderer in solitudes deeper yet has been cheered by Nature's
songsters the traveller who listens beneath Arabian palms to
the night-bird close by ; the mariner who sees his native moor-
lands rise around him when first greeted by the cuckoo's call

" Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides."

He thinks now that the strain relates to "old, unhappy, far-off
things," clan-fights of days gone by, and now that it may lament
but

" Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again."

All that is certain is that this daughter of the hills bends above
her sickle and sings

" As if her song could have no ending."

The clan has lost its independence, but a silver thread of min-
strelsy binds them still to the memory of heroic days. The
poem is not an Elegy there is more of sweetness than of sad-
ness in the " melancholy strain " ; nor a Pastoral there is no-
thing in it of changeful incident ; nor a descriptive poem we
are not told whether trees diversify the field or a river engirds
it ; and had we been told more the ideality would have been

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 207

lost. It is a poem of Nature and of man, a melody at once and
a picture, a record and a reverie.

Not less characteristic are the poems on Yarrow. That le-
gend-haunted river had, while yet unseen, been so dear to the
poet that he feared to see it, lest the dream of years might
be dispelled ; and the charm of " Yarrow Unvisited " consists
in the pretended indifference with which he evades the impor-
tunity of his companion, who urged him to visit it. He sees
it ten years later, and only as he could have seen it :

" Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom,

For sportive youth to stray in ;
For manhood to enjoy his strength ;

Old age to wear away in !
Yon cottage seems a bower of bliss,

A covert for protection
Of tender thoughts that nestle there,

The brood of chaste affection."

With the pathos of the present the tragedy of the past mingles :

" Where was it that the famous Flower

Of Yarrow Vale lay bleeding ?
His bed perchance was yon smooth mound
On which the herd is feeding."

But the sorrow was transient, the sweetness perennial :

" Delicious is the lay that sings

The haunts of happy lovers ;
The path that leads them to the grove,
The leafy grove that covers :

And Pity sanctifies the verse

That paints, by strength of sorrow,
That unconquerable strength of love ;

Bear witness, rueful Yarrow ! "

At first, when Yarrow as a reality had superseded Yarrow as
a dream, the poet felt defrauded ; but by degrees dream and
vision reclaim each its own " divisum imperium " :

" I see- but not by sight alone,

Loved Yarrow, have I won thee !
A ray of Fancy still survives

Her sunshine plays upon thee !
Thy ever-youthful waters keep

A course of lively pleasure ;
And gladsome notes my lips can breathe,

Accordant to the measure."

208 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [May,

It is this blending of the inward and the outward worlds, and
again the fusion of intellect with emotion, which makes the
poetry of Wordsworth, while anything but sentimental, yet
eminently the poetry of elevated sentiment. It is never dry
thought ; it is never irrational feeling. It comes from hidden
depths of the spirit, but it weds itself in delighted sympathy
with the purity and splendor of the visible universe ; and its
Philosophy, like the Socratic Wisdom of old, walks familiarly
amid the thoroughfares and tarries at the doors of men. The
genius of Wordsworth would commonly be called " subjective,"
yet in its habit of minute observation it deserves no less to be
called objective. The union in him of those two qualities, each
in its highest degree, is one of those characteristics which
Wordsworth shares with Shakspere ; while, on the other hand,
his poetic method was in polar opposition to Shakspere's, of
whose dramatic instinct he was signally destitute. Each is a
profound thinker and a large-hearted humanist ; and they have,
therefore, far more essential resemblance to each other than
Milton possesses to either. This was early remarked on by Lan-
dor, who, in his dialogue between Southey and Person, claims for
Wordsworth a breadth of human sympathies, and power of illus-
trating human character, not put forth in an equal degree by any
other poet since our great dramatist.

Shakspere learned his insight chiefly from the stirring life of
a metropolis ; the philosophic bard mainly from the woods, the
fields, and the cottages of humble men. In the world of conven-
tion Wordsworth had as little part as they had. To him, as to
them, Nature remained the mighty Mother ; and wisdom is near
to those to whom nature is dear. That wisdom does not come
to those who can only declaim about the picturesque, but to those
in whom nature has a living part, whose yearnings are those
that she inspires, whose joys are those that she ministers, whose
sorrows are those which she consoles, whose daily round of
dutiful and neighborly life she approves. The poet who wrote
" The Churchyard among the Mountains " had considered the
ways of those laborious men, as he had " considered the lilies of
the field, which toil not, neither do they spin." He had marked
how nature, with her rough sweetness, had prompted their youth-
ful vivacities ; how, with " the strong hand of her purity," she
had corrected their aberrations ; how the wilds and the moors
had fostered their industry and those hardier virtues which
would have starved in luxurious climes ; and how the adversi-
ties of life had generated on the one hand their softer charities,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 209

and, on the other, an ascetic self-sacrifice in the form of frugality.
He had noted 'how that mighty Mother had spoken to their
souls of a mightier Father in whose law there was peace, and
in whose promise there was hope. He had noted that, while
the rich live among their fancies, the poor live mainly among
the great verities of nature health with its triumphant strength,
or depressing sickness ; that rest was a real joy to those who
had labored all day, and the prayer for " daily bread " a real
prayer for those whose daily food was uncertain. The truthful-
ness of his own heart made dear to him the society of those who
lived among great truths ; and though he disclaimed the love of
"personal talk," no one enjoyed it more when it was free from
frivolity and detraction, and no one learned from it wiser lessons.
He was interested by the wayfarer's tale, by the babble of the
child ; and when new forms of industry had banished the spin-
ning-wheel from the cottage floor his ear missed, as we learn from
the sonnet which he alone could have written, that soothing
sound every tone of which was in harmony with a virtue, or
with some condition of life proximate to a virtue. When the
cottage dame no longer put on "fresh raiment," spun from the
" daintiest fleece," in honor of the Easter morn ; when at Christ-
mas the village church no longer drew to its ivied chancel the
mountain peasant through the winter snow, his verse lamented
the loss of ancient pieties which long had won

" Their pensive light from a departed sun ";

but he still found consolation in the pure morals and in those
ancient manners, their " viewless fence," which had long lived
on, protected by their rocky ramparts :

" Hail, usages of pristine mould,
And ye who guard them, mountains old ! "

But for Wordsworth external Nature had offices yet more
holy. She was not intended, he believed, to feed man's body
only, but his soul also. She was an hourly ministrant of peaceful
gladness to many an unconscious recipient who served God well
by gratefully accepting his gifts. For him Matter was but the
shadow of Spirit, and all things fair and good on earth were
but types of things yet higher subsisting in the Ideas of the
Divine Creator. The Psalmist had said that the ways of God
are like the firmament, and his counsels like the chambers of
the deep. The converse statement must, then, be equally true :
the firmament and the seas must be material symbols of things
VOL. xxxix. u

2io THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [May,

spiritual and supernatural. We read that "as the mountains
stand around Jerusalem," so God protects his people ; if the
higher is like the lower, then the lower must have been so
placed, in relation with the human mind, as to elicit the idea
of the higher, otherwise doubtless as inconceivable to man
as to the inferior animals. That things visible actually rep-
resent things invisible is the confession of language itself; for
such words as sweetness, brightness, greatness, harmony, stabi-
lity are applied to both classes alike. A materialistic philosophy
affirms, indeed, that material things are the sole realities, and that
the terms in which we describe them are but metaphors when
applied to spiritual things ; but it is easier to make this confident
assumption than to disprove the converse assertion made by a
spiritual philosophy viz., that things spiritual are the realities,
and that the material world was created after their image, as man
was created after the Image of God. Our inferior faculties have
an earlier development than our nobler. Our dealings with
things around us precede our dealings with the things above us ;
but what is the inference from this ? Only that the lower is first
in the field, that it may minister to the higher. Language, which
is largely formed from material things, enables man to make
inquiry respecting spiritual things ; but it could never have
prompted the instinct to make such inquiry, if it were not that
in the mind of man the Ideas of things spiritual are innate, or
at least exist potentially. The sea, though vast, is finite ; yet its
vastness suffices to elicit the idea of the Infinite, not, however,
in an animal, but in man in whose mind that idea abides ; and if
we stand in delight looking down through its translucent depths,
this is

" Because the unstained, the clear, the crystalline
Have ever in them something of benign ;
Whether in gem, in water, or in sky,
A sleeping infant's brow, or wakeful eye
Of some young maiden, only not divine." *

It is obvious that this estimate of the visible universe, if
sound at all, must apply to the whole of Nature, even to her
minuter details, though her significance will be best understood
in proportion as the scene she offers to our regard is charac-
teristically beautiful, and as the beholder's imaginative sensi-
bility has been trained aright. If he be but a beginner he will
have to spell out Nature's language letter by letter ; if he be

* Wordsworth, " Sonnet by the Sea-shore, Isle of Man."

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 211

her apt scholar he will be able to read sentences ; and his delight
will not be the less because her meanings are expressed not dis-
tinctly, but vaguely. Music has a meaning, if it be true music ;
and we express that meaning vaguely when we apply to it such
terms as pathetic, mirthful, impassioned, warlike, or religious;
but if we are required to be definite we reply that the ideas of
Beethoven or Mozart are already expressed in the language of
notes ; that they cannot be definitely expressed in words ; but that
their presence may not be doubted, since in their absence we
should have but that senseless music which Coleridge compared
to a school-boy's nonsense-verses. It is thus that the Words-
worthian Philosophy regards a beautiful landscape as a coherent
whole. Every one not blind is struck by a forcible passage, here
and there, in Nature's open book ; but to one who is acquainted
with her language she pours forth a continuous strain ; stanza
after stanza of her Ode, her Elegy, or her Pastoral coming out
upon him in exquisite succession, as he confronts her mountain
ranges, or advances along the glen, or tracks the stream in its
windings through woodlands, pasture, and flowery mead.

Now, among the high offices of poetry, as a " virtuous art,"
and consequently as a truthful art, one is this : to bring out Na-
ture's meanings in their fulness to those who otherwise would
but have caught glimpses of them occasionally persons who are
without that keener insight which is at once creation and percep-
tion, but who are not without a responsive sensibility. She has to
teach them first Nature's characteristics ; and nothing is charac-
teristic without being essential Truth. A skilful Dutch picture
gives to a poultry-yard or the interior of a kitchen an interest
which we do not find in the original. There is no object which
does not admit of being idealized ; but the process of idealiza-
tion consists not in an attempt to ornament, but to represent
truly what is characteristic. Objects which we should Vpass
without regard please us in a picture from the truth of the
representation, the painter's eye having discerned that which
belongs to them essentially, while an ordinary eye would have
dwelt as much on the irrelevant* and the accidental. It is thus
that genuine art is more true, not indeed than the Nature which
it imitates, but than that Nature as seen by an undiscriminating
eye. The true artist idealizes by a process the opposite of the
false artist. The latter adds to what he copies, something which
he fancies to be flattering, but which is simply incongruous and
unmeaning ; the true artist takes away what is incongruous, and
what remains is the characteristic and the true. The bad artist

2i2 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [May,

thus adds detail to detail while he remains ever within the limits
of the merely individual, and thus makes his portrait a carica-
ture, even though it may be a " beautified " caricature ; while
the true artist brings out in his portrait the great generic type
of Humanity by subtracting from it the accidents ever found
in flesh and blood, while at the same time he emphasizes what is
generically characteristic in the countenance copied. In other
words, he creates while he copies, by seeing the Truth and repre-
senting it stripped of disguise. Such is the poet's function in his
delineations of Nature. He has to see its Truth and express it.
He expresses it mainly by eliciting its Beauty ; for Truth and
Beauty are but different aspects of the same thing as regarded by
Reason "or by Imagination. The eye of a dog is moKe powerful
than that of a man, and not a bush or brake escapes his remark
or fades from his memory. But he has not the higher Reason
of man ; and therefore for him neither the Truth nor the Beauty
of Nature exists. He sees objects, but does not see the land-
scape, as he hears the sounds but does not hear the music.
When the poet has fulfilled his mission aright that Truth of
Nature which he has elicited flashes forth into Beauty ; that
Beauty breaks into life; and the voice which it utters is Na-
ture's hymn of praise to her Creator. That voice is always as-
cending from Nature's lips, but inaudibly to the many: when
the true poet holds up his shell the hymn is heard.

It is heard by those who have a true ear. Though Nature has
ever a meaning in her landscape, she is contented to adumbrate
that meaning, and does not always choose to speak it plainly. It
is thus that she speaks best ; for which reason her most striking
scenes are often not the most beautiful, not those which we re-
member best and to which we would most gladly return. She
does not " cry aloud " ; her voice is low and persuasive : there are
other voices those of Duty and of Faith which address the
<soul with a more imperative authority, and she is often contented
to sustain their loftier music with an accompaniment in un-
dertone. If the seer is forbidden to prophesy " unless he in-
terpret also," Nature has her interpreter in the true poet of
Nature. But he, too, speaks to the few, not the many.
His function is to make her meanings intelligible to the willing
apprehension, not to the reluctant, the self-absorbed, or the dull.
He, too, has to remember that as there are departments of thought
in which, as in science, our knowledge cannot be too distinct, so
there are others in which knowledge comes to us both most safely
and most with power when it falls on us like mountain out-

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 213

lines seen through mist. There are meanings which must be
felt before they are apprehended, and which are not felt unless a
certain degree of mystery clings about them. A poet who pro-
fesses to set forth Nature's meanings as plainly as if he were
translating her words is apt to read his own meanings into
Nature. He makes her allegorize ; and this is not her way even
though it is true that without parables she does not open her
mouth.

We have affirmed that Wordsworth is the poet of Nature
in a sense special to him. The assertion admits of many tests.
Here is one of them : Let the thoughtful reader compare the
really Wordsworthian descriptive poems with those two early
poems, " An Evening Walk " and " Descriptive Sketches," writ-
ten with ability and witnessing to an ardent love of Nature,
but written also before his genius had matured itself and
thrown off the recollections of the eighteenth century. He will
perceive little resemblance between the authentic and the un-
authentic inspiration. Here is a second test: Let him compare
them next with "A Night-Piece/' "Waterfowl," "View from
Black Comb," and "The Haunted Tree" ; these are poems of a
purer taste, and as literal descriptions they are effective. But
one feels that they were poetic exercises, or records kept in a
poet's diary. These, too, are not in the higher Wordsworthian
spirit. Its power, its pathos, and its wisdom are not in them.
They were written "sine numine," though not without discern-
ment, feeling, and skill. A third test may be added : Take the
best descriptive passages in Thomson or Cowper, and com-
pare them with Wordsworth. The difference is that between
mere veracity and spiritual truth, or between eloquence and
great poetry. Still more striking is the contrast if we turn to
such intensely Wordsworthian poems as " Influence of Natural
Objects" and " Yew-Trees."

The two last poems represent a special variety of Words-
worth's descriptive poetry, in which observation is neither de-
tained by the beauty of the object described, nor works as a
servant of memory, but becomes mastered by the imagination,
seeing Nature with an eye that more than " half creates," and
adding to Nature's Truth

" The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream."

Even in him, however, such description is exceptional. That na-
ture which he loves best to describe is nature not when it re^

214 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [May,

fleets the rapt moods of an extraordinary mind, but nature as
she is loved by the general heart of man, as she brightens the
dejected, consoles the unhappy, yields its reward to industry,
gives rest to the weary the brook that has taught the child his
first lesson of hardihood ; the river on which rival oarsmen have
measured their strength ; the thicket that heard the youth's first
declaration of love ; the bridge " crowned with the minster tow-
ers," and on which the cripple asked for alms ; the churchyard
sombre with the groves of death. The nature which has min-
istered to God's creatures and mirrored human life is Words-
worth's nature. And in the main it is a nature as gladsome
as it is serene, though it has nooks which might well be called

" Apt confessionals for one
Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,
That Life is but a tale of morning grass
Withered at eve."

Carlyle's view of human life was a gloomy one ; to him the
earth presented an aspect full of Fortune's irony and the implaca-
bility of fate. It yielded, indeed, even if with seeming reluc-
tance, a reward to persevering virtue and a field for the labors of
valiant men ; but it was filled with stains and shams, and deserved
the tyrannous tread that stamped it down. Far other was the
aspect which the life of man bore in Wordsworth's eyes. It had,
indeed, its woes, deeper than those which the selfish and the weak
cannot face ; but its sorrows, too, were sanative, and the sword
of God that pierced carried with it a healing virtue, from the
hour when childhood was sufficient to itself,

" As a faggot sparkles on the hearth
Not less if unattended, and alone,
Than when both young and old sit gathered round,"

to the years when age, full of hope because true to faith,

" Rejoices secretly
In the sublime attractions of the grave."

All things, he maintained, are " full of blessings." While we are
in health every breath we draw is a satisfaction ; the humblest
green field is a comfort to the eye, every sound of Nature, almost,
is pleasant to the ear; man's laws may be bad, but a divine law
continues to fecundate the earth with all the charities of house
and home. The oppressor cannot hinder the violet from reap-
pearing, or restrain the hawthorn from renewing its snowy bloom,
or reprove hearts as spotless when they spring to meet it. A fair

1884.] WOKDSWOKTtfS POETXY. 21$

picture must have its shadows as well as its light, and the un-
guilty sorrows of human life are but such shadows. This is the
estimate of man's lot takeirby one whose poetry never contented
itself with being the idle pastime of a vacant day, never shunned
the painful side of things, and never railed against the appointed
trials of humanity. It was because he had faced those trials
that Wordsworth saw what a light of consolation mingled with
them and spread beyond them. He had had personal expe-
rience of bereavement, poverty, and a disappointment perhaps
the deepest which he could have known that of his political
hopes for man.

Wordsworth's genius was made strong by a moral faith, in
the absence of which imaginative soarings bequeath but exhaus-
tion and dejection. It was part of his Credo that man's race ad-
vances

" With an ascent and progress in the main."

He believed that the pessimist estimate of things proceeded but
from the lack of a faculty accorded to teach us truth, not fiction
the Imagination :

" 'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind."

He bade the poets and the artists be sure that

" A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
A soaring spirit is their prime delight,"

and that he who possesses

" Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse ''
must also

" Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness."

Hope, he asserts, is " the paramount duty " which God lays on
us ; he insists on it that

" In all men sinful is it to be slow
To hope " ;

and even in the churchyard he listens to the
" Jubilate from the choirs of spring."

The cynical poet and the whining poet sing as if nature and
man's liie were nothing but the blundering workmanship or

216 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

bad jest of an evil power; that is, they see them unwisely and
report them untruly. What Wordsworth sees in them is pre-
dominantly (though he does not fail to see also " what man
has made of man ") the essential splendor left on them by the
Face of the Creator when he looked and beheld "that they
were very good." To see thus is to see the Truth ; and that
Wordsworth thus sees and thus witnesses is the " Wisdom and
the Truth " of his poetry.

HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS.*

THE editor of a popular newspaper once remarked to us that
when he wanted news he found a way to manufacture some-
thing. If this be a good device for journalism it is surely a
bright idea for histories. Catechisms are for all Protestant sects
a matter of manufacture, since the principle of private judgment
applies to all questions of faith. The church has no authority
whatever ; and each individual being for himself the sole judge,
there can be no objection to every man having a catechism of
his own, as he has his own creed. The only logical difficulty
here is the teaching of one man's catechism to children, thus
intruding upon their inexperienced minds and interfering with
their right to judge for themselves. We have never seen how
any Protestant sect could logically teach any catechism. Still,
each man will probably be zealous for his own opinion, and such
inconsistencies will arise. There will be such things as creeds
which are open to the private interpretation of every one. But
the catechism treads upon more dangerous ground and ventures
to explain the creed, thus teaching dogmatically, and even enter-
ing upon the domain of history. Let it be, however, understood
that the whole business is free to all, and that every mind must
apply its own judgment to the catechism as well as to the creed.
If this be not good Protestantism we fail to grasp its character.

The same blessed privilege applies to histories. If there are
none made to suit let them be supplied. It is easy to find almost
anything in the records of nineteen centuries. Let the enter-
prising student choose for himself. He can perhaps persuade

* Studies on the English Reformation. By J. Williams, D.D., Bishop of Connecticut.
Instruction- Books for Sunday-schools. Edited by the Right Rev. W. C. Doane, S.T.D.
Manuals of Christian Doctrine. By the Rev. Walter Gwynne.

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 217

himself of anything he chooses to believe, and, after sufficient
effort, black will seem white to his eyes. Since the days of what
is called the blessed Reformation the grand principle of private
judgment has been fully applied to history, and the studies in
this department have often been attempts, more or less success-
ful, to support private opinions.

Such reflections have occurred to us on reading the volumes
which we have named on the foregoing page. The Studies on
the English Reformation are quite curious, and, in the line of
special pleading, quite remarkable. The Manuals of Christian
Doctrine may seem refreshing to the few friends of the Anglo-Co-.
tholic school ; and surely these active people need some little re-
freshment amid the persecutions of their own great branch of the
One Church. We would not grudge them this cup of cold water,
though it be not taken in the name of a disciple. But to all
others, the great majority of their own communion, not to
mention the other brandies of the Catholic Church, these enter-
prising catechisms are funny beyond all expression. The Hon.
Mark Twain never accomplished anything so facetious, even
when his Innocents went all abroad.

We have no hope of converting to the truth the authors of
these bright books. They are believers in their own infallibility,
and wisdom will probably die with them. Still, it may be of
some use to hold the mirror before them, and let them see what
others among the great branches of the church think of their
curious performances. We will select, therefore, a few points,
and seek to throw upon them the light of Protestant authorities.
When doctors disagree who shall settle the dispute? And all
we say shall be said in the interest of truth. Who can say
whether the seed shall fall upon the wayside, or upon good
ground where some fruit may spring up for God's glory ?

It has been a favorite plan of apologists for the Reformation
to confound doctrine with discipline and morals with faith. The
Son of God, who founded the church, never promised to keep all
men, nor any class of men, not even the priests and princes of his
people, from sin. He did promise to keep his church from error
in faith. He did found it on Peter and promise that the gates
of hell should not prevail against it. It will be just and right to
be severe upon the sins of any Catholics, and especially upon the
offences of the hierarchy or sacred priesthood. But it will be a
false and dishonest argument to seek to conclude therefrom the
failure of the church in faith. The moment the church of God
teaches falsehood in faith she ceases to be the church, fails

218 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

utterly, and proves her Founder to be a liar. Much is said in
these Studies on the English Reformation about the wickedness
and corruption of the Catholic world. Stress is laid upon the
vices which at various times have prevailed at Rome, the centre
of Christianity. Our own opinion is that at all times the city
of Peter has been distinguished by great virtues, and that the
corruption of morals has been less there than in an}' part of the
world. Everything that malignant hate could do to blacken
the character of the popes has been done; but nothing has been
really proved against the life of any of the long line of pontiffs
while on the papal throne. Yet let it pass. What does it all
amount to, but to show that men are men and that God keeps
his treasures in earthen vessels? That the divine wisdom has
kept the faith pure and entire in the hands of sinful men is the
great proof of the mission of the Son of God and of the super-
natural character of the church which he founded. The author
of the Studies seeks to gather from the admission by Catholic
writers of the need of reformation in morals that they have con-
ceded the corruption of faith. This they could not do, and this
they never did. There is a quotation from a letter of Adrian
VI. in which this pontiff is represented as holding the errancy of
the popes in questions of faith. It is given in the text as if he,
while pope, had uttered such an opinion, although there may be
no intention to thus misrepresent him. A careful investigation
of the whole matter renders it at least doubtful if he speaks of
the popes in their official capacity, and it is certain that he does
not speak of the pontiff teaching ex cathedra. Moreover, the
language attributed to him is simply his private opinion as a
professor of theology at Utrecht. It is false that he permitted
the republication of his work when he was pope. It was pub-
lished against his will and before his arrival in Rome. The
church does not hold the inerrancy of the Supreme Pontiff as a
private individual. But the words quoted if, indeed, they are
accurately quoted are not the words of Adrian VI., but of the
cardinal before his election to the papacy. Perrone (De R. P. In-
fallibilitate, p. 152) states that there is no utterance of this kind in
his works published at Rome in 1522.

The author of the Studies lays great weight upon the words
of Gerson, as if he held that the church could err, while in the
sense intended by the quotation no Catholic could for one mo-
ment be supposed to speak.

The learned Dr. Williams has not one glimpse of the apos-
tolic church, nor the least conception of what it is to be a Cat ho-

1 884.] HISTORIES AND CA TECH ISMS. 2 1 9

lie. In regard to the powers of the Vicar of Christ, Gerson has
these words : " He alone can compile the symbol of faith ; he
alone can treat of the causes of faith, and other greater ques-
tions ; he alone, as is actually done, makes definitions, laws, and
canons. Whatever is defined, decreed, published, or established
by others is void and of no effect. No constitution of any other,
whatever it may be, binds him. I am very much in error if this
tradition, even before the celebration of the sacred Council of
Constance, did not so hold the minds of the greater number that
the teacher of the opposite opinion would not have been con-
demned of heretical pravity " (De Pot estate Ecclesiastica, ii. p. 247).

The University of Paris, in a theological treatise offered to
Clement VII., thus speaks: "The first conclusion is that it per-
tains to the holy, Apostolic See to define by supreme judicial
authority the things which are of faith. And this is proved, be-
cause to define judicially belongs to the authority of that Supreme
Judge whose faith never fails ; because of this Holy See, in the
person of Peter, it was said : ' I have prayed for thee that thy
faith fail not.' "

Wherefore, says Cyprian, " He that deserts the chair of Peter,
upon which the church is founded, how does he prove that he is
in the church?"

And Jerome declares: "Upon him is the church founded,
and he that gathers not with the Roman Pontiff, scatters " (Maz-
zella, De Religione, p. 852).

If we mistake not the author of the Studies, he charges the
whole church with corruption in doctrine. He says: "Prac-
tical evils in the church have, as a rule, their roots in doctrine."
Quoting Bossuet, he declares, that his words " are a perversion
ot the truth '' when he affirms that not one of the doctors who
called for reformation in morals " even for once thought of
changing the faith of the church, or of correcting her worship,
or of subverting the authority of her prelates, and chiefly that of
the pope."

His view is, therefore, that the Catholic Church had become
corrupt in faith, and so had ceased to be a safe guide to any
one.

The Manual of Christian Doctrine says that " the Church of
England, in the course of several centuries, became corrupt in
doctrine and practice, like most of the other churches in Eu-
rope."

If we mistake not, the conclusion to be drawn from this is
that the Lord Jesus Christ for many centuries had nowhere a

220 ' HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

pure church. In connection with this assertion of the complete
failure of Christianity the author of the Studies attacks the be-
lief in a present church, and asserts a successional church in its
place. We understand this to mean that the existing church in any
age is not the teacher of truth, but the faith is to be learned from
historical investigation of the teaching of all ages. Of course he
does not refer to tradition properly so called, which is a rule of
faith to the Ecclesia docens, but to the private interpretation of the
individual. We humbly aver that a church which has lost the
faith or corrupted it is no authority whatever to any one at any
time. And when the enterprising historian has fixed the time
when the church was corrupt, we insist that he must exclude this
time from his studies. In honesty those who are not believers
in a present church are not believers in any church at all, since
the churches of preceding centuries are not now in existence, and
are nothing.

We do not propose to argue this question here. We only
say that those who admit that the church at any time has erred
in faith, have really destroyed the whole institution of Christ.
The devil could not have a better instrument than a church
teaching falsehood. The Manual of Christian -Doctrine tells us
that " the church of God is a creation of God, and not a work of
man." Yet it also .teaches us that this " creation of God " has
signally failed by a corruption of many centuries.

To this glaring contradiction of common sense and Holy Scrip-
ture we simply add the following quotations :

" Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the
world " (St. Matthew xxviii. 20).

"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it " (St. Matthew xvi. 18).

" For this cause did the Lord take the ointment on his head, that he
might breathe incorruption upon his church " (St. Ignatius, Ep. to the Ephe-
sians}.

" The Spouse of Christ cannot become adulterate ; she is undefiled and
chaste. She owns but one home ; with spotless purity she guards the
sanctity of one chamber " (St. Cyprian, De Unttate).

" The gates of hel shall not prevail against the church. I consider the
gates of hell to be vices and sins, or certainly the doctrines of heretics, by
which men are enticed and led to hell " (St. Jerome, t. iii. 1. iii. in Matt.)

"There follows in the Creed the holy church. . . . God and his temple
have been shown you. This is the holy church, the one church, the true
church, the Catholic Church, which fights against all heresies. She may
fight, but cannot be defeated " (St. Augustine, t. iv. De Symbold).

" I believe, the holy Catholic Church, that thou mayest acknowledge a
church, the spouse of Christ which will abide in the uninterrupted society
of Christ " (St. Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 61).

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 221

It is quite evident that the author of Studies on the Reforma-
tion never made, nor could make, an act of faith in the church.
And as there was, according to his theory, a time when the uni-
versal church was corrupt, there was then " no pillar and ground
of the truth." It will be also observed that the private judgment
of each individual is the sole authority to determine the extent
of this corruption. The corrupt church could not well be relied
upon ; and even if it were it has no authority to speak.

Another point in this luminous view of the body of Jesus
Christ is that, while the greater part of the church was sunk in
the depths of vice and error, the time came when a portion of
this corrupt mass arose and purified itself. To use the exact
language of the Manual before us, " it arose and washed itself."
This is the theory also of the Studies. The Continental churches
went too far and were guilty of revolution, which ruined every-
thing. The Church of England was just the wise one, who
washed himself and did not wash himself away. The dirt came
off, and behold the spectacle of primitive purity which the world
had not seen since Pentecost. " The vision of a national autono-
mous church, holding the faith, orders, and liturgy of the uni-
versal church, and subject only to a free and lawful general
council, looms up indistinctly but unmistakably in the petition of
Convocation in 1531, and takes on shape and consistency till it
stands out a living thing in 1534." * What a blessed looming this
is, of a coming into life of a thing which was not living till 1534!
How like the phoenix it arose from its ashes to spread its wings
in its national autonomy / Here, to cast more light upon the
vision, we quote the catechism : " By a vote of the two Convoca-
tions the Church of England declared that the Roman bishop has
no greater jurisdiction given him by God in this kingdom than
any other foreign bishop. And she gradually reformed her doc-
trines and practices." " At this time the Bishop of Rome commit-
ted a great schism." What did he do? Why, "he ceased to
hold communion " with this national, pure, and autonomous church.
The more is the pity ; but this is nothing to what he had done
before. " In 1054 he separated himself from the Eastern or Greek
churches." Then he completed his iniquity by " establishing a
Roman Catholic sect in England which is only three hundred
years old." It is a beautiful theory, and it " looms " upon us like a
thing of beauty which is a joy for ever. It is delightful to teach
children these fairy-tales. The Arabian Nights were never read in

* Studies, p. 122.

222 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

the Sunday-schools ; but these catechisms are more marvellous.
And schism is a deadly sin, and especially when the body commit-
ting schism is so large and the true church is so very small. Let
us, however, draw near and look at this spectacle of a church
washing itself, and not washing too much nor too long. It was not
an ordinary wash, for it washed away a part of its faith. Sup-
pose we find that, after all, it did not wash itself, but that it was
washed pretty well against its will, and by hands that were any-
thing but clean !

We will proceed to quote from Protestant historians to show
that this washing was not done by the church itself, but that the
ecclesiastical body was bound hand and foot, and then washed
until there was nothing left of it. This point is important, be-
cause it shows the romance of the catechism, and opens another
field of inquiry whether those who did this washing had any
divine commission to do it.

Rev. R. W. Dixon, vicar of Hayton, in his history of the
Church of England, thus testifies :

"The Church of England was so handled by the Assembly which began
to sit (1529) as she had never been handled before. This was the Parlia-
ment which, by successive acts, within a few years took away much of the
ancient liberties of the church ; which caused her to renounce all depen-
dence upon the See of Rome ; and which backed the king in his contest
with the Convocations of the clergy." "A full generation at least of the
fiercest hacking and hewing followed ere the ancient system was spread
upon the ground. The fury of a great revolution fell first, as in all such
cases, upon religion and the church."

" The church was taken out of the hands of the clergy, to be managed
by the laity. The king and the temporal estates overruled the spirituality.
If the church had been left to her proper officers to be reformed, and the
needful compulsion given to them which it was always in the power of the
king and the temporality to apply, the state of the nation would have been
better at this day." " It is not known that the Parliament condescended to
consult the Convocation on any of their measures, according to the ancient
custom of the realm."

"The struggle now actually commencing between the king and the
clergy, which ended in the victory of the former, consisted of two great
parts or actions, rapidly succeeding each other, in which the spiritual juris-
diction was destroyed. The first was the Praemunire, which led to the
king's new title of the supreme head of the church. The second was the
supplication of the Commons, of the year following, which brought about
the formal submission of the clergy." "The papal jurisdiction or authority
in spirituals was not the object of Henry's attack, but the liberties of the
Church of England. The proof of this is that the pope's jurisdiction fell
after the fall of these liberties, not before it. The pope's jurisdiction fell
inconsequence of the fall of those liberties; and they were not abridged

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 223

that it might be abrogated." "The Convocation of the clergy of Canter-
bury, when the thunderbolt of the Commons fell upon them, was actually
engaged in making canons. These laws would have been sufficient, if they
had been enforced, to have freed the church from her worst corruptions,
while they preserved her ancient jurisdiction. They never became laws
upon her authority. The power of making laws was taken from her be-
fore they could pass through her assemblies. In this, as in so many other
things, the clerical reformation was stopped by violence."

" The famous submission of the clergy ran thus : ' We your most humble
subjects and beadsmen, of your clergy of England, having our special
trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely good-
ness, and fervent zeal in the promotion of God's honor and Christian re-
ligion, do offer and promise in verbo sacerdotii here unto your highness,
submitting ourselves most humbly to the same, that we will never from
henceforth enact, promulge, or execute any new canons or constitutions
provincial, or any other new ordinance, only as your highness by your
royal assent shall license us to assemble our convocation, and thereto
give your royal assent and authority.' "

.The second part of this servile submission agrees to abrogate
any previous ordinances which seemed prejudicial to the royal
prerogative. At this time we presume the autonomous Church of
England began to loom. We cannot see it. We see a king, but
no church. Much less do.we see any autonomy.

"A great tyrant," says Dix*on, speaking of Henry VIII., who washed
the English church, "tries the nature of men. Under him all were dis-
torted, all were made worse than they would have been." "The burden of
these crimes is laid, as a matter of course, by one writer after another, upon
the clergy, and especially upon the bishops; but the reader will, by this
time have perceived that the clergy had wonderfully little to do with them ;
that they broke out whenever the king desired it, and ceased at his com-
mand." " That such a king was on the throne was the circumstance which,
above all others, brought on the Reformation."

We quote now a few passages from the history of Dr. Short,
one of the English bishops :

"The existence of the Church of England as a distinct body, and her
final separation from Rome, may be dated from the period of the divorce "
(PP- 53> 54)- " Henry now suspended all the bishops from the use of their
episcopal authority ; and after a time the power of exercising it was re-
stored by a commission which was granted to each of them on their peti-
tioning for it. It must be confessed that this commission seems rather to
outstep the limits of that authority which God has committed to the civil
magistrate ; but in this case there was no opposition raised on the part
of the bishops, excepting by Gardiner " ( 201).

"The plan of reformation pursued by Cranmer was to entrust the task
of reforming any particular branch of church matters to a committee of
divines appointed by the crown, sometimes on the ground of the eccle-

224 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

siastical supremacy, and sometimes under an act of parliament, and then to
sanction the result by a fresh bill, or by publishing it under the royal
authority." "This method of proceeding maybe esteemed very uncon-
stitutional with regard to the Convocation j but if the supreme authority be
lodged in the chief magistrate, in him, too, must be vested the power of
finally approving or rejecting all regulations with regard to the service of
the church." "The Articles of Religion published in 1553 might appear
from their title to have derived their authority from Convocation ; but if
they were ever submitted to the upper house, which is very questionable,
it is indubitable that they were never brought before the lower, while all
the original mandates which remain prove that they were promulgated by
the royal proclamation alone " ( 338, 484).

The English bishop Burnet, in his History of the Reformation,
refers to the submission of the clergy in 1532, when, according to
Dr. Williams, the autonomous church began to loom. " By this
submission," he says, " all the opposition which the Convocations
would probably have given to every step that was afterwards
made in the Reformation was so entirely restrained that the
quiet progress of that work was owing \a-the restraints under
wJiich the clergy put themselves by their submission " (vol. iii. 120).

The Rev. F. G. Lee, an English clergyman, vicar of All-
Saints', Lambeth, thus writes: " Humanly speaking, the severance
of England from the rest of Christendom in religious and ec-
clesiastical matters, and the repudiation of the primacy of the
Apostolic See, were brought about by the king's divorce of his
lawful wife and his alliance with Anne Boleyn. The complica-
tions then caused ended in the visible separation of England from
Catholic nations on the Continent, and have sealed her continued
irreligious isolation ever since " (History of the Reformation, p. 289).

The Rev. Mr. Lee evidently does not see the autonomy, nor
does he admire the washing of which the catechism treats. For
he thus speaks of the doings of 1534, when, according to Dr.
Williams, the autonomous church became a living- thing : " Grave
and startling changes were introduced by which the traditions
of nine centuries, common to every other part of the family of
God, were abolished. That innovation, however, was sufficient
to amaze and startle which had taken away from the pope all
such authority as by obvious necessity had existed in England
since the days of St. Augustine. For the kingdom of Christ was
universal and world-wide, its laws being framed for all nations,
while the kingdom of England was, comparatively speaking, new
and national " (pp. 224, 225). Knight's Popular History of En-
gland thus speaks of the great epoch 1534 :

"The parliament assembled in November, 1534, had some root-and-

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 225

branch work to do at the bidding of its imperious master." "The most
arbitrary man that ever wielded the large prerogatives of sovereignty had
now united in his person the temporal and spiritual supremacy." " The
crown had become all in all. The whole system of human intercourse in
England was to be subordinated to one head, king and pope in one." "No
Amurath of the Turks could write more insolently to his provincial slaves
than Henry of England wrote to his sheriffs." "The higher clergy were
terrified into the most abject submission before this spiritual lord. The
Lords and the Commons crawled at his feet." "The ecclesiastical authority
which had regulated the English Church for eight hundred years was
gone " (vol. ii. pp. 356, 357).

The Studies on the Reformation, while not wholly approving
the conduct of Henry VIII., seek to apologize for the Act of
Supremacy and to find some precedent in the conduct of Chris-
tian kings of England who preceded him. Even Dr. Williams
cannot approve of Henry's whole conduct, nor of the acts of his
lay vicar-general. Still, in all he sees much to be thankful for,
and beneath all tyranny and humiliations of the clergy he be-
holds the blessed autonomy. The Rev. Mr. Lee is not of his mind.
He says : " The idea of an English monarch claiming or owning a
supreme spiritual jurisdiction, which of course implies the right
and power of correcting and redressing heresies and errors, and
pronouncing finally upon matters of faith and practice, never
before entered into the minds either of monarch or people "
(Sketches, p. 9). There were no such Christian kings as Henry
VIII. before his time. Mr. Lee says again, quoting another
English clergyman, whose language he commends :

"The royal supremacy over the Church of England has been called,
I think, by some one the brightest jewel hi the Rngltsh crown. But it is a
jewel which has been stolen from the crown of the Incarnate God. Let us
replace it where only it has a right to be. On any other brow, on any other
diadem, but that of Christ it shines with an ominous gleam, which is a
sign of wrath and vengeance against all who have taken part or are im-
plicated in the robbery which transferred it from him to those with whom
it ought not to be."

And he adds:

"The ritual conflict, important enough in itself, is of slender interest
in comparison to that of authority, jurisdiction, and spiritual indepen-
dence." " To the parsons the question will come, Will you have subser-
vience, slavery, and spiritual degradation with your useful and convenient
endowments,^ are you ready to surrender your temporal advantages for
the sake of perfect spiritual freedom ? " (Lee, pp. 410, 411).

The Studies on the Reformation would seem to evade the plain
meaning of words and the more indubitable language of facts.
VOL. xxxix. 15

226 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

11 The Act of Supremacy was repealed in 1553, and never revived
in its original form. Elizabeth refused the title * Supreme
Head,' and substituted for it that of ' Supreme Governor ' as
well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes as tem-
poral." This curious view of the supremacy of the crown needs
some preparation of mind to understand it. The restoration of
the liberties of the church which had been washed away took
place among the first acts of Queen Mary's reign in 1553. And
when Elizabeth came to the throne the statutes of Henry VIII.
were revived. This took place in the parliament of 1559, when
once more royalty was invested with ecclesiastical supremacy.
We do not see the great difference between the title of governor
and that of head. The meaning was entirely the same, and the
oath required of her subjects implied all that Henry VIII. ever
demanded. Indeed, the obligation to take this oath was extend-
ed to all the functionaries of the crown as well as to clergymen.
All laymen suing out the livery of their lands were obliged to
take it. Not one of the bishops except Landaff consented to take
it, and they were therefore deprived of their sees. The bishops
created then by the mandate of the crown were the obedient
slaves of Elizabeth. And from that day to this, as Dr. Williams
knows, the bishops of the English Church have had no power
whatever to make laws or determine questions of faith. The
bishops are only ornamental, and the last appeal in every con-
troversy is to the crown.

" The bishops," says Macaulay, " were little more than Eliza-
beth's ministers. By the royal authority alone the prelates of
the Church of England were appointed. By the royal autho-
rity alone her Convocations -were summoned, regulated, pro-
rogued, and dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons
had no force. One of the articles of her faith was that without
the royal consent no ecclesiastical council could lawfully assem-
ble " (History of England, i. 62). " Her bishops," says Froude,
11 Elizabeth treated with studied insolence as creatures of her
own, whom she had made, and could unmake at her pleasure."
" To an episcopacy so constituted the most extreme Presbyterian
would not long have objected." " Pretensions which many of
them would have gladly abandoned have connected their office
with a smile" " The latest and most singular theory about them
is that of the modern English Neo-Catkolic, who disregards his
bishop's advice and despises his censures, but looks upon him
nevertheless as some high-bred, worn-out animal, useless in him-
self, but infinitely valuable for some mysterious purpose of spiri-

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 227

tual propagation " (Hist, of England, xi. 100, xii. 577-579). " The
oath of homage," says Rev. Mr. Lee, already quoted, " which the
bishops still take on their knees before the sovereign, asserts that
all spiritual and temporal authority and jurisdiction come from
the monarch. This is a very wide and large assertion, and cov-
ers so much. A recent writer, the Rev. J. H. Blunt (who is also
an enterprising student), holds ' that the courage of the clergy in
Convocation under Henry VIII. secured under God's providence
the future freedom of the church '; but those who use the term
freedom in its ordinary sense, and remember the course of eccle-
siastical legislation from the days of Thomas Cromwell to the
time of Lord Penzance, /will scarcely agree with him. The na-
tional church is as much subject to the crown as is the Board of
Trade or the Admiralty " (Sketches, 108, 109). Wonderful mag-
nifying-glasses and a distorted vision must be necessary to see
any autonomy here. Rather, with Cardinal Newman, we " see in
the English Church not merely no descent from the first ages, and
no relationship to the church in other lands, but we see no body
politic of any kind. We see nothing more nor less than an Es-
tablishment, a department of government, or a function or opera-
tion of the state. Its unity and personality are gone, and with
them its power of exciting feelings of any kind. As a thing
without a soul, it does not contemplate itself, define its intrinsic
constitution, or* ascertain its position. It has no traditions; it
cannot be said to think ; it does not know what it holds nor what
it does not. Bishop is not like bishop any more than king is like
king." "Elizabeth boasted that she tuned her pulpits; Charles
forbade discussions on predestination, George on the Holy Tri-
nity ; Victoria allows differences on holy baptism. Similar dif-
ferences have been lately allowed by the Supreme Court of Ap-
peal in ecclesiastical causes with regard to various other impor-
tant matters, such as the eternal reprobation of the finally impeni-
tent, the inspiration of Scripture, and the Real and Adorable
Presence in the Eucharist " (Anglican Difficulties, p. 4).

" One of the Articles," says Dr. Doilinger, " declares, indeed,
that the church has authority in matters of faith, but no one is
able to say what and where this church is. It cannot be the En-
glish state church, for this has no organ, and since the Reforma-
tion has never had one, unless it be the political supremacy of
the prime minister for the time being and his privy council of
laymen" (The Church and the Churches, p. 160). Even Arch-
bishop Wake said in 1710 that " the English church was only
preserved from destruction by her hands being bound by the civil

228 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

power, so that she could not destroy herself " (Calamy's Life of
Baxter, i. 405).

The bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States have never been bound by the civil power, and thus they
have been able to do much mischief. They have rid themselves
of the Athanasian Creed and of the only adequate form of abso-
lution, have asserted a Zwinglian doctrine of the Holy Eucharist,
and have denied regeneration in holy baptism. We agree with
Archbishop Wake that the only safe way is to tie their hands
and keep them from doing anything.

The author of the Studies not only sees autonomy where no
one else can see it, but he sees it from the beginning. The
Church of England was planted on an island, and was always
isolated from the Catholic world, being all-sufficient to itself and
independent. The catechism tells us this also, and asserts that
Augustine, who came to England in 597, had no power to inter-
fere with " the canonical rights and immunities of the Church of
Britain." Dr. Williams seeks to prove that this independence
of the British church was secured by the Council of Ephesus,
and that the right of appeal to Rome was forbidden or denied
by the second General Council of Constantinople. He refers to
Hefele, and therefore we will quote Hefele, with the desire that
he may study the work a little more. First, the canons of the
Council of Constantinople were never received in the West, and
the confirmation of the council by the pope refers only to its
decrees on faith. The Vicar of Christ has had more than once to
contend with jealous and contentious bishops, but he has always
maintained his rights, and the church universal has acquiesced
in them. " It may certainly be said," says Hefele, " that in the
sixth century the oecumenical character of this council had come
to be most distinctly acknowledged in the Latin church, and, as
we have seen above, had been expressly confirmed by the popes
Vigilius, Pelagius II., and Gregory the Great. But this ac-
knowledgment, even when it is not expressly stated, only re-
ferred to tlw decrees on faitk, and not to the canons, as we have
already observed in regard to the third and sixth of them " (His-
tory of Councils, ii. 374). The canon of the Council of Ephesus in
431, which is said " to cover with the shield of law the Anglican
position," is not given by Hefele at all. There was discussion
" in regard to the churches of Cyprus, and it was resolved that
they should be confirmed in their independence, and in the right
to consecrate and elect their own bishops, and that the liberties

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 229

of all ecclesiastical provinces generally should be renewed, and
all intrusions into foreign provinces forbidden " (Hefele, iii. 72).
This resolution is put down in some manuscripts as the eighth
canon, but it treats of local matters and has no reference what-
ever to the prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome.

What this third council thought of the rights and authority
of the Roman Pontiff may be gathered from its language. When
the letter of Ccelestine was read commanding the synod to act,
and instructing the bishops on the questions of faith before them,
they replied : " That is the true judgment, thanks to Ccelestine
the new Paul, to Cyril the new Paul, to Ccelestine the watchman
of the faith." " One of the papal legates, the presbyter Philip,
now thanked the synod for this, that the holy members had ad-
hered to the holy head, knowing well that Peter was the head of
the Catholic faith and of all the apostles, and asked that the de-
cisions of the synod might be laid before them, so that the legates
might confirm them in accordance with the commission of the
pope. This was agreed to, and the session then ended " (Hefele,
iii. 63). The prerogatives of the pope are quite fully stated by
the general councils. We will quote still further from Hefele :
" The Council of Chalcedon, in its synodal letter to Pope Leo, ex-
pressly says : ' Thou by thy representatives hast taken the lead
among the members of the synod, as the head among the mem-
bers of the body.' ' " It is undeniable that the Fourth (Ecumen-
ical Council looked upon the papal confirmation as absolutely
necessary for insuring the validity of its decrees, and there is no
good ground for maintaining that this was a new principle, and
one which was not known and recognized at the time of the Ni-
cene Council." Its address to the pope thus speaks the sense
of all Christendom : " We acknowledge the whole force of the
things which have been done, and the confirmation of all that we
have accomplished to be dependent upon your approval" One
sentence like this is conclusive to any honest and unprejudiced
mind. " We see from these considerations," says Hefele, " of
what value the sanction of the pope is to the decrees of a cour-
cil. Until the pope has sanctioned the decrees the assembly
of bishops which formed them cannot pretend to the authority
belonging to an oecumenical council, however great a number
of bishops may compose it ; for there cannot be an oecumenical
council without union with the pope " (Hefele, i. 32, 44, 46, 52).

It will be seen, then, that neither the Council of Ephesus nor
any other council " covers the Anglican position with the shield
of law."

230 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

The catechism, with which, as far as we can see, the Studies
of Dr. Williams are in accord, asserts that the Protestant Epis-
copal Church in this country is "the Holy Catholic Church,"
and that it has the marks of its Catholicity in its doctrine, in its
ministry, and in its worship. These marks are worthy of study.

For the first mark of doctrine there is nothing to be said ex-
cept that the Protestant Episcopal Church retains the Apostles'
Creed and the Nicene Creed. The latter symbol is, we believe*
optional, and need not be said by those who object to it. We
humbly submit that the possession of a creed is no mark of any-
thing whatever, since the veriest heretic may recite a creed and
either misunderstand or misrepresent it. And we conscien-
tiously believe that in the Episcopal communion there is no
proper comprehension of the creed. We feel sure that this
church generally does not possess the proper doctrine of the
Incarnation, and we know that it cannot have any idea of " the
communion of saints, the Holy Catholic Church, or the for-
giveness of sins." We consider this point very puerile, because
it means just nothing at all. The real opinions of the English
communion are to be sought from the Articles of Religion which
she set forth, and which are her explanation of the Creeds. Dr.
Williams admits that these work both ways and " bear a double
witness." We think that they bear a very decided witness
against any possible conception of the Catholic Church. They
were, as Bishop Short has told us, set forth by royal authority,
but the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States has
adopted them by its convention of 1801. They assert in the
plainest terms heresies which are suicidal to the Catholic faith or
practice. Among many of their errors are the Lutheran doctrine
of justification, the denial of inherent righteousness and of the
merit of good works, and an ambiguous profession of the Calvin-
istic doctrine of election. The thirteenth article implies total de-
pravity ; the nineteenth asserts the corruption at times of the
whole church ; the twenty-second condemns the doctrine of pur-
gatory, the invocation of saints, and the use of images or relics ;
while the twenty-fifth denies five of the sacraments and declares
that Penance, Confirmation, and Extreme Unction have grown
" of the corrupt following of the apostles." Orders and Matri-
mony are " states of life allowed in the Scriptures," but no sac-
raments. The twenty-seventh article guardedly denies the actual
regeneration of the soul by baptism, and the twenty-eighth in so
many words excludes from the Eucharist the real presence of
Christ, " as the mean whereby the Body of the Lord is received

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 231

\sfaith" The thirty-first declares that " the sacrifices of Masses
in the which the priest, as it was commonly said, did offer Christ
for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt,
were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." We commend
these plain assertions of Protestant doctrine to the candid editor
of the catechisms. And we would put another question to the
enterprising student: u When a church by its articles teaches a
different doctrine from the catechism, what must the good child
do? " Would it be right for him to consult the other branches of
the church, or must he go after the " successional church " ?

The Eastern churches have more than once condemned the
whole English communion, and they would not give the sacra-
ments to any member of that church unless he first anathematized
the Articles of his faith and the English church also. Fallen as
are the Eastern churches from the vigor of faith, they have never
countenanced the Protestant heresy nor communed with any
who professed it. We give the language of Dr. Overbeck, a
Russian priest : " Are we to commune with a church so replete
with heresy as the English church is ? You have installed heresy
in your pulpits ; you do not cast it out ; you cannot cast it out,
because your church is historically a Protestant Church, and
Protestants framed your Articles, which you contrive in vain to
unprotestantize. There is no communion with an heretical
church, no communion with the English church. God forbid !
It would be the grave of orthodoxy " (Catholic Orthodoxy, Over-
beck, p. 97).

When, then, the catechism teaches the direct contrary of the
Articles and thus disputes the highest authority of its own
church, what does it teach any intelligent mind but to forsake
its own communion as untrustworthy? We would beg the
children who are so happy as to study these manuals to ask the
Right Rev. Dr. Doane if he signed the declaration of faith in
which the bishops of the Episcopal Church, October n, 1871,
assert that " the word regenerate used in the office of baptism
does not signify any moral change wrought in the sacrament " ?
Then perhaps the editor of these manuals will put out another
edition telling us what the new birth really is. One thing is very
certain : the children taught by these manuals can have little r-
spect for their own church, and less for their bishops.

Still, these bishops are, according to the catechisms and the
Studies, the successors of the apostles, and every one of them is
in himself an independent apostle. The same blessed autonomy
which belongs to the body belongs also to the members. But

232 HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. [May,

what if these bishops are no bishops at all, not even priests? The
catechism tells the children that they may be " surer of the
apostolic succession than they are of their Bibles." Yet sup-
pose they are not sure of their Bibles, which they cannot be, un-
less they are all inspired ? Suppose you ask the children whom
you seek to rear in this Neo-Catholicity what proof they have of
the orders. vi these bishops? Ask them if these orders have been
ever recognized for one moment by any part of what you call
the Catholic Church. Ask them to read what the authorities of
the Eastern churches which they so love say on the subject.
Tell them that they say that " all the Catholic world refuses in-
tercommunion with you, re-ordains your priests, and have con-
tinued doing so for three centuries." " All the ordinations by
Parker and his successors in the whole present episcopate and
clergy of the English Church are considered by the Eastern
churches invalid, null, and void" (Overbeck, pp. 14, 70).

Tell them the honest truth, that their illustrious fathers from
whom the Neo-Catholic Church descends did not put forth any
such claims as now the catechism insists upon. Ask them to read
the writings of Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, Field, Ussher, Hall, and
Stillingfleet, who " did not hold the theory of an exclusive jure
divino episcopacy, and fully recognized the validity of presby-
terian ordination." Tell them that " Bishop Poynet was of opin-
ion that the word bishop should be abandoned to the papists ;
that prominent clergymen of the Church of England had re-
ceived only presbyterian ordination on the Continent ; that the
doctrine of the divine and exclusive right of episcopacy was
first intimated in self-defence by Bishop Bancroft in 1589, then
taught and rigidly enforced by Archbishop Laud in 1633, then
apparently sanctioned in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity which
expelled from office two thousand ministers, including some of
the ablest and most worthy men in England " (Creeds of Christen-
dom, Schaff, i. 605,, 607). Above all, ask the enterprising student
to read the "judicious Hooker," who in his last moments re-
ceived absolution and Holy Communion from Dr. Saravia, some-
time a pastor both in Flanders and Holland.

Then on the subject of the worship of the church it would be
well that the inquiring child should know that there is no like-
ness whatever between the liturgies of the ancient church and
the Book of Common Prayer. If there be, why do not the Anglo-
Catholics make use of the Roman Mass and imitate the cere-
monies of priests in the Holy Sacrifice ? Why were altars pulled
down at the establishment of the autonomous Church of England?

1884.] HISTORIES AND CATECHISMS. 233

And why was it a crime, punishable by death, for a priest to
celebrate Mass in England? Why was the crime of hearing
even one Mass punished by a year's imprisonment?

Let the ingenuous child study well all these points, and
" mark, learn, and inwardly digest them." If he can see any
point of continuity or resemblance between the ancient church
and the Protestant Episcopal communion, he will be as bright
as the man who sees autonomy in the creature of Henry VIII. and
Elizabeth.

Nevertheless, says the catechism, " Is there a true branch of
the Catholic Church in this country ? " Answer : " Yes ; that
body known to the civil law as the Protestant Episcopal
Church."

" What is its true name ? " Answer : " The Holy Catholic
Church in the United States."

Perhaps the boys will not believe this, but nevertheless we
urge them and all the girls of the Sunday-school to call them-
selves Catholics. We advise all the ministers to call themselves
Catholic priests, and beg all the bishops to insist upon being
called Catholic bishops. Let them not be deterred from this
praiseworthy effort because of the laughter of the world. Let
them give this thing a really fair trial. It is hard if a man can-
not be called by his own name. They may seem like " Dream-
land folks "; but to persevere in a good cause is the fruit of vir-
tue.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem says : " If ever thou art sojourning in
any city, inquire not simply where the Lord's house is (for the
sects of the profane attempt to call their own places houses of
the Lord) nor merely where the church is, but where is the Ca-
tholic Church. For this is indeed the peculiar name of this holy
church and mother of us all, which is indeed the spouse of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God " (Catech. xxiii.)

St. Ambrose writes : " He called the bishop to him, and, not
accounting any grace true which was not of the true faith, he
inquired of him whether he agreed with the Catholic bishops that
is, with the Roman Church " (t. ii. 1. i. De Excessu Fratris).

St. Augustine says : " The Christian religion is to be held by
us, and the communion of that church which is Catholic and is
called Catholic not only by its own members, but also by all its
adversaries. For, in spite of themselves,*even the very heretics
and disciples of schisms, when speaking not with their fellows,
but with strangers, call the Catholic Church nothing else but
the Catholic Church. For they cannot be understood, unless

234 SPKING IN THE NORTH. [May,

they distinguish her by that name by which she is designated
by the whole world " (t. i. De Vera Religione).

And again : " The name itself of the CatKblid -Church keeps me
a name which, in the midst of so many^'fieretics, this church
alone has, not without cause, so heldpossession of as that,
though all heretics would fain have themselves called Catholics,
yet to the inquiry of any stranger, ' Where is the meeting of the
Catholic Church held?' no heretic would dare to point to his
own basilica or house " (t. viii. Contra Ep. Manichai).

This test of the Christian Fathers has been well tried since
their day. We recommend the writers and students of these
catechisms to try it now. One real fact is worth many words,
no matter how enticing these words may be.

SPRING IN THE NORTH.

GRAY clouds trail o'er the cypressed air

Like nuns, with eyelids down, the chapel door,
Awaiting dawn to silver heaven's floor

And summon vestal choirs to matin prayer.

No hunter's boat cleaves stealthily the weeds,
Nor shot resounds from up the hilly wold,
Nor plaint of lamb disturbs the sleeping fold,

Nor cautious fowl flaps warily the reeds.

Gray silence reigns along an ice-chained coast :
Heaven and earth alike benumbed seem ;
The shivering birds blink, coo, and dream :

A gray fog wanders like an aimless ghost.

1884.] ARMINE* 235

WHEN Mrs. Bertram went out of the room, leaving her
daughter and Mr. Talford alone together, it is not to be sup-
posed that she was insensible to the possibility of that decla-
ration which Sibyl on her part feared. But it did not strike
Mrs. Bertram as a thing to be feared, but rather as a thing to
be desired, on one ground, if not on another. Though she
had no reason to believe that her daughter would accept Mr.
Talford, neither had she any reason to believe that she would
reject him, and under the circumstances it was surely well
that the matter should be brought to an issue. And there was
at least no precipitation in it. Any other woman than Sibyl
would have been disappointed that the offer had not been
made long before this; and although it might readily be
Sibyl's own fault that it had not been made, her mother was
nevertheless anxious that she should not be deprived of the
triumph of having Mr. Talford's difficult taste and large for-
tune laid at her feet. " If she would only accept him ! " Mrs.
Bertram sighed, with some faint hope that she might do so
for that consideration of manner toward him which struck
Egerton so forcibly had not escaped her observation but, if
this were not to be, it was none the less desirable that he
should not resign his suit without having come to a decisive
point ; for Mrs. Bertram knew her world, and knew what
would be said in that case, since it was well understood that
Mr. Talford had more than once roused hopes in fair bosoms
which he finally walked away without gratifying. If retribu-
tion overtook him there would be heartfelt pleasure in many
quarters; but unless there was certainty of this retribution
there would unquestionably also be strong incredulity.

Aware of this, Mrs. Bertram, like a wise woman of the
world, said to herself that it would be no fault of hers if Mr.
Talford did not leave the house either an accepted or a re-
jected suitor. Nothing would have induced her to efface her-
self in an obvious manner ; but she was not sorry for the sum-
mons which called her from the salon, and, having despatched

236 ARMINE. [May,

the business which demanded her attention the simple pay-
ment of a bill she saw no necessity for returning to the
room, where a steady murmur of conversation indicated that
her daughter and Mr. Talford were agreeably, and she hoped
profitably, occupied. She therefore retired to her chamber
and awaited the issue with mingled hope and fear, meditating
the while upon the superior excellence of the French marriage
system, which leaves so little to the vagaries of individual
choice.

Mr. Talford's departure was presently audible, but there
was no sound or sign of Sibyl. Mrs. Bertram waited for what
seemed to her a considerable length of time, and then entered
the salon, where she found that young lady seated in the chair
where she had left her, gazing absently out of the window at
the sun-gilded tree-tops of the Pare Monceaux. She did not
turn her head as her mother entered, and after a moment's
pause Mrs. Bertram walked up and laid a hand on her shoul-
der.

"Are you dreaming?" she said. "I hope the subject of
the dream is pleasant."

Sibyl looked around at her with a smile.

" Poor mamma ! " she said. " The dream is not what you
would like it to be. It is sad, is it not, to have a daughter
who is so impracticable ? I wish for your sake that I had been
made differently. Though I cannot say," she added, as if to
herself, " that I wish I had been made able to marry Mr. Tal-
ford."

"Then you have refused him!" said Mrs. Bertram in a
low tone. She thought that she had not indulged in much
hope, but she learned by her disappointment that it was greater
than she imagined.

" Did you think it possible that I would accept him ? "
Sibyl answered. " If so, I am sorry for your disappointment ;
but there has never been a moment in which it was possible
to me."

" And yet " said Mrs. Bertram, then paused.

"And yet what?" asked her daughter. "You cannot
mean to imply that I gave you any reason to believe it pos-
sible?"

" No," was the reply. " I cannot say that you gave me any
reason."

" If not you, who then ? Certainly not him"

" Perhaps not certainly not that you would accept him,"

1884.] ARMINE. 237

said Mrs. Bertram. "But you have not indicated in any man-
ner that you disliked him."

" Why should I, when I do not dislike him ? Is there no
medium between disliking a man and being willing to marry
him ? It seems to me that it is not a passive but an active feel-
ing one requires for the last."

"That is not what I mean you know that is not what I
mean," said Mrs. Bertram. "Of course it is an active feeling
that one requires for such an important step, and I am not as
worldly as you think I should not wish you to marry with-
out love. But you have seemed to like Mr. Talford for
you."

"And you thought such liking might be a substitute for
love for me?" said Sibyl. "Certainly no one is accurately
known even by those who should know one best."

"But you cannot deny,", said Mrs. Bertram, a little obsti-
nately, " that you have treated him better than you treat other
people."

"HI have it was because I was too indifferent to him to
treat him otherwise. One does not quarrel with an absolute
stranger and Mr. Talford was an absolute stranger to all
save the surface of my life. And then I suppose you will
hardly understand but I was interested in him a little, as a
study. I wanted to test the value of his philosophy of life."
Mrs. Bertram ejaculated, " Good heavens ! " under her
breath.

" And so," Sibyl went on, her gaze returning again medi-
tatively to the tree-tops, " I may unintentionally have misled
him a little. But I do not think it could have been very
much. I have been considering the matter ever since he
went away, and I am sorry if in the least degree I have
brought on him a disappointment which is, however, no
deeper than his vanity."

" You cannot possibly tell that," said Mrs. Bertram. " Why
should he have asked you to marry him, if he were not at-
tached to you?"

" There are different forms of attachment," said Sibyl
quietly. " Some are flattering ; others again are not. I do
not think I could make you comprehend what I felt when Mr.
Talford offered me what he called love."

" I am not very stupid, yet I doubt if you could," said
Mrs. Bertram dryly. " Your ideas are altogether too exalted
for my comprehension."

238 ARMINE. [May,

Sibyl gave a short sigh. "It is a pity when people do not
understand each other," she said, " but at least I do not ob-
trude my ideas, save in affairs that concern myself alone."

" But how can you think that the affair of your settlement
in life concerns yourself alone ? " said Mrs. Bertram patheti-
cally. " What can concern me more ? I would give anything
to see you happily and brilliantly married, for the end will be
that I shall die and you will be left alone an old maid with a
very moderate fortune."

" What an appalling picture ! " said Sibyl, with a smile.
"But I hope you do not mean to die soon; and as for the old-
maidenhood I could not only support that, but I should con-
sider it happiness compared to marrying a man who was un-
congenial to me. It must be a struggle to marry even a man
whom one loves and admires for one can never be free again.
But to think of marrying one whose character one despises,
whose aims in life one scorns l that way madness lies.' No-
thing could induce me to do it -nothing! "

She rose as she spoke, looking so beautiful and stately in
her energy that Mrs. Bertram involuntarily clasped her hands.

"O Sibyl!" she exclaimed, "you will throw away all your
attractions and you have so many ! if you do not look at
things more more practically."

Sibyl laughed. "That was Mr. Talford's word," she said.
" He, too, advised me to look at things ' practically.' But un-
fortunately I am incapable of following such advice. It is a
pity for you, mamma. I wish you had a different daughter
one who would make a brilliant marriage and do you
credit."

" If you imagine that I am thinking of myself you make
a great mistake," said Mrs. Bertram, a little wounded for
her worldliness was of a mild order. " I am thinking of you,
of your life, and of the position you ought to occupy in the
world."

" I am sure that you think of me," said her daughter gently.
" I did not mean to imply otherwise."

And, indeed, she said to herself, what was the good of far-
ther words? There are characters so essentially different
that, like parallel lines, they may run side by side during the
intercourse of a lifetime without ever approaching near enough
for comprehension. It had not been a mere form of speech
when Sibyl said that for her mother's sake she wished she had
been made differently "for it must be hard when an only

1884.] ARMINE. 239

child disappoints one! "she had often thought, feeling the de-
fective sympathy between them more cfn her mother's account
than her own. But wishes on such a subject being quite
vain, the defective sympathy remained, though veiled by mu-
tual affection, and only coming to the surface on a few occa-
sions.

The present was such an occasion; but when her first dis-
appointment was over Mrs. Bertram said to herself that, after
all, things might have been worse. It was quite possible so
she acknowledged that Mr. Taiford might not have made a
perfect husband for one so highly strung as Sibyl, and at any
rate it was something to have rejected that difficult and fas-
tidious personage. No one would now be able to say that he
had trifled with Miss Bertram, for Mrs. Bertram determined
that in a quiet way the truth should be known.

The opportunity for disclosure was not difficult to find ; in
fact, it soon presented itself in the person of Miss Dorrance,
who a day or two later made her appearance, and, finding Sibyl
out, opened her purpose to Mrs. Bertram.

" I should like to know what you and Sibyl propose to do
with yourselves this summer," she said. " Don't you think it
would be pleasant if we could go to the same place? Mamma
and I have been talking of it, and I thought I would inquire
what your plans are."

" I cannot say that we have formed any plans," Mrs. Ber-
tram answered. " When Paris becomes too warm we gen-
erally go to the sea-shore or to Switzerland; but there is no-
thing to take us to any special place, and I should be delighted
if our plans could be made to agree with yours."

" To a certain extent ours are fixed by the doctors," said
Laura. "They say that mamma must go to the German baths.
Do you think you would care to go there?"

Mrs. Bertram replied that for herself she liked the German
baths very much "though Sibyl does not fancy them," she
added. " But there is time enough in which to discuss the mat-
ter. You are certainly not thinking of leaving Paris yet?"

" I do not want to leave it," Laura answered, " but Cousin
Duke is trying to persuade mamma to go. He seems suddenly
to have conceived a great desire to get away ; and he is bound
to see after us, you know. Papa has laid that on him as a duty
he cannot escape. He must take us and settle us wherever we
decide to go ; so he wants us to go at once, which is most dis-
agreeable of him ! "

240 ARMINE. [May,

"Paris will certainly be very pleasant for another month,"
said Mrs. Bertram, " and I should think that your mother would
like to remain as long as possible under the immediate care of
the doctors."

"So she would," said Laura, "and she should simply de'cline
to go ; but she has an idea that she ought not to detain and in-
convenience Cousin Duke though Heaven knows he has no-
thing to do, and no reason why he should be in one place more
than another ! It is abominably selfish of him ; but he always
was selfish ! " Then the young lady paused and turned her
sharp eyes on Mrs. Bertram with a very penetrating look.
" His desire to leave Paris is so suddenly developed that I
think Sibyl must have something to do with it," she said.

Mrs. Bertram smiled slightly a lady-like and gently regret-
ful smile. " I am* sorry," she said, " and Sibyl, I know, will be
very sorry, if any disappointment which she was obliged to in-
flict upon Mr. Talford has even remotely inconvenienced your
mother and yourself."

" So she has rejected him ! " exclaimed Miss Dorrance.
" Well, I suspected as much, and I am sure I hope it will do
him good ! I told him she would not marry him, but he was
so sure that no woman would refuse him. Now he sees who
was right! Of course it was foolish of Sibyl you must ac-
knowledge that, Mrs. Bertram, for he is very rich and a good
fellow on the whole but still it is not a bad thing for him
to realize that there is one woman who would not marry
him ! "

It is needless to say that nothing would have induced Mrs.
Bertram to acknowledge that she had herself thought it fool-
ish of Sibyl.

" Your cousin was indeed very much deceived if he ima-
gined that Sibyl would marry him," she said, with quiet dig-
nity. " A man has, of course, a right to try his chance, but he
has no right to count on a favorable answer when he has only
been treated with ordinary courtesy."

"He is very much spoiled," observed Laura. "That goes
without saying. But Sibyl did treat him with a good deal of
consideration for a time. We all observed that."

" She was interested in his philosophy of life," said Mrs.
Bertram, standing to her colors.

Miss Dorrance lifted her eyebrows. "That sounds like
Sibyl," she said. " I wonder if Cousin Duke has a philosophy
of life ! I think I must ask him. It would be very instructive.

1884.] ARMINE. 241

And he would be pleased to know that he was regarded as a
study."

" I hope you will not think of implying anything unkind "
Mrs. Bertram began, when the young lady interrupted :

" Oh ! dear, no. I shall not mention the subject to him un-
less he speaks of it. One cannot take liberties with him beyond
a certain point. And this disappointment has really struck
deep : he is not like himself at all. It is a pity, for it may in-
terfere with our summer plans. It would not be pleasant, under
the circumstances, for him and Sibyl to be thrown into con-
tact, unless you think there is a chance that she might change
her mind. Women do sometimes, you know."

Mrs. Bertram shook her head. " Sibyl will not change
hers," she said gravely.

" It is a pity ! " repeated Miss Dorrance. " She might do a
great deal worse. And there is really no telling what she will
do in the end ! Clever people are so peculiar sometimes, and
Sibyl is capable of going any lengths for an enthusiasm."

" I do not think that you understand Sibyl," said Mrs. Ber-
tram, with an air that expressed more than the words. " She
is enthusiastic, but not at all likely to be carried away in a fool-
ish manner. And, although she might certainly do worse than
accept Mr. Talford, she might also do better. But you have
not yet mentioned to what one of the German baths your mo-
ther thinks of going."

In this way Sibyl's champion gallantly refused to confess
the misgivings which she felt, and Miss Dorrance was effec-
tually silenced. But not deceived. " Mrs. Bertram will not
own that she is uneasy about what Sibyl may do," that young
lady averred afterwards, " but I am sure she must feel that it
is perfectly possible she may either marry a Communist or be-
come a nun any day ! "

Meanwhile when Sibyl heard of Laura's visit and its object
she begged her mother not to think of joining the Dorrance
party anywhere or under any circumstances. "It 'would be
impossible for me to entertain such an idea," she said ; " for Mr.
Talford must be with them and look after them, in a degree at
least, and the position would be very disagreeable to both of
us. Indeed, on my part it would look as if I desired him to re-
peat his offer."

" Yes, it would not do," said Mrs. Bertram, with a slight
sigh. " It might be pleasant to spend the summer with the
Dorrances, but "
VOL. xxxix. 16

242 ARMINE. [May,

" Do you think it might be pleasant ?" asked Sibyl a little dry-
ly. " I confess that I do not. I am glad of an excuse to. avoid it."

" O my dear ! I am not so exigeante as you are," said Mrs.
Bertram, unable to resist sending this small arrow. " Mrs. Dor-
ranee and I have been friends for a long time, and I like her
society very well, but of course it is not to be thought of under
the circumstances."

" I am sorry if I am at all to blame for the circumstances,"
said vSibyl.

" How could you be to blame ? " replied her mother. " I
did. not mean that. If men fall in love no one could expect
you to prevent it. But we must be thinking of our plans for
the summer," the speaker went on quickly, anxious to change
the subject. " I always like to know where I am going well
in advance."

" Why should we go anywhere ? " said Sibyl half-absently.
" For once I should like to stay here."

Mrs. Bertram looked at her in surprise. " Here ? " she said.
"Stay in Paris all summer?"

" Well, not in Paris, perhaps, but in some place near Paris.
How would you like Fontainebleau, for instance ? I have al-
ways felt that I should be glad to spend a summer wandering
through that forest."

" I think that I should prefer some more lively amusement,"
said Mrs. Bertram. " And so, I fancy, would you before long.
Why have you taken an idea to stay near Paris ? You usually
speak of longing for the mountains or the sea when summer
comes."

" Yes," said Sibyl ; " but there are some things better than
even the mountains or the sea the companionship and the in-
fluence of a noble soul, for example. And if one might lose that
for ever by going away I mean if one should find it gone for
ver when one returned nothing that one gained could com-
pensate."

u I suppose you are speaking of M. d'Antignac," said Mrs.
Bertram. " Is he likely to die ? "

" He is likely to die at any time," was the reply. " When
one thinks of his suffering it is impossible not to feel that it
must end soon. I was there to-day, but I could not see him it
is one of his bad days. I saw Mile. d'Antignac for a few min-
utes only, and she spoke of him with tears. I believe that she
thinks the end is drawing near not immediately, perhaps, but
certainly."

1884.] ARMINE. 243

" It is very sad," said Mrs. Bertram ; " but since his recovery
is impossible and his suffering so great one should be resigned
to his release."

" It seems so, no doubt, to those who do not know him,"
said Sibyl, with the slight bitterness that is excited by such easy
consolations. " But the world could better spare a thousand
men who walk these streets to-day in health and strength."

" That may be ; but if he suffers so much, existence can be
only a pain to him."

" It is natural to think so, but I am sure that to him it is a
blessing, because he can still do so much for others. And I,
who have come so late into his life I cannot consent to lose
one day of what I shall always remember as the greatest bless-
ing of my life."

Mrs. Bertram looked at her curiously for a minute ; then
she said, " He seems to have a great influence over you."

"Has he?" said Sibyl. " I do not know. I only know
that he is able to supply every need of my nature or, at least,
to point out how they may be supplied. I have heard of a
physician for the soul. He is one."

" But why should your soul need a physician ? " said Mrs.
Bertram, who had never felt the need of one for her own
soul, and who thought that the words had a suspicious
sound. " O Sibyl ! I am afraid that the end of all this will
be something very foolish and visionary ! "

Sibyl smiled a little.

"Dear mamma," she said, "your fears would be set at rest
if you could know what an absolute antidote to visionary folly
M. d'Antignac's influence is. He leads one into a region
where it can have no place a region of truth as exact as
logic and as clear as light. And if he shows one visions, it is
only after he has taken care to set one's feet firmly upon a
rock."

CHAPTER XLIV.

IT was indeed a terrible ordeal of suffering through which
D'Antignac was passing, and those around him thought more
than once that the end was at hand. But his strong vitality
still resisted the approach of dissolution ; and after days of
agony he came slowly back to a knowledge of the things of
life, wan, exhausted, shattered from the onslaught of pain, which
like a sullen foe retreated slowly, in preparation for some

244 ARMINE. [May,

fiercer attack which the worn forces of life could no longer re-
sist.

During these days no one shared more constantly the vigil
by his bedside than the Vicomte de Marigny, and in this way
he was thrown into frequent contact with Armine. It was
a contact which both avoided at first, but in the sharp ten-
sion of anxiety as D'Antignac's danger increased they forgot
all save this anxiety which they owned in common, and when
the worst was over it was as familiar friends that they con-
gratulated each other.

" And now," said De Marigny as they talked softly in the
salon, while deep quiet reigned in the chamber adjoining,
where Helene kept watch by him who lay wrapped in the
bliss of respite from agony, "you should also think of resting.
So much watching and anxiety has told upon you."

" Has it? " she said. " But relief seems rest enough and it
is such great relief ! "

" Yes," he said a little sadly, " to us ; but to him it is only
a fresh lease of suffering. One cannot forget that."

" No, one cannot forget it," said Armine, " but who can
say what it enables him to merit for others as well as for
himself? I am sure there is comfort in that for him, and so
there should be for us."

"You have learned something of his way of looking at
things," said the vicomte, with a smile.

" Everything that I know of good I have learned from
him," she answered simply.

There was a moment's silence. It was late afternoon, and
through the open windows floods of long sunshine came, to-
gether with the subdued sound of the city's life the beating,
.as it were, of its great heart. The soft air was full of refresh-
ment, but it brought no touch of color to Armine's pale
cheeks. Watching and anxiety had told jipon her, as M. de
Marigny said, but it had not lessened the charm of the sensi-
tive, poetic face with its deep, beautiful eyes. Those eyes
were gazing out of the window at the depths of blue sky when
she spoke next, as if unconsciously uttering a thought aloud :

" But it will be harder than ever to leave him after this."

The vicomte started. " To leave him ! " he repeated in-
voluntarily. " Are you going away ? "

She, too, started a little ; and now a faint tinge of color
came into her cheeks. It was evident that she had spoken
unconsciously.

1884.] ARMINE. 245

" Oh ! yes," she said, a little hurriedly. " I thought you
knew. I go soon to join the Sisters of Charity."

The vicomte did not answer immediately. Indeed, it was
plain^that it cost him a strong effort when he said presently :

" I have heard that you thought of the religious life, but I
did not know what order "

" There could be no question with me," she . said. " I
want a place in the ranks of those whose lives are given to
the service of the suffering and of the poor. And where
should I find that save with the daughters of St. Vincent de
Paul?"

She paused after the question, and M. de Marigny forced
himself to say something about the merit of such a choice.

" I do not think that I can claim much merit," she an-
swered quietly, " for it is less a deliberate choice between the
higher things of God and the lower things of the world than
a passion which impels me. I could not rest in ease and hap-
piness. The misery of which the world is full, and which I
know so well, would pursue me. I could not forget it. For
others such forgetfulness may be possible. It would not be
for me. The poor call me. My place is with them and my
work is among them."

She looked at him, as she spoke, with eyes full of wistful
entreaty. Her voice, though very low, seemed with every
sentence to deepen in feeling. He could not resist the im-
pression that she was pleading with him to understand her
now, as he had understood her before. Again the thought
of the churchyard of Marigny came to him, and of the letter
which he had read on the terrace of the. chateau full of the
same entreaty. It was impossible to withhold the expression
of his comprehension and sympathy.

" I understand you," he said in a low tone. " The passion
of which you speak is that with which God fills the souls
which he destines for noble deeds. Before it all human pas-
sions must veil their heads. And you have this great happi-
ness," he added in a tone that despite himself was sad, " that
you offer to God a heart and a life that will be his supremely
a heart that has not been wearied by the world, a life that
has not been soiled in its service. You have chosen ' the
better part.' No one could even desire to take it from you."

Comprehension was not on his side alone. She under-
stood the sadness under the self-forgetful words, and a long-
ing filled her to say something anything to lessen the pain

246 ARMINE. [May,

of which she was instinctively conscious. She did not pause
to think as she spoke hurriedly:

" Such words are like all that I have known of you. You
have always understood; you have never made a mistake;
you have been kind and generous from the first. Do you
know what it is to be placed in a difficult position and to
meet one who divines all that you feel without the need of
speech, and who never fails in sympathy? That is what I
have always found you. Do not think that I have not felt
it that I do not feel it in my heart." She paused for an
instant, then went on in another tone that tone, at once proud
and pathetic, which he had heard from her once before " I
told you once that it mattered little what name one bore.
Where I am going it matters nothing for there alone the
Socialists' dream of equality is realized, so I may for once ac-
knowledge the tie of kindred blood, and say that in leaving
the world I shall take with me no happier memory than that
I leave such a noble kinsman fighting in a cause for which I
can only pray."

Words failed him with which to answer her. She seemed
already to speak from a height which no prayer of his could
reach, had he desired to make any. But he had not forgotten
the hour when he resigned his heart's desire to the will of
God ; and now that he was face to face with Armine, that he
heard her words, saw her spirit, as it were, unveiled, he felt,
as D'Antignac had felt before him, that her resolve was based
on no impulsive fancy, but on the clear and positive words
heard now as of old by many a faithful soul " Leave all and
follow me."

" What can I say to you? " he asked presently in a low tone.
" You know what is in my heart, but you have sealed my lips."

" Have we not understood each other almost without
words from the first ? " she answered gently, rising as she
spoke and standing before him, a slender figure in the slanting
sunset glow. " Believe me, all is better so ; and you in a
little while you will feel it. For this is God's willI am sure
of it and he makes no mistakes. See ! " she clasped her
hands with the old familiar gesture " after what I have
known could I turn my back upon humanity which suffers,
and upon God who calls, to be merely happy ? Ah ! no. You
must feel say that you feel I could not ! "

He, too, rose, answering with every faculty of his being
to the sudden passion of that demand upon him.

1884.] ARMINE. 247

" I feel it now/' he said, " if I have not felt it before. All
that I have offered is worthless compared to what you choose.
How could a man dare to make himself the rival of God ? I
do not dare. Go, in God's name ! Leave happiness to those
who have no higher good."

" But is there not happiness in the higher good ? " she
said. " The world may not know it, but you know that there
is. To work, to endure, to spend and be spent in God's ser-
vice and the service of the poor, in lessening for a few the
misery that drives them to despair what is the happiness of
ease and content and natural love to this? It is wonderful
that God should have called me to this happiness; but since
he has oh! if hereafter you ever think of me, let it be to
thank him for me ! "

She turned and went away before he could utter a word ;
but, left alone, he said to himself that he should ever after re-
member her chiefly as she had stood before him then her
eyes full of infinite radiance, and her figure touched by a light
that left the room with her.

As D'Antignac grew better one of the first visitors ad-
mitted to his presence was Egerton. The young man had
been solicitous in his inquiries, but he had not seen D'Antignac
until this occasion, when Helene admitted him to the familiar
chamber, warning him, however, not to remain long.

It was an unnecessary caution. For Egerton was so
shocked when he saw the face that lay motionless on its pil-
lows as white and thin again as when he saw it last that
he would fain have escaped almost immediately, fearing to ex-
haust the little strength which the sick man still possessed, had
not D'Antignac detained him.

" Nay, do not go," he said, when, after his inquiries were
over, the young man made a movement to depart. " I have
not seen you for what seems to me a long time whether it
be long or short in reality I do not know and I have some-
thing to tell you."

" I only fear to tire you or to suffer you to tire your-
self," said Egerton, hesitating. " Mile. D'Antignac warned
me"

" Never mind H61&ne," said D'Antignac. " I don't allow
her to play tyrant over me a moment longer than I am able
to assert myself. Restez / I want to speak to you of Armine."

He made a slight motion with his hand a hand as thin and

248 ARMINE. [May,

pale as the face which Egerton obeyed by resuming his seat,
wondering as he did so over the marvellous faculty of this man
for forgetting himself in others. He had dismissed the sub-
ject of his own suffering that absorbing subject to most- in-
valids in the fewest possible words. But he was ready to
talk of Armine, to throw himself into the interests of another
life. It was so wonderful to Egerton that he did not speak,
and after a brief pause D'Antignac went on :

" Do you remember but of course you remember our
conversation one day about the last charge which her father
laid upon you? We decided then that she must be told of it,
if the necessity arose. You will be glad to know that it has
not arisen, and that it will never arise."

" I am glad very glad to know it," said Egerton, much
surprised ; " but pardon me if I ask how can you be sure that
it will never arise ? "

" Because," answered D'Antignac, " we agreed that she
need not be told unless there was a probability of her marry-
ing M. de Marigny. There is no such probability."

" But there may be," said Egerton a little obstinately.

" No," said D'Antignac, with a smile in his dark, serene eyes,
" there will never be. For those who enter the religious life
there is no more question of marriage than there is for the
dead ; and Armine will soon enter that life."

" What ! she will become a nun ! " cried Egerton, startled
beyond control.

" Not exactly a nun that is, not a cloistered nun," an-
swered D'Antignac calmly. " She will become a Sister of
Charity, to follow in the footsteps of our Lord, to nurse his
sick and tend his poor. If you will think a moment you will
perceive that it is the only fitting end for Armine."

Egerton did not answer ; he sat still and thought for more
than a moment. And he said to himself at length that it was
indeed the only fitting end for the girl whose youth had been
passed amid the terrible sounds of the social revolution, who
had heard the divine counsels of perfection perverted into war-
cries of communism and robbery, who had seen face to face
the misery that leads to revolt and the spiritual ignorance that
leads to crime. What could she, with her passionate soul and
her clear mind, do but join the great army of those whose mis-
sion it is to carry light and comfort into the dark places of
earth ? Dimly the young man felt as she had said that hap-
piness, mere commonplace, earthly happiness, was not for her.

1884.] ARMINE. 249

It was beneath the exalted soul that could not do less for God
than her own father had done for humanity. By a flash of
inspiration Egerton saw and understood it all. Even before
the light of faith had shone upon him he, too, had felt, as noble
souls must feel, the divine necessity of sacrifice; and though
he could not yet in his ignorance fathom that mystery (which
must be ever a mystery to the carnal mind) of prayer and in-
tercession for a guilty world which the cloister hides, he had
often bowed before those heroines of divine charity who carry
through hospital wards and scenes of infinite wretchedness the
habit of St. Vincent de Paul. It was truly a fitting end for the
Socialist's daughter that she should wear this habit of the
devoted servants of the -poor, and that she, whose father had
denied God with his dying lips, should go through life hold-
ing the crucifix before dying eyes.

" I understand now why it was that I could never feel as
if any worldly destiny within my power to imagine would suit
her," said the young man at length abruptly. " As I told you
once, she always seemed above the possibility of love from me'.
That was not remarkable ; but even when I thought of her in
connection with M. de Marigny, I might feel that it would be
an ideal marriage, yet I could not fancy her merely a happy
wife like other women. She seemed made for some higher
destiny to be a heroine, a genius, or perhaps a saint."

"She may be all three yet," said D'Antignac, smiling.
" Saints are the geniuses of the supernatural order ; and, indeed,
in the natural order I have always thought that there was a
touch of genius in Armine. But then, you know, I have al-
ways been an enthusiast about her."

" Every one who knows her must be," said Egerton.

" Oh ! no," D'Antignac answered. " To the commonplace
all things are commonplace and all persons also. To appre-
ciate even a genius or a saint one must have a little, at least,
of that fine quality called sympathy. I do not flatter you, mon
ami, when I say that you possess more than a little of it."

" It proves a misleading quality sometimes," said Egerton.

" Without doubt. What is there of good which cannot be
turned to evil? But surely by this time you have learned
or, if you have not, you will learn that a man must have some
certain guide to distinguish between the good and the evil of
this life, where evil so often wears the guise of good."

" I have learned it," answered Egerton. " I have learned
it by the bewilderment with which I have listened to the dif-

250 ARMINE. [May,

ferent voices that tried to solve the riddle of life and only
added to its mystery and its sadness. When one is young and
rich, and the sun shines, this is a delightful world provided one
does not think, and that one cares for nothing beyond the sur-
face of existence. But if one does think, and if one begins to
question, then there is no longer peace until one has followed
principles to their ultimate end, and reached either the dreari-
ness of absolute scepticism or the satisfaction of absolute
faith."

"And you have reached ?" said D'Antignac eagerly.

The door opened at that instant, and Egerton rose to his
feet, glancing around quickly. Then he smiled.

" I thought it was Mile. D'Antignac coming to eject me,"
he said, " but it is Mile. Armine. She never appeared at a
better moment. Come, mademoiselle, and hear the answer to
a question which M. d'Antignac has just asked. I think it will
interest you a little."

Armine advanced, and, laying her hand in that which he
held out, said, with the exquisite smile and voice that charmed
him first : " Whatever concerns you, M. Egerton, must interest
me."

Egerton did not release her hand at once, but, holding it,
stood looking from herself to D'Antignac for an instant. Then
he lifted his glance to the crucifix that hung over D'An-
tignac's couch.

" After God," he said reverently, " I owe it to you two
that I am able to say to-day, * Credo in unam, sanctam, Catho-
licam et Apostolicam Eccksiam! '

CHAPTER XLV.

" IF you should meet Miss Bertram, will you tell her how
much better Raoul is, and that he will be glad to see her when-
ever she can come?"

It was Mile. d'Antignac who said this to Egerton as he was
taking leave, and the words lingered in his memory when he
found himself again in the streets. Indeed, as he crossed the
Pont du Carrousel he said to himself that they were in fact a
message which it would be well to deliver at once, since he
had nothing else to do, and he remembered it suddenly this
was the Bertrams' reception-day. A minute later he had stop-
ped a passing fiacre and was driving toward the Pare Mon-
ceaux.

1884.]' ARMINE. 251

It was a very familiar scene on which he entered when the
door of the Bertram salon opened a fragrance of flowers filling
the air, sunshine streaming on the pretty, fantastic appoint-
ments of the room, while half a dozen voices were talking, and
the clatter of teaspoons indicated the usual accompaniment of
these informal social occasions. Egerton knew most of those
present, and after he had exchanged several greetings he found
himself approaching Miss Bertram. She was standing near one
of the windows of the salon, talking to a man who turned as she
said, " How do you do, Mr. Egerton?" and revealed, to Eger-
ton's great surprise, the face of Winter.

"Ah ! Egerton, is it you ? " he said cheerfully. " You are
in Paris yet, then?"

" So it appears," answered Egerton. " Why should you
imagine that I was not?"

" I called to see you a few weeks ago, and the concierge told
me you had left. I thought it very natural, considering your
experiences just at that time."

" Yes, it would have been quite natural," said Egerton a lit-
tle drily. Then he turned to Miss Bertram. " I think," he said,
" you have heard me speak of my Red Republican friend of the
Quartier Latin, who gave me my first impulse toward Social-
ism. Behold him."

" Mr. Winter ! " said Sibyl. " You surprise me. I should
never have fancied him a Red Republican."

" Now that Egerton has betrayed me, it is too late to deny
my opinions," said Winter ; " but I may be permitted to ask
why you would not have fancied that I held them."

She smiled a little. " You have a perfect right to ask," she
said, " since we have only talked together for ten minutes, and
it is therefore rather strange that I should have formed any
opinion concerning you. But, in point of fact, do we not con-
ceive an idea of a person as soon as we hear of him ? If your
aunt" she glanced across the room at an elderly lady talk-
ing to Mrs. Bertram " had said, ' I want to bring my nephew,
who is a student of the Quartier Latin, to see you/ I should
immediately have imagined Red-Republicanism of the most
furious type. But what she did say was, ' I want to bring my
nephew, who is a great Oriental scholar, to see you,' and how
could I imagine anything so incongruous as Orientalism and
Red-Republicanism ? "

Egerton laughed at the expression of Winter's face, " The
oldest and the newest ideas of the world brought into contact

252 ARMIXE. [May,

the Avesta, the Veda, and the Philosophic Positive! Confess,
Winter, that it is incongruous ! " he said.

But Winter was far from confessing anything of the kind.
" I am very sorry," he said, " that Miss Bertram should have
been led to believe that I am ' a great Oriental scholar,' who
am merely a student of Oriental languages and literature ; but
I fail to perceive that there is the faintest incongruity in study-
ing the oldest myths of the world and believing in its latest
creed of progress. On the contrary, the one naturally leads to
the other, as childhood leads to manhood."

" And so the Philosophic Positive marks the manhood of the
human race ! " said Miss Bertram. " But may'it not I merely
throw out the suggestion mark its second childhood ? With
the idea of gradual development there must be connected
also the idea of decay. And since we do not know the length
of life allotted to the race, how are we to tell that it is not the
downward instead of the upward path ? "

" Humanity is immortal," said the Positivist very posi-
tively. " There is no downward path for it. The race will
constantly advance in knowledge and the application of know-
ledge until"

"Yes, until what?" asked the young lady as he paused.

" Until we attain social and political perfection," said he
boldly.

"And then?" said Miss Bertram. "Excuse me, but this
is very interesting, and I always like to press things to their
ultimate conclusion. After we have attained social and poli-
tical perfection what then ? "

" Why, then we or if not we, for I fear there is no hope
that we shall ever see it, but those who do see it will enjoy
it," said Winter, smiling.

"And become immortal?" asked she.

It began to occur to him that this young lady with her
grave, attentive face was covertly laughing at him.

" You are surely aware," he said, " that we do not believe
in immortality for the individual, but only for the race."

" Yes," she said, " I am aware of it, but I really cannot
understand why you should deny what the world has believed
for ages with regard to the one, and assert what it has denied
with regard to the other, unless you have had some new light
upon the matter."

" We have had the light of positive science," said Win-
ter.

1884.] ARMINE. 253

" And has positive science discovered anything about im-
mortality? I thought that it was a subject which lay entirely
outside of its domain that it refused to advance one step be-
yond the grave."

" True ; but there is no grave for humanity. That is the
point."

" It does not seem to me a point very well made," said she,
smiling. " If you will not recognize any power outside of
nature, I am unable to see where you find ground for believ-
ing that anything is exempt from the law of decay and death
which governs everything that we know. Whatever had a
beginning must have an end is it not so ? Or if you believe
in the immortality of the race, for which you have no war-
rant in nature, why not believe in the immortality of the in-
dividual soul, and a heaven that will not be only for some
distant mortal generations, but for the immortal hosts of all
ages ? "

As she asked the question, with her eyes full of the bril-
liant light that always came into them when anything roused
her interest, Egerton thought that he had never seen her look
more beautiful, and the same fact probably made Winter hesi-
tate before saying:

" Ah ! that old dream of heaven what a fascination it exerts
over the human mind ! "

" Yes," said Egerton. " One may be permitted to doubt
whether your ideal of human progress will ever exert a like
fascination."

" Perhaps not," said Winter. " Yet that ideal at least is
tangible."

" So far from it but you and I have been over this ground
before without appreciable result, so we will not inflict a fresh
discussion on Miss Bertram."

" I assure you that it interests me very much," said Miss
Bertram. " There is nothing I like more you ought to know
that, Mr. Egerton."

" I know how delighted you always look at the D'An-
tignacs'," said Egerton, smiling.

"Yes," said she, smiling in turn, "and that reminds me:
why have you never taken Mr. Winter to the D'Antignacs' ?
It would be just the place for him."

" I really never thought of it," said Egerton, " but I fear
Winter would not agree with you. He would not think it the
place for him."

254 ARMINE. [May,

" I cannot give him credit for such bad taste," said she.
" I cannot imagine any one not enjoying M. d'Antignac and
the atmosphere which he creates. I wonder" she paused a
moment, and her face as well as her tone changed " if we shall
ever enjoy that atmosphere again ! Do }^ou know, have you
heard, how he is ? "

" I am just from there," Egerton answered, " and I found
him very much better so much better that I talked to him
for half an hour and when I was leaving Mile. d'Antignac
asked me to tell you of his improvement, and to add that she
knew he would be glad to see you whenever you cared to
come."

" How good of her!" said Sibyl. "And how good of you
to bring me the message at once. It makes me happy to think
of seeing M. d'Antignac again!"

" You will be terribly shocked when you see him," said
Egerton. " He looks more like a spirit than a man."

" He always looked like that."

"Oh! he looks as much so again now. He has evidently
passed through the most horrible suffering possible ; but he
puts it aside, like a thing of no importance, and begins to talk
about the affairs of the person visiting him. It was a way he
always had, you know, and of course one's egotism falls easily
into the trap. I am always disgusted, when I go away, to re-
member how much I have talked about myself."

Miss Bertram laughed. " I know very well what you
mean," she said, " but on such occasions I am not disgusted
with myself, because I am sure that M. d'Antignac's interest
has not been pretended."

" This M. d'Antignac must be an accomplished man of the
world," said Winter. " To set people to talking of themselves
and make them believe that they are thereby immensely in-
teresting him that is the perfection of worldly tact."

" Yes," said Miss Bertram ; " but worldly tact is only the
imitation of something better of real self-forgetfulness and
that M. d'Antignac possesses. To put others before one's self
that is what spiritual perfection and good-breeding both
demand. But one is to the other what gold is to paper cur-
rency. Somebody long ago said that."

" Well, one must admit that paper currency is more con-
venient," said Winter, " but one likes now and then to touch
gold. I think I should like to see this M, d'Antignac. Who
is he?"

1884.] ARMINE. 255

Egerton gave his history in few words ; then he said : " You
see he is a person with whom you have little in sympathy,
but if you really care to see him I am sure that he would be
willing- to receive you."

Winter hesitated. A papal soldier, a passionate Catholic
certainly he had little in sympathy with the man who was
these things. He was about to say, " No, thanks ; on the whole
I do not care to know him," when Sibyl spoke :

" M. d'Antignac is a man who has something in sympathy
with every one, and his friends or at least his acquaintances
seem to belong to all shades of opinion. I do not think you
will find yourself at all out of place in his salon, Mr. Win-
ter ; and if you take my advice you will certainly allow Mr.
Egerton to present you next Sunday. We always go there
on Sunday, if he is able to receive."

The " we " conquered. The student of Oriental literature,
who had been dragged against his will out of his Bohemian
retirement in the Quartier Latin, felt that he should like to
meet again those brilliant eyes and hear that charming voice.

"I shall follow your advice with pleasure, mademoiselle,"
he said, " if Egerton will present me."

" I shall be delighted," said Egerton, " to have an oppor-
tunity to repay your kind offices. I have not forgotten that
I owe my introduction to Duchesne to you."

"Ah, poor Duchesne!" said Winter. "He was your en-
thusiasm for a time. But I never expected you to be a serious
convert to Socialism, and I was therefore surprised that you
should have been going to Brussels with him when he was
killed."

" It was curiosity, idleness I hardly know what, but cer-
tainly not conviction which was taking me," said Egerton.
" It was a narrow escape from death, and yet I am and al-
ways shall be deeply indebted to you for having enabled me
to know Duchesne."

Miss Bertram glanced at him a little keenly as Winter
said :

" He was a wonderful man and a great loss to his cause.
We could have better spared many who are more famous.
If he could not convert you, no one ever will."

" I am quite sure of that," said Egerton. " No one ever
will to Socialism. Though I am ready to acknowledge that
Socialism has an ideal which is noble and generous compared
to the selfish materialism of the society against which it re-

256 ARMINE. [May,

volts. It is, in fact, the reaction against this materialism ; and
it cannot be long before the two forces come to open war.
There is a terrible judgment approaching for the world which
has made Mammon its god and prosperity its supreme excel-
lence."

Winter regarded the speaker curiously.

"What a singular person you are!" he said. "You are
neither fish nor flesh. You acknowledge that materialism is
crushing society, and yet you will not join the forces that
fight against it."

" How do you know that ? " asked Egerton tranquilly.
" There are other forces besides Socialism which fight against
it. It was not Socialism which said, ' Woe unto ye rich/
and * Blessed are ye poor.' '

" Oh ! " said the Positivist, with contempt, " the great Found-
er of Christianity may indeed have said that, but you know as
well as I that the so-called Christian churches have long since
abandoned such doctrines and made a complete and lasting
alliance with Mammon."

" I grant you that the human so-called churches, founded
by men whose first act was to seize the heritage of the poor
and to obliterate from men's minds the counsels of perfection,
have done so," Egerton answered ; " but we may put them
aside. They have indeed upheld the worship of material
prosperity which now curses the world ; but their day is
over. Every man who thinks recognizes now their want of
logical basis, their absolute incapacity to teach or lead hu-
man society. But the church the one, majestic church
of all ages which taught them all that they know, repeats
for ever the words that I have uttered, and for ever proves
her right to utter them by being continually slandered, per-
secuted, and led to Calvary like her Lord."

Winter stared for a moment. Then he said : " I told you
how it would be ! I am not surprised ! When people have re-
actionary sympathies one never knows where they will end."

" Or, rather, one knows very well where they will end, if
they have any logic," said Egerton. " Unfortunately a great
number of worthy and excellent people have none at all. And
we are all more or less prone to the amusement of setting up
a man of straw in order to knock him down. We do not
care to investigate doctrines which we do not wish to be-
lieve true. The history of the perpetuation of error lies in
that."

1884.] ARMINE. 257

" Some things one scorns too much to think them worth
examination," said the other.

Egerton shook his head. " Ah, mon cher" he said, " there
is fear as well as scorn, else you would not forget all scho-
larly and philosophical rules. You would not look at the
most stupendous fact of human history solely by the light of
partisan testimony. But " he turned to Miss Bertram" I
am afraid I must apologize. I forgot that I was not at M.
d'Antignac's. In a salon like this one should not fall into such
grave discussions."

" No," said Miss Bertram, with a slight air of disdain,
whether for him or the salon it was difficult to tell ; " we
should be talking about the Op6ra Comique, the fashions,
and the races. To do us justice, we were discharging our
duty in that line were we not, Mr. Winter ? when you came
up."

" Then there only remains for me to take myself away,"
said Egerton, with a smile.

" Wait a moment," said Winter. " My aunt, I see, is rising,
and after I have put her in her carriage we will walk down
the Boulevard together."

A few minutes later they were in the open air, stroll-
ing along the Boulevard Malesherbes toward the Madeleine.
Both were silent for some time, and it was presently Winter
who spoke :

" What a beautiful woman Miss Bertram is ! and as clever
as she is beautiful! I am tempted to wish that my aunt had
come to Paris a little earlier ; yet I know that things are best
as they are. I should only have singed my wings to no
purpose."

" You cannot tell that," said Egerton somewhat absently.

The other glanced at him quickly and, as it seemed, a little
indignantly.

" Don't tempt me to knock you down ! " he said. " As if
I could not see how she changed color when you came up !
Well, there are some things that not even Socialism can set
straight. We can never give all men an equal chance with
a woman."

" Nor with many other things," said Egerton, smiling, yet

effectually startled. " But, my dear Winter, if you imagine

that / have any chance with Miss Bertram you are greatly

mistaken. Sometimes I think that she dislikes, and I am al-

VOL. xxxix. 17

258 ARMINE. [May

ways sure that she scorns, me though, honestly, I do not
know why."

"Because you are so stupid, I presume," said Winter drily.
" You must be uncommonly stupid if you believe that If
ever I saw a woman's eyes speak but why should I enlighten
you? You don't deserve such luck!"

Egerton could not restrain a laugh.

" I never knew before that imagination was your strong
point," he said. "The idea of Miss Bertram who is a veri-
table Lady Disdain regarding me with favor is absolutely
ludicrous, though I don't mind confessing that I have never
at any time needed more than a grain of encouragement to
precipitate me into a grand passion for her. But the grain
of encouragement has never come."

" Nor ever will," said Winter, with a scorn equal to that
of Miss Bertram. " Encouragement ! Bah ! does one look
for a queen to smile like a grisette ? The man who wins Miss
Bertram must win her without encouragement he must win
her in spite of herself! And I only wish" with an honest
sigh " that I were the man ! "

CHAPTER XLVI.

ON SundayT evening, for the first time in many days, [his
friends gathered again around the couch on which D'An-
tignac lay pale, worn, but with tranquil content in his eyes
and smile. Not a single face was missing of those most fami-
liar to him, and he looked at them as one who did not know
how long such sight may be granted ; for he was as well aware
as the doctors that the sharp suffering which had withdrawn
for a time might return at any hour, and that the exhausted
forces of life must then go down before it. Something of
this thought was in the smile with which he received con-
gratulations on his improvement and put aside all discussion
of his condition. " I am comparatively free from pain to-
day," he said. " That is enough ; we jvvill not think of yes-
terday or to-morrow."

Egerton was one of the latest arrivals, having gone to the
Quartier Latin for Winter, who had forgotten his promise and
was only animated to keep it by the thought of meeting Miss
Bertram. Yet even ,he was touched indescribably by the
scene upon which he entered by the pale, serene, almost ra-
diant face of the man who lay helpless on his couch, and by

1884.] ARMINE. 259

the joyous cheerfulness of those around him. D'Antignac
held out his hand with a smile. " Miss Bertram has been tell-
ing me about you," he said to the young man. " I wish you
had come earlier. Egerton should have brought you before."

" I have seen very little of Winter of late," said Egerton.
" His life and mine have somehow drifted into different
channels."

"There was no drifting about it," said Winter. " They
have always been in different channels. Life for me means
work, and for you pleasure. There is a wide difference."

" A difference altogether in your favor," said D'Antignac.
" There are few people more to be pitied than the man who
lives only for his own pleasure ; though I do not mean to im-
ply that Egerton belongs to that class."

" I have belonged to it," said Egerton simply, " and I can
testify that you are right. The man is indeed to be pitied
who has no better end."

Winter shrugged his shoulders. " Here we are at once at
our old point of disagreement," he said. " Men who are
elevated by fortune above the need to work will always live
for their own pleasure."

"You see the conclusion," said Egerton, looking at D'An-
tignac with a smile. " Therefore so runs the syllogism no
one should be allowed to accumulate enough of fortune's
goods to elevate them above the need to work."

" The conclusion is as false in logic as in fact," said D'An-
tignac. " The man who is not restrained by a sense of duty
from living for his own pleasure as a millionaire would not
be restrained as a laborer, except by the narrowness of his
means. But even in narrow means there is scope for selfish-
ness and the selfishness of the workman who leaves his fam-
ily without food while he spends his wages on drink is more
keenly felt than the selfishness of the fine gentleman who
lives for his own amusement."

" And therefore," said Winter, *' living for his own amuse-
ment is a luxury which fortune secures to the fine gentle-
man, and of which a considerable part of the world desire to
deprive him."

" In order that they may have greater freedom in living
for their amusement?" said D'Antignac, with a smile.

" On the contrary, that no one shall possess such free-
dom ; that every one shall be forced to do his share of the
work of the world."

260 ARMINE. [May,

"That sounds very well," said D'Antignac quietly, "but
have you a recipe for banishing- selfishness from the world
that you think it possible to prevent men most men from
seeking- their own interest and pleasure? Yet, notwithstand-
ing this tendency of human nature, there are not many drones
in the human hive, and democrats like yourself should re-
member that for every great achievement of the world for
statecraft, for heroism, for art, for science, for all that gives
permanence and splendor to civilization you are indebted to
men who were elevated by fortune above the need of servile
toil."

" Even Oriental research might come to an end if its stu-
dents were reduced to the necessity of digging for their
bread," said Egerton.

"As it happens," said Winter, "it is exactly for my bread
that I am digging among Oriental roots."

" Secondarily, perhaps, but not primarily," said Egerton,
"else I am sure you might find a quicker way 'to make it.
No, no; in the ideal republic of Socialism there will be no
leisure for refined pursuits or high intellectual processes.
The aristocracy of intellect and attainment must follow the
.aristocracy of birth. What ! do you think that we are going
to tolerate scholars and geniuses any more than dukes and
millionaires? Let us be consistent and have equality in all
things. Nature, it is true, disdains to recognize it ; but then
we may improve upon nature."

" I can't flatter you, Egerton, that sarcasm is your forte"
said Winter. " If there is anything for which the Revolution
as remarkable it is for the manner in which it fosters intellec-
tual life."

It was at this moment that Sibyl Bertram, unable longer
to restrain her impatience, abruptly ended another conversa-
tion in which she was engaged, and drew near. The smile
which the last assertion had drawn to D'Antignac's lip at
once attracted her attention.

" I am sorry I was not a moment sooner," she said. " M.
d'Antignac looks so much amused that something very enter-
taining must have been said."

" Something very entertaining was certainly said," answer-
ed D'Antignac, " though I acquit Mr. Winter of any intention
to be amusing. He has just informed us that the Revolution
is chiefly remarkable for fostering intellectual life."

-"And can any one deny it?" demanded Winter with as-

1884.] ARMINE. 261

tonishment. " Is not every fetter removed from speculative
thought? Is not the educational question the burning ques-
tion of the day in every country in Europe ? "

The smile had left D'Antignac's lip now, and a light came
into his eye that meant, as Sibyl knew, the rousing of his deep-
est feeling. But his voice was as calm and gentle as ever when
he answered :

" Yes, it is true. Every fetter is certainly removed from
speculative thought, and the right to deny God's truth has
ended in the right to blaspheme and denounce him. It is also
very true that the educational question is the burning question
of the day in every country of Europe. But why ? Is it be-
cause the Revolution is filled with zeal for learning? Every
dispassionate man must be aware that, on the contrary, it is
simply because the schools are the propaganda of revolutionary
and infidel ideas. The battle is not for education, but for god-
less education. Else why are the teaching orders expelled from
France, and, with few exceptions, every religious house of in-
struction closed ? "

" You will pardon me," said Winter, " but we do not be-
lieve that education, in the proper and enlightened sense of the
word, can be given in a religious house."

" And therefore," said D'Antignac, with unmoved calmness,
" you forbid those who differ with you to send their children
where they please. I will not pause to point out the admir-
able consistency of liberal ideas for we have long since learn-
ed that ' freedom of thought ' means freedom to oppress all who
do not agree with you but I will venture to ask when the
church became incapable of guiding the civilization which it
created? For you, a student, a scholar, you who have your
dwelling in the old Pays Latin, cannot be ignorant of the fact
that ' there is not a man who talks against the church in Europe
to-day who does not owe it to the church that he is able to
talk at all.' "

" I am aware," said Winter, " that we owe a great debt to
the ecclesiastics of the middle ages, but "

" But you think it well to repay that debt by exiling their
descendants and converting houses of learning into barracks for
soldiers. Eh Men, do you ever, in passing through the famous
quarter where you live, try to recall the idea of the great uni-
versity which once existed there, with its swarming thousands
of students, its forty-two colleges, its abbe*ys, cloisters, and
churches, enriched by an art that had been taught by faith?

262 ARMINE. [May,

Then does it occur to you to remember that every noble
foundation was laid in centuries that an age of shallow learn-
ing ventures to call ' dark,' by ecclesiastics to whom the modern
world pays its gratitude in reviling ? and how and by what
it was destroyed?"

Winter colored slightly. " The Revolution, of course, did
not spare it," he said, and then paused.

"No," said D'Antignac, "the Revolution did not spare it.
Through those splendid halls, through the great libraries and
stately cloisters, swept the storm in the name of freedom of
thought, and those who now excuse this storm find it con-
venient to forget that it not only demolished churches and
violated tombs, but that it also suppressed all houses of learn-
ing. Under its fierce blast the great University of Paris per-
ished, and was replaced by a bureaucratic system of public
instruction which has filled even the chairs of the Sorbonne
with doctors of infidelity, and degraded such few of the an-
cient colleges as remain to mere lyceums, where the youth of
France are trained to despise all that their fathers honored,
and to extol and imitate the deeds of men who, while calling
themselves apostles of reason, strove to extinguish the light of
human intelligence as well as that of divine faith."

There was a moment's silence as the clear, vibrating tones
ceased. For once Winter could not reply. He knew the stub-
born facts of history, and, confronted with them, had no word
of excuse to make. Presently D'Antignac looked at him with
a kindly smile.

" When next you enter the Sorbonne," he said, " think a
little of this, and try to realize that the church which did such
great things for human learning when she was queen of all
nations and no man denied her power is not likely to desire to
doom men to ignorance now. On the contrary, she desires to
rescue them from the ignorance and the false learning that
is, learning resting on false premises which are destroying
society and menacing civilization."

" He is certainly a remarkable man," said Winter to Miss
Bertram, when he had discreetly withdrawn from the imme-
diate neighborhood of the couch. " It is not so much what he
says one has heard that before but the way in which he says
it, and the look with which he accompanies it. I understand
now the change that has come over Egerton. A month or two
ago he was as near a Socialist by Jove ! I beg your pardon,
but that cannot be Mile. Duchesne vender?"

1884.] ARMINE. 263

"Yes," said Sibyl, smiling at the amazement of his tone,
"that is Mile. Duchesne. You know her, then?"

" I met her once at her father's. But it is impossible !
It cannot be the person I mean. How would she come
here ? "

" Very simply. The D'Antignacs are old friends of hers.
And she is certainly, I think, the person you mean that is,
she is the daughter of the Socialist Duchesne."

" But his daughter here ! "

" It does seem remarkable, no doubt, especially when you
knew him. But I assure you that she is his daughter; and
here is Mr. Egerton to support me in the assertion."

"Yes," said Egerton, who drew near at the moment, "it
is certainly Mile. Duchesne. Should- you like to renew your
acquaintance with her?"

" Renew ! I have no idea that she remembers me," said
Winter. " But I wish you would tell me how her father's
daughter comes to be here."

" There is not much to tell," said Egerton. " The D'An-
tignacs, strange as it may seem, were her oldest friends in
Paris, and she had no relatives. Suppose you come and speak
to her? I assure you she does not shrink from her father's
friends."

Thus encouraged, Winter consented to be taken up to Ar-
mine, and, having presented him, Egerton returned to Miss
Bertram.

" I have returned good for evil in the most admirable man-
ner," he said, with a smile. " It was to Winter that I owed
my introduction to Duchesne, and now I have repaid the
debt by presenting him to Armine. If any one can counter-
act her father's work she can."

" Did she counteract it in you ? " asked Miss Bertram.

"Yes," he answered. * * I think I owe more to her than
even to M. d'Antignac, since but for her I do not believe I
should ever have been roused to sufficient interest to listen to
him."

There was a moment's pause. Then, without looking at
him, Miss Bertram said:

" Do you know have you heard w'hat her intentions
are ? "

"To enter the religious life?" he answered. "Yes, I
heard that some time ago. Did not you?"

" No," she answered, lifting her eyes now and regarding

264 ARMINE. [May,

him with a scrutiny so keen that it puzzled him. " I only
heard of her resolution to-day. It surprised me very much."

" Is it possible ? " said Egerton. " It did not surprise me
at all. Of course there was a little shock at first, but in five
minutes I agreed with M. d'Antignac that it is the only fit
end for her. It is what I always dimly felt that she was in-
tended for. I might have fallen in love with her but for that,"
he ended, with a smile.

"Are you sure that you did not do so?" said Miss Ber-
tram involuntarily it seemed.

"I am quite sure," the young man answered, though he
looked a little surprised. " My feeling for her was not at all
of that kind. She seemed to inspire something altogether dif-
ferent as if she had been a saint already. I always thought
her like Guercino's St. Margaret," he added, smiling again.

" Saint or no saint, I think if I had been a man I must have
fallen in love with her," said Miss Bertram ; " so you see I
only gave you credit for good taste in suspecting you of hav-
ing done so."

" You are very kind," Egerton answered, " but " he paus-
ed, then added in a low tone, "you should have known bet-
ter."

Miss Bertram lifted her eyebrows. Her glance said as
plainly as words, "What had I to do with it?" But notwith-
standing this, there must have been some faint sign of that
encouragement concerning the lack of which Egerton had
complained, for he went on quickly :

" I have long said to myself that there only needed a word,
a glance, to make me passionately in love with you ; but I am
not sure now that the word or glance has been needed. You
have always seemed to regard me with so much scorn that
hope has been out of the question ; yet I think it is possible
to love without hope." *

Sibyl did not answer indeed, there did not seem to be
anything in this speech which required an answer but after
an instant she rose and moved away, not, however, toward any
of the various groups, but farther away from them, to one of
the open windows which overlooked the river. This embold-
ened Egerton to follow her.

" I know," he went on, in the tone of one who pursues an
argument, " that my life has been deserving of your scorn, and
that your vague aspirations at which I used to smile were
more than my contentment with lower things. Yet perhaps

1884.] ARMINE. 265

I seemed more contented than I was, and if self-disgust may
lead to better things "

He was interrupted here. With her old impetuosity Sibyl
turned to him.

" And what was my life that / should have ventured to
scorn any one ? " she said. " You do not understand you
never understood it was because I thought you had the
power to do something better that I was impatient. But I
have grown a little wiser. I know now that one should not
criticise unless one has a better way to point out. I had
none."

"But there is a better way," said Egerton, "and, if you
will, we may seek it together. This sounds presumptuous,
perhaps" as she stood still and did not answer "and I
have no right to expect you to believe in me. But we have
both felt that life is meant for something better than mere
living for one's own interest or one's own pleasure ; and I
think we both see that the nobler existence is within our
reach. The question is, shall we enter upon it together or
apart ? That is for you to decide. But if if there is the least
hope for me, I am willing to wait to serve "

" I have come to say good-evening, dear M. d'Antignac,"
said Sibyl half an hour later.

D'Antignac looked up at her as she stood in her charming
beauty by the side of his couch, extending her hand. He
took it with a smile, and glanced from her to Egerton, who
stood by. Did those kind, dark eyes read everything? It
seemed so to the two who met them.

" We have a better salutation than that in French," he said.
" It is the most exquisite of all forms of greeting. For brief
or long parting, for joy or sorrow, for life or death what
better can we say than adieu ? It expresses all blessing and
it places those whom we love where we would wish ever to
leave them. So, my dear friends" he held out his other
hand to Egerton" ct Dieu ! "

THE END.

266 THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" [May,

.THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN."

ONE Indian Summer's day in the year 1808 a horseman rode
out of the village of Emmittsburg, Maryland, in the direction of
the Catochtin Mountain, which was about two miles distant. It
was one of those days which come only in Indian Summer. The
persimmon-trees along the roadside were loaded with ripe fruit ;
the air was balmy and perfectly still ; a slight haze tinged the
landscape, giving it a reposeful, dreamy look ; overhead, soaring
round and round in a vast circle, were a number of turkey-buz-
zards ; and as the eye rested upon the broad sweep of primeval
forest which clothed the beautiful mountain one of the spurs of
the Blue Ridge you might almost have fancied that a gigantic
rainbow had dropped down from the sky and remained to give
it all its joyous, glorious autumn tints.

" How do you like Emmittsburg ? " spoke the Rev. Mr.
Dubois, addressing a pale-faced boy of twelve or thirteen, who
rode behind him with his feet thrust deep into the good priest's
pockets, which served him for stirrups. " I like it much better
than Baltimore," answered Jim Taney. " And if my sister were
only here I'd be perfectly happy."

" Well, be patient," said the priest. " Agnes is now in the
care of Mother Seton, who is coming by and by to make a home
not far from our home." " How glad I shall be to see my sis-
ter again ! " continued Jim. - " This is the first time we have been
separated since father and mother died. Oh ! I love Agnes very,
very much."

When they had reached what is known to-day as Featherbed
Lane they entered the shadow of the woods, and, after proceeding
a short distance, came to another road which led straight up the
mountain. Here young Taney clapped his hands and in his ex-
citement almost fell out of the saddle; for he had discovered an
opossum waddling across a fallen tree which spanned a roaring
brook ten paces to the left, and he had never seen an opossum
before ; the animal looked so droll as it turned its roguish head
half round to wink at him, and Jim wanted to run and catch it.
" O Father Dubois ! " he exclaimed presently, " do stop here.
Do build the college here! " " This would not be a bad spot,"
replied the reverend gentleman, as he took a pinch of snuff out
of an old French snuff-box. " But, my dear boy, let us explore a

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN!' 267

little further ; let us go as far as yonder log-cabin on the other
side of the stream." So saying, the priest with the boy forded
the trout-brook, in those days a good deal broader than it is to-
day. They were welcomed at the humble abode by a widow
named Peggy McEntee, who with her own hands hitched the
nag to a hickory sapling, then bade Mr. Dubois, whom she knew,
to enter and take some refreshment. " And you, too, little boy,"
she added, " must be hungry after your ride. Come in and' taste
my doughnuts."

Taney needed no urging, and when, after eating his fill, he
accompanied Mr. Dubois afoot to a point somewhat more ele-
vated,. he declared that he had never dreamed of a finer place
than this. " For Mrs. McEntee has stuffed my pockets full of
chestnuts," he said. " And she tells me that the rabbits and
'possums cannot be counted, and that there are thousands of
squirrels. Oh ! look, look ; there goes a rabbit ! " And before
Mr. Dubois could stop him Jim was scampering at full speed
through the bushes and briars. By and by he found his way
back ; his pretty blue cap was missing, nor could he find it any-
where, although he spent a quarter of an hour in the search, so
dense was the laurel thicket into which he had foolishly plunged.

" That rabbit is no doubt laughing at you," spoke Mr. Du-
bois. " Well, I'll set a trap and catch him, and then /'// laugh
at him" returned Jim, with a grin, who had thick curly hair and
looked much better without his cap than with it. The clergy-
man smiled, then, after climbing a few steps further, paused and
exclaimed : " What a magnificent view ! 'Tis here I will build
the church ; and down below, shielded by the mountain from the
cold west winds in winter, shall stand the college and seminary."

"When? How soon? Oh! do let us come here at once,"
cried Jim. " For there are so many chestnuts here, and rabbits,
and 'possums! "

" You will have something else to do besides trapping rab-
bits and getting nuts," answered Mr. Dubois, patting his head.
" Oh ! to be sure, I will study very hard and become very learn-
ed," pursued Jim. " Mount St. Mary's College" said Mr. Du-
bois in a musing tone.

" What ! is that to be the name ? " asked Taney, who had
keen ears. " Yes ; and let us hope that the institution may give
to our country many worthy priests and scholars. Mount
St. Mary's is a sweet-sounding name. Dear Mount St.
Mary's ! "

" And my sister will not be far from me," said the boy, his

268 THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN:' [May,

eyes sparkling with delight. "And when Agnes is here this
will be Paradise nothing else but Paradise."

Having thus decided that the college should stand on the
right bank of the stream, between Mrs. McEntee's and another
dwelling occupied by an aged slave belonging to her, who had
been born in Africa and was named Pompey, Mr. Dubois jog-
ged back to Emmittsburg, reading his breviary as he went along,
and now and again telling restless Jim not to thrust his feet
entirely through his coat-pockets.

The glowing account which Taney brought to the eleven
boys who had stayed behind made them all eager to move as
soon as possible to the foot of the mountain.

And to the foot of the mountain they went towards noon of
the following day. It was no easy task for Mr. Dubois to keep
his merry band in order. Five rabbits crossed the road within
a few steps of them ; a lazy opossum was discovered dozing on
top of a persimmon-tree ; while one boy declared that he spied a
flock of wild turkeys. And turkeys, opossums, and rabbits drew
from the future collegians a volley of stones ; while Jim Taney,
whom it was impossible to restrain, was half-way up the tree
before Mr. Dubois could make him come down. " Wait, wait,"
exclaimed the priest. " Time enough to catch 'possums by and
by."

Being very hungry, the youngsters were glad to reach the
house of Mr. Joseph Elder, about a mile east of Peggy McEn-
tee's, where they found a substantial dinner awaiting them fried
chicken, hominy, and stewed apples. And here for the next six
months they took their meals as well as slept, studying in an-
other log dwelling hard by.

Bright and early next morning the boys stood in line before
Mr. Dubois; there were James Taney, John Lilly, Frederic
Chatard, Jonathan Walker, Harry Beelen, Tom Conner, John
and Felix McManus, William Miles, Robert Hickey, Richard
Cole, and James Shorb.

Their reverend master told them in a few earnest words that
they were to begin immediately to fell trees and clear the
ground for a college. " Take good care," he said, " of the axes
and hatchets which I shall give you. Be not distracted while at
work by rabbits and squirrels. We are about to lay the founda-
tion of a great institution. Every day we shall devote a few
hours to study ; but our chief occupation for some time to come
must be hewing logs, digging up roots, and rolling away stones.
Let us pray that Almighty God may bless our undertaking."

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN: 269

This brief address was answered by three cheers ; after which,
led by Joe Elder, who was to teach them how to use their im-
plements, they proceeded towards the babbling brook, and there,
between the cabin of Mrs. McEntee and that of her venerable
slave who was to assist them in their labor was begun the
building- of " The Mountain " ; for by this name the college was
known in after-times.

It greatly edified Mr. Dubois to see how zealously the lads,
after a brief instruction from Mr. Elder, set themselves to their
task ; the brambles and trees were attacked with an energy that
was uncommon, and Mrs. McEntee stood at her door with hands
outstretched in wonder. At ten o'clock she was to bring them
a supply of doughnuts. " But, alas ! if they go on at this rate,"
she ejaculated, " they'll have such appetites that they'll eat me
out of house and home."

It happened, however, that the chestnut-tree which Taney
and Willy Miles were trying to lay low had a good many nuts
upon it; and after hearing them drop here and there some-
times they dropped plump on their heads they could bear it
no longer, but, throwing aside their axes, made for the tempting
chestnuts. Just at this moment a hickory-tree which Pompey
was cutting down began to creak and totter ; and lo ! what
should presently emerge from a lofty clump of leaves but a
flying-squirrel. At once arose a chorus of shouts and yells. In
vain did Pompey tell them it was only a poor little squirrel and
that they could not possibly catch it ; as it sailed from tree to
tree along the mountain-side the * eager throng followed like
hounds in full cry. Into the brook two of them tumbled Jack
Lilly and Fred Chatard while the others continued the break-
neck pursuit, until by and by Mr. Dubois could no longer hear
their voices in the distance. Then, after taking a pinch of snuff,
he gravely asked Mr. Elder what was to be done. The lat-
ter shrugged his shoulders and advised that the scapegraces
be given no doughnuts at ten o'clock. Whereupon Pompey
scratched his grizzly wool a moment, then in a most deferential
tone said : " Massa, I'd no punish 'em for running off. Leave
'em to me ; I cure 'em." " What will you do, Pompey ? " in-
quired Mr. Dubois. " Wait, massa, and you'll see. They nq
quit work again. I cure 'em." " Well, I shall trust to your wis-
dom, Pompey," answered Mr. Dubois. " I only hope they'll
not get lost in the forest." After waiting half an hour the boys
were seen strolling back ; they were all breathing very hard, and
some had their faces scratched by the briars. Then Taney,

2/o THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN:' [May,

looking most innocent, informed his reverend master that he
had found his lost cap. "And I do believe it was hidden in a
rabbit's nest," he said. " For it was under a hazel-bush, and te.
rabbit was sitting upon it." " And oh ! what fun we had chas-
ing the rabbit," put in Miles. " Which you no doubt caught,
and the squirrel too," answered Mr. Dubois, trying to look
serious. " You are indeed very successful hunters."

"No, sir, they both got away," said Hickey, which remark
caused everybody to laugh.

Here Mr. Dubois perceived that Chatard and Lilly were en-
deavoring to screen themselves behind their comrades, for they
were wet through and through having fallen in the brook, we
remember and were ashamed to be seen. But instead of repri-
manding them he merely bade them repair to Peggy McEntee's
and there dry their clothes.

" Father Dubois is the kindest master I ever knew," said
Lilly to his friend as they descended the hill. " Yes, he hardly
ever gets out of humor," replied Chatard, who had known the
good priest in Baltimore where from his likeness to Napoleon
he was called the Little Corsican " and in future I'll not leave
my work to go after a rabbit or a squirrel." " Well, if he had
flogged me for failing into the water," continued Lilly, " I'd
probably be much inclined to wade in it this very afternoon in
search of a bullfrog that I saw swim under the bank. But now I
mean to do just what will please Father Dubois."

While they were talking the Widow McEntee was discov-
ered climbing the ascent, holding her apron wide open as if it
was filled with something. " Doughnuts are coming," whis-
pered Pompey to Jim Taney. Jim needed but this to rouse his
whole being into full activity. He had scarcely yet got back his
breath after his long run ; but the word doughnuts sent a thrill
through his veins, his lungs filled out at once, and down the
hillside he went, followed by the other excited youngsters. So
great was the impetus of their combined rush that had not Mrs.
McEntee dropped her load of cakes and fled for her life they
might have overturned her and broken her precious neck.

The scene which now took place made even good-natured
Mr. Dubois brandish his cane, while Mr. Elder exclaimed, with
a rueful shake of the head : " 'Tis little work we'll get out of
these idle brats."

Pompey, however, enjoyed the scramble and tussle im-
mensely ; perhaps he saw anew through the mist of far-off
years a combat in the jungles of Africa. His huge mouth

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN." 271

grinned from ear to ear, his eyes well-nigh jumped out of their
sockets, and his arms swung round like two flails, while Mr. Du-
bois and Joe Elder hastened to quell the disturbance. But it
was several minutes before even their voices could be heard.
Jim Taney, although only thirteen and seemingly a frail lad, was
as active as a cat, and had grabbed much more than his fair
share of doughnuts : his pockets were crammed full, between
his gleaming teeth he clinched a cake which happily hindered
him from shouting, but made his face grow exceedingly red
while in each fist was a doughnut crushed out of all shape ; for
his fists were striking right and left at Lilly and Miles, who were
both attacking him with intent to make him surrender a part of
what he had so greedily grabbed.

Hickey and Shorb, in endeavoring to get possession of the
rest of the scattered cakes, were trampled upon by a number
of heels ; and a sorry aspect the ravenous scramblers presented
when finally peace and quiet were restored by their master's
hickory stick.

" Golly ! Dat was glorious ! " ejaculated Pompey as he picked
up one of the warriors, whose nose was bleeding. But Mr. Du-
bois thought otherwise. After bidding the slave to hold his
tongue he administered a sharp reproof to these early students
at " The Mountain," and concluded by allowing them only one
doughnut apiece. Taney, however, got more than one, for he
had already swallowed a cake and a half.

And now timidly from her hiding-place behind a stump crept
Peggy McEntee, who could do nothing but roll up her eyes and
clasp her hands ; for they were fine-looking lads, these twelve
" Mountaineers," and now to behold their dishevelled hair and
torn collars did deeply move her loving heart. But presently
she smiled and patted Taney 's cheek ; for woman, being a non-
combatant by nature, doth eminently admire pluck and pugna-
city in the other sex.

Having obtained leave of Mr. Dubois, Pompey now pro-
ceeded to address the boys a few words. " Young gemmen,"
he said, " you are young and inexperienced, as you showed by
chasing a flying-squirrel awhile ago, thinking that he might be
caught. Next time your axes scare a squirrel out of his nest
don't even look up at him. Father Dubois wants us to make a
big clearing here for a college where your heads are to become
chock-full of learning. Therefore, young gemmen, while you
are at work, work in downright earnest ; don't notice squirrels
and rabbits. But there is a time, too, for play ; and now I wish

272 THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN:' [May,

to say that I'm going to teach you how to make rabbit-traps,
and that some night when the ground is a little damp I'll get my
hounds, Bowser and Towser, and we'll all go after 'possums.
And believe old Pompey : there's nothing better than roast
'possum for breakfast and dinner and supper ; stuff him with
chestnuts, stick an ear of corn in his mouth, and then well,
young gemmen, roll up your eyes."

When Pompey had ended this brief speech every boy made
for his axe, while Mr. Dubois complimented the aged slave on
his well-timed remarks ; and during the rest of the day barring
an hour for dinner all labored with good-will, so that by the
time evening arrived not a little ground had been cleared. Such
conduct pleased Mr. Dubois, who said as they wended their way
back to Joe Eider's; " Boys, you have done well to-day, and it
shall not be long before Pompey takes you out 'possum-hunt-
ing." " Oh ! do let him take us this very evening," exclaimed
Taney. " Why, I'm not in the least tired."

But Mr. Dubois answered : " This evening, James, you must
go to bed early; you all need a good long sleep."

Next morning Taney awoke an hour before it was time to
rise, and he at once proceeded to rouse his schoolmates, wko
began immediately to talk about rabbits and squirrels ; no
thought of a book entered their heads, until by and by Hickey
said : " I hate Latin grammar; don't you, Shorb ?"

" Y-yes," answered Shorb, a fat, good-natured lad, who was
only half-awake. Upon which Taney jerked the pillow from
under his head, and presently Shorb added with a yawn : " En-
glish grammar is is hard enough. What a a horrid time Ro-
man boys must have had with their grammar! " " Well, Pompey
says he never studied any grammar at all," spoke Miles. "Yet
see what a fine speech he delivered yesterday." " Pompey 's a per-
fect Cicero," said Lilly, flinging his pillow at Hickey. This was the
signal for a volley of shoes, stockings, and pillows ; and the fun
and uproar only ended when Mr. Dubois opened the door. But
then it ended suddenly, as if by magic. You might have heard
a pin drop, a mouse creep over the floor; and when Mr. Dubois
bade them get up and come to prayers, one boy after another
stretched out his arms and yawned, and the kind-hearted priest,
bending over Jim Taney, said : " I am sorry to wake you, James,
but it is late and time for prayers."

In a jiffy all the youngsters were on their feet crying out,
" Oh ! do let's make haste ; it's late ; it's time for prayers."

The reverend gentleman, be it here said, had just returned

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN"^ 273

from Emmittsburg, whither he had gone before sunrise to offer
up Mass ; and he had brought back two pedagogues sent to him
from Baltimore. The moment the boys laid eyes on their teach-
ers, who stood a little behind Mr. Dubois, a violent chill crept
over them, and Hickey, his fevered fancy conjuring up visions of
rattans, determined to put on two pairs of trousers, which might
prove useful in case of contingencies. Mr. Smith was tall and
lank, with a sallow complexion and of a bilious temperament.
Mr. Monahan was a thick-set Irishman, with short-cropped hair
which stood up like bristles.

" The tall fellow looks as if he had been feeding on Latin
grammar; doesn't he?" whispered Taney. " Yes," answered
Miles under his breath. " And I think I see a Greek root stick-
ing out of his left ear."

" Well, the-stout one with red face looks as if he had some fun
in him," said Miles.

" Humph ! I wish they hadn't come," said Taney, heaving a
sigh " at least not till we had finished the big log-house where
our school is to be." Here Mr. Dubois clapped his hands, and
presently all were on their knees.

Having performed their morning devotions, they breakfasted,
and all ate with good appetites except Taney. To him had
come a letter from his sister, and so deep was his emotion on
reading it that he could not prevent the tears from flowing ;
and when Hickey giggled and called him a baby for crying,
Taney gave him a pretty hard punch in the side, which caused
Hickey to utter a groan and spill some hot coffee on his lap.

This disturbance made Mr. Smith knit his brow and lift his
right hand in a threatening manner. But he went no farther, for
this was Jim's first offence ; and presently Taney and Hickey were
good friends again. But still Taney did not touch his breakfast ;
he could do nothing but read and reread Agnes' letter. And
after they had left the table he took Mr. Dubois' hand and asked
how soon his sister would arrive. " I have already told you,"
replied Mr. Dubois, " that she will be here next spring with
Mother Seton." " Next spring ! " sighed Jim. " Oh ! that seems
very, very far off."

Thanks to Pompey's promise to take them soon on an opos-
sum-hunt, the youngsters worked like beavers this day, as well
as the next and the next ; and besides the old slave and Mr.
Elder there were several other skilful axemen to assist them,
so that by the end of the week the ground for the college
and college garden had been pretty well cleared, and Peggy
VOL. xxxix. 18

274 THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" [May,

McEntee declared that she hardly recognized the place, it was
so changed.

At ten o'clock every forenoon she treated the boys to fresh
doughnuts ; nor had the boys ever tasted more delicious water
than the water which flowed in the brook close by, and which in
years to come was to give delight to so many thirsty students
as it bubbled out of the fountains on the college terrace.

Saturday evening after supper they were allowed to go with
Pompey to the mountain in quest of opossums. Mr. Smith
shook his head and hinted to Mr. Dubois that they might get
into mischief. But Mr. Dubois was not afraid to trust to their
honor; and so off went the frolicsome band, Pompey leading and
carrying a big bag in which to put the game, while at his heels
trotted Bowser and Towser dogs seemingly of no particular
breed, and which he aptly styled meat-hounds.

No sooner had the boys departed than Mr. Smith, who had
nothing to do, set out for Emmittsburg to get whatever letters or
parcels he might find addressed to the care of his superior. It
Avas a dark night, the air a little moist, and just the kind of wea-
ther for scent to lie well. When the youngsters heard this they
rubbed their hands in glee and began to count their opossums in
advance, while Shorb exclaimed : " I do wish my whole life
could be a 'possum-hunt."

" Well, I reckon these be your happiest days," observed Pom-
pey, as they entered the forest at the foot of the mountain.

" They would be the happiest days for me if my sister were
here," said Taney, who was constantly thinking of Agnes his
dear Agnes.

" I don't see the good of studying Latin grammar," put in
Miles. "Do you, Pompey?" " Can't answer that," replied the
venerable African. " 'Twouldn't, of course, be no good to me.
But I'm only a poor nigger ; you may become an an archbishop
some day." This remark was greeted by a peal of laughter, and
for many a day afterwards Miles was known among his school-
fellows as the "Archbishop."

The first opossum was captured right at the back of what is
to-day the college God's-acre, and he was taken alive by Taney,
who, braving the animal's sharp teeth, climbed the tree, and,
deftly unwinding his tail from the branch round which it was
coiled like a snake, let him drop into the bag which Pompey held
open underneath. " We'll have him for dinner to-morrow," cried
Shorb, as he peeped into the bag. " No, let's keep him and tame
him," said Felix McManus.

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" 275

" Let's hide him in Mr. Smith's bed to-morrow night," said
mischievous Taney.

" But 'possums bite right hard," observed Pompey gravely.
" Very glad they do," said Hickey. They were still debating
what should be the fate of their first opossum when the dogs
treed another; and soon afterwards a third and a fourth were
bagged.

" I'd like to find a coon afore we get home," said Pompey,
" for then we'd see a tussle ; 'tisn't every dog can whip a
coon." " Yes, yes a coon, a coon ! " cried all the boys at one
breath.

A quarter of an hour later Pompey came to a sudden stop,
and, putting his hand to his ear, listened intently. His dogs were
barking furiously down in the valley. " What have they treed
now ? " said Miles. " Perhaps a wild-cat," said Chatard. " Well,
I never heard that kind of bark afore," said Pompey. " It's a
strange bark to me ; let's make haste and see what they've treed."
Immediately the boys armed themselves with stout sticks ; and
now, with daring Taney leading the van, carrying a stick and a
stone, down the mountain they hurried, for the barking seemed
to be in the direction of Featherbed Lane.

But the youngsters were soon a long distance ahead of Pom-
pey, whose limbs were stiff with age, and he was far behind
when by and by they reached a cedar-tree up at which Bowser
and Towser were barking like mad.

" O fellows ! it's a bear ! a bear ! " cried Taney, flinging a
stone at a big, dark object dimly visible among the topmost
branches.

" A bear ! a bear ! " cried the others ; and only one boy was
afraid to approach near the cedar. His name we do not give, for
in after-life he became a most holy and learned bishop.

"Boys! boys!" shouted Mr. Smith down from the top of
the tree, "what are you doing? Don't you know me? I'll
flog every one of you!" "A bear! a bear!" screamed the
youngsters louder and louder ; so that poor Mr. Smith's voice
was drowned in the din, and he feared to descend lest the dogs
might devour him. The unfortunate man was obliged to bury
his head in a crotch of the cedar for fear of the stones, which
were whizzing by like a swarm of bees ; while his legs, which un-
happily were very long, dangled in full view of the hunters and
were hit more than once. The boys were highly elated at hav-
ing treed such big game.

"Young gemmen, what in tarnation is it?" cried Pompey,

276 THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" [May,

arriving almost out of breath. " A bear ! a bear ! " was the ex-
cited response. Then, while Pompey was stretching out his
neck and straining his eyes to get a glimpse of the animal, the
boys kept up a deafening yelling and shouting, and presently
Taney, seizing the negro's axe, proceeded to fell the tree, which,
after a shower of heavy blows, tumbled with a crash on venture-
some Hickey, who was partially stunned ; and before the latter
could regain his feet Mr. Smith had clutched him by the collar.
Immediately the other boys scattered in different directions,
Taney and Shorb making for the mountain, up which they went
as fast as legs could carry them.

" I wonder where we are ? " said Shorb after they had run a
long way through the woods. " I reckon we're lost," answered
his friend. " But no no, we're not. I see a light ahead of us."
In a few minutes they emerged from the gloom of the forest
.and found themselves at a rock which stood on the northeast
brow of the Catochtin. This spot was afterwards called " In-
-dian Lookout"; for seated by a fire, which was t not at all un-
pleasant this moist, chilly night, was an Indian. "Don't be
scared," spoke the latter for the boys looked a little startled at
the grim, dusky visage turned upon them. " You've got out of
the trail, have you ? Don't be scared." " We have been hunt-
ing 'possums," replied Taney. " Is it far from here to Mr.
Joseph Elder's?" "Some distance. I'll show you the trail
which leads down to the valley," said Tobias or Uncle Toby, as
he had been christened by the people of Emmittsburg, whither
he went now and again to sell cigars, or " Tobies," as the col-
lege boys called them long after the old Indian himself had gone
to the Happy Hunting- Ground.

"Well, is this your home?" inquired Shorb. "Yes," an-
swered Tobias. " My wigwam is near by. I am the last of my
tribe, and I cultivate a patch of tobacco, which in winter-time I
make into cigars."

" Indeed:! " exclaimed Taney.

"Smoke?" said the Indian, offering the boys a handful of
" Tobies." " I have promised Mr. Dubois not to smoke," re-
plied Taney, " and I will not break my promise." " Nor I,"
said Shorb.

" I know Mr. Dubois," said Tobias. " All the folks about
here know him. He's very good, and very strong too. He can
walk 'most as far as I could when I was his age. But he isn't
.here now ; he can't see you. Do try my tobacco."

Again the boys shook their heads, and the Indian, after star-

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" 277

ing at them a moment in wonder, rose to his feet and guided
them safely down the mountain.

Next morning Mr. Dubois was obliged to punish his school-
boys. For Mr. Smith had told him what they had done in
Featherbed Lane: how they had wantonly flung stones up the
tree and bruised his legs, which were all black and blue, and
called him a bear, and then had hewn the tree down at the im-
minent peril of his neck. Whereupon his brother pedagogue
had inwardly laughed and wished that he had been present to
witness the sport.

" I say, fellows, it's worth being obliged to learn seven pages
of Latin grammar just to have such a jolly hunt as we had last
evening," spoke Taney. " Well, Mr. Smith suspects that I was
smoking," said Shorb; " for he made me open my mouth, and I
came near biting his nose off."

" But Mr. Dubois believed our word of honor," said Taney.
" And it's true we didn't smoke." Then presently he added :
" But, fellows, Shorb and I discovered a lonely spot on the
mountain where lives an old Indian named Tobias, who makes
cigars." " Really ? " ejaculated Harry Beelen, who was fond of
tobacco. " Well, I must make Tobias' acquaintance."

Having committed to memory their seven pages of Latin
grammar, the boys repaired to the mountain, where, on a part of
the clearing nearest the brook, a big log-house was commenced
the first building of Mt. St. Mary's College.

And here day after day they labored industriously with
Pompey, Joe Eider, and their teachers, while happy Mr. Dubois,
seated on a stump, read his breviary and superintended the
work.

Nor did Peggy McEntee ever forget to bring them dough-
nuts at ten o'clock.

And often at noontime, while they were resting, Mr. Dubois
would tell them of the thrilling, awful scenes he had witnessed
in France during the Reign of Terror, and how one morning he
met his former schoolmate, the redoubtable Robespierre, who, in-
stead of taking his head off, had invited him to breakfast.

One Saturday Mr. Dubois went to Baltimore afoot, too, the
whole fifty miles and shortly after his departure Mr. Smith set
out for Emmittsburg, where he said he hoped to find a letter. At
about the same hour Harry Beelen disappeared. But, strange to
say, he was not missed. For the other boys begged Mr. Mona-
han, who was a well-read scholar, to tell them about Hannibal's
invasion of Italy. " Beelen will be back before his absence is

278 THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" [May,

discovered," whispered Taney to Miles. Then aloud he said :
" Oh ! how interesting it is, Mr. Monahan, to hear you tell about
Hannibal." " Please go on, sir," said Miles. '" I could listen to
you a whole week talking about Hannibal."

And, thus encouraged, the guileless Mr. Monahan proceeded,
while the truant boy made his way through the forest to Indian
Lookout.

" I have come here," spoke Beelen, when at length he found
himself at the wigwam " I have come here to get a supply of
cigars. I am a school-boy under Rev. Mr. Dubois ; and I love
' Tobies/ as I am going to call the. cigars you make."

The Indian made no response, but put his finger to his lips ;
at which Beelen wondered not a little and threw his eyes curi-
ously about him. Then, never having seen a wigwam before, he
determined to enter this one. But Tobias grabbed him by the
trousers and drew him back. At this moment a moth-eaten red
blanket which hung across the entrance fell to the ground, and
whom should the dumfounded lad discover within the narrow
abode which was full of tobacco-smoke but solemn Mr. Smith,
looking very confused ; for his pockets were crammed with " To-
bies," and his nether jaw dropped about two inches when he saw
Harry Beelen, whom he had flogged the day before. But if Mr.
Smith felt abashed in the presence of his pupil, the latter was
frightened, and Beelen's first impulse was to run away. In less
than a minute, however, Mr. Smith recovered his self-possession,
and, coming out of the wigwam, he patted the boy's head in a
kindly manner and said he would grow to be a learned man ;
which unexpected praise almost took the boy's breath away. For
if there was a dunce at school it was Beelen ; and Beelen knew it.
Then together they went back to Mr. Joseph Elder's, neither of
them uttering a word ; and when in Featherbed Lane a " Toby "
slipped out of Mr. Smith's pocket, Beelen was afraid to pick it
up, while the pedagogue lifted his eyes towards a turkey-buz-
zard which was soaring overhead, and muttered something in
Latin which the boy did not understand.

Mr. Dubois seemed never to have been told of Beelen's visit
to Tobias, the cigar-maker, for the lad was not punished for
having gone there without leave ; and albeit mischievous Taney
extracted every one of the " Tobies " from Mr. Smith's pockets
at midnight in the little dormitory, Mr. Smith did not complain
of the loss, but asked Mr. Dubois to give the boys a half-holiday
on the following Monday, which request was granted, and for
a while Mr. Smith was almost as popular as Mr. Monahan.

1884.] THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" 279

Happy indeed were these first " Mountaineers "; and when
Agnes Taney heard from Mr. Dubois how much her brother was
enjoying himself at " The Mountain/' she begged Mother Seton
not to wait until spring-time, but to move to Emmittsburg imme-
diately.

But, happy as the boys were, a grief came to them at last.
Before the winter was over Felix McManus was seized with a
fatal cold. Felix had caught a rabbit in his trap a week before
he took to his bed, and ere he breathed his last he asked Taney
to set his rabbit free ; which Taney did with moistened eyes, he
and Hickey first moving the dying boy's cot as near to the win-
dow as possible, then rubbing the frost off the glass, so that
Felix might see his pet escape from the narrow space where it
had been too long immured, just as, a few hours later, the soul
of young Felix broke loose from its own prison and flew away.
In an old God's-acre, about twenty rods north of the spot now
called Clairvaux, Felix McManus was buried. No stone marks
his grave ; the little wooden cross has long disappeared, nor do
any traces of the humble cemetery remain.

In April the boys moved from Mr. Elder's house to the new
building at the foot of the mountain. It was a day of great re-
joicing and kept as a holiday. Pompey escorted them thither,
thrumming on a banjo, while Peggy McEntee begged to be al-
lowed to wait on the youngsters at their first meal in the refec-
tory.

But Mr. Dubois said : " I wish the students to wait on one
another." And this has been ever since the time-honored cus-
tom at Mount St. Mary's.

But of all the boys, whose number was now increased to
twenty-five, the most frolicsome was Jim Taney. And Jim stud-
ied, too, with good-will, holding first place in English and arith-
metic. " Because," he said, " I promised Agnes that I would
study hard." No brother ever loved sister more than Jim loved
his. Twice a month she wrote to him, and he to her. In glow-
ing words Jim described the happy life he was leading; he told
of the sweet echoes which the college bell awakened when it
rang the Angelus, and he only made Agnes' heart flutter when
he mentioned the battered Revolutionary musket which Hickey
and himself owned between them, and which once in a dozen
shots might graze a squirrel's head. Sometimes Taney would
read aloud to the other boys what his sister wrote concerning
Mother Seton, who was coming soon to dwell near Emmitts-
burg ; and all agreed that the weeks passed too slowly. Mother

28o THE BUILDING OF "THE MOUNTAIN" [May,

Seton would not arrive until June, and with her were coming
twelve little girls whose brothers were at " The Mountain " no.
wonder, then, that the boys were impatient.

At last, on the evening of the 2ist of June, word was brought
by Joe Elder, who had galloped from Emmittsburg with the
glad tidings, that a couple of big, canvas-covered wagons were
slowly approaching the village along the Westminster road, and
that the dear ones so long expected were in these creaking,
old-fashioned vehicles. Yes, Mother Seton and her companions
had arrived after a two days' journey from Baltimore. And now
loudly, joyously pealed the college bell ; down dropped gram-
mars and slates, and forth from the classroom rushed the excited
students, Jim Taney at their head, who was noted for fleetness of
foot. Half a mile south of Emmittsburg Mother Seton was met,
and the little girls who were with her waved their handkerchiefs
when they espied their brothers bounding towards them.

But when Jim Taney cried out, " Where is Agnes? " Mother
Seton's countenance fell, and, after whispering something to Rev.
Mr. Dubois, she drew poor Jim aside, and taking a ring from her
pocket a pretty gold ring she slipped it on his finger and
said : " Agnes is no longer with us ; she is gone to live with the
angels. ' Give this ring to Jim,' were her very last words, * and
tell Jim to keep it as a pledge to meet me in heaven.' '

The boy, when he heard this, spoke not a word ; he turned
quite white and presently walked away into the fields with his
head hanging down. Jim's parents had died when he was a
mere child ; he had never known what it was to love them and
weep for them. But around Agnes his tender heart had thrown
all its roots in nearly every dream she had come to him and
now to lose her !

For several days the mourner held aloof from his school-fel-
lows, and when Hickey asked him to play at marbles something
in Jim's throat rose up and choked him so that he could not
answer yes or no ; nor did he care for the nice apple-tarts which
Peggy McEntee made specially for him.

But Time, we know, has broad wings, and Time gently flew
away with the boy's grief, as she flies away with all our griefs.
Within a month he who had firmly believed that he would never
be able to smile again was playing at marbles and whistling like
the other boys. He continued, too, at the head of his class. For
Jim considered the promise which he had once made to Agnes
as binding still ; for her sake he always studied hard, he was al-
ways industrious.

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 281

And among the first " Mountaineers " no name in after-years
stood higher than that of James Taney.

Taney lived to a green old age; he saw the fame of his Alma
Mater spread from one end of the land to the other ; he never
took Agnes' ring off his finger ; and he was always proud to tell
of the Indian summer's day in 1808 when he had ridden behind
the Rev. Mr. Dubois and helped him choose a site for Mount St.
Mary's College.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A CATHOLIC DICTIONARY, Containing some Account of the Doctrine,
Discipline, Rites, Ceremonies, Councils, and Religious Orders of the
Catholic Church. By William E. Addis, Secular Priest, sometime
Fellow of the Royal University of Ireland, and Thomas Arnold, M. A.,
Fellow of the same University. New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co. 1884.

The preface to the American edition of the Catholic Dictionary states
that it is a reprint from duplicates of the English stereotype plates, and
that "such alterations have been made 'as to fit the work more satisfac-
torily to American needs." The editors in their preface acknowledge
their indebtedness to American contributors, and to two English contri-
butors, for a certain number of articles. Nearly the whole work, however,
has been written by the two gentlemen whose names appear on the title-
page a very extensive and laborious task indeed, the fulfilment of which
gives evidence of great competence and industry on their part. The best
notion of the extent, comprehensiveness, and value of the work can be
gained by examining the list of titles of articles which is given in the ad-
vertisement elsewhere. The greater number of them, of course, are short.
Some, however, on the most important topics, are really little treatises,
succinct and condensed, yet quite thorough and complete.

The most salient and characteristic quality of the principal articles is
that of a critical rigor and severity in the treatment of topics. Outside the
limits strictly determined by authority, or by a science and history which
are certain and universally recognized, the editors and writers have ex-
pressed their own opinions with great freedom ; and of course the official
sanction of the prelates who have given their Imprimatur extends no
further than to attest that they have not transgressed any obligation by
which the church binds Catholic writers. There can be no question con-
cerning the great utility of a work like^ the Catholic Dictionary, whose
merits we expect to see universally recognized.

CLAVIS RERUM. Norwich : F. A. Robinson & Co. 1883.

The design of this work of small bulk but immense scope is to set
forth the conclusions of its author in respect to the plan and purpose of
the universe considered as a perfect and inseparable whole. In belief he
is nearer to the orthodox and semi-Catholic type of Protestantism than
any other, with some peculiar opinions of his own. His essay shows an

282 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May,

uncommon capability for high speculative thought, an elevated moral sen-
timent, and a clear apprehension of several of the principal Christian
dogmas. Of these latter we specify the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the
Mediation of Christ. On these and other topics he has written some ad-
mirable passages. The style of the book is good and suited to its themes.
There is only one sure criterion by which an absolute and final judg-
ment can be pronounced on the theory of the universe elaborated with so
much care and ability, and offered to lovers of truth with modesty and yet
with assurance as "the key of things." This is the doctrine of the Catho-
lic Church. The theology of the theory partly exceeds and partly comes
short of this unerring standard. In respect to its purely philosophical
part, our standard of judgment is the scholastic philosophy approved by
the highest authority in the church and the test of ages. Tried by this
criterion it is in several respects erroneous. Beyond these matters of es-
tablished certainty, there are some opinions in physics in which our own
personal convictions differ from those of the Clavis Rerum. An accurate
discrimination and discussion of all the points in which we agree with and
differ from the conclusions of its author would take up a great deal of time
and space. Let it suffice to say that the fundamental ideas and essential
structure of the author's theory of the plan and purpose of the universe
are in accordance with Catholic theology and based on the revealed truths
of the Christian faith. The portions to which we must take exception,
though not unimportant, are yet not really the main supports on which his
theory rests, which is substantially sound in respect both to faith and
reason.

THE BAPTISM OF THE KING. Considerations on the Sacred Passion. By
H. J. Coleridge, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. New York : The Ca-
tholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

This is, to our thinking, the most beautiful of all the minor works of
Father Coleridge, and one of the best among the books we have in English
treating of the Passion of our Lord. It does not go into the details of the
pathetic tragedy of the Passion, or appeal directly to the imagination or
the emotions. It deals with general considerations of a theological and
moral kind concerning the causes, reasons, results, and special signifi-
cance and end of the sufferings and satisfaction of Christ in relation to
God and man, this world and the other, as a part of the universal plan of
the divine providence. The style is that of conferences given during a
retreat, or sermons of a mixed doctrinal and practical character.

THE WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON. Collected and arranged by
Henry F. Brownson. Vol. vi. Controversy ii. Detroit : Thorndike
Nourse. For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

Mr. Henry F. Brownson is getting out his father's works with commen-
dable expedition. The present volume embraces the second part of Dr.
Brownson's writings in defence of the church. In many respects it is one
of the most interesting volumes of the series. It contains several of Dr.
Brownson's most notable articles on transcendentalism, as well as the
striking controversial story, "The Two Brothers; or, Why are you a Pro-
testant ? " The other articles in the volume besides those on transcen-
dentalism are: "Protestantism in a Nutshell," "The Presbyterian Confes-

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 283

sion of Faith " (two articles), " Professor Park against Catholicity," "Thorn-
well's Answer to Dr. Lynch " (three articles), " Literary Policy of the
Church of Rome," " Methodist Quarterly Review," and " Hopkins' British
Reformation."

EINSIEDELN " IN THE DARK WOOD "; or, Our Lady of the Hermits. The
story of an Alpine sanctuary. With numerous illustrations. New
York : Benziger Bros.
(Mrs. Anne R. Bennett, nee Gladstone.)

Goethe, in his Memoirs, writes of Einsiedeln : " The antique dwelling of
St. Meinrad appeared to me something extraordinary of which I had never
seen the like. The sight of the little building, surrounded by great pillars
and surmounted by arches, excited in me serious reflections. It is there
that one single spark of holiness and the fear of God kindled a flame which
is always burning, and which has never ceased to give light ; a flame to
whicli faithful souls make a pilgrimage, often attended with great difficul-
ties, in order to kindle their little taper at its holy flame. It is such a cir-
cumstance as this which makes us understand that the human race stands
in infinite need of the same Light and the same heat which the first ancho-
rite who inhabited this spot nourished and enjoyed in the depths of his
soul, animated as it was by the most perfect faith." Lists of the most dis-
tinguished of these pilgrims have been kept from the tenth century down.
There are found the names of prelates, from Bishop Adalbert of Bale (A.D.
915) and St. Charles Borromeo to Bishop Dupanloup and Archbishop
Spalding. Among the royal and noble visitors we read the names of the
Emperor Otho the Great and St. Adelheid (955) ; St. Elizabeth of Hungary
( T 335); the Emperor Frederick III. (1442); Louis XIII. of France (1622);
Ludwig I. of Bavaria ; Archduke Nicholas, afterwards Emperor of Russia ;
Queen Hortense with Louis Napoleon ; Frederick William, Crown Prince,
afterwards King of Prussia; William, King of Wiirtemberg; Count Monta-
lembert, the Count de Chambord, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Den-
bigh, and numerous others of similar rank. The vast number of pilgrims
is shown by the fact that the average number of yearly communions dur-
ing the last three hundred years has been 150,000, and in the year 1861 rose
to 210,000, in 1749 to 226,000, in 1710 to 260,000.

The monastery, which began in 838 with St. Meinrad's hermitage, is one
of the few of the grand old monastic establishments of the mediaeval period
which are still extant and flourishing, and, so far as we are informed, takes
precedence among these few, as the one which at the present time has the
greatest importance. It seems to fulfil the purpose which Leibnitz re-
garded as the one for which the great monastic orders are the best fitted of
all other institutions in this modern age. ' It is a great seat of learning, of
the arts, and of education, as well as of religious contemplation and the
active work which is strictly sacerdotal. In its immediate neighborhood,
and under the shadow of its venerable walls, there is the great publishing
and printing establishment of the Benzigers. The adjacent village with
the outlying country region, under the parochial care of the Benedictine
fathers, presents the example of a most exemplary and happy community
where practical Christianity exists in as perfect a state as we can ever hope
to see realized anywhere in this world. Of all this, and of the past history
of the place, Mrs. Bennett gives a complete and most interesting account

284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May,

in the first part of her little book. In the second part she describes a visit
which she made to the sacred spot, with many pleasant incidents.

DARWINISM, STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. Characteristic Passages from
the Life of Charles Darwin. Selected and arranged by Nathan Shep-
pard. New York : D. Appleton & Co.

None but a bigot would dispute that Mr. Darwin was a close and assi-
duous observer in the domain of natural history. No one who loves truth
will deny that, though over-fond of theorizing, he contributed not a little
to the branch of science called natural philosophy. Let him have cheer-
fully sincere sympathy and credit for what he really did.

But he played a part for which he deserves no credit or sympathy the
part of a speculator in the higher branches of knowledge, for which he was
not equipped. It would make an interesting pendant to the present vol-
ume to draw from Mr. Darwin's writings the evidence of his repeated in-
fringing upon the laws of sound logic, and his departure from the dry light
of science. But we shall have to wait another generation, perhaps, for the
production of this volume. The minds of men will first have to be willing
to settle down to solid facts, and to an impartial estimate of the value
of the physical sciences, before men of this class receive their just deserts
and their true place in the temple of fame. However small may be his
worth in other respects, in these Mr. Darwin's value will not be insignifi-
cant.

We presume the volume before us has been prepared by a competent
person and gives a fair resume of the unwearied labors in the fields in
which this celebrated naturalist was at home.

THE IRISH BIRTHDAY-BOOK. Selections from the speeches and writings
of Irish men and women, both Catholic and Protestant. Arranged by
" Melusine." London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

Amid the deluge of "birthday-books " (there is even a Martin Farquhar
Tupper Birthday-Book) it is a wonder that an Irish birthday-book has not
made its appearance before now. The publishers of this tasteful little vol-
ume, with its cover of unbleached Irish linen and its clear type, have hit
on a bright idea which will very likely prove a profitable one ; and as
they are first in the field with it, they deserve that it should prove profita-
ble. The compiler purports to give a couple of sentiments by Irish writers
for every day of the year to go opposite the blank spaces for birthday sig-
natures. He (or she) does not fulfil this laudable purpose ; but then, on the
whole, the book is as good as the average of birthday-books, and perhaps
we have no right to criticise it further than to say so.

Nevertheless an Irish birthday-book, compiled with proper care and
understanding, which would give a gleaming thought or stirring sentiment
from one of Ireland's bards, or orators, or historians, or novelists for every
day in the year, would be such a desirable thing that we are tempted to
dwell on this little book a moment longer. What a charming little volume
could be made up of choice bits from'the works of Ossian, and Moore, and
Mangan, and McCarthy, and Allingham, and Furlong, and Davis, and Wil-
liams, and Lover, and Grattan, and Curran, and Burke, and Mitchel, and

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285

Edgeworth, and Wilde, and Joyce, and Graves ! But why particularize
among the host of sweet singers and golden-penned writers? Any one of
them Mangan, or Davis, or Burke could fill a volume with brilliant
things himself. The book before us, out of all that Edmund Burke has said
or written, has only one quotation, and that an entirely uncharacteristic
commonplace that any man might have uttered as well as Burke. On the
other hand, there are abundant extracts from the Penny Magazine,
" Speeches from the Dock," extinct newspaper articles, and harangues de-
livered during the late land movement. There is only one quotation from
William Allingham, and none at all from Thomas Furlong, and only one ac-
credited to Robert D. Joyce, though there are a few extracts from the
Deirdre, given as if the compiler was not aware that it was Dr. Joyce who
wrote that beautiful epic. " Melusine " (to call the compiler by his or her
nom-de-plume) does not seem to know of any of Arthur Percival Graves'
exquisite contributions to Irish balladry, for he quotes nothing of them.
And we never dreamed that " Junius " was an " Irish man or woman, Ca-
tholic or Protestant"; for Burke repudiated the identity, and indeed
" Melusine," with charming aplomb, settles the vexed controversy by
printing "Sir Philip Francis " in parentheses after "Junius' " name.

" Melusine " deserves credit for the idea of making quotations from
historians. Some of the pregnant sentences occurring through the book
are like rents in the veil of the past; such as this from Lecky : "The com-
mercial and industrial condition of the country was, if possible, more de-
plorable than its political condition, and was the result of a series of En-
glish measures which, for deliberate and selfish tyranny, could hardly be sur-
passed" ; or this from Mitchel : "For the next two weeks, awaiting the
result of this trial, all things stood still in Ireland, except the famine, and
the 'addresses of confidence' from landlords, and the typhus fever, and
the clearing of estates, and the wail of the Banshee ! " And what a lu-
minous remark is this of Lecky's as to the subject of English criticisms
of Irish politics : " We should have heard few eulogies of the honorable
character of the Irish policy of Pitt, if English writers were not accus-
tomed to judge Irish politics by a standard of honor very different from
that which they would apply to English ones."

IRISH PEDIGREES ; or, The Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation. By John
O'Hart, Q.U.I., Fellow of the Royal Historical and Archaeological As-
sociation of Ireland, etc. Third edition. Svo, pp. xxxvi.-8o8. Dublin :
M. H. Gill & Son. 1881. (For sale by the Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co.)

While our fellow-citizens of English or of Dutch race are amusing
themselves by tracing their ancestry back for two or three generations, to
some industrious kitchen-gardener, perhaps, some of them, too, appropriat-
ing, without so much as " by your leave," the coats of arms, crests, and
mottoes of such European aristocrats as happen to bear the same name,
our fellow-citizens of Irish birth or origin are here enabled to trace their
lineage that is, if they can make a link with the pedigrees given up to
Adam, the father of us all. This statement, however, is too wide, and must
be qualified. Mr. O'Hart, in this volume of wonderful research, traces the
pedigrees of all the chiefs of Irish clans up to Adam ; he does not take so
much pains with the non-Gaelic Irish. In a few cases he has been consid

286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May,

erate enough of us on this side of the sea to show the connection between
some of these chiefs and American citizens. He finds in Cincinnati, for
instance, a lineal descendant of the MacCarthaigh Mor the "great McCar-
thy," as one would say in English ; in St. Paul, Minn., another representa-
tive of the same illustrious line.; and in the proprietor of the New York
Herald he finds a lineal descendant, through his mother, of Amhailgaidh
O'Feargail (phonetically written "Awley O'Farrell"), who in the twelfth
century was chief of Connemara. Fro.m Amhailgaidh that gentleman, by
means of Mr. O'Hart's book, can continue the pedigree to Milidh (or Mile-
sius, whence Milesian as applied to the Celtic Irish) of Spain, who, long
centuries before our era, married the daughter of the king of Egypt and
then led the Milesians, Scythians, or Scots to Ireland.

But, in all seriousness, there is no civilized country that has passed
through such vicissitudes as Ireland. In Cromwell's time entire popula-
tions, whole clans with their chiefs and families, were dispossessed and sent
to the mountain territory of the West " to hell or Connaught " was the
phrase. Even now many hereditary chiefs are recognized by their people,
and though " the O'Flaherty " or " the MacAonghus " (Magennis) may
wear a frieze coat, and his only arms may be "a bit of a stick," and as he
passes along the road he may be set down by the ignorant and arrogant
English tourist as a " peasant," he is none the less a haughty nobleman,
and has, probably, all the natural qualities of a born leader, if only he had
a country that offered him a field. And, by the way, in spite of O'Connell's
often-quoted remark about "the finest peasantry in the world" being Ire-
land's, Ireland has never had a peasantry in the sense of the word as used
in England and on the Continent of Europe. The peasantry of those
countries are the descendants and successors of the serfs who obeyed a
feudal lord. But Ireland never had feudal lords, or so far as the Gaels,
the true Irish, are concerned lords of any sort. There were in ancient
times a few slaves, mostly Anglo-Saxons, taken in sea expeditions, but the
men of Ireland were all equal socially. An Irishman's deference to a lord
is always hypocritical. The most stupid rustic in Ireland recognizes no
superiority over himself in the man who is powerful through wealth. The
clansman looked on the chief as his kinsman, as the most direct descendant
of that far-off hero from whom he himself descended. The bard, the
brehon (lawyer, or judge), and the file (poet) had privileges, just as the
chief had, but the Gaels had no classes. They were the most perfect
democrats the world has ever seen. Something of this spirit of honest
pride in one's self is to be observed in the country-people of France,
though there feudalism stamped out much of the old ideas of their Gaelic
ancestors. The most sturdy, self-possessed people of Spain are said to be
the inhabitants of Galicia, also a Gaelic people. We all know how difficult
some Americans complain that it is to get Irish servants to acknowledge
their own inferiority. The Gaelic language has no equivalent for the
English word snob ; it is doubtful if any other language than English has.

The first half of Irish Pedigrees contains three hundred and two pedi-
grees of Gaelic families traced to Heber, Ir, or Heremon, sons of Milidh,
and Milidh's line is traced to Adam. Though we may smile at Milidh's
pedigree, there can be little doubt of Milidh's existence many centuries
before Christ ; and, considering that bards and brehons had strong reasons

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287

for keeping the line of inheritance sure, there can be little doubt of the
genuineness of these pedigrees as far back at least as Milidh. Caesar
speaks of the carefulness shown in his time by the bards of the Gaels of
France in this matter. The tenure of land depended on accuracy as to the
lineage of the chiefs, who did not inherit from father to son, but were
elected out of the one chief family.

The part of the volume given up to the families of non-Gaelic origin is
not so elaborate, and it contains, in one pedigree at least that of the
Bourkes some errors. This family is traced correctly to Pepin of Landen
(A.D. 622), and thence to Robert, the half-brother of William the Con-
queror, who took^ part at Hastings in the rout of the Saxons, and whose
great-grandson, William Fitz-Adelm, went to Ireland in 1169. But why
Mr. O'Hart should trace it through Godfrey of Bouillon, the great Crusader,
who lived and died a bachelor and was honored universally for his chaste
life, is a mystery past finding out, perhaps. The truth is, of course, the
pedigree passed through Godfrey's cousin Eustace not brother, as he in-
correctly refers to him.

Another interesting use that this volume can be put to by those who
have no pedigree to trace, or no inclination to trace it if they have one, is
the light it throws on the corruption of Gaelic surnames during the last
three centuries. Scarcely one Irish name to-day is spelled correctly or
pronounced as it was pronounced by those whose only language was
Gaelic. Here are a few instances : Mac Giola Mhochudha we now see as
McGillicuddy, MacEllicott as Elliott; Mac Amhailgaidh as MacAwley,
Macaulay, etc.; O'Flaithbhearthaighe as O'Flaherty; Gall Chobhair as
Gallagher (the name signifies " the help-bringing foreigner ") ; Mac Uidhir as
McGwyre, Maguire, etc. ; O'H-Aonghusaigh as O'Hennessy ; and in like
manner Mac Aonghus as MacGennis, Magenniss, Guiness, etc. The old
names had a meaning ; the new forms have none.

In fact, if Queen Victoria's pedigree be left out and there can be no
reason for introducing that person, except historically, into an Irish book
Mr. O'Hart's volume will be a constant source of delight to all who have
Irish blood in them or take interest in Irish matters.

FLOWERS AND THEIR PEDIGREES. By Grant Allen. New York : Appleton
&Co.

This book is one of the will-o'-the-wisps that flit about the pathway
of scientific study, seducing the unwary traveller into pleasant by-ways
and leaving him benighted in a morass. The student who would trust
himself blindly to the teaching of this engaging volume would find him-
self in a morass of hopeless evolutionism.

The book is one of the most fascinating tracts on a scientific subject
we have read, except perhaps the same author's Colin Cloufs Calendar and
Vignettes from Nature. Mr. Grant Allen quite evidently is a literary man
before he is a scientist. He is master of the art of imparting information
such information as he has to impart and he writes in a style that enchains
the reader's attention and charms it from the first sentence. You go with
him out into the buoyant air, by blossoming summer hedge-rows, through
daisy and cowslip speckled meadows, up heathy hillsides, and it is there he

288 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [May, 1884.

keeps you while he talks of the flowers and plants he culls by the way.
What lover of Nature would not such a method lay under a spell ?

Mr. Allen in Flowers and their Pedigrees confesses himself a devotee of
the theory of evolution, and he clings to it with as content and ardent a
faith as an African devotee to his fetich. His object in the work is to
trace the supposed processes which some half-dozen familiar specimens
of plant-life have undergone, and the relationships they have contracted
with other specimens in their evolution from their primordial state to their
present form. He promises the narrative will be as wonderful and as in-
teresting as a fairy-tale. That he fulfils his promise any one who reads
his astounding family histories of the long-pedigreed daisy, of the rose and
the strawberry, his account of the origin of wheat, his "romance of a way-
side weed " (the wood-spurge, to wit), or his story of the cuckoo-pint and
"a mountain tulip," will readily confess. But how these positivists stultify
themselves ! If you grant any one certain impossible premises which
still baffle and will ever baffle the scientific speculators, it will be only
want of a vivid imagination that will hinder him from weaving an endless
web of marvellous possibilities. Mr. Grant Allen, who belongs to the
school who refuse to believe anything that they cannot see demonstrated
with the eye of flesh, finds it essential to the eking-out of his fairy-tale
that his readers should renounce, whenever he asks them, the like in-
convenient anxiety to see for themselves. In bridging over the yawning
chasms on the pathway of evolution he requires an effort of faith some-
thing akin to that demanded by the chorus in a Greek drama when it in-
formed the audience that thirty years had elapsed since the previous act.
In fact, Mr. Allen's evolutionism is an appeal to faith in essentials, and
would bind the reason in fetters more galling than those which the ra-
tionalists are so fond of saying the theologians cast around it.

Mr. Allen says the present book is merely the first instalment of a
great work on which he is engaged and which he intends to be a " func-
tional companion to the British flora." We are sorry to hear it. It is to
be deplored that a writer so gifted with the rare and desirable power of
rendering attractive to the many a stud) r delightful in itself, but still over-
laden with the dust and rubbish of the museums, should be captivated
with the desire to make scientific fairy-tales rather than with the ambition
to simplify the presentation of truth. Nor would Mr. Allen's pen find any
lack of wonderful material if he confined himself to the domain of truth if
he contented himself with ascertained botanical metamorphoses instead of
soaring with waxed wings into the nebulous region of Darwinian and
Huxleyan evolutionism.

j,** Several notices of new publications have been crowded out this month which will ap-
pear in our next number.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIX. JUNE, 1884. No. 231.

DARWIN'S MISTAKE. ;

NOT long ago there was published the reply of the late
Charles Darwin to the letter of a German student, N. D. Doedes,
dated 1873, which attracted a great deal of attention to his sys-
tem of reasoning in his scientific treatises, and very justly.
There is no denying the ability of the celebrated naturalist, the
reputed author of the so-called system of evolution. His know-
ledge of facts is remarkable ; his patient study wonderful ; his
deductions, while strictly within the limits of natural science or
comparative anatomy, most frequently not to be gainsaid. But
in this letter he has given the key to his method, and we have
accounted for the extraordinary bound by which he leaped to
his conclusion that all animals have a common ancestor and that
species have evolved one from the other.. We use the word
extraordinary advisedly, because this proceeding is not in ac-
cordance with the sound reasoning that should obtain in the
study of natural facts. He has not reached it by the proper
study and correlation of facts. He noticed the resemblances
between the various orders of animal life and guessed at his
conclusion, and that in the very face of facts revealed by the
accurate study of the relation of species among themselves. It
is a well-known fact that a species maintains itself, propagates
itself ; does not pass into another, though there may be races
comprised under each species ; moreover, when violently joined
with another species, or rather race of widely differing charac-
teristics, hybrids are produced which are not prolific. This is

290 DARWIN'S MISTAKE. [June,

the general, well-known law. So well known is this that to note
the exceeding fertility of the province of Rieti, in Italy, there is a
common saying that "in terra Reatina mnla peperit" a mule
brought forth there. Yet, in the face of this law, Darwin asserts
the convertibility of species makes all one family, with power of
reproduction among the members of it. And he does this in
spite of the fact that he can show no link, fossil or other, of any
such transformation of species. He acknowledges he cannot.
He puts the question to himself, and says he cannot completely
answer it. But he immediately tries to answer it, and says his
fossils of missing links have not yet been found, it is true, but he
believes that they are buried in submerged continents. On this
point Dr. Constantine James, in his recent work, Moses and Dar-
win, of which we shall make frequent use in this article, very
justly remarks that it is strange the fossils should be found in
their proper strata, according to time, and yet the intervening
fossils of Darwinian transformations should nowhere be seen.
He speaks of Darwin's use of Lyell's comparison of the archives
of nature, and laughingly says that these archives are a very
strange book, of which every alternate page is wanting. It is
not necessary to call attention to the numerous following of
clever men the Darwinian theory has. The names of Huxley,
Biichner, Haeckel, etc.,, are too well known. How is it that all
these brilliant intellects have gone wild over this theory ?

To us, especially after the letter cited above, the answer is
easy. Darwin started out with the practical disbelief in a
Creator. He acknowledges, in this reply, that he knew of no
proof of the existence of a God, and, this being the case, he
ignored the Creator entirely. It must be said he was not frank
in this. He was afraid to say it. He used expressions that mis-
led many into a conviction that he did believe in a Creator, and
in this he did a great deal of harm with the incautious. It was
the fashion to say that Darwin's disciples were responsible for
atheistical conclusions, not he. Those who read his first edition
of the Origin of Species saw there his statement that animals re-
ceived "the breath of life." The expression is Scriptural, and
naturally was understood in the Scriptural sense of man's crea-
tion. He was violently attacked for this by Haeckel, Mile.
Clemence Royer, his translator, and others. In his second edi-
tion he gives up the obnoxious expression, and in an apologetic
tone says he did not intend to convey the Scriptural meaning,
but thought the wording well adapted to show our ignorance
of .what really did take place ; and that, perhaps, he should have

1884.] DARWIN'S MISTAKE. 291

used some other expression ! What does all this mean, if not that
Darwin really did start out with a disbelief in a personal God ;
that he was a pantheist ; that his school is pantheistic, and that,
this being so, he and his are perfectly logical in their assertions?
We shall endeavor to show this briefly.

Any one who starts out with such a principle as the negation
of a personal God has no other refuge but to attribute to matter
ail the energy that exists and is possible. To him matter becomes
God. This is the inevitable conclusion of every one who denies
even one essential attribute of the Divinity. He must, therefore,
exclude any plan outside of matter itself. Any other procedure
he is right, from his stand-point, in calling absurd, or, more deli-
cately, unscientific, as Darwin does in his Descent of Man (c. i. p.
24, Appleton & Co., 1876). In his mind matter is the only factor,
an impersonal one, a blind one, developing itself by a law of its own,
a necessity of its nature. It is the old proposition over again, that
God develops himself in nature, condemned by the oecumenical
council of the church. This mode of development, absurd as it
must be to any believer in God the Creator of all things, is by
no means unphilosophical in the eyes of Darwin, Biichner, Huxley,
and Haeckel, with their followers. Matter with them is capable
of spontaneously evolving itself into all possible forms. Such
energy belongs to it necessarily. So all things visible have come
from it. Circumstances surrounding any object are a sufficient
reason to account for the peculiar development or evolution of
the matter it contains. The seeds of plants and the ova of ani-
mals, all come spontaneously from matter, are this natural divinity
developing or evolving itself ; and therefore we can readily under-
stand how similarity of parts and progressive development are
convincing proof that what is has come out of what is similar to
it and prior to it. Spontaneous generation of the seeds and ova,
of the germs of all things, r first came about ; and this impulse
inherent in matter, continuing in its ever-increasing activity,
suffices to produce the never-ending work of evolution, one
species giving origin to the one next in order.

We pause here for a moment to remark that such evolu-
tionists are, in making the above assertion, guilty of most un-
scientific teaching. They are, moreover, in a dilemma : they
must so teach from their principles; while, on the other hand, the
researches of Professors Tyndall and Pasteur, with others, have
convincingly proved that there is no such thing as spontaneous
generation. This is the deduction from facts, and all positivists
must admit that a deduction from carefully-observed facts is a

292 DARWIN' s MISTAKE. [June,

scientific deduction. The pantheistic school, to begin their rea-
sojiing, must perforce admit as a postulatum spontaneous genera-
tion, and science tells us there is no such thing. The result of
starting out in this way leads a man to construct his theories
beforehand and adapt his facts to them. Everything that does
not agree with his ideas is to be swept aside disdainfully as
unscientific ; for his ideas, logically in keeping with his first prin-
ciple, pantheism, must necessarily be right. In this view we have
taken of the system of reasoning of the Darwinian school it is a
source of great satisfaction to us to have the support of such an
authority as Agassiz. This distinguished naturalist writes as
follows : " Darwin, by the disdain he affects for material proofs
(apropos of his * missing links,' and supposition of submerged
continents which contain them), recalls that school of thinkers
who, taking their inspiration from Schelling, applied his philo-
sophy to natural history. Then, too, was seen acclaimed a doc-
trine, ready made, embracing all nature, and offering no other
guarantee but the infatuation of its authors. I believe Darwin's
teaching will meet with the same fate which overtook that of this
sect." * It must be remembered that Schelling's philosophy is
pantheistic, and that the infidel philosophers following in his
wake threw aside everything that Christianity holds dear, to
see, later on, their efforts fail and the religion of revelation assert
a still stronger hold on the human mind. So will it be with the
pantheistic school of to-day. If nothing else will convert them,
men of judgment will understand that a system which confounds
man with the brute creation, takes away free-will and responsi-
bility, and opens the gate to the free indulgence of passion,
which in the masses even now is developing in the forms of
socialism, anarchism, and nihilism, cannot be a sound one ; for no
sound system produces such fruit, and from the fruits one comes
to know the tree.

Darwin's system, therefore, has a sin of origin which taints
it essentially and vitiates his conclusions, as far as they are de-
duced from his first principle pantheism. His conclusions, as
we have already said, when strictly in accord with the sound
principles of comparative anatomy which made the name of
Cuvier one that will outlast his, are most worthy of respect and
evince his undoubted ability. Having, however, unscientifically
leaped to his conclusion, it is curious to mark how he is domi-
nated by it in such a way as to draw the very gravest deductions
from the very weakest grounds, or rather from no ground at

* Quoted by James, p. 236.

1884.] DARWIN" s MISTAKE. 293

all. Let us take, for example, a very important and capital
instance on which Darwin bases his deduction that man came
from a fish.

We are not aware that Darwin lays claim to being a physi-
ologist. But he supports his views by frequent citations of what
he thinks favors them, from physiologists of name. In his
Descent of Man (c. i. pp. 9, 10) he speaks of the similarity of
the human foetus with that of other animals, and especially with
that of the fish, and he refers to the brarichise, or gills, of the
foetus, in which later on are to be seen "the slits on the sides of
the neck " where the gills were. He gives from Ecker a draw-
ing of a human embryo at the twenty-fifth day. The impression
left on the mind of the reader is that here is the convincing
proof that man came from a fish, for he has gills ! The fish de-
veloped into an animal with lungs by frequently-repeated acts
which forced the gills down into the breast, and so the gills
became lungs! Now, what is the real state of the case? The
human embryo, in the early stage such as this drawing repre-
sents, having no attachment by which to draw sustenance from
the mother, gets its sustenance indirectly from her through the
medium of the fluid in which it floats. The absorption must
take place through the arteries, which must come in contact with
this fluid for such a purpose. Hence the arteries form the
arches which are in contact with the fluid and therefore neces-
sarily outermost. When the placental formation takes place,
then the exposed condition of the arteries is no longer necessary,
and they recede into the interior of the body, leaving the marks
where they were exposed in the neck. In the meantime the air-
passages, entirely distinct from these arteries, begin to form, and,
coalescing with them so as to be immediately in contact with the
arteries, which, as it were, come to meet them to be enveloped
by them, the lungs are formed, useless till birth, because the
blood circulating in the placenta takes its nutrition entirely by
exosmosis from the blood of the mother. Huxley and Haeckel
could easily have seen this and understood it ; they could have
comprehended that an accidental resemblance of the arteries, dis-
posed as above, to the gills of a fish in the embryo did not
constitute them essentially the same thing, inasmuch as the
gills are for breathing, while these arterial arches are for nutri-
tion. That accidental resemblance came from both the fish
and the foetus floating independently in the fluid from which
they draw what they need the fish the oxygen required for
the blood, the foetus the oxygenized matter from the mother

294 DARWIN s MISTAKE, [June,

for nutrition. The condition of the foetus is temporary and tran-
sient, and in no way can such a thing as gills be made out. The
gills are a permanent, essential organism of the fish, made to live
and die in the water from which it draws oxygen ; the arterial
arches of the fcetus, on the other hand, have only an accidental,
temporary exposure of the vessels to the circumambient fluid,
and they are not gills, nor, being gills, do they become lungs
by being forcibly driven back into the body a really strange
idea. Still, this makes no difference with our evolutionist. All
species came from prior ones, therefore the fcetus bears the mark
of gills there is the proof! Instead of his having a proof of his
theory, Darwin has only furnished a proof of the unscientific
reasoning into which his preconceived theory has betrayed him.*
To cite one more instance of this precipitate way of draw-
ing conclusions, we mention his argument drawn from rudi-
ments. Now, we do not believe we risk anything in saying
that no proof of transformation of species can be drawn from
the existence of rudimentary bones, muscles, or organs. The
type of animal life is more or less one. To sustain and devel-
op it certain tissues have been created, and the beginning and
growth of these tissues depend on life ; they will not develop
without life. What life is we shall see further on. The
fact stands that life is what makes tissues begin, evolve, and
perfect themselves from inert matter. Take, says Dr. James,
phosphate of lime. What more incapable of self-development as
you look at it ? Let life once begin its action, and forthwith
you see the fish form from it its fins, marvellous in their beauty
and adaptation ; the various animals their bones, hoofs, horns,
claws ; man his body's frame of bone. Now, whatever tissues are
needed for the body the mysterious agency of life takes, and
the development of the tissue depends on the circumstances
of the animal. They will be fully developed or rudimentary
according to these circumstances. Accidental circumstances

* We had written the above, when, consulting a professor of standing, we learned what it
never would have entered into our mind to suspect Darwin of being ignorant of that the most
weighty physiologists and authorities in this matter have rejected entirely the theory of these
arterial arches being gills, and therefore the name branchiae is a misnomer. They tell us that
from the very first the nutrition of the foetus is from the mother, through the filaments which
mediately or immediately come in contact with her blood. Such is the teaching of Em. Bailly
in the Dicttonnaire de Medecine, etc., and also of A. Kolliker in his most valuable work on
embryology. These writings are those of experts in the matters of science they treat of, and no
one in the medical profession can gainsay the weight of their authority. What are we to say of
Darwin, with such evidence on the other side, building up a most momentous theory with
results of the very gravest import ? It is certainly not the mark of wisdom to make grave
assertions on the lightest foundation ; and in this matter the part played by Charles Darwin is
not happy.

1884.] DARWIN'S MISTAKE. 295

may cause hypertrophy, or fuller development, such as irritation,
which determines a flow of blood to the part, greater nutrition
therefore, and growth of teeth, hair, or bones, where only
the possibility of their production existed. On the other
hand, quiet or disuse determines a less flow of blood, conse-
quently less nutrition, less growth, atrophy or reduction to
the condition of a rudiment. As all these tissues are more
or less alike in all animals, it is to be expected that rudiments
should exist, as not all animals call their tissues into play
equally. Nature seems to abound in precautions, so that
these rudiments sometimes come into play in a very curious
and often very important manner. It is wonderful to see how
nature will at once adapt itself to a changed condition, and what
is rudimentary will not unfrequently, to compensate, develop
fully in a most extraordinary way. Even in some of the pre-
historic animals of vast proportions there are to be found
teeth hidden in the gums, though the other teeth have not
fallen out as yet. Darwin makes an excellent remark (p. 6r,
Descent of Man} : " I am convinced, from the light gained
within the past few years, that very many structures that now
appear to us useless will hereafter be proved to be useful."
We think we are justified in applying this remark to rudiments ;
may not rudiments which are considered by his school to be
useless and only signs of descent from other species be hereafter
proved to be providentially useful, at least in certain contin-
gencies ? It seems to us exceedingly probable, and that there-
fore the argument from rudiments in favor of transformation
of species is not only a weak one, but unfounded, a piece of
mere conjecture.*

The work of Dn Constantine James, Moses and Darwin,
to which we have referred, is one of decided merit and bears
evidence of great research. The writer is a French physician,
and was formerly a co-worker and assistant of the celebrated
Magendie, whose brilliant success in studies of physiology and
comparative anatomy gained him deservedly a world-wide repu-
tation. His efforts are all devoted to showing the baseless na-

* Darwin, p. 61, Descent of Man, acknowledges he "perhaps [in his Origin of Species
prior to the fifth edition] attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the
survival of the fittest." He " did not formerly consider the existence of structures, which as
far as we can judge at present are neither beneficial nor injurious ; and this I believe to be
one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work. I may be permitted to say, as
some excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view : FIRSTLY TO SHOW THAT SPECIES HAD NOT

BEEN SEPARATELY CREATED, AND, SECONDLY, THAT NATURAL SELECTION HAD BEEN THE CHIEF

AGENT OF CHANGE"! Preconceived notions appear to have led to this result of unscientific
reasoning.

296 DARWIN 's MISTAKE. [June,

ture of the theories of Darwin on the origin of species and on
the descent of man. His work is accompanied by a brief of the
late venerated pontiff, Pius IX., which is more than usually
liberal in terms of commendation and of congratulation, as well
as of condemnation of the absurd "dreams" which Dr. James
undertakes to refute in the name of true science. Such words
are grave and impressive, for they are not uttered at hap-hazard ;
without being intended to contain any "infallible judgment," they
are the words of authoritative decision based on the views of in-
telligent and learned men employed by the Sovereign Pontiff to
expedite such letters for him ; and for this reason they mean a
great deal.

It is the fashion to look on anything English, and perhaps
American, in the way of scientific investigation and critical
judgment as of supereminent value, and to rank with these
the Germans who agree with them. With all due respect we
beg to be regarded as not sharing this opinion. One of the
reasons why we do not share it is because a clever Englishman
has taught us otherwise. Something over two hundred years
ago a learned and able English writer who knew what he was
saying, by name Thirlby, editing an edition of the works of St.
Justin, martyr and philosopher, wrote as follows : " The art of
judging and critically discerning the value of facts and of docu-
ments, of determining what is genuine and to be received, and
what is false and to be rejected, is a most difficult one. Not
many among us succeed in it. In France more have been suc-
cessful. In Italy, where 'fervescente sole calescit ingenium '-
the heat of the sun, that is, seems to force the intellect those who
have succeeded are still more numerous." The two hundred
years and more which have gone by since Thirlby wrote have
not changed the Italian mind. The Ausonian Peninsula can
boast of great writers still, of that calm and judicial temperament
so valuable, yet so little appreciated except by the learned. At
this moment there is no man in Europe who ranks higher in
this respect than the distinguished Roman, Giovanni Baptista De
Rossi, whose word is listened to with the utmost deference by
men of learning in all matters of antiquity requiring critical ex-
amination. It is precisely this character of calmness, of exclu-
sion of all preconceived notions, of weighing well all facts before
coming to a conclusion, which distinguishes the real man of
science from the superficial lecturer, half-learned and full of pre-
conceived notions. The man who is to be trusted is the one
who realizes the extent of what he does not know ; and only a

1884.] DARWIN' s MISTAKE. 297

truly learned man, one who has studied and appreciated the dif-
ficulties of the matter he has in hand, can be said to belong to
this category. Such a man can be relied on with confidence
when he gives evidence of not being under the influence of a
preconceived idea, than which no idol is more fatal to his use-
fulness. We have referred to an Italian as an example of the
frame of mind so necessary for the discovery of truth. Among
the French, also a Latin nation, we have Barthelemy de St.
Hilaire, Quatrefages both cited by James^ and Pasteur and Moi-
gno, men of world-wide reputation in their respective spheres.
It strikes us as injudicious, therefore, to look only at the Ameri-
can or the English or the German side of a question, espe-
cially when in all those nations there is a larger contingent on
the other side, and not to take into consideration what may be
said by able men of France, of Italy, and of Spain, particularly
when, in the judgment of a critical scholar of English nationality,
those latter nations are especially prolific in that very kind of
intellectual ability so useful and so necessary for the discovery of
truth.

Although the author of the book we have referred to indulges
from time to time in the sarcasm and ridicule which, we must
confess, spring naturally from such a theme as the learned
English naturalist has made so prominent, Dr. Constantine James
writes as a scholar and man of science, as he is. Thus, for ex-
ample, page 249, he says : " Darwin establishes as the basis of
his system that there is not only question of a simple modifica-
tion of species, but of their radical transformation. Thus from
the larva a fish is produced ; from a fish a reptile ; from a reptile
a bird ; from a bird a mammal ; whence results the unheard-of
phenomenon that each of these metamorphoses brings with it a
complete renewal of the solid and liquid parts. I said that the
solid and liquid parts must be completely renewed. As for the
solid parts, the thing is evident. It is enough to recall the fact
that the bone and flesh of one animal differ essentially from the
bone and flesh of another. The differences do not consist only
in the disposition of the cellules and in the arrangement of the
fibres ; the microscope reveals a difference in the woof, so to
speak, of the organs. Every animal, therefore, to pass from one
species to another, must perforce lose its proper material or-
ganization to take on that of the species into which it is trans-
formed. So much for the solid parts. As for those that are
liquid there is not less evidence. Let us take the blood, for ex-
ample. It is well known that the blood is not a homogeneous

298 DARWIN' s MISTAKE. [June,

fluid, but that it contains in suspension myriads of little bodies
known as ' globules/ I could not give a better idea of them than
by comparing them to the little golden flakes which float in the
brandy of Dantzig. These globules are fitted, in volume and
form, to the diameter of the extremely small vessels they must
go through. Lenticular in men, elliptical in birds, ovoid in frogs,
they vary according to the species. They will, therefore, vary
each time the species changes. This enables us to understand
why, in the operation *of transfusion of blood recently again re-
sorted to, there cannot be injected into the veins of a man any
but human blood, under penalty of causing the gravest disorders
in the circulation, owing to the stopping of the globules in the
capillary vessels." We ask : Are we to accept such extraordinary
changes and revolutions o$ the faith of a theorist who has not
proved his theory ?

At page 253 Dr. James begins an interesting chapter on
Harvey's celebrated axiom, " omne vivum ab ovo " every
living being comes from an egg. He continues : " But that egg,
as long as it is only a germ, represents only a colorless globule,
inert, and without determinate characteristics ; however skilful
you may be in handling the microscope, you will never be able
to distinguish the germ of a bird from that of a fish or from
that, of a mammal. From that period, the manner in which
the organs gradually come out of a mass apparently homogene-
ous; the changes, the complications, the relations, the functions
which are established at every new phase ; the manner in which
finally the young animal takes on his form and. definitive struc-
ture to become a new and independent being, prove that there
is in the egg a very extraordinary something which differs from
its material composition, and which is very extraordinary in its
nature, and is due to the pre-existing action of an organizing
spirit. Whence we are to conclude that every animal bears in
itself the principle of its own individuality." Or, to speak more
clearly in -the language of strict philosophy, every animal has a
form that is, a principle in virtue of which a thing is actually
what it is. This form is the substantial form of St. Thomas.
Thus a human body is a body in virtue of the substantial form,
the soul, which it has. It is this soul which united to matter de-
termines the development of that matter into what becomes the
human body. This is the " breath of life " of a body ; this, with
the development it determines, is life. Each animal and each or-
ganized living plant has its own form or determining simple
essence, varying in grade of excellence, till we come to what

1884.] DARWIN'S MISTAKE. ' 299

is called inert matter, which seems to act merely by general laws
exterior to it or inherent in it crystallization, endosmosis,'exos-
mosis, expansion or contraction, chemical combination or chemi-
cal decomposition. To matter thus acted on, without power of
self-movement, we may, by comparison with higher organiza-
tions, attribute a form, but the wording in this case, it seems
to us, would be more figurative than exact. It is the First
Cause which wills the laws in every instance ; but his action,
if we may so speak, is more immediate in the case of inert mat-
ter than in the development of living, organized matter, though
that action in this latter case is of a nobler grade, requiring
greater exercise of creative power, inasmuch as the form is
created directly to make use of general laws and thus deter-
mine the development of the matter it needs to constitute with
it a composite unity. To make a further application of this
theory of forms, upon which depends the development of mat-
ter, we say that each animal has its own proper form, w r hich
is simple in its nature or essence, and not compound or mate-
rial. This being so, this simple form or essence cannot change
into another; it either exists as it is or is annihilated, ceasing
to exist at all. It follows, therefore, that one species which
owes its existence to its form cannot change into another ; but
if a species essentially differing from another is to arise, a new
form must be created. Whether this can be done by the new
form being made to take on the qualities of a preceding form,
plus what is in it distinctively essential, seems to be a disputed
question, as we find some writers, who hold to revelation, re
ferring to a possibility of a perfected species being raised to a
higher grade by the creation of a higher form for it. Thus
Professor St. George Mivart, in his recent article in the Catho-
lic Quarterly, January number, 1884, thinks it not untenable to
teach that this actually took place with regard to man, and that,
when the evolution of species had reached the desired perfec-
tion, the Creator infused the nobler form, the soul of man, into
the species so perfected, and, doing it only to one pair, thus
made the whole race of mankind of one man and of one wo-
man. We confess, however, we are not convinced of the truth
of the position ; for the facts we have already given the ab-
sence of the missing link in the chain of development, the im-
possibility of breeding a different species from a pre-existing
one, the sterility of hybrids, etc. seem to us to make such a
position very unsafe as a scientific theory. It is certainly sim-
pler, safer, and, we think, sounder to say that a personal God,

300 THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. [June,

creating matter, gave it the forms he wished it to have ; and
having first the noblest of all in his mind that of man made
the other forms partake, in varied degree, of the excellence
of that form, first in his intention, though ultimate in reali-
zation, beginning with the simpler form of animal life and by
successive steps reaching the most complicated, that which
immediately precedes man. In this theory there is no need of
the missing bond of development, and the sterility of hybrids
and of differing species among themselves is explained ; for in
the case of communication between differing species the form
is not created, while in the case of hybrids the action of the
form is hampered by the physical state in which it finds itself,
it being not essentially but functionally rendered incompetent
to produce an animal organization like to its own, the reason
being that the Creator has made no provision for such a state
of things.

In conclusion we think it well to state that what we have
written on the present subject we have given as a matter of in-
dividual opinion ; and we hereby disclaim any intention of repre-
senting any other than ourselves.

THE NEW FLAGELLANTS.

A PHASE OF NEW-MEXICAN LIFE.

SOME time since a writer in the Gentleman s Magazine made
quite a vigorous onslaught on some of our pet phrases, and he
seemed to single out with special acrimony that one about his-
tory repeating itself. This is to be regretted, the phrase was so
convenient, it conveyed to one's hearers so succinctly the de-
sirable impression of one's wealth of historical knowledge and
powers of historical criticism. But now all that is over. The
anonymous writer I refer to says it is all a mistake or worse
to think that history repeats itself, and that any one who says so
is but risking his reputation for good sense. I do not, of course,
presume to dispute this judgment; lam quite satisfied that no
one would set up his tripod in the Gentleman s Magazine, an
oracle with authority so Delphic and distinctness of meaning so
very un-Delphic, if he were not eminently well qualified for so
doing. For my part, I now hold religiously that, whatever else

1884.] THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. 301

history may do, it does never repeat itself. But still there are
times when one is tempted to think otherwise ; and if in the pre-
sent instance the writer seems to yield somewhat to the tempta-
tion, the weakness, he trusts, will be pardonable. For here in
New Mexico we are not supposed to be over-gifted with critical
acumen, and when we chance upon scenes much the same as
others that were enacted in the middle ages and proceeding
from very similar causes, we are apt to use the obnoxious
phrase.

But the middle ages ! Quid Athenis et Hierosolymis ? What
have the middle ages to do with the United States ? Surely
the United States this land of the railway and the telegraph,
this typical country of our advanced civilization should be the
last place in the world in which one would think of looking for a
repetition of mediaeval practices, and of habits of thought suppos-
ed to be peculiarly mediaeval. But, nevertheless, here they are.
In this little-known and less understood corner of the United
States, New Mexico, we have the thirteenth century, with much
of its good and much, too, of its evil, face to face with the nine-
teenth. Much of its good is here that has elsewhere grown
rather unfashionable the filial dependence, the reverence for
parental authority, the fervid Spanish faith, and a certain spirit-
ual way of viewing things that contrasts oddly and not quite
unfavorably with our too common dollar-and-cent criteria. On
the other hand, there is a great want of energy in the right direc-
tion, and while some of our good citizens hold life other peo-
ple's life altogether too cheaply for comfort, there are others
whose primitive disregard for forms of law strongly recalls me-
diaeval ways of meting out justice.

Then, to go on with ttie parallel, there are sheep-lords here
and cattle-lords who, so far at least as their immense land pos-
sessions go, might well do duty as the old barons, while the
cow-boys, without any limitation whatever, would make admi-
rable Free Companions, and in our Penitentes we have the Fla-
gellants.*

For the cow-boys and lynching-parties, and other such
amenities of New-Mexican life, I was prepared ; but I did not
expect to find a repetition of the penance-doing extraordinary by
which the Flagellants have secured their little niche in history.
This was novel to me, and as it will be so, I think, for most peo-

* It should be remembered that the lynchers and the cow-boys, who fill so satisfactorily the
place of the dispossessed Apaches and Navajos, are rarely Mexicans ; in nearly every case they
are products of our own American civilization.

302 THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. [June,

pie outside New Mexico, a few words about it and the people
who distinguish themselves by the practice of it may not be un-
interesting 1 .

The first trace I had of these people was in February of last
year while riding along a mountain-road some distance from Las
Vegas. A dismal-looking road it is at the best of times ; but in
winter it is particularly cheerless. The undulating country that
stretches away to the right is perfectly bare ; the monotony of
its barrenness was at that time unbroken by tree or shrub or
any sign of life ; even that ubiquitous New-Mexican nuisance, the
barbed-wire fence, was .absent. On the left the view was drearier
still ; for at the place I speak of the road runs near the Canon of
the Pecos. This canon is about three hundred feet wide here
and four hundred deep. These figures may not be very correct
one cannot be too Dantesque in measuring such uncanny
places but, apart from width and depth, I can answer for it
that, what with its steep descents and pverhanging precipices,
its sides rent and furrowed and bespread with huge boulders
and broken rock, it is as savage a place as even a tourist could
wish to see.

Just at the head of one of these break-neck descents into the
canon I noticed a peculiar-looking house, an ugly adobe build-
ing not peculiar in that, but in being ornamented with crosses
painted on the doors and close-shut windows, and having a rude
wooden cross set up on the roof. I rode over to examine it
more closely, thinking it might be a chapel ; but I could make
nothing of it until an old Mexican who came jogging along on
his donkey told me it was a morada (lodge) of the Penitent es.

This mystified me still more, so he explained that the Peni-
tentes are a set of people who make penance the chief end of man,
and that this was one of the houses in which they hold their
lugubrious assemblages.

What I gathered from him then, and what I learned after-
wards, about the origin and aim of these Pcnitentes recalled to
me very forcibly the Flagellants, and made me, I confess, use
that never very brilliant and now altogether objectionable
phrase about history and its repetitions. But certainly they
do resemble each other very much. The Flagellants, as every
one knows, were a widely-spread sect that flourished in Ger-
many and the south of Europe during the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries. They owed their rise in some measure to the
circumstances of that period one of the gloomiest of the
middle ages. For, to say nothing of private crime and dis-

1884.] THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. 303

order, there were wars and rumors of wars, plagues and famines
which succeeded each other so rapidly that it would be strange
if men especially the susceptible natives of southern Europe
were not profoundly impressed thereby. They were so ; but
the impressions were by no means uniform in kind. The skull
on the banquet-table of Lucullus was much the same, was
quite as ghastly, as the one St. Jerome used to contemplate in
his cave, but the impression it made on Lucullus and his
guests was very different from the impression his made on St.
Jerome. So with this shadow of death that was then deepen-
ing and lengthening over Europe. To some its only significance
was that time the time for pleasure is short and fleeting, and
while it lasts man should make the most of it,

" For who knoweth
What thing cometh after death ? "

And so they gave themselves up to riot and indulgence un-
til the spread of libertinism became something appalling. Of
this class the extreme representatives were the Dancers, who re-
solved, with commendable philosophy, to " dance the ills of life
away." They succeeded in part they danced themselves off
this mortal scene, but not, unfortunately, before other people
had become so infected with their disease that the laborious
amusement developed into a sort of nervous epidemic that at
last had to be suppressed by force.

The other class believed that these calamities had been sent
as punishment for sin ; some even thought that the end of all
things was near and these visitations were the shadow of the
coming event ; but they all agreed that the wisest thing was to
do penance and reform their lives. Of these the extreme repre-
sentatives were the Flagellants. I have not heard of any organ-
ized successors to the Dancers, but the Flagellants, I think, have
their lineal descendants in the Penitentes of New Mexico.

Let us put them side by side for a moment and see how far
the resemblance goes. The Flagellants were founded by saintly
men for an end entirely praiseworthy the reformation of morals,
with legitimate penance as a means thereto but when their
founders died they began to regard those penitential practices,
not as a means to the end, but as the end itself ; not as the medi-
cine they are, but as the very food of the soul. In consequence
they went to the greatest extremes ; and some, as was inevitable,
fell into the opposite excesses, while others made a fetich of their
Sangrado-method of sin-cancelling and held to it as the one thing

304 THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. [June

necessary. Their public exhibitions became revolting and ludi-
crous ; they brought discredit on religion, and did more harm
than they could ever have done good ; and when ordered to de-
sist from those extravagances they became contumacious and vio-
lent, and refused to obey, and in consequence were condemned
by several popes and finally disappeared altogether as a s^ct.

In like manner our Penitentes were founded by the Francis-
can friars, the first missionaries of New Mexico, holy and self-
sacrificing men, who chose this means of penance as one ad-
mirably adapted to the genius of the people for the purposes of
satisfying for their own shortcomings and of putting them into
intelligent sympathy with the Passion of Christ. But the Fran-
ciscans were expelled in 1825. The enlightened government of
Mexico, that tolerates scoundrelism and sets a premium on blas-
phemy, denies men especially if they have property that is de-
sirable for government uses, denies them the right to use their
personal freedom in the highest and holiest way that a man can
use it, in binding themselves to poverty and chastity and obe-
dience, so that they may serve God more perfectly and do more
good to their fellow-men. Callow republicans in all nations
seem to have a fancy for making this a crime. It was the crime
of the Franciscans, for which they were expelled from Mexican
territory, and their reductions in California and missions in
Old and New Mexico were given over to the lupine mercies of
the government officials. The history of what followed is little
different from the history of all such triumphs of might over
right, where the gloom of apparent failure is relieved and made
almost bright by the heroism of those who have failed ; but here
we are concerned only with the effect the expulsion of the Fran-
ciscans had on people they had been guiding.

The apostolic labors of the present Archbishop of Santa F6,
which have been so fruitful for New Mexico, did not begin
until 1837, an d in the meanwhile there was time for the good
customs the Franciscans had introduced to degenerate into the
barbarous practices at present in vogue. The isolation and
primitive condition of the people has also conduced to this.
And, besides, there has been always a scarcity of priests ; for
though there are here so many zealous men of the race to which
America owes so much, who have exiled themselves from France
for the sake of this people and have done wonders among them,
still many more are needed for a population that is scattered
over an extent of territory greater than New York and Penn-
sylvania and New Jersey together.

1884.] THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. 305

Like the Flagellants, also, these descendants of theirs have
had their own wars and their plagues ; and like them, too, many
came to regard penance, not as the supplementary and medial
thing it is, but as the only coin current for discharging all debts
of the world to come. They dispensed many of them with
confession altogether, and calculated to a nicety by just how
much scourging every Holy Week a year's peccadilloes neither
few nor light, says rumor could be paid for. For this, ordinary
flagellations of course would not do. So they set about de-
vising unusual kinds of torture whose ingenuity throws quite in
the shade all the results of Hindoo inventive talent in the same
line.

Upon this followed the third stage of likeness to their me-
diasval prototypes. Their theatrical processions and floggings
and crucifixions were condemned by the clergy, and their whole
system was discountenanced, especially as it became in many
places (and could everywhere become easily) a machine of un-
scrupulous politicians. There is living not far from where I
write a foreigner, who years ago settled as the bee settles
hereabouts. He became a Catholic and Mexicanis ipsis Mexi-
canior, and a Penitente of the most fakir-like type, and it was all
a cleverly-laid scheme for getting a high political office. His
reputation for holiness measured by the force with which he
laid on the scourge in public was great; he became Hermano
Mayor > a leader in Israel ; and when the time for office-getting
came about he had only modestly to intimate that the place he
coveted would not be unacceptable to him, and lo! the numbers
and influence of his admiring co-disciplinants bore him, as on a
tidal wave, into the haven of his desires. Once in office, as may
easily be guessed, his lamp of zeal began to flicker suspiciously
and grow dim, and at last, to the great scandal of the faithful, it
went out altogether. This is a comparatively harmless instance ;
sometimes the results of brotherhood amongst these people are
more serious.' For example, in places where the.y are numerous,
if one of them commit a crime against another who is not a
Penitente, it is almost impossible to secure his conviction ; judge
and jury are either Penitentes themselves or under the influence
of the society. On the other hand, it is never difficult in these
places (and they are by no means few) for a Penitente to revenge
himself on some personal enemy, provided the latter be not one
of the initiated.

For the settlement of disputes among themselves each morada
resolves itself into a sort of Vehmgericht^ before which all of-

VOL. XXXIX. 20

306 THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. [June,

fenders are tried and by which they are punished. The Penitente
is certainly happy in his tribunal. It dispenses him from the
necessity ordinary people are under of having recourse to some
higher court, spiritual or civil ; for this tribunal will take cog-
nizance of any offence whatever, no matter whether against the
civil law or the Decalogue, and will judge the offence and punish
the offender with a firmness and swiftness that it would be
pleasant to see transferred to the methods of courts more legiti-
mate. The punishment for certain offences is accompanied by
impressive ceremonies. The culprit, after he has been judged
and found guilty, is cited to appear before the fraternity on an
appointed night.

When he comes to the door of the morada he is forbidden to
enter until he has stripped himself to the waist and presented
himself in sufficiently penitential style. He does so, and then,
kneeling on the threshold, again craves permission to enter. It
is granted, and he comes in on his knees, to find himself at the
bottom of two rows of the brethren, w r ho stand in silence waiting
for him. The guilty man advances, always on his knees, to the
nearest one, and, prostrating himself, confesses his fault and asks
pardon, and so remains until the other absolves him in the con-
secrated formula : " De mi, estas perdonado ; Dios te perdone "
" For my part, I forgive you ; may God forgive you." He then
turns to the first one of the other row, and, prostrating himself
as before, repeats the confession and receives the same absolution.
And so he goes from one to the other until he has been absolved
by every Penitente except the Hermano Corregidor (Brother
Chastiser), who must take a great and grim pleasure in this par-
doning scene. This worthy stands, armed with a formidable
scourge, at the end of the two lines, waiting for the victim, who
comes up to find he has run the gauntlet in vain. He has
crossed the sea safely only to be wrecked in port. Again he
makes his confession, but no absolution follows now ; the Her-
mano Corregidor has no bowels of mercy he is Justice itself: he
rolls up his sleeve, takes a firmer grip on the scourge, and
says to the penitent, " Everybody else has forgiven you, but I
won't " ; and so saying, down comes the scourge on the man's
naked shoulders, and it rains blows until the Brother Chastiser
thinks he can conscientiously forgive him. This chastiser is not
the chief, however. The style and title of the latter is Hermano
Mayor Eldest Brother. His power is almost absolute. The
rest bind themselves by oath to obey him in whatever he enjoins,
and the oath is generally kept. What a danger lies here it is

1 884.] THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. 307

easy to imagine when we consider that this man is nearly
always as ignorant as the others, and, for the most part, is dis-
tinguished from them only by being more fanatical or more
crafty than they ; while at the same time dense ignorance and
fanaticism are generally not the least prominent mental char-
acteristics of the devotees over whom he has such complete
control.

It is evident, therefore, that, apart from the nature of the pen-
ances they undertake, there is weighty reason for the strenuous
opposition these people have met with at the hands of the priest-
hood throughout New Mexico. On account of this opposition
the society is much less powerful than formerly, and is driven
from many of its old strongholds ; but it still thrives in a num-
ber of places and counts among its adherents some people of
excellent private character, while the public exhibitions of the
endurance and fervor of its members go on as openly as ever.
I was desirous to witness one of these performances, and after
two fruitless journeys my zeal was rewarded.

There is a little village not far from here, in a spur of the
Rocky Mountains, where the Penitentes are in a most flourish-
ing state ; and thither I betook myself to see them in their habit
as they live. The village is situated on a plateau, encircled by
hills, that looks as if it had once been the bed of some lake.
About two miles distant stands the solitary morada, where the
Penitentes assemble every day in Holy Week to go through
their exercises. They are not visible to outsiders except on
Wednesday and Holy Thursday and Good Friday, when they
come out in procession. (Each procession, by the way, has its
'own name. That of the one on Wednesday I have not been able
to discover for certain ; scinduntur doctores. But it is probably
La Procesion de los Dolores Procession of the Sorrows. That
which takes place on Holy Thursday is called La Procesion de la
Santa Cruz Procession of the Holy Cross at which it is the
proper thing for every participant to carry a cross. And the one
on Good Friday is La Procesion de la Sangre de Cristo Proces-
sion of the Blood of Christ.)

The remainder of the time is spent in a pious and penitential
way, if one may judge from the quantity and quality of the noise
made ; and they sally forth in Indian file on these three days,
merely to edify the community. The objective point of their pro-
cessions is a great cross, erected more than half a mile from the
morada, and directly in front of the door. It is called " the Cal-
vary." Towards this place we set out on the afternoon of Good

303 THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. [June,

Friday, and we fortunately found a hill from which the cross
could be well seen. We climbed it, and sat down to await the
course of things.

Most of the Penitentes were already in the morada, but from
two o'clock there was still a continual stream of threes and twos,
every one carefully muffled up, and with his sombrero drawn
down over his eyes so that it was impossible to see the face. At
some distance from the place of meeting the new-comers, were
challenged, as it seemed,' by one of several sentinels whose
duty appeared to be the keeping out of the profane, and if all
was satisfactory they would pass on and enter the morada.
While we were waiting one of these sentinels set off on a run
for a clump of bushes midway up a hill near ours. And in a few
minutes he returned leading a man who wore only nether under-
garments and was barefooted ; his face was concealed by a cloth
wrapped round the head and having two little holes for the eyes ;
he carried in one hand his clothes and shoes, and in the other a
big cactus. He was led to the morada, introduced, and left to
his fate within. Several more such arrivals took place before
three o'clock. It appears that some people, who do not belong
to the society, are allowed by favor of the Hermano Mayor to
participate in the exercises for Holy Week ; and as they wish to
remain unrecognized even by the Penitentes, they undress and
mask before entering the place of torments.

Towards three o'clock we could hear now and then the shrill
notes of a fife and sounds (very discordant) as of chanting or
praying from within. This continued for some time, and then
the door of the inorada was thrown open and a group of men ap-
peared advancing with difficulty through the doorway, as if they
were bearing some heavy object. When they were well outside
they raised up their burden, after much exertion, and steadied it.
It was a cross ten or twelve feet long, on which hung a naked
man. His arms were stretched out tensely on the cross-beam,
and bound to it with ropes from wrist to shoulder. His feet
and legs were bound to the upright piece in like manner along
their length, and, except for a waist-cloth, he was quite naked.
While they were raising up the cross we caught sight of some-
thing on either side of the man that glistened in the sunlight ;
these, as we discovered when they came nearer, were two long
swords fastened at the hilts to the victim's wrists in such a man-
ner that their points just touched his sides, and at every rough
movement of the bearers they pierced the flesh. What their
torture must have been may be imagined when we remember

1884.] THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. 309

that the men who bore the cross were walking barefooted over
a rocky, uneven road, where the sharp stones and briars and
cactus wounded their feet at every step, and, no matter how
good their intentions were, made the walking very unsteady.

After cross and crucified, which were borne slowly forward
swaying always to and fro, came the long line of Penitentes
every man with his face masked, stripped to the waist, barefoot
and clad (like the first we saw, whose green-room was in the
bushes) in light under-garments only.

Immediately behind the group of cross-bearers walked a tall
Penitente, straight as an Indian, who was playing furiously on
a sort of flute. He was followed by the Hermano Mayor : a typi-
cal Penitente this gaunt, and large-boned, and dark. He di-
rected the exercises and intoned the hymns and prayers the
processionists chanted from time to time. I think he must have
been chosen for his choral abilities ; he was, like the Athenians'
fitriffTGopez dvrfjz, great as a shouter. Nothing there could bear
comparison with his wonderful lung-power, if it were not. his
own reverberant flagellation. He scourged himself fiercely
with thongs that at the end were armed with pieces of cactus,
and when he stopped occasionally it was only from sheer fa-
tigue. After him came the long, irregular line of disciples.

It was a sight to be remembered ; no kind of torture that
they could devise was unrepresented swords, daggers, chains,
barbed wire, cactus, even logs, were utilized.

Here is one man staggering along under an enormous weight
of cactus bound on his back. Near him walks another with his
hands stretched above his head and tied to the ends of a stick ;
and at either wrist a sword is fastened in the same way as with
the man crucified. He holds his head up, so as not to see the
ground, and so he walks on, stumbling over large stones, start-
ing involuntarily as he steps on jagged pebbles, and getting
pierced with the sword-points every moment ; his sides are
covered with" wounds and blood. Many discipline themselves
with cow-hide and scourges of wire, and one even has a heavy
chain. There is a young man who walks slowly ; his ankles are
tied with thongs, so that he must take very short steps ; and on
the thongs there are bound two daggers with the points touch-
ing his legs in such a way that they are continually gashing the
flesh. Behind him walks a man who has made an incision in the
small of his back ; he scourges himself with a large cactus, care-
fully prepared and wielded with great skill. Evidently he has
rehearsed this in private with much assiduity, because at every

3io THE NEW FLAGELLANTS. .[June,

stroke the cactus lights on the wound with mathematical pre-'
cision. Another man has a heavy log tied to his ankles, and
another, who is scourging himself, has a halter around the neck.
An irreverent bystander remarked that altogether the demon-
stration was like a moving-out of the Tower of London.

All the while the fifer kept tooting and shrilling with edify-
ing vehemence, especially when there was any chanting to be
accompanied ; the chanting, too, was very fervent more fer-
vent than harmonious; and so they went on, ^fifing, chanting,
and torturing, until they reached the Calvary. Here they set
down the cross into a hole prepared for it, and, while two or
three remained by it to keep it steady, the rest, as they came
up, threw themselves on their knees in front.

The crucified man by this time was in a most pitiable con-
dition ; the blood had been flowing profusely from the wounds
in his sides, and the white cloth around his waist was streaked
red with it ; his face was haggard and pale, but he was still con-
scious, and his brethren seemed determined that, if it could be
done by noise and fury, he should remain so. Some kept shriek-
ing out encouragement to him, others grovelled in the dust and
moaned with all their might, and all prayed and beat themselves
with tenfold vigor. But the torture was growing too great for
him : his face became distorted with the pain, and his body, as
the tight ropes hindered more and more the circulation, grew
purplish gradually, and at last almost black. As they saw his
strength giving out the singing became wilder (and, if possible,
less harmonious) and the shouts of encouragement became more
frantic, but they roused him only for a moment ; the limits of
endurance were passed, and his head sank again heavily on his
breast : he had fainted. Then they hurriedly took down the
cross, unbound him, and dashed water over him until he began
to revive. It took some time for that so long that we were
apprehensive of a fatal result but he recovered at last, and the
doleful procession took up its march homeward.

Once in the morada we saw no more of them. This Procesion
de la Sangre de Cristo has sometimes a much more tragic end-
ing. There have been at least four cases within the last six
years when the crucified man died after being taken down from
the cross; and what makes matters worse is that death, under
the circumstances, is considered a thing to be courted rather
than avoided, for they hold universally that a Penitent e who dies
under the torture (like the Moslem who perishes in battle) goes
straight to Paradise and glory. These lamentable occurrences

1 884.] THE NE w FLA CELL ANTS. 3 1 1

have always been made by the clergy an occasion for protest-
ing- against the cause of them, and the last such death (which
took place near Las Vegas) was made the text of a very em-
phatic condemnation of all these penitential masqueradings. Of
course it is understood that what is condemned is not the prin-
ciple of penance, which the church has always taught to be not
only salutary but necessary it is the manner and kind, the pub-
licity and barbarism, of that which is practised by the Penitentes.
But the time is not distant when their society will die its
natural death and their likeness to the Flagellants be complete.
This is not to be regretted ; Flagellantism in New Mexico, as
in mediaeval Europe, is an excrescence, and it is better that it be
removed. But it is to be hoped, however, that while such evils
as Penitentism are removed, the characteristic good of that Span-
ish civilization which until now has obtained in the Mexican
countries will remain undiminished and untouched. The reme-
dying of the defects of this civilization and the eradication of
their cause is a thing wholly to be wished for, but that itself
should disappear is not an entirely desirable consummation ; for,
taking it all in all, it seems to me that we may well question
whether the civilization of which Flagellantism is an excrescence
be a lower kind or less fitted to ennoble men and make them
happy than that other among whose excrescences figure Know-
nothingism and Spiritism and Oneida Communities.

THE "LEADING ARTICLE" [June,

THE "LEADING ARTICLE" IN ENGLISH
JOURNALISM.

WHEN did a "free " press begin in England? We should be
inclined, if urged closely for an answer, to say it began with the
institution, " leading article." Not even the tenth or twentieth
newspaper could have developed England's present freedom had
it not been for the introduction of "leading articles" as the
most prominent characteristic of journals. The date of this in-
troduction is uncertain. The Times newspaper of June 22, 1815,
contains, it is true, one leading article, on " The Victory of Wel-
lington over Buonaparte," and the elation of the editor is best
shown by the huge type in which he twice writes " two hundred
and ten pieces of cannon." In the same issue there is an allu-
sion to a weekly paper called the Monitor, which paper had ap-
parently been " cribbing " from the Times, or affecting to have
the same (French) correspondent. But the Monitor of that time,
though it gave its views on passing events, was not given to the
luxury of leading articles. Indeed, the growth of this feature
destined to change our literary habits and to make us almost
expect our newspapers to think for us was very slow, very cau-
tious, and at the first only an elaboration of what was popularly
accepted as "the news." The leading article of our own day,
which " reads lessons " to everybody, from the president and the
prime minister down to the smallest venturer on public fame,
is an institution which sprang chiefly from competition so soon
as many papers vied for favor. If one paper got a reputation
for taking one side, another paper would find its interest in tak-
ing another side ; and then the credit which would be begotten
of talented advocacy would suggest a gradual extension of sub-
j set-matter. Hence the one leading article of seventy years ago
suggested the two leading articles of sixty years ago, and so on
till every new rival paper tried to " cut out " other papers by its
leaders. A reference to newspaper-files of fifty years ago shows
that the institution, leading article, was fully established ; but it
was not, perhaps, till the Saturday Review was originated, for the
publication of " leaders without news," that the function of the

1 884.] IN ENGLISH Jo URNALISM. 3 1 3

leader became that of " thinker for the public " as to every pos-
sible intelligent estimate of current events.

We may therefore say that the institution, " leading article,"
was contemporary with the institution, " free " press. Some
people talk as if a free press were a free grant made by a liberal
government to a free people. It would be truer to say that
governments are at the mercy of a free press for their successes,
their popularity, their " in " -or " out." Leader-writers are the
schoolmasters of governments ! At least they write as if they
thought themselves to be so ; and the public in England at least
seem to confirm their impression. Nine persons out of ten,
when they want to read of some great speech which has been
made by a prime minister on a great subject, turn straight to
the leading article, so as to get the gist of the arguments with
the ready-made criticism they should evolve. Why take the
trouble of wading through two columns, only to be obliged to
form your own judgment after the wading, when both the argu-
ments and their collective value are given in one column, and
with much more accuracy of estimate than you can hazard?
Thus English public opinion is formed by leading articles ; the
ministry takes its cue from public opinion ; the ministerial cue
rules the nation ; ergo, the nation is ruled by leading articles.
Exaggeration as this is, there is yet sufficient truth in it to make
the institution, leading article, to seem imperial.

In these days there is no conceivable branch of news, nor
scarcely any department of philosophy, about which we are not
taught what to think by the gifted writers who are so kind as to
think for us. Say that a daily paper contains an average of four
leaders, or twenty-four leaders in the week ; that gives us twelve
hundred and forty-eight leaders in the year, which treat of per-
haps three or four hundred subjects. Nor is there any limit to
the " freedom " of such censorship, save only the limit of "pro-
priety." It is true that the libel laws restrain freedom ; but
these laws are interpreted by the canons of public taste much
more than by fixed rules of right or wrong. " Freedom " in it-
self implies the right of interpreting the whole domain of ideas
in regard to freedom ; for in the fact that I may publish what is
most offensive to another person say in the advocacy of a par-
ticular religion or form of government I exercise my freedom
as to the choice of first principles equally as to their modus
operandi. If I may advocate heresy in a country which is Ca-
tholic, or Catholicism in a country which is heretical ; if I may
advocate republicanism in a country which is monarchical, or

314 THE "LEADING ARTICLE" [June,

autocracy in a country which is republican, it is manifest that
the limits of my freedom are denned only by what is called " pub-
lic taste." If I do harm to another's character, or morally injure
a just cause, or financially impoverish a good movement, I offend
against the limits of my freedom, because I get across " the moral
law." But the whole domain of religion, of politics, of social
matters (bar only the advocacy of immorality), being within the
compass of my freedom, it follows that my freedom includes the
right of misleading others equally with that of being misled my-
self.

So that it would be absurd to argue that the enjoyment of a
free press is necessarily the enjoyment of just views first, be-
cause all views are advocated with equal talent ; and, secondly,
because we choose our advocates for ourselves. The immense
majority of Englishmen read the " organs " of their own views,
but do not read the organs of unpalatable views; while in cer-
tain exceptional grooves say religion and politics not one En-
glishman in a thousand reads the Tablet and the Rock, the Stan-
dard and the Daily News. And what is it that makes the dif-
ference in these papers ? In " religious " papers, so-called, there
is a difference in the "news" a difference in the whole object
and subject ; but all the political (morning) papers contain sub-
stantially the same news, the same telegrams, the same reports.
There is substantially no difference between the Standard and
the Daily News in any department of the mere columning of in-
formation ; it is only in the fact that the Standard takes one
view, and the Daily News takes another view, of the same peo-
ple, the same events, the same politics, that one paper is called
Tory or Conservative and the other paper is called Liberal or
Radical.

II.

Now, it is necessary, if we would arrive at a just estimate of
the history of the growth of leading articles, that we should pay
a visit to the British Museum, and there study the files of the
first newspapers.

"A somewhat dry way," you may think, perhaps, "of passing
a whole day, and one that I would rather not experience."
And yet in this estimate you would be mistaken. You would
find the " dryness " relieved by much amusement. Even a good
laugh will be got sometimes out of the oddness with which
" news " two hundred years ago used to be published. It is
true that you must be prepared to wait at least a whole hour

1884.] IN ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 315

while the old newspapers are being " dug out " by the searchers ;
but, seeing that there must be a million newspapers in the
British Museum, this is no very great penalty to pay. Then
when your papers are brought to you your nineteenth-century
eyes will be astonished and annoyed by the black letter, and by
a sort of brownish hue which a couple of centuries will have im-
parted to " This day's foreign and domestick news." The names
of the papers will be much alike. When first started papers
affected kindred titles. Thus the Observator, the New Observator,
the Legal Observator, the General Observatory with the Post Boy, the
Postman, the Post Bag, the English Post, the Flying Post, will crop
up about the year 1700. Indeed, it was at this time (about a hun-
dred and eighty years ago) that English newspapers, and there-
fore necessarily London newspapers, became an institution " for
the million." Their price at the first was only a half-penny. No
tax was imposed on English newspapers before the year 1712, so
that the cost of their issue was a mere trifle ; and when the penny
tax was first levied, so great was the consternation excited among
the newspaper proprietors that, as Dean Swift expressed it, " an
earthquake would -have been less terrible than this announce-
ment to the news-venders in Grub Street." Even a Farthing
Post had been published in 1701, but this venture only lasted
seven months. After the year 1.712 the normal price of the
newspaper was the not very huge sum of three half-pence ; and
the public soon showed that they were practically indifferent to
this extra demand for " the latest news." The size of a news-
paper would be well represented by half a sheet of what we at
present account foolscap ; one side being devoted to a digest of
news, and the other side to all kinds of advertisements. And
here it may be observed by the way that the geniuses of adver-
tising of the year 1704 seem to have had exactly the same
spirited ideas as they have in the year 1884; for we read in the
Post Boy of June 9, 1702, that "Dr. Lower's famous purging
pill surpasses all pills and all elixirs now extant," and that but
no, we will draw a veil over the " best ways of preserving
an elegant symmetry." The Book Column of this same issue
contains the following, which might have been published only
last week in the Protestant Rock : " The Church of Rome is no
guide in matters of faith ; being an answer to a letter from a
nephew to his uncle, containing reasons why he had become a
Roman Catholic ; by the Very Reverend, the Dean of Exeter."
No doubt in the time of William of Orange it was a plucky
thing for a young man to become a Catholic. And the Dean of

316 THE "LEADING ARTICLE" [June,

Exeter, if he wanted a bishopric, did wisely in " shooting a
pamphlet " at. his nephew. It was just about this time in the
month of March, 1702 that the English Post thus announced' the
death of William of Orange in not more than about three inches
of space : " Yesterday morning died our Glorious Sovereign
Lord, King William the Third, our Glorious Deliverer from
Popery and Slavery."

However, to turn to our more immediate subject, the origin
and development of leading articles, let it be said that, even so
late as a hundred years ago, no trace of a leading article is to be
found in the Morning Chronicle one of the most respectable and
important of the London papers. Yet Charles Lamb wrote for
the Morning Chronicle for many years ; Lord Campbell, Sir James
Mackintosh, and Mr. William Hazlitt were, in their earlier days,
members of its staff. But though these gentlemen wrote in
various grooves of literature, leading articles were never in-
eluded in those grooves. We find " contributions " and " criti-
cisms " ; we find detached opinions as to events, and we find very
important " correspondence " ; but the modern " leader " had not
come into existence during the first twelve years of the Morning
Chronicle. That paper was started in 1769 ; and it may be said
that up to 1781 it did not contain a leading article. What it
did contain was, however, admirable writing: no wonder, con-
sidering the great men who wrote " on it." Messrs. Longman,
the publishers, thought the paper sufficiently important to ad-
vertise sixty books in one issue. We know nothing as to the
rate of payment for these advertisements. What we do know
is that the rate of payment for "literary contributions" was so
small as to be almost imperceptible. Let our modern press-
writers or leader-writers, who imagine that their services are in
these days but imperfectly remunerated, gladden their hearts by
this one grateful fact : that William Hazlitt, one of the most dis-
tinguished of literary critics possibly even the most so of the
eighteenth century, received only five shillings for a very long,
small-type column of most elaborately thought-out critical
writing! The editor of one of the principal daily papers was
remunerated by half a guinea a week ! Our authority for these
statements is Mr. Grant, the well-known author of the Newspaper
Press. This gentleman has made the remark that there was " no
intellect" in the leading articles which were published in the
papers of eighty years ago. If the gentlemen who wrote the
leaders lived on half a guinea * a week we can well understand

* Two dollars and a half.

1884.] IN ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 317

that their " intellectual " capacities would not be in the liveliest
possible mood.

The following introduction to the first number of the Daily
Courant, which was issued in the reign of Queen Anne, seems to
justify the opinion of Mr. Grant in regard to the want of power
in leading articles. - The editor thus opens his new newspaper:
"The Daily Courant is confined to a small compass, to save the
public at least half the impertinences of ordinary papers." And
again proceeds the plain-spoken editor : " The Daily Covrant
professes to give only foreign news, as the editor assumes that
other people have sense enough to make reflections for them-
selves." Such a preamble was certainly modest and very re-
spectful. Yet we cannot help suspecting that the editor was
slyly alluding to the fact that he had only "half a guinea a
week," or was wishing to let the public know that he had more
lucrative avocations than " writing criticisms at five shillings per
column."

It seems likely that the idea of leading articles, as a most
captivating auxiliary of first-class newspapers, was generated by
such ventures as the Tatler and the Spectator papers, and by such
splendid writers as Addison and Steele. We, in these days, can
well imagine with what avidity and sense of luxury the English
gentleman must have " devoured " his Spectator paper, which was
placed on his breakfast-table with his coffee and roll, and which
was certain to be consummately exquisite. Nor is it strange
that contemporary with the Spectator was a huge growth in all
the daily papers of satirical and playful compositions. Thus the
Times which was first published in 1788 under the title of the
Universal Register, and three years later under its present and
better title contained no leading articles in its infancy ; but it
did contain in 1801 would-be satirical compositions on the follies,
the fashionable weaknesses, of the day. Indeed, there are long
" funny articles," so to call them not " leaders " in any sense of
the word which really, if we may speak honestly of their lite-
rary value, were beneath the level of even ordinarily fair wit.
That grave, dignified censor, the Times, who now rounds his
periods like cannon-balls, and who for half a century shook
Olympus with his nod, was in his infancy but a very pleasing
child, who did not promise to develop into a Jupiter.

It is just possible that the Times, which for more than half a
century has been prince of the journals of Great Britain, began
its mission as "leader-writer-in-chief" from the date of the Aus-
tro-French war. It was about the year 1805-6 that the British

3i8 THE "LEADING ARTICLE" [June,

government (during the Sidmouth administration) stopped the
foreign correspondence of the Times, actually seizing its letters
and parcels. The Times very properly resented such injustice,
and in wrathful " leaders " roundly abused the administration
for a tyranny which in our own day would be impossible. So
far as we can gather, most of the newspapers " took up " the
scandal ; and from that date the " freedom of the British press "
was a recognized and unassailable institution. And here it may
be mentioned that just a little before this date the Morning
Post, which was established in 1772, had got into very hot water
by libelling the character of a great lady. The damages claim-
ed were four thousand pounds; and this amount was awarded
and was paid. So that the great leader of " fashionable "
journalism, the Morning Post, began its career by a sharp lesson
in damages, perhaps the largest ever awarded in a civil action ;
and the great leader of " political " journalism, the Times, fought
its way to the summit of public favor against the hostility and
the executive force of the British government.

And yet it would be unfair to give to the Times the whole
honor of having " bearded " the great powers of the state. The
North Briton, about the year 1762, accused the king of having
uttered downright falsehood in his speech at the opening of
Parliament an act of impudence, if not of treason, which at least
showed that " journalists " had some pluck about the middle of
the last century. The North Briton was impeached. It soon
died. But the mistake of the North Briton was in not having
learned the art which in these days is common to most jour-
nalists of making the most unjust and most offensive observa-
tions in the most serene and perfectly gentlemanly spirit.

Once more : it may be noted that antecedent to leading arti-
cles was the custom of publishing (first) in the newspapers whole
volumes of romances or essays. The Letters of "Junius" first
attracted attention in a newspaper which is now quite forgotten.
And, to speak of a very different publication, yet one which is far
more widely known, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe first appear-
ed in the London Post, having been refused by twelve or fourteen
English publishers ! It was not until romances and columns of
facetious matter ceased to be a feature of the " morning papers "
that leaders became a fixed institution ; the modern " weekly
paper " taking up the mantle which the modern " morning pa-
per " has quite thrown aside.

1 884.] IN ENGLISH Jo URNALISM. 3 1 9

in.

If Macaulay's saying be true, that the history of a country
may be most accurately gathered from its newspapers, we should
be driven to the conclusion that England had but little history
before the time of the invasion by William of Orange. Journal-
ists, before that period, could not, had they had a mind, give
reports of proceedings in Parliament, because the jealousy of both
houses as to the fulness of reports was a constant source of quar-
rel with "outsiders." And newspapers which could not give
Parliamentary reports, save in a garbled or guessed form, could
not be accepted as " historical." Take even the Times of June
22, 1815, only sixty-nine years ago. The first page (of four
small pages) consists of advertisements ; the second and third
pages are about the war ; and the fourth page is again all ad-
vertisements. What, then, must have been the newspapers of a
century and a half ago as authorities on " foreign and domestick
news," when, of two small pages only, one was devoted to ad-
vertisements and the other to "bits" of news and correspond-
ence? One issue of a morning paper in these days contains
seven or eight times the quantity not to speak of the increase
in variety which was contained in the early numbers of the Lon-
don Gazette, the St. James Chronicle, or any paper of a hundred
and fifty years ago. And the leaders alone of every one of the
English morning papers take, as a rule, five to six columns to
themselves, printed, it is true, in such exceptionally grand type
as to betoken that they are the paper.

And they are the paper ; it is to them that the reader turns,
because they embody at once the gist of important news and the
right " party " estimate to be taken of it. In other words, a
Conservative turns to the Standard leaders to know how best he
may find fault with Mr. Gladstone ; while a Liberal turns to the
Daily News leaders to know how best he may vindicate that
great statesman from the attacks which the Conservatives make
upon him.

Are, then, leaders, in their modern sense and empire, a boon
or a bane to the community ? They are a boon, because they
give people the advantage of seeing their own views expressed in
intelligible form, with possibly one or two ideas which would
not have occurred to them or which they could not have
clothed in such good language. They are a boon, because they
are a saving of time in giving both facts and their (apparent)
value in one column. They are a boon, because, when they are

320 THE "LEADING ARTICLE" [June,

well written, they are a real literary pleasure, or even profit.
They are a boon, because a man who writes a leader is assumed
to have digested his subject ; and though the assumption may be
but flattering, it is obvious that " composition " must be in itself
a strong stimulus to accuracy. Lord Bacon's assertion that
" writing makes an accurate man," just as "reading makes a full
man " and " speaking makes a ready man," is just true so far as
this : that what a man dares to print is not likely to contain gross
misstatements. The art of knowing what not to say is doubtless
more apparent in ninety-nine leaders out of a hundred than is
the art of lucidly summarizing a whole argument; and it is a
great gift of many leader-writers to be able to write profoundly
upon almost any subject they take in hand, without saying any-
thing whatever, from beginning to end, which is more than a dis-
play of good grammar. Still, the very capacity for " dancing
among eggs " warns the reader of the delicacy of the subject ;
and teaches him to be reserved in his opinions, since even the
gods of the press are not assured. Again, all leaders are a boon
even bad ones because the importance or the triviality of
their subjects is a sign of the movements of the times. Blessed
are the times when all the subjects of all leaders are purely
domestic, artistic, or speculative ; for in times of disaster the first
and second leading articles are sure to be charged with terrible
interest. And, once more, leading articles are a boon, as teach-
ing us to distrust all " fine writing " ; for since the champions of
exactly opposite opinions may write bravely and assuredly, and
even profoundly, in advocating what we know to be wrong, it
behooves us to give to journalism its right place in authority, and
not to conclude that any amount of human advocacy can of
itself make what is wrong to be right.

But in some respects this branch of journalism is most bane-
ful. The bane of leading articles is that, most readers being
superficial, or incapable of distinguishing reasoning from bias,
most readers are led away by the apparent persuadedness with
which a journalist will lay down the law. It is needless to name
papers ; but every one knows of this paper or of that paper
which week after week, or even day after day, advocates false-
hoods with audacity. This is true, however, in the main only of
" religious " newspapers. Thus there is one paper in London,
a " religious paper," which, week after week through twenty
years, has had leaders against the Catholic religion ; the argu-
ments and the data being correlatively idiotic, because neither
of them rest on any truth. Are such leaders a bane or a boon?

1884.] fN ENGLISH Jo URN A LISM. 3 2 1

The "freedom of the press," as was observed at the beginning,
includes the right of misleading the public equally with that of
being misled ourself ; and it is in leading articles we have the full
use of the freedom. To withhold facts in regard to news is un-
doubtedly as great a falsehood as to create facts which never
had existence ; but to comment on some facts, as if they were all
the facts, or to comment on facts which have been proved ficti-
tious, is even a still bigger falsehood than to misrepresent facts,
because it is the assumption that the facts are all admitted.
Morally, it is probable that the biggest liar that ever existed
is that impersonal chatterbox, the leading article ; because it is
constructed only for a " view," or to preserve the " line " of the
paper, with perfect knowledge that there has been a beginning
on a wrong tack. " Sir, you stultify the paper," said a pro-
prietor to a journalist who had the manliness to argue dead
against himself, and who considered that it was more honorable
to confess that he had been mistaken than to go on blinding his
subscribers by a false advocacy. Just as some papers or edi-
tors refuse to insert letters which prove that some journal-
ist has made mistakes, so some papers or editors will go on
" writing up " a cause which has been proved over and over
again to be rotten. Now, it is the institution, leading article,
which has introduced this form of lying by committing news-
papers to certain grooves of party-advocacy. In politics can
anything be more ridiculous, or more utterly contemptible or
childish, than the rule of always abusing the champions of one
party and always eulogizing, or .at least excusing, their op-
ponents? You might imagine that the one party was impec-
cable and the other party incapable of any good, so virulent
or so testy is the criticism on every act or every policy of the
" other party." This, perhaps, is the worst bane of leading ar-
ticles. To be the " organ " of a political party means to be the
accuser of the other party ; not principle, not public advantage,
being the object, but solely to " turn out " the other party at ail
hazard.

It was impossible, however, that the institution, leading ar-
ticle, should not be abused like every other institution. Begun
probably with the perfectly legitimate intention of dressing up
the news in attractive form ; developed by the necessity of
from time to time repudiating the imputation of false news or
false advocacy ; and finally made to rival all sorts of " critical "
writings, such as the wondrous and fascinating papers of Ad-
dison, leader-writing has come to mean the assumption of in-
VOL. xxxix. 21

322 THE "LEADING ARTICLE" [June,

fallibility as to the right view of everybody and everything.
Journalism no longer means news-gathering, but the affectation
of teaching the right bearings of all news. The office of the
editor is didactic. The attitude of the reader is pupillary. And
the anomaly of the relation is that the editor teaches the reader
what he knozvs that the reader will like best, while the reader
is under the impression that he enjoys a " free press " be-
cause he can enjoy an "organ" of his own predetermined
views. The freedom of the press, as it is presented in leading
articles, is the freedom of being flattered in our own opinions ;
it is not the freedom of enjoying the " nuda veritas," but of
having the " veritas " toileted to our own taste. Dr. Johnson
was once asked by Mr. Boswell whether he thought that reading
the newspapers was a. waste of time. The blunt doctor replied
that the wisdom of all reading must be sought first in the wisdom
of the reader. But in regard to leading articles the wisdom of
the reader almost always moves in the groove of a preconcep-
tion. No Tory was ever converted by a rabid leader in a Liberal
paper ; while as to Liberals, they turn away with irritation from
the organs of the old-fashioned Toryism. In some districts of
London, where political feeling runs high, a news-vender cannot
expose in his shop-window the organs of the unpopular party.
In one London parish you may ask for a Conservative paper at
every shop where the daily papers are sold ; but the answer is,
" We don't keep it," and the reason which is given is that "every
one is a Radical about here." This is an illustration of the real
meaning of " free press." Freedom there is certainly in being
able to buy your favorite organs, but freedom there is not in
either reading both advocacies or in suffering everybody to
read everything they like best. The editor of the Daily Courant,
whom we have quoted for his candor, and who professed to save
the readers of his paper from " half the impertinences of ordi-
nary papers," would have to change his tactics now, if he were
to come back to his editor's chair, seeing that no paper can
command a sale without impertinences. That highly respectable
editor, were he to tell his readers in these days that they " have
sense enough to make reflections for themselves," would be an-
swered by " We pay you for making reflections for us, and if you
can't do this we shall not buy your paper." Leading articles are
the modern machinery for thinking well with others' brains ;
only the machinery is intended solely for thinking just as you
wish to think, not for thinking as it is best to think or truest to
think.

1884.] VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. 323

THE VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT

ISMS.

IT would seem to be a growing with many, a full-grown
conviction among a number of Protestant dignitaries and no-
tables that the general cause of the " Reformationists " is rather
advanced than retarded by indefinite splitting of sects into num-
bers^ of other sects, no matter how divergent or contradictory
what they dignify by the name of tenets. Though their original
fathers set the rough-cast seal of their condemnation upon divi-
sion and lustily damned dissension from their dissension, the
legitimate children follow the works rather than the faith of
their progenitors, and have so long and ardently hugged the first
principle of each one's right of making doctrines and churches,
handed down in a straight line of tradition, that they have come
to glory in their shame.

This is the logic of error, always self-condemnatory. It does
not prevent the logic of truth from continuing to batter the
shields and helmets and breastplates of these self-deluded de-
fenders of men-made creeds with the blade they furnish, and
drive home their confessed defeat. It still remains unassailable
that the multiplication of churches upon churches, everlastingly
severing the broken limb of the Protestants Isms into match-
wood fragments and finally diminuting into invisible splinters, is
physical and moral suicide without hope of redintegration. But
if the blind will not see, we can, in common phrase, make them
feel, by the palpable testimony of raised figures of their own in-
vention, that their cause is lost and so confessed by their own.
What are the figures of the knowable Isms in the last -hundred
years? Their own counts? For the sake of argument though
we do in no sense admit their solidarity, which in reality they
claim not themselves let us permit their leaders to put their
forces all together and count as one body.

We have authorities, or what pass for such, making all the
sects of some forty larger and one hundred smaller denomi-
nations, from the highest, 140,000,000, to the lowest, about
30,000,000, in the last forty years, and now. An inconsiderable
few attempt to aggregate the whole at over 100,000,000, without
attending to any details ; these, therefore, we shall boldly and
quietly set aside. Dr. Hurst, in his Outline History of the Church

324 VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. [June,

(1875), is the only anyways respectable detailer who dares to sum
the Protestants at 131,007,449. But his figures of 37,000,000 in
the New World have proved so far wrong we may pass him
by. Here are opposite tables of computers who sum about or
below 100,000,000 as the whole count :

ALL THE PROTESTANT SECTS 1850-1883.

Aiithority. Count. Year.
Baron Htibner (Europe). 64,321,000

Hitchcock's A nalysis. .. 97,000,000 1875

Rand, McNally & Co. . *io8, 630,000 1882

A uthority. Count. Year,

Almanack de Gotha. ... 70,500,000 1876

Bishop Hopkins f6i, 000,000 1855

Hitchcock's Analysis. . ^50,000,000 1875

Macaulay. 50,000,000 1850

Scientific Miscellany... 48,985,000 1850

Deutsche Reichzeitung . 45,000,000* 1880

Wm. Cobbett 30,000,000 1830

1. We will dispose of Baron Hiibner's count, especially his
26,000,000 of Protestants in Great Britain, about an equal num-
ber in the German Empire, and not much less in Austria-Hun-
gary, when we reach these several countries.

2. Rand, McNally & Co.'s detail of 30,000,000 Protestants in
the United States has been answered elsewhere, || reducing their
number to nearly that of the Almanack de Gotha, whose figures,
again, make the largest Protestant sect only one-twelfth the size
of the Catholic Church.

Taking all the other authorities' average, we may fairly put it
at about 50,000,000 as the whole anyways reliable count for the
past thirty years and up to very recently. Following the facile
Yankee process of whittling, which these statistical worthies
give fair samples of, we can cut down and pare around these
figures considerably. But we shall make Protestants, at least all
non-Catholics, bring their own statistics and their own condem-
nations to amuse us with.

Just at the period when the great Evangelical wave sweeping
Europe, and especially Germany, ploughed the English Chan-
nel and washed over Great Britain forty years ago, a German
Protestant of German Protestants, speaking of the flood of ra-
tionalism and pantheism, of which Evangelicalism was but the
.after-roll, in the last century and beginning of this, says :

" In the midst of German Protestantism an alliance (of rationalism, etc.)
had been formed, which at first appeared to be of little danger, nay, to be

* Atlas of the World, 1882. \ End of Controversy Controverted^ Letter 22.

% The apparent contradiction is Hitchcock's real upsetting of his first general figure,
97,000,000, by his sum of details, footing up only about 50,000,000.

Not certain of the actual number, the count noted in the first draft of this has been
increased some 3,000,000. The paper puts the Catholics of Europe at the highest figure
153,344,000.

| American Catholic Quarterly Review^ January, 1882.

1884.] VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. 325

even advantageous, but which soon overthrew the scaffolding of doctrine
that the old Protestant orthodoxy had raised up, and precipitated Protes-
tant theology into that course which has, in the present day, led it en-
tirely to subvert all the dogmas of Christianity and totally change the ori-
ginal views of the Reformers." *

This is too evidently true to the unbiassed student of church
history to be confined to the blunt expression of this honest
man's opinion. There have been two forces at work in Germany
as, indeed, in most parts of Europe besides the sects' own
inherent disintegration, which have militated in opposite di-
rections against the possible increase of any of the larger sects.
These two are the Jesuits and co-working restored or reformed
religious orders, on the one hand, and on the other the ration
alistic and infidel schools working hand-in-hand with the Christ-
and-state-hating secret societies. These latter, originating in
England, thence transplanted to the Continent, notably France
and Germany, about 1717, spared no efforts to cajole the mon-
archs and weakening, if not dying, sects ; then afterwards to
unite their arms with both to undermine the church and honey-
comb society with dark-lantern schemes and plots which, ma-
tured by infidels in these three important divisions of Europe,
inaugurated a series of revolutions of which the last English was
the first, and the latest Russian shall not be the last.

Things went well with the devil let us not disguise the
simple truth when the suppression of the Jesuits in the height
of their power for good in God's world, in 1773, became pre-
cisely coincidental with the uprise of the schools of Kant, Paulus,
et id genus omne. The poor German Isms, faint with fighting the
glorious vanguard of Jesus' Companions, the detailed campaigns
of which we cannot follow, groaned again under the repeated
blows of the indefatigable rationalists. These possessed acumen,
high human cultivation, the zeal of their " father " for the de-
struction of immortal souls, and handed down a tradition of suc-
cess to their followers and heirs, every whit as mad in their theo-
ries and, alas ! with all the method of their ancestors' madness.
The pantheists under Schelling and De Witte in the beginning
of this century soon bore their legitimate fruit David Strauss
in the first quarter, with his school, and in the second quarter of
this hundred years the redoubtable Fichte and his brood of bur-
rowers & in philosophy and upheavers of the bases of society.
The tercentenary of Luther in 1817 scarcely caused a much

* Der Protestantisnms in seiner Selbstauflosung^ von einem Protestanten, pp. 291-3.
Schaffhausen, 1843,

326 VER Y LAST CENTENAR Y OF PROTESTANT ISMS. [June,

greater ripple of enthusiasm than the Evangelical Alliance formed
under Frederick William III.,* which was in reality but a damn-
ing 1 compromise of state-forced sects and a frittering away of
their remaining scraps of truth.

The popular preacher, Claude Harms, made the " Vaterland "
ring, as the incomparably better Savonarola before him had made
Italy ring, with his fiery denunciations, interlarded with some
coarse truths. " Bah ! " yociferated he, " I could write, on my
thumb-nail all the doctrines [of the Reformers] yet universally
believed." A greater than he, the Alliance king himself, decreed
that " the Alliance was formed in the sense of the Reformation
and in the spirit of Protestantism/' which was that " the Re-
formed [Calvinists] were not to go over to Lutheranism, nor
vice versa ; but both should make a newly revived evangelical
church in- the spirit of their founders."

But the Jesuits revived about the same time (1814), and in-
creased and multiplied until they very nearly reach their num-
ber when suppressed. In fact, before their term of forty years'
trial was fairly over they were re-established in Russia and some
contiguous countries, whence they soon poured their legions into
the hot-beds of Protestantism, " conquering and to conquer."
The Alliance itself found other opposition besides the uprisings
of the indignant peasants and honest common folk. Rebellions
broke out on many sides. In 1847 Daniel Schenkel played fast
and loose with the remaining traditions of Christianity among
his Protestant brethren, flatly denying, with Ernest Renan, the
mark of supernatural character to the teachings of any Christian.
The Nine Articles of the Evangelicals imported two years be-
fore into England came to a sad end in the Assembly of Geneva
in 1862, where English Methodism's orthodox stomach rose up
against the German rationalists. Finally, to set the official seal
to the grown infidelity of the whole government of the Evangeli-
cal Church, one hundred and nineteen Baden ministers and all
believing Protestant clergy of the country, on applying for
Schenkel's dismissal from his chair in the Prediger Seminar,
were answered by the Supreme Church Council and General
Synods at Carlsruhe that " Schenkel's opinions were reconcil-
able with Protestantism," as was confirmed by the same supreme
authorities at Carlsruhe in i86/.t

What have been the more modern consequences of these op-

* Marshall's Missions puts the date 1834, others some differently,
f Alzog, Allgemeine Geschichte^ ii, p. 632,'

1 884-] VER v LAST CENTENAR Y OF PRO TESTA NT ISMS. 327

posite forces, one Catholicizing and the other infidelizing Ger-
man Protestants?

In Germany there are "thirty-eight Protestant sects, . . .
with temples so empty and prayerless . ". . that it must be
plainly seen the days in which we live are ripe for the great
- apostasy." *

The famous Dr. Pusey quotes a German theologian as writ-
ing that in 1825, having recounted all the "professors who^could
anyhow be considered orthodox that is, who in any way con-
tended for the doctrine of the Gospel or its very truth counted
in ail Protestant Germany seventeen." Messmer, in 1 86 i,f "de-
plores that the deluge of unbelief is filtering through and wast-
ing away the protecting dikes of family, state, and church."

Prof. Von Schulte, in the Contemporary Revieiv and in the
November Edinburgh Review, 1880, writes that "it resulted from
an inquiry into the condition of the Lutheran Church in the
Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg that no service at all had been
held in the head churches for two hundred and twenty-eight
Sundays, because there had been no congregation. . . ." As for
religious home culture, there is, Prof. Von Schulte tells us, " an
entire lack of it in Germany. Family worship," it is stated by
the same authority, " is a thing unknown among Protestants be-
longing to the Prussian national church, except in a few pious
households." The religious condition of the mass of the popula-
tion is likened by one of our authorities to that " of pagan Rome
just before the advent of Christ, when the people had ceased to
bring sacrifices and cared no more for their idols, yet had no-
thing to put in their place."

The professor's judgment of the other churches is thus sum-
med by a New York journal :

" What is true of the Prussian church may be said, with some qualifica-
tions, of all the Protestant churches of Germany, which number twenty-six,
besides the old Lutheran and several sects not belonging to any establish-
ment. They all exhibit the same spectacle of stagnation and decay, the
same indifference and apathy on the part of their nominal adherents, which
have made of German Protestantism a church without a creed and a peo-
ple without belief."

When Berlin statistics sjiow only 30,000 people and of these
barely 4,000 Protestants out of 1,140,000 being seen at any
church, we may credit the lament of a Berlin clergyman to an
American correspondent :

"We have no influence," he said ; "we can do nothing. Instead of be-
* Apud DSllinger, Kir die und Kirchen, pp. 275, 308, 330, t Ibid. p. 204.

3 28 VER Y LAST CENT EN AR Y OF PRO TEST ANT ISMS. [June,

ing represented in any way in the government of the country, we stand
ourselves under most stringent police supervision. State support we do
not expect ; but we are, notwithstanding, hampered by state superinten-
dence. Against the universal prevalence of agnostic and freethinking
opinions our church can practically make no head."

Which correspondent honestly concludes :

f " The Protestants and philosophers are too far divided by internal dif-
riculti^fe to make any head against a united body like the Roman Catholics,
who have in all religious questions one undivided interest, and are pre-
pared to sacrifice all others to that." *

After these crushing proofs of the preponderance of infidelity
among the non-Catholic populations of the German Empire, it is
the supremity of sardonic sarcasm and the acme of ridiculosity
for encyclopaedias, atlases, and statisticians to persist in simply
dividing the populace into Catholics and Protestants, putting
the latter at some 26,000,000 or nearly 27,000,000, leaving no
margin for freethinkers, of which Protestant Germany is the
world-known nation, or taking the bitter alternative of saying
that the mantle of Luther is broad enough to cover them all.
This latter is the more likely. Bona-fide Protestants in the em-
pire may count 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 members. And how shall
even that number be gathered together ?

Passing down to Switzerland, the infidel Rousseau's influence
on the Reformed Swiss in the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, combined with the nearly as disastrous influence of the in-
cisive cynic and God-hater, Voltaire, in the latter half of the
eighteenth century, blew away like chaff the stiff dogmatism of
the worn-out Five Points of the cold tyrant, Calvin. All the
world knows the beneficent reconversions of the Apostle of
Geneva the gentle and sensible St. Francis pie Sales. It needs
but naming.

The reaction at the Reform centenary of 1855 was trumpeted
with ostentation by Merle d'Aubigne and his coterie of history-
makers. But, to show how soon the enthusiasm cooled, in 1864,

* " A Catholic reaction is making itself felt in the upper classes of Germany, just as much as
in those of England. Dr. Walcker, a professor in the University of Leipzig, has lately pub-
lished a paper entitled A Statistical Proof of the Growth of Catholicity among the Nobility of
Germany. The author, himself a Protestant, shows that in the course of the present century as
many as forty-four members of families possessing sovereign rank have become converts to Ca-
tholicity ; three of these are princes viz., Prince Solms-Braunfels, Prince Isenburg-Birstein, and
Prince Loewenstein-Wertheim ; then there are eleven counts and twelve countesses. One of
these was the Countess of Brandenburg, a daughter of King William II. of Prussia and aunt to
the present emperor. As a set-off against these forty-four conversions Protestantism can only
claim nine proselytes from Catholicity, all of them persons of minor note " (London Universe,
April, 1883).

1884.] VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. 329

the third centenary of John Calvin's death, the heresiarch was
publicly denied the honors of a national hero, and Geneva the
Calvinistic Rome gave harsh prominence to the expression of its
disgust at his horrid despotism. Here, too, in our very day, the
University of Geneva declares our Lord and Saviour " a mere
man"; and theological students are told ex cathedra : " Make any-
thing you like of Jesus Christ, so that you do not make him
God." *

A synod of Berne computes that u ' out of every ten or twelve
householders but one can be counted with any faith," confirm-
ing what fallen De Lamennais declared of the Genevese: " They
have no faith whatever."

In Geneva there are estimated forty-two thousand infidels, or
Arians; Catholics are as many. The Protestant cantons can
therefore not aggregate above a few hundred thousands at best.

" Religion in Holland," writes Huber,f " has never since the
Reformation remained the same for thirty years together." Of
its fifteen hundred ministers, fourteen hundred put themselves on
record as denying the Incarnation.

" The death-waters of unbelief," Messmer testifies in 1861,
" of rationalism, pantheism, and materialism, are in Holland, as
in Germany, sweeping all before them." What need to repeat
here the horrors of Dutch Calvinists in the apostasies of trade in
China, the absolute tyranny of the long government of Ceylon,
the persecutions and butcheries at home Gorcum notably and
in the colonies of Dutch Guiana? Besides, government statistics
show half the population of Holland is Catholic. Two-thirds of
the other half, at a moderate calculation, are indifferent deists
and practical atheists. The scores of thousands of Jansenists
have no sympathy with the Isms. We can scarcely allow the
sects more than in Switzerland.

Coming across to Great Britain, Dr. Pusey a certainly un-
questionable and capable authority designates his own native
Englishmen as " a numerous nation of heathens." In fact, the
official census of about 1860 gave 5,000,000 as of no religion a
confession not made by any other nation of itself in the circum-
ference of the globe. Officially, in Leeds and Liverpool, 40 per
cent.; in Manchester, 51 ; Lambeth, 61 ; Sheffield, 62 per cent, are
counted religionless.

The London Times (April n, 1862) prints: "In this great

* Religious Discussions ; pp. 4, 5. Confer Considerations sur le Divinite dejtsus- Christ >
par H. L. Empaytaz.

t Bibliothlque Universelle> torn. xxiv. p. 181.

330 VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. [June,

Christian nation vice exists to an extent utterly unknown in pa-
gan countries," which is explained sufficiently by its recording
in the preceding February : " Half the island are Dissenters ; and
of the rest the greater part take the Establishment as it comes,
with very mixed feelings."

There are not churches enough for one-half one authority
says one-third of the population of upwards of 4,000,000 in Lon-
don. In the May, 1881, census of those churches, of 57 places of
worship only 1 1 had 100 present ; in more than one-half not 50
attendants could be counted. In one there were 10; in a second,
9 ; in a third, 8 ; in a fourth, 4 ; in a fifth but 2 were present. Of
the 306 choristers, mostly hired, it is computed they had to sing
to a total of just 3,853 worshippers. The clergymen's salaries in
these churches amounted to $220,000 per year.* Similar statis-
tics in seventy cities of England and Wales show steady de-
crease in attendance, the major part of the people spending the
Sunday without going to church. If this be too general, Mr.
John Bright, the head commoner of England, told the world in
Parliament in 1880: " Nearly one-half of the Protestants of En-
gland and Scotland do not go to church at all. Many, after
being married, never see the inside of a church any more. Some
never go to church again after being christened." " But in Ire-
land," he contrasts significantly, " the great bulk of the people
are Catholics and do go to church."

A member from Glasgow, on the same or equivalent* oc-
casion, proclaimed that in his constituency, having over 300
churches withal, one-third, or 100,000, never went to any place of
worship. The English Church Establishment is surely divided
against itself, as Macaulay so caustically points to the " religion
of the Church of England as a bundle of religious systems with-
out number, tied together by an act of Parliament : a hundred
sects battling within one church." f

It is notorious in our own day that the Athanasian Creed's
abolishment by law is only a natural sequence to the declaration
that it is not of faith to believe baptism necessary for salva-
tion.

What purpose can it now serve to trace the decay of the Isms
in their successive transformations and breedings of swarms of
petty sects in Great Britain, from the inoculation of Calvinism
of old, through the new bodies of dissenters and the zealous pro-
pagation of Methodism in this century by the restless Wesley
brothers ?

* London Universe^ May i, 1881. t " Essay on-Church and State, 1 '

1884.] VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. 331

Puseyism's history is commonplace. If conservatism have
spared the English some of the disgraces of Continental countries,
and there be a perhaps more Christian something, hard to de-
fine, which makes Episcopalianism a sort of breakwater to in-
fidelity and, in its more advanced forms, a nursery for Catholic
converts, it is sadly true that the uppermost class, as described
by Disraeli's novels, notably his Endymion, and the lowermost,
depicted so vividly by Thackeray, Dickens, and their co-work-
ers, are permeated so deeply with irreligion and practical, if not
openly avowed, agnosticism on the one hand, and stupid igno-
rance on the other, that there is but a redeeming feature or two
in both classes.

If the hundreds of thousands of migrating Catholic Irishmen
coming over to England against their pastors' and the interested
English Catholic clergymen's better judgment and warning are
not swallowed up in the whirlpool of God-denying and God-
cursing lower British society and commerce, they may form the
seed of the thousands that still will not bend the knee to Baal
nor halt in their allegiance between God and Mammon. Con-
versions in the higher classes, so numerous and influential as the
examples become, may save some of the upper ten thousands.
The Salvation Army is too great a parody, nay, blasphemy, on
religion to be even worthy mention. Of Quakerism the Liberal
Christian (August, 1879) declares : " What is left of it is made up
of theeing and thouing, and its straight coat and stiff bonnet.
These are steadily losing authority, and when they are aban-
doned visible Quakerism will disappear."

In the concentrated light of these facts would it be folly to
reduce the boast of the Anglicans, that their church proper yet
contains twelve millions, to what even extravagant Cobbett tells
them they numbered in 1824 viz., one-fourth or one-fifth of the
then existing nation, say four or five millions ?

We may divide the Dissenters, by our authorities, into one-
half the supposed Protestant population, and make, perhaps,
about four or five millions of them, who may by a very sanguine
calculation, added to as many of the English church, sum up in
the neighborhood of eight millions who are the adherents, in
some sort, of some sect in Great Britain.

It is needless waste of space to devote more than a paragraph
to Protestant Episcopalianism in Ireland, after its late disastrous
disestablishment, and after Prof. Mahaffey, in his recent pamphlet,
has opened out its inner hollowness and most sure extinctive

332 VER Y LA ST CENTENAR Y OF PRO TEST ANT ISMS. [June,

decay. Of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Liebetrut * gives us
to understand : " The Swedish church is a church desolate,
dead, lying under the anathema of God. The church's unity is
the unity and peace of the graveyard."

And Bayard Taylor, f in 1858, adds: " It is slowly ossifying
from sheer inertia." As England has had to disestablish the
Irish church and will have to disestablish the English, so Mr.
Brace says:;): " This century will see the disruption and convul-
sion of the Swedish state church." A Baptist American mis-
sionary adds still a note of disgrace to the ruin by the statement
that " entire Baptist churches are gobbled up by the Mormons in
Sweden."

Inglis writes that, bad as is the state of morality in Sweden,
" the standard of morals is higher in Sweden than in Norway,"
" where a general indifference is manifested for religion."
f % Who will say, after this, that there are more than a million or
two, at the very utmost, out of the 6,400,000 inhabitants of the
Scandinavian peninsula, claiming to be Christians in any sense or
any sect ?

Going back now for a moment to those nations now over-
whelmingly Catholic, which, however, were once thought to be
in the balance and inclined to the new fashions invented by the
pseudo-Reformers, we will be surprised to find that in Austria,
Bohemia, and Moravia, once for nearly a century thought to be,
and counted as, mostly Protestant, the sects now count six per
cent, of the population of Austria and two and a half per cent,
of that of its dependencies. In Austria-Hungary there are
accordingly, by census of January, 1881, some 2,130,000 Calvin-
ists and 1,450,000 Evangelicals, which, properly reduced, may
sum some 2,000,000.

In the last synod of Paris, gotten up under the auspices of
Guizot and his associates of any prestige, the Union des Eglises
Evangeliques de France counted but sixty-one votes for the
"orthodox confession of faith," against forty-five of the materi-
alists of their own number who chose to follow Renan, Coquerel,
and their ilk. And though as late as fifty years ago, in 1830, a
French Protestant could boast of 2,000,000 of Lutherans and Cal-
vinists combined in France, the whole Huguenot tribe to-day
census of 1880 could muster but a pitiful 580,761.

In Italy, Spain, and Belgium, where the Reformers never
obtained any foothold thanks, as Gibbon and Macaulay confess,

* Ap. Dollinger, supra, pp. 259. f Northern Travels, p. 285.

JLaing, Tour, pp. 115-125. $ Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, second part, p. 142.

1884.] VERY LAST CENTENARY OF PROTESTANT ISMS. 333

to that very hated Inquisition they otherwise decry there are
respectively some nominal 100,000, 200,000, and 16,000 Protes-
tants, mostly visitors or importations from abroad.

Before we make our final summing we will run cursorily over
the fruits of Protestant missions as exhibited in the last edition of
the unassailable Christian Missions, as revised to late date by
the author. Scrutinizing the two bulky volumes for all the
figures we could find, the inquiry results in the following table :

Mission.

Converts.

Years.

Remarks.

China. . .

20 or 30.

1 7 societies, 5oyrs

Dwindled to " 5."

India

25 or t;o.

100 years or more.

Atheists in schools.

Ceylon

" 10;."

Since occupation.

Official, "3,137."

Australia

None.

Natives extinct.

New Zealand.. . .
Samoan Islands

None.
"64.1;."

Maoris % extinct.

Tahiti

Since Capt.Cook.

Nearly extinct.

Sandwich Isles

For this century.

Fijian "

One-third officials.

Greece

None.

2S years.

Expelled, 1854.

Europ. Turkey \

" Few Jews,
Armenians"

Asiatic "

None.

Jerusalem

" 10."

For 50 years.

With missionary and party.

Russia

None.

Since Cyril-Lucar

Armenia

" 2."

Cost $7,500,000.

N. America

Not a tribe

300 years

S. America. . . .

Central America

"No congregation."

In Asia, Africa, and Australasia nearly eight hundred and fifty
converts in all the Protestant missions in the Old World ! Of
the New World Melville puts the whole history in a sentence :
" The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated paganism from the
greater part of the North American continent, but with it they
have extirpated likewise the greater portion of the red race." *
According to the liberal allowances to each separate country
giving a generous donation of some 10,000,000 to the Americas
we have in Europe : Germany, 8,000,000 ; Switzerland, 500,000 ;
Holland as many ; Great Britain and Ireland, by a great stretch,
8,000,000, with 2,000,000 for the great dependencies in the Old
World; from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000, by sanguine estimate, in
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark ; some 2,000,000 say even
3,000,000 in the Austrian Empire ; half a million in France ;
nominal 100,000 in Italy, 200,000 in Spain, and 15,000 or 16,000

The Marquesas Islands, p. 217.

334 VER Y LAST CENTENAR Y OF PROTESTANT ISMS. [June,

in Belgium ; * throw in a round thousand for " converts " among
aborigines in all the wide world, and the sum total of all Protes-
tants of all sects in the whole globe will not exceed 34,000,000
after the fourth centenary of their first father and head.

In case these figures be not esteemed strictly just we will re-
duce them to strict bounds of justice by picking apart the hete-
rogeneous mass called Protestant Isms, and count each Ism as
it pretends to autonomy, and we will see whether the compar-
ison with the church will favor them any by their own figures
of themselves and of her children.

Blunt's f and the American Cyclopedias count of one of the
most numerous sects Methodists in 1874 is just : 3,626,830 full
members and several hundred thousand probationists in Europe,
America, and Australia; whilst the New York Observer Year-
Book of 1871 makes the church 195,460,000; in 1875 Dr. Hurst's
Outlines, 200,339,390; the atlases of Rand, McNally & Co., 1882,
202,368,000 ; Deutsche Reichszeitung, 1880, in Europe 153,344,000, in
Brazil 10,000,000, in Mexico 9,389,460, in the United States
8,000,000; Almanack de Got ha, 1876,211,000,000; Scientific Mis-
cellany, 1850, 254,655,000. Let men judge from the adversaries
of the church, as one learns best from a political opponent's
organ his own party's success, whether this shall not be the
very last centenary of Protestant Isms.

* For justice of particular figures, as modified here, consult the compared details of sta-
tisticians we quote.

t Dictionary of Sects , art. " Methodists."

1 884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 335

THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF WORDSWORTH'S

POETRY.

PART IV.

V. WE have reached the last of those topics which we 'pro-
posed to discuss.

There is one class of Wordsworth's poems in which that Wis-
dom which so eminently characterizes them takes a higher flight
than in the rest, and discourses on the origin of things in strains
such as the olden time called " Orphic." To write " Orphic " odes
on the marvels of Creatioir-was among the aims of Coleridge's
youthful ambition ; and his Hexameter Hymn to the Earth, as
well as a fragment of a Hymn to the Sun, survive as the memo-
rial of that intention. What he had designed was in part ac-
complished by the brother-bard with whom such plans must
often have been the subject of discourse. Wordsworth's " Ver-
nal Ode " is one of his greatest poems. It is not among the
works of his youth. It belongs to his forty-seventh year, and
was briefly described by him as " composed to place in view the
immortality of succession where immortality is denied, so far
as we know, to the individual creature." Transience is the law
of all things here ; an eternal and still glory is that of the things
above ; yet earthly transience is so exquisitely modulated in the
great creative scheme that it is itself ever sustaining the creature
with the thought of that stability which, in his present condition,
is denied to him. The forests die, but the fresh growths of
each new year spring from a soil enriched by the dead leaves
of its predecessor ; out of the night issues the morning ; and the
nations are ever renewing their youth. Such is the theme, and
it is treated as it might have been in those days when the bard
was still reverenced as a prophet and a revealer. The Ode
begins with the song of an Angel suddenly descended to earth.
Its first stanza celebrates his native realm, the radiant stability
of which is emblemed to man by the stars when they shine forth
night after night,

" Fresh as if evening brought their natal hour ;
Her darkness splendor gave, her silence power,
To testify of Love and Grace divine."

336 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

But neither in heaven nor on earth is more than an emblem of
stability vouchsafed to the material creation :

" What if those bright fires
Shine subject to decay,
Sons haply of extinguished sires,

Like them to pass away
Like clouds before the wind !
And though to every draught of mortal breath

Renewed throughout the bounds of earth and ocean,
The melancholy gates of Death

Respond with sympathetic motion ;
Though all that feeds on nether air,
Howe'er magnificent or fair,
Grows but to perish, and entrust
Its ruins to their kindred dust ;
Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care,
Her procreant vigils Nature keeps
Amid the unfathomable deeps,
And saves the peopled fields of earth
From dread of emptiness or dearth.
Thus in their stations, lifting t'ward the sky
The foliaged head in cloud-like majesty,
The shadow-casting race of Trees survive :
Thus in the train of Spring arrive
Sweet Flowers what living eye hath viewed
Their myriads ! endlessly renewed
Wherever strikes the sun's glad ray ;
Where'er the subtle waters stray ;
Wherever sportive zephyrs bend
Their course, or genial showers descend !
Mortals, rejoice J the very Angels quit

Their mansions unsusceptible of change,
Amid your pleasant bowers to sit

And through your sweet vicissitudes to range."

A human being might well fear that even amid the glories of
heaven the new-born Spirit might sometimes regret " vicissi-
tudes " thus described the changeful twilights of earth, and
the flash of the earliest snowdrop ; and the last four lines quoted
hint that with such a regret even heavenly Spirits are capable
of sympathizing. The poet, as he listens, catches the import
of the Angel's song and returns to it a musical echo :

" O nursed at happy distance from the cares
Of a too anxious world, mild, pastoral Muse !
That to the sparkling crown Urania wears,
And to her sister Clio's laurel wreath,
Prefer'st a garland culled from purple heath,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 337

Or blooming thicket moist with morning dews ;
Was such bright Spectacle vouchsafed to me ?
And was it granted to the simple ear
Of thy contented votary

Such harmony to hear ?
Him rather suits it, side by side with thee,
Wrapt in a fit of pleasing indolence,
While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn tree,
To lie and listen, till the o'er-drowsed sense
Sinks, hardly conscious of the influence,
To the soft murmur of the vagrant Bee.
A slender sound ! yet hoary Time
Doth to the Soul exalt it with the chime
Of all his years ; a company
Of ages coming, ages gone ;
(Nations from before them sweeping,
Regions in destruction steeping,)
Yet every awful note in unison
With that faint utterance, which tells
Of treasure sucked from buds and bells,
For the pure keeping of those waxen cells."

The creature he sings of draws near him, and its very feeble-
ness reminds him that the most fragile shapes are those which do
battle most bravely against time:

*' Observe each wing a tiny van !
The structure of her laden thigh,
How fragile ! yet of ancestry
Mysteriously remote and high :
High as the imperial front of man,
The roseate bloom on woman's cheek ;
The, soaring eagle's curved beak ;
The white plumes of the floating swan ;
Old as the tiger's paw, the lion's mane,
Ere shaken by that mood of stern disdain
At which the desert trembles. Humming Bee ! s

Thy sting was needless then, perchance unknown ;
The seeds of malice were not sown ;
All creatures met in peace, from fierceness free,
And no pride blended with their dignity.
Tears had not broken from their source ;
Nor anguish strayed from her Tartarean den ;
The golden years maintained a course
Not undiversified, though smooth and even ;
We were not mocked with glimpse and shadow then ;
Bright Seraphs mixed familiarly with men ;
And earth and stars composed a universal heaven ! "

There is in this poem a profound spiritual as well as philosophi-
VOL. xxxix. 22

338 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

cal Truth. The sorrow of man's estate does not come from
the transience of external things, but from a defect within himself
which has " disnatured " Nature's " sweet vicissitudes." The
transience itself is realized by Sense. If Faith were as strong
as Sense the restoration would be realized as vividly as the tran-
sience, and severance would cease to be, or at least would lose
its sting. It would not then be in " glimpse and shadow " that
the cyclic renovations of Time would present the Image of
Eternity ; nor would that Image be Vision only : it would be
Fruition also. It would be with the changes of human life as
it is with the changes of music, where each successive cadence
passes away too sweetly to be regretted, and dies but to prepare
the way for another, sweeter still.

Another of Wordsworth's Orphic poems is the Ode too mod-
estly entitled "Stanzas on the Power of Sound." It was in-
tended to have had a place in that poem of which the " Excur-
sion " is a part, a poem of which some unpublished fragments ex-
ist, and which apparently was not intended to consist exclusively
of blank verse. The Ode on the " Power of Sound " was written
in 1828, when the poet had reached his fifty-eighth year. At least
fifteen years previously, in the seventh book of the " Excursion/'
Wordsworth had recorded the lives of two men, each of whom
had been deprived of one out of those two senses, the eye and the
ear, through which chiefly the human soul holds communication
with the outward world. To each of these sufferers was given a
compensation which proved how largely man's interior powers
can dispense with exterior aids. The man deaf from his youth
is thus described :

"He grew up

From year to year in loneliness of soul ;
And this deep mountain valley was to him
Soundless, with all its streams. The bird of dawn
Did never rouse this cottager from sleep
With startling summons ; not for his delight
The vernal cuckoo shouted ; not for him
Murmured the laboring bee. When stormy winds
Were working the broad bosom of the lake
Into a thousand thousand sparkling waves,
Rocking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud
Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags,
The agitated scene before his eye
Was silent as a picture." *

* " The Churchyard among the Mountains."

1 884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 339

la another passage of the " Excursion "* those two great
organs of intelligence are thus contrasted :

" The soul sublime and pure,
With her two faculties of eye and ear
The one by which a creature, whom his sins
Have rendered prone, can upward look to heaven ;
The other that empowers him to perceive
The voice of Deity, on height and plain,
Whispering those truths in stillness, which the Word
To the four quarters of the winds proclaims."

Three of man's five senses are senses only, and the impressions
which fall upon them terminate with them. But the senses of
sight and hearing are more than mere material powers; the im-
pressions that reach them pass through them to the intellect,
which imparts to them in turn something of its own creative
might, changing mere form and color into beauty, and mere
sound into harmony. These two senses are the gates between
the worlds of matter and of mind -Sacraments of Nature, feed-
ing without intermission man's intellect and imagination. The
greater part of Wordsworth's poetry includes a celebration of this
sublime ministration of the eye. This particular Ode supplies
what was wanting : it celebrates the corresponding ministration
of the ear, which mediates no less between* man and another
mighty world assigned to him as a teacher. It is as " a spi-
ritual functionary " that the Ear is thus addressed :

" Thy functions are ethereal,
As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind,
Organ of vision ! And a Spirit aerial
Informs the cell of hearing, dark and blind ;
Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought
To enter than oracular cave ;
Strict passage, through which sighs are brought,
And whispers, for the heaVt, their slave ;
And shrieks that revel in abuse
Of shivering flesh ; and warbled air,
Whose piercing sweetness can unloose
The chains of frenzy, or entice a smile
Into the ambush of despair ;
Hosannas pealing down the long-drawn aisle,
And requiems answered by the pulse that beats
Devoutly, in life's last retreats ! ''

The second stanza this poem consists of stanzas, each of six-
teen lines enumerates a few of the individual as distinguished

*"The Pastor."

340 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

from combined or harmonized sounds which challenge man's
heart :

" The headlong streams and fountains
Serve thee, invisible Spirit, with untired powers ;
Cheering the wakeful tent on Syrian mountains,
They lull perchance ten thousand thousand flowers.
That roar, the prowling Lion's Here I am,
How fearful to the desert wide !
That bleat, how tender ! of the Dam
Calling a straggler to her side.
Shout, Cuckoo ! let the vernal soul
Go with thee to the frozen zone ;
Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone Bell-bird, toll !
At the still hour to Mercy dear,
Mercy from her twilight throne
Listening to nun's faint sob of holy fear,
The sailor's prayer breathed from a darkening sea,
Or widow's cottage lullaby,"

The next four stanzas refer to harmonized sounds in their
connection with the changes and chances of human life, rural,
social, political, or religious. A marvellous number of themes
are here compressed into narrow space the Sabbath bells and
the marriage chime, the milkmaid's ditty, the song that bright-
ens the blind man's gloom, the veteran's mirth, the ploughman's
toil, the galley-slave's task, the pilgrim's march, the prisoner's
cell, and, lastly, the shout of a delivered people when

" Inspiration

Mounts with a tune that travels like a blast
Piping through cave and battlemented tower."

In the seventh stanza the theme changes: the power of music
over the soul is traced downward to a region that underlies
both human intelligence and consciousness ; while the origin of
that power is traced upward to a universal and divine law :

" As Conscience to the centre
Of being smites with irresistible pain,
So shall a solemn cadence, if it enter
The mouldy vaults of the dull idiot's brain,
Transmute him to a wretch from quiet hurled
Convulsed as by a jarring din ;
And then aghast, as at the world
Of reason partially let in
By concords winding with a sway
Terrible for sense and soul !
Or, awed he weeps, struggling to quell dismay.

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 341

Point not these mysteries to an art

Lodged above the starry pole ;

Pure modulations flowing from the heart

Of divine Love, where Wisdom, Beauty, Truth

With Order dwell, in endless youth ? "

III stanzas eight and nine the " Orphean Insight, Truth's un-
daunted Lover," is invoked to record the fabled triumphs of
Music in early Greece, when Harmony put forth her subtler es-
sence to kindle a sensibility which had not yet broken its primal
league with Law, and when Art was " daring because souls could
feel." Amphion, "that walled a city with his melody," and
Arion, who " could humanize the creatures of the sea," are ap-
pealed to ; but in the middle of the tenth stanza the classic
legend yields place to something more potent than the highest
imaginations of antique song the dread realities of every- day
life :

" The pipe of Pan to Shepherds
Couched in the shadow of Menalian pines
Was passing sweet ; the eyeballs of the leopards
That in high triumph drew the lord of vines,
How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang !
While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground
In cadence, and Silenus swang
This way and that, with wild flowers crowned !
To life, to life give back thine ear ;
Ye who are longing to be rid
Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear
The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell
Echoed from the coffin-lid ;
The convict's summons in the steeple knell,
The vain distress-gun from a leeward shore,
Repeated heard, and heard no more ! "

In stanza eleven the poet breaks forth into the expression of
an impassioned desire that as " labored minstrelsies " are com-
petent to combine the several tones of lute and harp in great
concerted pieces for the delight of sense and imagination, so
Nature were but able to combine in one, for the soul's behoof,
all those separate sounds by which, whether harmonious or
rude, she is able at once to pierce the heart and to heal its
wound :

" O for some soul-affecting scheme
Of moral music, to unite

Wanderers whose portion is the faintest dream
Of memory ! O that they might stoop to bear

342 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

Chains, such precious chains of sight
As labored minstrelsies for ages wear !
O for a balance fit the truth to tell
Of the Unsubstantial, pondered well ! "

The twelfth stanza refers to the Pythagorean philosophy, ac-
cording to which the whole universe rests on a basis of num-
bers, mathematical relations, and harmonic tones. More than
six centuries before Ptolemy, Pythagoras, in anticipation to a
great extent of Copernicus, had taught that the sun, not the
earth, was the centre of our system, and that the planets moved
round it. He had taught also, as though anticipating the law of
gravitation and " the inverse square of the distances," that the
movements of all the heavenly bodies were determined by geo-
metrical principles, and that their velocities, sizes, etc., are mutu-
ally proportioned according to a certain graduated scale exactly
represented by the science of numbers. Discovering that mu-
sic rested on mathematical principles, and that harmonic tones
stood to each other in numerical relations, he taught that the
heavenly bodies in their movements through space produce
musical sounds exactly proportioned to the speed and bulk of
those bodies a conception the more natural as it was then be-
lieved that a subtle ether pervaded all space (a theory to which
recent science seems disposed to return), and that its agitations
were excited by moving bodies, as those of our atmosphere are
by the vibrations of musical strings. Such is the " Music of the
Spheres " taught later by Plato, a harmony that sustains the
whole creation, but which is heard by the great Creator alone,
remaining inaudible to man, both because it is perfect and be-
cause it is unceasing, but the sudden cessation of which would
notwithstanding be man's destruction. We now know that the
range of sounds which the human ear can grasp are restricted
to about ten octaves ; and consequently that if the actual sounds
all around us exceeded that narrow range by a hundred or a
thousand octaves, they must, however loud, escape our conscious-
ness not less than the Pythagorean Music of the Spheres. To
such sounds the poet alludes at the close of the stanza :

" By one pervading Spirit

Of Tones and Numbers all things are controlled,
As sages taught, when faith was found to merit
Initiation in that mystery old.

The Heavens, whose aspects make our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be,
Innumerable voices fill
With everlasting harmony ;

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 343

The towering Headlands, crowned with mist,

Their feet among the billows, know

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ;

Thy pinions, universal Air,

Ever waving to and fro,

Are delegates of harmony and bear

Strains that support the Seasons in their round ;

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound."

The thirteenth stanza reverts to the aspiration of an earlier
one that the sounds by which Nature is ever making her thrill-
ing appeal to the human heart might be combined into a sibgle
" scheme of moral music." If such a palpable combination of
them be impossible, a compensation has been provided. They
are combined in the heart of the sage who meditates daily " the
still, sad music of Humanity "; they are combined also in the
Soul of the Race, and to it their true meaning is revealed. They
constitute the ceaseless Hymn of Creation:

" Break forth into thanksgiving,
Ye banded Instruments of wind and chords ;
Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,
Your inarticulate notes with the sound of words !
Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead,
Nor mute the forest hum of noon :
Thou too be heard, lone Eagle ! freed
From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy that from her utmost walls
The six days' Work, by flaming Seraphim,
Transmit to Heaven ! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,
All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and endless gratulation, poured
Into the ear of God, their Lord ! "

The last stanza affirms that when we have put fables away
from us there remains a Truth loftier than Pythagoras or any
other philosopher of antiquity dreamed of. There was a Voice
before Creation existed ; there is a Voice which shall summon
the sleepers from their graves ; and there is a Voice, greater than
these, which shall last for ever. As there is not only a Material
Seeing, but a Spiritual Seeing also, so there is not only a Material
Hearing but a Spiritual Hearing; and as that Spiritual Seeing
is to feast for ever on the Beatific Vision, so for that Spiritual
Hearing there remains, in the Beatific state, a Divine Object
imparting to man an eternal contentment.' Through a faculty
of which the Eye is the T} 7 pe, and no less through a faculty of

344 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

Avhich the Ear is the type, Humanity, when it has "put on the
Incorruptible," is to converse with God, and thus find the end
for which it was created.

" A Voice to Light gave being ;
To Time, and Man, his earth-born Chronicler ;
A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,,
And sweep away life's visionary stir ;
The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadliest wars)
To archangelic lips applied,
The grave shall open, quench the stars.
O Silence ! are man's noisy years
No more than moments of thy life ?
Is Harmony, blest Queen of smiles and tears,.
With her smooth tones and discords just
Tempered into rapturous strife,

Thy destined Bond-slave ? No ! though Earth be dust
And vanish, though the Heavens dissolve, her stay
Is in the Word that shall not pass away."

It need hardly be remarked that the term Word is here used in
the most august of its various significations, and denotes that
Eternal Wisdom, Thought,, and Image of the Eternal Father,
through whom he utters himself to his whole Creation. That
Divine Utterance is here said to hang everlastingly on the
Spiritual Ear of God's Intelligent Creation, a Revelation inex-
haustible, the antetype of all the harmonies of earth, and of
every pleading or commanding tone with which Nature makes
appeal to the heart of man, and while man is imprisoned in
sense.

Such is Wordsworth's Ode " On the Power of Sound." Its
depth of thought is hardly less remarkable than the finished
grace of its diction, and the mingled swiftness and smoothness
of that metrical current which winds on from period to period.
The theme is by necessity an arduous one, and in the hands of
one not an artist as well as a poet could hardly have been ren-
dered intelligible. Treated by a master, it needs but attention
an attention it has seldom received. That a poem so great in
conception, and so finished in execution, should have remained
so long but scantly appreciated even by Wordsworth's admirers
is a painful illustration of that narrowness which too often limits
the poetic sympathies.

The Ode entitled " Intimations of Immortality from Recollec-
tions of early Childhood " is doubtless the greatest of Words-
worth's poems, and has been well designated as " the high- water

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 345

mark of modern poetry." Its theme, the origin and destiny of
the Human Soul, is the highest with which poetry can measure
itself without passing out of that region in which it finds firm
footing. In imagination and depth of thought it can hardly
soar much higher than some passages of the two Odes already
referred to, but it supplements these qualities with a richer
variety, and with a stronger flux and reflux of emotion. It has
been studied with more care than those others of Wordsworth's
poems which most nearly approach its greatness, perhaps be-
cause it was published earlier ; and therefore a few remarks on it
will suffice.

While the poem is essentially a philosophical one, it keeps its
philosophy mainly under ^the surface, unlike a certain inverted
sort of metaphysical poetry which seems ambitious to grow
with its roots where its blossoms ought to be. It is not didac-
tic poetry. It does not begin by announcing a theme, but by a
dirge over a personal loss ; and by degrees only do we learn
that that loss is one which falls on all men, and most heavily, it
may be, on those who are least conscious of it :

" There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore ;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

" The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose ;
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare ;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair ;
The sunshine is a glorious birth ;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth."

Many passages in Wordsworth's poetry record that talis-
manic power, wholly unconnected with human associations,
which Nature had for her chief singer in his childhood. She
seemed now near him, and now remote, like a Divinity. He
clung to some high rock, noting little whether the vale beneath
was lovely or threatening ; and the wind that whistled over the

346 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

craggy ledge seemed almost as much a part of him as the hair
it blew back. In Nature's most familiar objects there is to
children something of a miraculous character; and in the child-
hood of nations a similar fineness of sensibilit}^ combined with
a similar ignorance of Nature's laws, peopled the streams, the
boughs, and the clouds with divinities. What was the power
of the commonest green field or bush over Wordsworth in his
childhood we can guess, and how great the bereavement when
its full force had passed away, like the gleam from a pebble
when the sea-spray refreshes it no more. Wordsworth rests the
theory set forth in this Ode, not on abstract grounds of reason,
but on an experience specially, though not exclusively, his own.
But as a text is often not the demonstration, but merely the
"motto," of a doctrine thus forcibly recalled to the memory ol
those who believe it on independent grounds, so to the poet the
loss he lamented was to him in a special sense the memento of that
Philosophy which was involved in all his thoughts. If its philo-
sophy had been based on argument, not on personal recollections,
the poem, in losing its passion, would have lost its authenticity ;
and its author would have seemed to expound a system, not to
bear a witness. It is his own faith which enkindles that of his
readers ; and his own rests upon experiences gone by but pre-
cious still.

The poet has been wandering, not over lonely moors such as
those amid which the old man " motionless as a cloud " taught
him the lore of " Resolution and Independence," but among
scenes at once the grandest and the most festal. While"

" The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,"

the echoes throng through the mountains, the birds sing, the
Iambs bound, the shepherd-boy carols, and

" The babe leaps up on his Mother's arm."

The heavens are glad above and the earth beneath ; but to him
alone a piercing sadness has come like an arrow, and while the
children are pulling flowers all around him he alone stands, an
excommunicate from the universal feast. It is not that he is
sullen: " The fulness of your bliss I feel, I feel it all." It is not
the exhaustion described in Coleridge's " Dejection " :

" I see, not feel, how beautiful they are."
Rather it is the converse of this state. He sees, and he feels:

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 347

had there been less loveliness to see, or less sensibility with
which to feel it, the immedicable wound, the irrecoverable loss,
would have been less felt.

" I hear, I hear, with joy I hear !

But there's a Tree, of many one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone :
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat :
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ?"

Suddenly out of the gloom there arises a light. A hundred
bygone musings have rushed to a single conclusion, and the prob-
lem is solved. Sharply, definitely, and with nothing of preface,
the Thought which has wrought deliverance is enunciated. The
loss was even greater than it seemed to be ; but in its very great-
ness there lives a secret Hope. It was not the loss of that
gleam which beautified this earth : it was the loss of a whole
world, but of one that cannot be lost for ever. We have a
higher birthplace than we knew; and our sorrow is itself a pro-
phecy that the exile shall return to his country.

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy !
Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows

He sees it in his joy ;

The Youth, who daily farther from the Eas 4
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended :
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

The next three stanzas illustrate that gradual decline through
which the soul is beguiled into a temporary forgetfulness of its
origin. The Earth is not, indeed, his Mother; but she is his
Nurse, and she does what she can a cruel kindness

348 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

" To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came."

Her nursling assists her work, and buries himself daily deep-
er in the net of her enchantments. All the activities of child-
hood war on the contemplative instinct ; each new acquisition
of the inferior knowledge helps him to forget the higher. He
observes all things in the moving pageant of life that surrounds
him ; he is drawn towards them, he is blended with them
through sympathy and imitation : the current sweeps him from
the heights. Day by day " the little actor cons another part,"
and each is rehearsed on the stage of the lower, half-animal life :

" Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom, on thy Being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! "

Yet still he preserves a memory, however faint, of his first
estate ; and this is in part to retain it. As often as we question
the world of sense we assert that our heritage is in the world
of Spirit :

" O joy ! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive !

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction ; not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest ;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast :

Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise,

But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the Eternal Silence ; Truths that wake,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 349

To perish never ;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,

Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !

Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither ;
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

The poem next, with an admirable skill, reverts to that glorious
and gladsome mountain scene described in the earlier portion of
it ; but no shadow now is cast across the glory, and no bitter re-
membrance mingles with the gladness. That which has been
taken away from man has been taken only for a time ; and com-
pensation has been made, not only

" In the primal sympathy

Which having been, must ever be,"
but yet more

" In the faith that looks through death."

That which was ours by right divine must be ours again.

The close of this sublime Ode restores to the reader's mind
that repose which is needful after the soarings and the sinkings
of the strain. The Elegy ends in a hymn of praise : the es-
trangement in reconciliation ; for Nature, besides her diviner
gleams, so seldom revealed, has her human side, and that alone
might well suffice for " the brief parenthesis of mortal life." Its
tranquil gladness is intensified by the pathos which loss alone can
confer. To those who are still inmates of " this valley of exile "
it is not transport but consolation that Nature brings and should
bring :

" And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Think not of any severing of our loves !

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ;

I only have relinquished one delight,

To live beneath your more habitual sway ;

I love the brooks which down their channels fret

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ;

The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet ;

The~clouds that gatl^r round the setting sun

Do take a sober coloring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

350 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

Thanks to the human heart by which we live ;
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears ;
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

And thus this poem, the one among- Wordsworth's works
which ascends most freely above " this visible diurnal round," re-
turns to uman things a change analogous to that which takes
place in the concluding stanzas of his " Song at the Feast of
Brougham Castle." Both these poems overflow with vehement
passion, in one case chivalrous, in the other spiritual ; both of
them end in a tranquillity which retains but a ripple of the storm
beyond the harbor bar. In this Ode there are many notes of
that high though unostentatious art with which the poet had
sedulously perfected his natural gifts. Thus, while the theme
is mainly philosophical, the first four stanzas, though they make
us understand that loss which has saddened a soul once self-
sufficing, are yet filled mainly with exuberant images of " boon
nature's grace " ; and, in like manner, the three next stanzas,
which vindicate the daring doctrine of the poem, elude, not-
withstanding, the polemical. They affect not to argue ; they
affirm, and they persuade by setting forth, in a manner accordant
with that doctrine, a view of human life illustrated by successive
images which make all its seasons and stages beautiful. In the
metre of this Ode there is also a singular appropriateness. Some
of Wordsworth's odes are written in regular stanzas, and others
in irregular paragraphs. The regular structure has often an ad-
vantage in the expression of definite thought ; but the irregular
yields itself more pliantly to imaginative passion. Nowhere else
in Wordsworth's poetry are the metrical changes so great and so
sudden as in this Ode ; and their effect is enhanced by a corre-
sponding change from long lines to short a change which faith-
fully echoes a corresponding change in the sentiment of the
poem. That poem is in one sense a troubled poem, while in
another its yearnings are ever after rest, and remind one of the
description of the ocean in u Prometheus Unbound " :

" I hear the mighty deep hungering for calm."

HJDW closely the sound and sense are united will become ap-
parent to us at once if we ask ourselves what would be the re-
sult if the most skilful writer of the " heroic couplet" were to
translate this Ode into that metre.* Its diction is as felicitous
as its metre. Parts of it are written in that " large utterance,"
at once majestic and simple, which makes so much of Words-

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 351

worth's poetry, when once read, haunt the ear for ever. Parts
of it are in his most opposite extreme, familiar even to rough-
ness. That roughness was intentional, and was not mitigated in
the later editions. It was needed. The perfection of a poem
may be gravely impaired by its uniform elaborateness ; as, in
architecture, ornament becomes offensive if it be not relieved
by contrasted masses of occasional plainness or roughness. With-
out such passages the sentiment of this Ode would have lacked
its impulsiveness, and its doctrine would have been frozen into a
scholastic theory. In this poem many extremes are reconciled.
In no other did Wordsworth's genius, contemplative at once and
emotional, move through so wide an arc.

The philosophy of this Ode is substantially the Pythagorean
teaching respecting the pre-existence of the human Soul, divested
of its " Transmigration" theory. Many will ask how far it was
seriously believed by Wordsworth. In his later years we have
heard him say that he had held it with a poetic, not a religious,
faith. When he wrote the poem he might perhaps have ex-
pressed a more ardent adhesion to it. Whether or not he held
the doctrine literally, he must have maintained it substantially, so
strongly did he hold that of Innate Ideas. To the old saying,
1 Nihil est.in intellectu quod non prius in sensu," he would at
any time have opposed the old rejoinder, " Nisi ipse intel-
lectus " ; for all his poetry is the assertion that we bring with
us into the world all those great ideas, such as the " Beau-
tiful," the " True," the " Infinite," the " Holy," which change
the physical into a moral world, and contradistinguish man from
the brutes. To the same source he referred, of course, those
Mathematical Intuitions on which the world of Science rests,
and of which the late Sir William Rowan Hamilton said : " They
are Ideas which seem to be so far born with us that the posses-
sion of them, in any conceivable degree, appears to be only the
development of our original powers, the unfolding of our pro-
per humanity." * He might, however, have held the doctrine of
his Ode on theological as well as on philosophical grounds, so
closely allied is it to an opinion entertained by some theolo-
gians viz., that each human 4 Soul not only sees its Judge im-
mediately after death, but saw its Creator also, for one brief
moment, at the instant of its creation. Time does not exist in
the spiritual region ; and the expression of the Ode, " God who
is our Home," implies that a single flash from the Divine Coun-

* Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland. By Robert Perceval
Greves. Longmans,

352 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

tenance might have filled the Soul with all that haunting and un-
forgotten Wisdom which it could have learned during a millen-
nium spent

" In that imperial Palace whence we came."

It is, however, in the " Excursion " that one might expect
chiefly to find Wordsworth's highest teaching that poem the
introductory portion of which was greeted by Coleridge as

" An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted ! "

Its theme was nobler than that of the ancient Orphic bards. Its
aim was to celebrate the creation and the marvels, not of a mate-
rial, but of a spiritual universe :

" Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope
And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith ;
Of blessed consolations in distress ;
Of moral strength, and intellectual power ;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread ;
Of the Individual Mind which keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there
To Conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence which governs all,
I sing. . . . Not Chaos, not

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of man,
My haunt, and the main region of my song."

The highest of all aids is invoked, and a mission, the highest at
which poetry can aim, is claimed :

" Descend, Prophetic Spirit ! that inspir'st
The human Soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come, and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts
Of mighty poets ; upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight ; that my song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence. . . .

If with this

I mix more lowly matter ; with the thing
Contemplated, describe the Mind and Man

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 353

Contemplating ; and who, and what he was,

The transitory Being that beheld

This Vision ; when, and where, and how he lived

Be not this labor useless,"

What are the tidings which a seer thus commissioned has to
deliver for the behoof of his fellow-men? They are, first, that
man's help does not come, as pride suggests, from himself:

" And if the Mind turn inward, 'tis perplexed,
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research ;
Meantime the Heart within the heart, the seat
Where Peace and happy Consciousness should dwell,
On its own axis restlessly revolves,
Yet nowhere finds the cheering light of Truth."

Wordsworth's Transcendentalism was not of that sort which
assures us that because man carries an inner dial within his
conscience that dial can be 'read by the aid of any lantern our
caprice may bring to it, and needs no light from heaven.

Secondly, his tidings are that man's help does not come, as
Sense suggests, chiefly from the world around us. The visible
world is indeed a marvellous thing ; but if it existed alone it
would be but a fair shadow. It is great alone because it tells us
of things Invisible :

" I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy, for murmurings from within
Were heard sonorous cadences ! whereby,
To his belief, the Monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native Sea.
Even such a shell the Universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things ;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ;
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation/' *

What are those " Invisible Things " of which Faith thus makes
report? They are the things which belong to that Universe

* " Excursion," book iv,
VOL. XXXIX. 23

354 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF [June,

which alone is true and eternal the Spiritual and Personal

Universe of Deity :

" And what are things Eternal ? Powers depart
Possessions vanish, and Opinions change,
And Passions hold a fluctuating seat :
But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken,
And subject neither to eclipse nor wane,
Duty exists : immutably survive,
For our support, the measures and the forms
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
Whose Kingdom is where Time and Space are not.
Of other converse, which mind, soul, and heart
Do, with united urgency, require,

What more that may not perish ? Thou, dread Source,
Prime, self- existing Cause and End of all
That in the scale of Being fill their place,
Above our human region, or below,
Set and sustained ; thou, who didst wrap the cloud
Of Infancy around us, that thyself
Therein, with our simplicity awhile,
Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed
Who, from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,
Or from its death-like void, with punctual care,
And touch as gentle as the morning light,
Restorest us daily to the powers of sense,
And Reason's steadfast rule thou, thou alone
Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits
Whom thou includest, as the sea her waves,
For adoration thou endurest ; endure
For consciousness the motions of thy Will ;
For apprehension those transcendent Truths
Of the pure Intellect, that stand as laws
(Submission constituting strength and power)
Even to thy Being's infinite majesty !
The Universe shall pass away a work
Glorious, because the shadow of thy might,
A step or link for intercourse with thee."

The fourth book of the " Excursion " " Despondency Cor-
rected " from which these passages are cited, is the most magnifi-
cent poetical confession anywhere to be found of that Authen-
tic Theism which, including as it does a loyal devotion to all the
Personal Attributes of God, whose providence governs His world,
by necessity finds its complement in Christianity that Christian-
ity so zealously asserted in Wordsworth's maturer poetry, and
so obviously implied in the whole of it.

In speaking of the Truthfulness which in a manner so special,

1884.] WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 355

and a degree so remarkable, characterizes Wordsworth's poetry,
we have not found room to enlarge on one important part of that
subject viz., the mode in which that Truthfulness is guarded
and enforced by the perfect grammar and logic which essentially
belong to Wordsworth's style, and by its contempt for false orna-
ment. The extraordinary incorrectness of much modern poetry,
and the degree in which the true laws of composition are evaded
even where they are not violated palpably, the author remaining,
as far as possible, a contented outlaw from the domain of accu-
rate periodic construction, proceeds in the main from want of in-
tellectual Truthfulness. When things essentially dissimilar are
ranged together in the same category, the offence against sound
logic, or the practical ignoring of its rights, proceeds from the
same mental defect. It is far from being the result of mere care-
lessness ; for some of the most painstaking poets have often cor-
rected their poetry, in the hope of making it more elaborately
beautiful, till they have deprived its meaning even of such cohe-
rency as had originally belonged to it. Solid Thinking is cor-
rect Thinking by instinct and by necessity. Confusion of meta-
phors, and the undue multiplication of them, proceed from
deficiency of truthfulness in the Imagination, a faculty which
needs that virtue not less than the understanding. An analysis
of Wordsworth's style as compared with that, of most modern
poets would be absolutely necessary for a full illustration of that
Truthfulness which belongs to his poetry ; but it would require
an essay in itself. The general plainness of that style is a com-
mon complaint with those whose taste has been vitiated by the
over-flavored poetry common in recent times ; but it was with
the poet a matter of deliberate choice, as is proved by the rich-
ness and majesty of his language on suitable occasions, and by
the fact that hardly any poetry abounds so largely in memorable
lines. The plainness of Wordsworth's style results from the
greatness of his thoughts.

356 THE ISLE OF THANE r AND ITS SAINT. [June,

THE ISLE OF THANET AND ITS SAINT.*

" Thanet, as her saint, even to this age doth hery t
Her Mildred." MICHAEL DRAYTON'S Poly-Olbion.

THERE is certainly no place in England more deeply interest-
ing to every Christian of the Anglo-Saxon race than the small
isle of Thanet on the coast of Kent, just below the mouth of the
Thames. For it was here that St. Augustine and his band of
monks first landed when they came to save the nation de ira Dei
from the wrath of God to use St. Gregory's own expression.
Thanet has greatly changed since that day. The sea has re-
ceded on one side and washed away the coast on another, and
the river that separates it from the mainland has shrunk to a
mere brook, rendering its insular character less apparent to the
casual observer. Ebbsfleet, where the missionaries landed, is
now a mile or two inland, deserted by the sea, whereas at Re-
culver, where stood the first beacon-light on the coast, the soil
has been greatly washed away. A tract of land at Ebbsfleet is
still called Cotsmansfield that is, the Field of the Man of God
but the stone which received the impression of St. Augustine's
feet at his landing was afterwards removed to the monastery of
his name at Canterbury, where it was religiously preserved in
the church.

It was on this isle also that St. Augustine had his first inter-
view with King Ethelbert, the description of which is so thrill-
ing and picturesque. The king, suspecting the strangers of
magic powers, wished the meeting to take place under an oak on
the greensward, it being a Saxon superstition that spells were not
effectual in the open air. The river, or estuary, was also near,
which according to Scott, limited the power of enchantment:

" The running stream dissolved the spell."

The interview was at Richborough, now a cheerless, dreary
place, somewhat inland, barren of trees and surrounded by
marshes, and rendered still more melancholy by the ruins of the
old castle. Directly opposite is Reculver, on the other side of
the stream, where Ethelbert retired with his court after he gave

* Life of St. Mildred, Abbess of Minster in Thanet. By a Lay Tertiary of St. Francis.
London : R. Washbourne. 1884.
t Hallow, or venerate.

I884-J THE ISLE OF THANE T AND ITS SAINT. 357

up Canterbury to the monks. On the south side of this isle of
holy memories is Minster, which derives its name from the min-
ster, or monastery, founded here by Queen Ermenburga, the
great-granddaughter of Ethelbert, who ended her days here,

" Immonaster'd in Kent, where first she breathed the air."* t

This convent was peopled by ladies of the highest rank, among
whom were the learned nuns who corresponded with St. Boni-
face in the Latin tongue, the chief of whom was St. Eadburga,
the third abbess, who paraphrased portions of the Holy Scrip-
tures in Latin verse, and was distinguished by the wisdom with
which she governed, as testified by St. Boniface, who addressed
her with profound respect and sent her spices and a silver pen,
begging her to transcribe the Epistles of St. Peter for him in
letters of gold to inspire the carnal-minded with more respect
for the great apostle, whom he calls the patron of his mission.

But the great saint of Thanet is St. Mildred, daughter of
Ermenburga, and second abbess of the house, styled by Edward
the Confessor " the virgin Mildred, beloved of God," whose
venerated name is to be found in the decrees of old Saxon coun-
cils. The very convent she governed afterwards assumed it and
became known as St. Mildred's Minster. And, though nearly
twelve hundred years have elapsed since she held mild sway
over the nuns of Thanet, her name is still perpetuated every-
where in the isle. You find St. Mildred's Bay, St. Mildred's
Lynch, St. Mildred's Road, St. Mildred's Abbey, not to speak of
St. Mildred's Hotel, that still attest her popularity. In other
parts of Kent are four parish churches bearing her honored
name. And in London "is the church of St. Mildred in Bread
Street, where stands a monument to Sir Nicholas Crispe, so de-
voted to the Stuarts, of an ancient family in Thanet, one of whom,
Sir Henry Crispe, was a man of such eminence as to be called
" the little king of all the isle of Thanet," and was knighted by
Henry VIII. And from remote times there was the church of
St. Mildred in the Poultry, one of whose chaplains in the twelfth
century was Peter of Colechurch, one of the pious pontifices of
the middle ages, who first undertook to build a stone bridge
across the Thames that became famous as the old London
Bridge, and, dying before its completion, was buried in a stone
coffin in one of its piers, which, at the removal of the bridge in
1832, was found with the bones of the clerical architect therein.
This church of St. Mildred has lately been demolished, in the

* Michael Drayton.

358 THE ISLE OF THANE T AND ITS SAINT. [June,

true spirit of the times, to make room for the offices of an in-
surance company.

Fresh interest has been excited in the life of this old Anglo-
Saxon princess and saint by the restoration of St. Mildred's day
as a solemn festival in Thanet under the rite of Double by a de-
cree of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. , dated January 13, 1881, and
by the bringing back of a portion of her remains to Minster
from Deventer, Holland, where they had been carried for safety
in the time of Queen Elizabeth. And a convent of Benedictine
nuns has again been established in the isle, embowered among
the leafy orchards on part of the very land given by King Egbert
twelve hundred years ago to endow the minster of Ermenburga.
It is at the request of these nuns the life of St. Mildred has been
written. The author is not only familiar with every part of the
isle of Thanet, but has visited the places on the continent asso-
ciated with St. Mildred, and explored all the old chronicles and
MSS. that relate to her life. The work, therefore, though small,
is one of much research, and the author has combined with such
happy effect all the known facts concerning the saint and the
many poetic legends 'that grace her memory, with sketches of
places where she lived and a sufficient amount of history to show
the spirit of the times, as to make every reader say with Cardinal
Manning : " Saxon England, with all its tumults, seems to me
saintly and beautiful."

St. Mildred, through her mother, descended not only from
Ethelbert, the first Christian king of England, but from Clovis,
the first Christian king of France. On her father's side she was
the great-granddaughter of Penda, King of Mercia, the savage
pagan warrior who slew five Christian kings in battle, but,
though a relentless opponent of Christianity, despised those con-
verts who did not live up to their profession, calling them de-
spicable wretches for not obeying the God in whom they be-
lieved. How fully Merewald, our saint's father, inherited Pen-
da's fierceness of nature, and how subdued he became under the
influence of Christianity, may be inferred from the legend of the
lion so completely tamed by St. Etfrid (a Northumbrian priest
who was the instrument of Merewald's conversion) as to ap-
proach and take bread the panem verum from his hands. And
the softening influences of religion are also indicated by the pre-
fix of Mild (gentle or clement) he gave to the names of his three
daughters, Mildburg, Mildred, and Mildgyth, who have been lik-
ened to the three Cardinal Virtues, with Mildred shining in their
midst as the embodiment of Charity or Love. The name of

1884.] THE ISLE OF THANET AND ITS SAINT. 359

Mildred signifies "a peaceful well." Of his only son, Meresin,
little is known, save that he was a holy prince, who, as the old
chroniclers beautifully express it, " was led away to heaven in
his youth." The whole family have been canonized, at least by
the popular voice. Merewald himself is said to have founded
the see of Hereford, and his venerable remains when he died
were divided between the monasteries of Leominster and Wen-
lock, which he had founded, and which flourished till the time of
Henry VIII. It was at Wenlock his daughter Mildburga became
" Godes bryde." *

St. Mildred was still in her girlhood when her mother founded
the convent at Thanet. The tragical event that led to this foun-
dation is too characteristic of those semi-ba'rbarous times to be
omitted. Ermenburga's two brothers, who had been brought
up at the court of their kinsman, King Egbert, the usurper of
their rights, were basely murdered the king tacitly, if not ac-
tually, consenting to the deed by one of his courtiers, named
Thunor, "a limb of the devil " diaboli membrum as Roger of
Wendover calls him. He buried the bodies of the young princes
beneath the royal throne itself, thinking it impossible for them
ever to be discovered in such a place. But, as an old Saxon
writer says, " by the power of God a beam of light rose up
through the very roof of the hall to heaven." The king himself,
going out in the morning at the first cock-crowing, saw the light
and was terrified. The crime was revealed, and St. Theodore,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and St. Adrian, Abbot of St. Augus-
tine's, seconded by the clamors of the people, induced Egbert to
seek forgiveness of Ermenburga, the nearest of kin, and offer her
the weregild, a kind of fine for the shedding of blood imposed by
the ancient Teutonic laws. Ermenburga pardoned the king, but
refused the rich gifts he offered her. She begged, however, for a
tract of land in the isle of Thanet where a minster could be erected
in expiation of the crime and prayer be continually offered for
those who were guilty of it as much land, she said, as her tame
deer could run over in one course. The king granted her re-
quest, and the deer was let loose in the presence of the court.
Thunor was also there, and loudly protested against allowing the
instinct of a brute to dispose of " the very flower, the bridal-
chamber, as it were, of the kingdom "regniflos et thalamns. And
in his rage he was endeavoring to arrest the course of the deer
when the earth opened and swallowed him up at a place after-
ward known as Thunor's Grave, or, as it is called on an old map

* Mildgytha became a nun at Canterbury.

360 THE ISLE OF THANE T AND ITS SAINT. [June,

of 1414, Puteus Thunor. This spot, now commonly called Thun-
nor's Leap, is generally identified with the chalk-pit on Mount
Pleasant above Minster.

At this signal judgment the king " very much feared and
trembled," and, though the deer ran over about two thousand
acres, he returned thanks to Jesus Christ and surrendered the
whole tract, as he had promised, St. Theodore and the devout
Adrian hallowing the gift with their blessing. The amount of
land recorded in the Doomsday Book corresponds exactly with
that given in the legend.

Around this tract of the Hind's Course

" Domneva built

A goodly dyke, dividing fair in two
Sweet Thanet isled upon the sea ; so far
The innocent roe had marked the land of prayer.
There rose a convent's walls, where quiet nuns
Hymned up meek vows, and filled their souls with tears,
Their lips with prayers for the lost youths who lay
Dead 'neath the throne they should have graced with beauty. 1 ' *

The boundary line thrown up around the convent lands was
afterwards called St. Mildred's Lynch, a portion of which is still
to be seen between Minster and Westgate.

Ermenburga became abbess Of the house she founded. It was
then she took the name of Ebba, or Eva, whence that of Dom-
neva, by which she is often called in history that is, Domna
Ebba, the Benedictine nuns being styled Domna, or, at the pre-
sent day, Dame, as the monks of that order are called Dom.

St. Mildred was now sent to complete her education at the
abbey of Chelles, near Paris, founded by her ancestress, St. Clo-
tilde, but chiefly endowed by the sainted Queen Bathilde, who
was an Anglo-Saxon by birth. Many English princesses had
been sent here to be educated, among them the great St. Hilda,
abbess of

" High Whitby's cloistered pile."

While here St. Mildred is said to have transcribed the Psalter
with her own hand.' A curious legend is connected with her
leaving Chelles. A young nobleman of the vicinity offered her
his hand in marriage, and his relative, the Abbess Wilcoma, is said
to have used every means to induce St. Mildred to accept him,
resorting even to threats and ill-usage, and at last, in a fury, cast
her into a fiery furnace and left her to her fate. Three hours
later Wilcoma returned. Sweet strains of music were heard

* Thunnor's Slip^ by E. L. Hervey.

1 884.] THE ISLE OF THANET AND ITS SAINT. 361

issuing from the flames. She opened the furnace, and Mildred
came forth with radiant countenance and garments unsinged,
whereupon Wilcoma fell upon her with renewed fury. Mildred,
who had resolved to embrace the monastic life, made her escape
in the dead of night. When the abbess found her missing she
had the convent bells rung and sent an armed force in pursuit,
but Mildred succeeded in making her escape. This strange
story is related by Jocelyn, a monk of the abbey of St. Bertin
in Flanders, who went over to England with Herman, Bishop of
Salisbury (twelfth century), and joined the monks of Canterbury
a man well versed in literature and music, according to Wil-
liam of Malmesbury. It is also told by William Thorne, a monk
of Canterbury, who was born at Thanet within sound of the
bells of Minster, and therefore familiar with the traditions of the
place. And in the office of St. Mildred, in a Harleian MS., it
says : Stans beata Mildretha in mediis flammis, cum beata Agnete,
expansis manibus, psallabat et benedicebat Dominum devotione Tri-
um Puerorum, thus comparing her to St. Agnes the martyr and
the Three Children of old who escaped the fiery ordeal.

This strange story is, of course, not to be taken literally.
But all such ancient legends embody some actual event or sym-
bolize some truth, and it is generally thought that the abbess fa
vored her kinsman's suit, and brought some pressure to bear on
Mildred to induce her to accept him.* And it is noteworthy
that there is no record of any English princess at Chelles from
that time, though this might be on account of the increased edu-
cational advantages at home. All this is quite in accordance
with the still half-pagan spirit of those times in England and
France. It is related of St. Mildred's own sister Mildburga that
she was wooed in such a fierce manner after she entered the con-
vent at Wenlock that she only escaped by the miraculous rising
of the river she had succeeded in crossing. And St. Winifred,
in trying to escape from Prince Caradoc of Wales, who wished to
make her his wife, had her head smitten off by her enraged
suitor on the very spot where the miraculous well of her name
has so long attested the power of God in his saints.

Tradition says St. Mildred fled to a place now called Millam,
a corruption of Milhem or Milderhem that is, St. Mildred's
hamlet a name it certainly bore within a century after her

* Our author scouts at the " Legend of the Furnace," and maintains that St. Mildred could
not have been at Chelles in the time of Wilcoma, if there ever was such an abbess, and that
any real severity of treatment could not for a moment be admitted of St. Bertille, who was un-
doubtedly the abbess at her arrival.

362 THE ISLE OF THANE T AND ITS SAINT. [June,

death. Millam is in French Flanders, and now several miles
from the sea, but an old map of the year 800 shows it standing- on
the shore of a bay running into the mainland, forming a fine har-
bor nearly opposite the isle of Thanet. Here St. Mildred hid her-
self in a rude cell in the woods or morass till she could obtain a
passage to England. This is related by Father Malbrancq, a
Jesuit of St. Omer, who could not help knowing all the traditions
of Millam, which is at the foot of the Mount of Watten, where the
fathers of St. Omer's had a country house.

At all events, there has been from time immemorial a great
devotion to St. Mildred or Ste. Maldrede, as the French some-
times call her at Millam, as well as a chapel of her name on the
very spot where once stood her cell, built and kept up by the pea-
santry without any aid from the clergy or gentry. Our Angle-
Saxon princess is here emphatically the saint of the people, who
call her in their Flemish tongue Sinte Mulders. Her chapel is a
place of pilgrimage where they go to invoke her against the
marsh fevers so prevalent in the neighborhood (as was anciently
done in England, according to Jocelyn), and clrink of the waters
of Sinte Mulder s beek, or St. Mildred's beck a small, sluggish
stream, on whose bank the chapel stands, overshadowed by the
ash and the willow, about half-way between Millam and Merke-
ghem. There is a farm adjoining that bears the name of St. Mil-
dred. The country around is covered with grain-fields and rich
pastures, with a remnant of the old forest of Ravensberg at the
north. In the chapel is a statue of the saint which has its curi-
ous legend, and the walls are covered with six large oil-paintings,
each with its Flemish inscription, setting forth the life of St. Mil-
dred. One of these represents her with an angel at her side, re-
jecting the young nobleman who asks her hand in marriage. In
the next she is cast into a fiery furnace by the Abbess Wilcoma,
but issues forth unharmed, all the nuns looking on in great
amazement, as well they might, from over the monastery walls.
These paintings, however, are of the last century, and the per-
sonages (St. Mildred among them) are all dressed in the Louis-
Quinze style, and move about with the superlative elegance of
that time, so familiar to us all from the pictures of Watteau, which
greatly detracts from the devotional effect. And floating about
in the blue heavens above are many smiling, white- winged putti,
not without grace of movement. Pope Clement XL granted a
plenary indulgence to all who should worthily approach the
sacraments in this chapel on St. Mildred's day (July 13). It
seems 'strange that this festival, so long suspended in England,

1884.] THE ISLE OF THANET AND ITS SAINT. 363

should have been kept up to our own day in this rural chapel of
a foreign land, as well as at Chelles till the abbey was destroyed
in the great Revolution.

. Two popular fttes, called Ducas, are held every year at Mil-
lam, one beginning on St. Omer's day, the patron of the parish,
and the other on St. Mildred's, the saint of the people. A fair is
held on these occasions which lasts two or three days, and every-
thing has the aspect of a Belgian kermesse. St. Mildred's Ducas
begins July 13. Mass used to be said in her chapel in the morn-
ing, and Vespers were sung in the afternoon. Then came
dancing in the open air, which in better days ceased at sunset,
but in more recent times was prolonged to an untimely hour,
with revelries of other kinds, which forced the archbishop in
1869 to forbid any religious celebration. But two months later
he withdrew the prohibition on condition of a guarantee against
all scandals. Then came the Prussian invasion, and public ser-
vices, necessarily suspended for a time, have never been resumed.
The chapel is still open to pilgrims, however, and sometimes
nearly a hundred tapers are to be seen burning before the holy
image of Sinte Mulders.

But to return to the life of our saint. She at length found
means of crossing the Channel, and arrived safely at Thanet.
Her mother, Domneva, St. Ermengytha, her aunt, and all the
nuns of Minster went down to the shore to meet her nuns not
being so strictly cloistered in those days as at a later period. St.
Mildred, in landing, stepped on a large rock projecting into the
sea, which bore the impress of her foot ever after, and became
famous as the Lapis Sanctse Mildredas, or St. Mildred's Rock.
This was still to be seen as late as last century. St. Mildred at
once took the veil at Minster, and the beautiful ritual used on the
occasion has been preserved to our day. When she made her
solemn vows, together with seventy other nuns,* there was such
a concourse of people that they filled the church and knelt all
along the grassy mead down to the river Wantsume. She must
have soon taken her mother's place as abbess, for in 694 she at-
tended the Kentish council of Beccancelde with four other ab-
besses, to deliberate with the clergy on the interests of God's
church in Kent, and signed her name as abbess of Minster imme-
diately after the bishops.

St. Mildred in the cloister showed great fervor in psalmody
and prayer, perseverance in long fasts and vigils, charity to the

* Among these was St. Mildred's aunt, St. Ermengytha, afterwards so famous for her sanc-
tity that her tomb, about a mile from the convent, became a popular resort for pilgrims.

364 THE ISLE OF THANE T AND ITS SAINT. [June,

poor, and kindness to the sisterhood. An old Saxon MS. says
she was merciful to the widow and orphan, a comforter to the
needy and afflicted, and in all respects showed herself to be of a
mild and gentle temper. So pure and holy was her life that the
very angels of God seemed to have sought her companionship
and made her the special object of their care. We are told of
a most friendly angel amicissimus angehis by whom she was
guarded, and who sometimes made himself visible to her pure
eyes in all the brightness of his heavenly radiance. In her last
days she suffered much from physical infirmities. Sickness, says
Jocelyn, burned up her enfeebled frame in holocaust to God.
At length, drawn by the influence of Divine Love, she went one
day to the church of Our Lady, and, while giving herself up to
prayer with more than usual fervor, the place became filled with
incomparable glory, and the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove
hovered for a while over her head and then entered the sanc-
tuary of her heart. She felt her end was near. It came the
third day before the ides of July, about the year 725. Her re-
mains were laid beside those of her mother, Domneva. When
her tomb was opened a quarter of a century later her body was
found entire and incorrupt. She looked, it is said, as though
sleeping in a bridal bower, her very robes white and spotless.
These sacred remains, sealed up in a stone sarcophagus, escaped
the various ravages of the Danes, even when they burned down
the abbey of Minster, together with the Abbess Seledritha and
the entire sisterhood, who had taken refuge in the church.

About the year 1031 St. Mildred's remains were taken out
of her tomb by the Benedictine monks, reverently folded in a
cloth of dazzling whiteness, and borne secretly away to Canter-
^ bury in the night-time. But not without arousing the people
of Thanet, who, infuriated at their removal, pursued the monks
with swords, and clubs, and other weapons. The latter, how-
ever, succeeded in escaping with their prize. This translation
took place in a time of great drought, and it is recorded that
abundant rains fell at Canterbury in grateful welcome of the
saint. Here they were placed in a shrine near the big lamp
called Jesse, and before it a service was daily celebrated. Crimi-
nals claimed the right of asylum around it a claim respected
even by William the Conqueror when he became master of Eng-
land. This shrine also attracted numerous pilgrims and became
noted for miracles. Among the wonders related some are
amusing, as when our gentle saint boxed the ears of the bell-
ringer data palma, alapam ei dedit who_had fallen asleep before

1884.] MY ESPOUSALS. 365

her shrine, telling him it was an oratory and not a dormitory.
Others are most touching-, as when she appeared to console the
relict of Edward the Confessor, abandoned and persecuted in her
widowhood ; and when the palsied man, suddenly cured while
the Gloria in excelsis was being sung on St. Mildred's day, walked
and sang with grateful joy, the whole congregation joining him
in praise and thanksgiving. But " who is there," exclaims
Jocelyn, " that has ever approached one so benign in vain ?
Who is there that is blind, or dumb, or deaf, or ailing from
whatever cause in mind or body, who has failed to obtain relief
through her intercession? Verily, Mildred, whose name in her
mother-tongue signifies merciful, pours herself out as a sweet
balm on all such as have recourse to her." And the same pious
author thus apostrophizes her:

" Gaude virgo gloriosa
In Christ! tui gloria,
Mildretha benignissima,
Proles regum clarissima,
Merciorum margarita,
Cantuariae corona,
Totius Angliae stella radians :
Fave cunctis prece pia ! '' *

MY ESPOUSALS, f

AWAY, away, unholy fires

That, fed with tears and fanned by sighs,

Inflamed my heart with mad desires.

Come, chaste, abiding love that brings
True joy ; cast round my soul thy spells,
And fold to rest its fluttering wings.

Breathe o'er this throbbing brow, and chase
The phantom light that round me hangs
And wraps me in its dread embrace.

* Ex MS. Harl. 3908.

t This impassioned and exquisite poem has been forwarded to THE CATHOLIC WORLD by
the Rev. Richard Howley, D.D., of Mount Melleray Abbey, Cappoquin, Ireland, without the
name of the author, who would appear to be an Italian who has become a monk of the Cistercian
Order in its celebrated Irish monastery, Mount Melleray.

366 MY ESPOUSALS. [June,

Thee only, Spouse divine, I'll press,
All-spotless, to my burning breast,
And live and die in thy caress.

O joy ! thus close to thee to cling
And melt into thy being this
Is love supreme, all-conquering !

Thou wooed'st me, and thy sacred shrine
Our dear love's bower beheld our bliss,
Where no false light of earth could shine.

There, in the silent night, to thee

My bosom heaved, as when the kiss

Of silver moonbeam thrills th' enraptured sea.

There ever found I thee, and wept
Tears of delight, alone, unseen,
While from my lips low, mystic murmurs crept.

Life of my life ! O sacred fire !
Sweet light that, with thy rosy beam,
Dost tinge and perfume each desire f .
And hallow every glowing dream
Of mortal beauty

Come, o'erpower

All earth-born flames ; burn thou alone
Within thy consecrated bower,
And make its sweetness all thine own.

Farewell, bright vision of an hour !
Farewell, too fondly beaming eyes !
Farewell, thou tender, clinging flower !
I tear thee from my heart, e'en though it dies.

II.

I saw thee in thy starry heaven,
And in the rosy ray of morn,
And in the mellow light of even.

1884.] MY ESPOUSALS. 367

Ah ! if a day, that scarce appears

Ere night's dark mantle wraps it round,

So radiant be, what of thy years ?

What of thy endless morning light
That knows no eve, that dreads no night,
Resplendent o'er time's changeful flight?

At mother's knee my faltering tongue
First lisped the lesson of thy Word,
And to my heart its music sung.

No dream of glory then illumed
The virgin tablets of my soul ;

No earthly flames my heart consumed.

i *

Be thou my glory, Spouse divine

My lover's lay, my poet fire,

Glowing throughout each pulse of mine !

One day perchance, a poet I,

Amid the choirs that round thee throng,

Shall live in deathless song on high,

And with love's language clothe the thrills

Of the angelic minstrelsy

That wakes the everlasting hills.

But here below no crown I crave

Save thine of thorns. No nobler wreath

Could grace the brow of bard or brave !

For that be home and land forgot,
And gentle kin. Come, crown of woe,
Come deck my lyre and rule my lot.

in.

With all my pulses failing fast,
And scarce a ray of hope to win
A peaceful home with thee at last,

368 MY ESPOUSALS. [June,

I sought thee, and I gave thee all,
Ay, more than all of mine, to free
My troubled soul from throe and thrall.

I left, in heart, my Italy,
I tore my lips from life's own spring
My mother-country's breast and vowed
To stranger lands life's opening.

Ah, love ! In dreamy fancies oft
(Thy elms, Italia, o'er me spread)
I heard its magic song aloft

In springtide, when the birds were wed
Among the leaves. I watched the play
Of mate with mate through morn and noon.

Each swelling throat poured forth its lay
Of love throughout the gladsome day,
While sped the songsters^' honeymoon!

No love, nor mate, nor home have I,
Save 'neath thy mighty, tireless wing ;
There nestled close to thee, I'll fly
Where'er thou wilt: to thee I'll cling,

My love-lorn soul unbosoming.

O happy home, to dwell in love !

To breathe its breath, O blissful clime !

O life, earth's life to soar above !

We'll wander thus till we have built
A bower, a resting-place, my own,
Far from all haunts of woe and guilt.

There nestling with our tender brood,
Our soul-begotten young, we'll dwell,
And spend for them our tears and blood..

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 369

IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS.

WHO has not heard of Pictou Pictou, that hardy Highland
settlement, that outlet of the great coal trade of eastern Nova
Scotia ? Every Monday morning, at Pictou wharf, lies a small
black iron steamship yclept the Beaver. She waits until the
arrival of the Prince Edward Island boat and the Halifax train,
after which she gives a most unearthly whistle and steams away,
making for Georgetown, Prince Edward Island. The Beaver
is a much-maligned boat ; she is slow, it is true, but she is very
safe, and in facing the angry sea one is much more secure in her
somewhat narrow cabin than in the saloon-decked boats of the
Prince Edward Island route.

About seven o'clock on a brilliant summer morning the
passengers of the Beaver sighted the irregular peaks of the
Magdalen Islands. The land seemed to rise from the sea in
semi-circular form. In some parts the hills, purple in the morn-
ing light, towered against the opal sky ; in others they hid their
faces in a filmy veil of mist and claimed kinship with the low-
lands, that in their turn ran out to the sand-ridges, the links in
the chain connecting these strange islands one with the other.

The Magdalen Islands have a history, which we will relate
in a few words. On the 22d of July, 1534, Jacques Cartier,
sailing through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sighted this group of
islands, to which, following his pious practice, he gave the name
of " Sainte Magdeleine." In 1663 La Compagnie de la Nouvelle
France granted the islands to Sieur Frangois Doublet, a mari-
ner of Honfleur, and on the ist of February, 1664, Sieur Dou-
blet granted a fourth of his insular estate to Frangois Gon de
Quim6 and to Claude de Landemar, his associates in a fishing
speculation; and in 1719 the- king of France, at the instigation
of the Duchess of Orleans, ceded the Magdeleine Isles to the
Comte de St. Pierre. At this time fishermen used to come out
from France and, as it were, " camp out " in the Magdeleine
Isles, returning to France in the fall.

In 1757 four families, named Boudreault, Chaisson, Lapierre,
and Cormier, came from St. Peter's Bay, in Prince Edward Isl-
and, on the invitation of a retired officer, of the English army
named Gridley, who wished to open an establishment for trad-
VOL. xxxix. 24

3/0 IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. [June,

ing in walrus and seal oil on the Magdalen Islands, and who, to
secure fishermen for the work, promised these Acadians that he
would undertake the support of a resident priest, as they abso-
lutely refused to leave their homes unless they were assured of
the enjoyment of the offices of their religion. Had one of these
simple fishermen been standing on the brow of Demoiselle Hill
one summer evening towards the close of the last century, and
had he been gifted with " second sight," he would undoubtedly
have come down the grassy slope with a sore and heavy heart,
ior he would have learned of his country's coming doom. In
the pathway of molten gold thrown by the setting sun over the
dancing waters of Havre-au-Ber he would have seen a British
ship of war, and on her deck, in earnest conversation with the
captain, His Excellency Guy, Lord Dorchester, on his way to
Quebec to assume his duties as governor-in-chief. He would
have learned that the gallant captain had longingly looked upon
this Naboth's vineyard ; that the possession of its fair green hills
and rich natural beauties had become necessary to his happiness,
and that his august passenger had undertaken to use his influ-
ence with the English government to procure the much-coveted
grant. In 1798 Captain, afterwards Admiral, Sir Isaac Coffin, as
a reward for his services, received from the English government
the grant of the Magdalen Islands " en franc et commun soc-
cage " ; and thus it was that this beautiful estate, slightly ham-
pered by restrictions, passed into the possession of the Coffin
family, its present owners.

Bishop Plessis visited this part of his diocese in 1811, and has
left a graphic account of the imposition of Admiral Coffin's rent
charge. He was delighted with the piety and simplicity of the
islanders. In speaking of this group Monsignor Plessis likens
their formation to that of a horseshoe, and on nearing the land
one sees that his comparison is a correct one. Sandy Hook in
Amherst Island, and Cape Alright at the extremity of the island
of that name, guard the entrance to the beautiful sheet of water
known as Pleasant Bay, while between the two stands Entry
Island, a picturesque sentinel. We steam carefully past Sandy
Hook with a due respect for that dangerous shoal, pass under
the lee of Entry Island, and, making for a crescent-shaped cove,
come to anchor about half-way between the eastern extremity
of Amherst Island, known as Point Gridley, and the curious,
-conical brace of hills called Les Demoiselles. Amherst is a very
small metropolis, containing about sixty houses. It boasts no
-wharf on the bay side of the village, so that the ship's boat was

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 371

lowered, and without any difficulty we were landed on the peb-
bly beach.

The first consideration was to choose a local habitation. We
were fortunate in securing rooms at a cozy house on the heights
of Point Gridley, where every comfort is cheerfully accorded to
the weary traveller, and where, on the morning in question, we
drank to our own health in fragrant coffee flanked with tempt-
ing halibut-steaks, delicious bread, stewed mushrooms, Entry
Island butter, cranberry -jelly, and scalded cream.

Amherst, which is called Havre-au-Ber by the Acadians, is
eleven miles in length and not more than four at its greatest
breadth. It is supposed to resemble in shape the human foot,
though the resemblance is hard to find. In the western end of
the island the " heel," we will say, of the foot is the flourishing
parish of Basin, with its' fine church, dedicated to St. Francis
Xavier, commanding the head of the beautiful lagoon from
which the parish takes its name ; while on the " toe " is the nar-
row isthmus on which are the fishing-huts and commercial
establishments of the village of Amherst, terminating in the
small promontory on which the luckless Gridley 's garden once
bloomed, and which now serves as a pasture-field for cows. The
northern shore of this little isthmus is washed by Pleasant Bay ;
on the south lies Amherst Harbor, protected by its double line
of sand-bars and consequent lagoon. Amherst Harbor boasts a
fleet of seven schooners, about fifty large fishing-boats, and little
boats innumerable. On its shores are two lobster " factories."
Several pretty private residences dot the hillside. The most
prominent building of all is the jail, a large and hideous stone
erection with a stunted chimney at each end, bearing some sort
of resemblance to the grim visage of a young bulldog with
cropped ears. Over eight years have passed by since the jail
has held a prisoner. Further up the highland, on the slope of
Demoiselle Hill, is the church of Our Lady of the Visitation, and
beside it a large and handsome three-story building erected by
the venerable cure at his own expense and intended for a con-
vent. Up to the present time the Rev. Mr. Boudreault has not
been successful in finding an order that will undertake the teach-
ing of little boys as well as of girls, so that in the meantime the
spacious convent does duty as a presbytery. About half a mile
distant, at the foot of a hill called Calvary, is the site of the old
church, and on the summit of the hill stood until very recently a
lofty wooden cross, placed there by Monsignor Plessis in 1811,
a souvenir of his visit to the islands.

372 IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. [June,

From the grass-grown pinnacle of Demoiselle Hill the view is
superb. At one's feet the quiet, gray village, edged with light
fishing-stages, stretches away to Gridley's Point, on the extremity
of which stands a tiny Protestant chapel staring defiantly across
the bay at the beautifully-proportioned church of Notre Dame
on the opposite headland. To the west lies Basin, the sun set-
ting behind its wooded hills and lighting up the surface of its
placid lagoon, in which are reflected as in a mirror the spire, the
housetops, and the boats that dance on its waters. Curving
round the bay on the northwest stretches the horseshoe of land,
now rising into bold headlands, now sinking into low sand-ridges,
whilst in all directions on the blue water float the white sail of
the fishermen. Beyond Entry Island, twenty-one leagues to the
south, is the high, blue line of the Cape Breton coast ; and to
the south, lost in the horizon, the low shores of Prince Edward
Island.

The geology of Demoiselle Hill is very varied : in some parts
the cliff is composed entirely of trap, then again the angular
sides of the trap will be found glittering with a thick deposit of
manganese. But the especial treasure of the hill is its gypsum
cliffs. In one place great sheets of gypsum from one to two
inches thick may be seen loosely embedded in soft red clay.
Further on immense boulders of the same mineral look ready to
fall over and crush the unwary loiterer. One of these, engraved
with a Latin cross and the sacred monogram, deeply cut and
stained with native ochre, is a monument to the patience, perse-
verance, and piety of some amateur sculptor. But these vast
gypsum cliffs crumble and waste, their treasures tossed about by
the ebbing and flowing tide ; surely it is a pity that such a source
of wealth should be so neglected.

One beautiful summer morning we started to drive to Grind-
stone Island to visit the pretty little village called L'Etang du
Nord an expedition that perhaps more than any other gives an
insight into the peculiarities of the Magdalen Islands. About
eight o'clock we left Amherst village and drove along by the
side of a sparkling lagoon in which the fishing-boats were begin-
ning to be astir. At every few yards we met one of the quaint
little wooden carts so numerous here. They are several sizes
smaller than the usual farm-cart, and are perfectly innocent of
springs or paint or any modern improvements. These chareftes
are drawn by small, sturdy ponies with wonderful powers of en-
durance, which jog along regarding hills, dales, plains, or ditches
with the most stolid indifference. Soon after leaving the shore

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 373

of the lagoon we pass what looks like a mineral spring, judging
from its rusty, oily appearance. Near here is also a pretty
little fresh-water river famous for the plentiful trout that lurk
in its waters. An attractive feature of the brooks and ponds
here is that they are frogless: St. Patrick must have taken
this place under his special protection, as not a frog, toad, or
snake has ever been found on any part of the Magdalen Islands.
Not far from La Riviere we turn into what is called the " Moun-
tain Road," and here we see for the first time the curious for-
mation of these lofty hills. They are for the most part conical
in shape, but near the top there is almost always a deep hollow ;
sometimes four or five peaks surround one of these hollows.
Others are on the hillside, their cavernous depths shaded by
stunted pine-trees ; some are dry, and around their edges delicate
Michaelmas daisies and trailing vines grow in profusion ; others,
again, are full of water, and their sullen fathoms have never been
sounded. Around and upon these hills are found fused iron-
stone, cinders, tufa, lava, and other signs of eruption. Mr. Suth-
erland in his report pronounces the whole group of islands of
volcanic origin ; but Mr. Chambers, a Protestant minister resid-
ing on Grindstone Island, who has given considerable attention to
the study of geology, unhesitatingly condemns this opinion, and
accounts for the curious hollows as being caused by a subsidence
of gypsum, while the lava, tufa, conglomerate, etc., were, he says,
brought to the shores by the sea. The geology of the Magda-
len Islands is well worthy of study, furnishing many rich and
varied specimens not only of stones but of minerals.

After leaving the mountains, the road, which, by the way, is
disgraced by some very bad bridges, lies through a level country,
where among the short brushwood we gathered an abundance
of blueberries and of the small red berry known in Nova Scotia
as foxberry, also another ground fruit, small and hard, of a light
gray color with dark spots, called by the islanders mokoks.
These berries make excellent preserves. The large cranberries
grow in great abundance on the dunes, and find a ready market
in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Another berry
found here in swamp-land is the bakeapple, so abundant in Lab-
rador a small, juicy, white fruit, in appearance resembling a
white raspberry ; it is in season in July, as are the wild straw-
berries that grow here in the greatest profusion. Raspberries
also are plentiful, and wild currants. In our search for fox-
berries we came across several varieties of ferns, but all such
as are commonly found in the adjacent provinces. Only late

3/4 IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. [June,

wild flowers were blooming in this tangled brushwood the
fragile Michaelmas daisy and, in beautiful contrast, with its
pale mauve blossoms, the bright yellow of the waving golden-
rod. There was also an abundance of a starry white flower
and any quantity of immortelles, while here and there large
clusters of pigeon-berries reminded us that summer was waning.
At a distance of about eleven miles from Amherst village we
took the shore ; and how is it possible to describe the charms of
that wonderful sea-road ? From the deck of the Beaver Amherst
and Grindstone had appeared two distinct islands, but now we
saw the immense sheet of sand that connects them, and which
at low tide forms a safe and pleasant roadway safe, at least, if
one has a pilot ; for deep and dangerous quicksands abound on
every side, and woe be to the luckless adventurer whom night-
fall should catch on these shoals ! Along the chain of high sand-
ridges run the posts of the sorely-needed and much-prized tele-
graph. Against the western shore the surf beats in, incessantly
chanting its never-ending dirge over those whom its pitiless
waters have engulfed. But very calm and beautiful was the sea
of St. Lawrence that summer day, and its waves murmured
softly and cooingly as they twined strange wreaths of wild sea-
grasses round our horses' feet, and brought us delicate mosses
and dainty shells, as if to allure us to venture nearer to their
treacherous depths ; but ever and anon the gentle waves broke
against the wooden wall of some ill-fated wreck that, lodged in
the tenacious sand-bar, stood a grim testimony to the truth of
Mr. Stedman's beautiful poem :

'" Woe, woe to those whom the islands pen !
In vain they shun the double capes ;
Cruel are the reefs of Magdalen ;
The Wolf's white fang what prey escapes ?
The Grindstone grinds the bones of some,
And Coffin Isle is craped with foam ;
On Deadman's shore are fearful shapes ! "

On the eastern side of the sand-bar, to our right hand, stretches
the beautiful lagoon called Havre-aux-Basques, that has quite a
deep channel in which large schooners winter. It is shut in by
a low marsh-land (called here the Barachois) rich in cranberries
and blueberries, and in the spring-time a great receptacle for
gannets' eggs. It is after passing the shores of the gulf and the
lagoon that the distinctive features of the landscape are seen.
All around us for miles stretches a vast, unbounded plain of

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 375

shining sand, crossed here and there by little gullies in which our
tired horses cool their weary feet. On one side the telegraph-
posts stand bare and gaunt in the sand-hills, interspersed here
and there with the broken masts of some ill-fated vessels. These
sand-hills produce an abundance of grass of which cattle are
very fond, and at this marine harvest some men were working
heartily. To our right as far as the eye could reach the sands
were dotted with women digging clams. These women come
from a long distance in their little carts, and their patient horses
wait their mistresses' pleasure. Owing to some atmospheric
peculiarity every object seemed magnified, and away out on the
horizon these little horses and their industrious drivers assumed
giant proportions.

In the Magdalen Islands can be found the answer to an in-
quiry made long ago when time was young made by a man of
considerable experience in follies feminine ; for there, brave, pa-
tient, and beautiful in her strength and industry, is many an
example of the " valiant woman." Here one finds a distinct
peasantry a hardy, self-reliant race, that keep to their own cus-
toms of dress and speech as handed down from their Basque and
Breton ancestry. No faded flounces and tawdry flowers or
meretricious jewelry incommode these women in their daily toil.
Short, full, homespun gowns, generally of some dark, rich color,
surmounted by a loose, light, print jacket ; their glossy black
heads covered by large sunbonnets of snowy whiteness, furnished
with a deep cape ; their shapely feet and well-turned ankles en-
cased in gaily-striped stockings and strong leather shoes such
is their week-day attire. They are very tenacious about these
same shoes and stockings, and would be terribly scandalized at
being caught going barefooted, as is the custom of the peasantry
of the British Isles. What they were in the days of Bishop
Plessis they are now : when you see one you see all. There are,
of course, different degrees of comeliness, but all are neat, clean,
and well dressed, and pass you with a cheery " Bon jour! " that
is pleasant to hear. And work ! How these women do work !
sometimes down on the beach, where they go through the
tedious process of cleaning, salting, drying, and piling the cod-
fish that their liege lords pass the day in catching ; sometimes
on the farms and in the gardens; again you meet them driving
the loads of fish along the highway, or see them digging clams
for bait when the tide is out, not unfrequently coming home wet
and cold and tired, but always cheerful and brave. They are
never idle ; even when you meet them taking an evening stroll

3/6 IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. [June,

by the roadside their knitting-needles are clicking busily, and
the gay striped stockings grow into shapely length in such
stolen moments of so-called leisure.

After a drive of fifteen miles on the level sand, in the course
of which we saw hundreds of plover and the sportsman of our
party longed unavailingly for his gun, we entered the bright
little village of L'Etang du Nord, where we counted more than
seventy boats at anchor in the cove. This village is mainly
composed of small cottages on the beach, which are inhabited
during the summer months only, and that by a few members of
each family, the homestead being away up on the hills, gene-
rally in the centre of a thriving farm. This island of Grind-
stone is very rich and fertile, though here, as in other portions
of the Magdalens*, man has not done much to assist nature. The
yield of hay, much of it fine timothy, is something marvellous,
considering that no seed has been sown for many years. Grind-
stone Island is somewhat oval in shape ; its greatest length is
six miles, its breadth four; it is well wooded and offers a grand
field for the sportsman's rifle. Mr. Cory, in his book on the
ornithology of the Magdalen Islands, gives a list of ninety-five
birds, of seventeen different varieties, as the result of one day's
sport on Grindstone Island."* Under the shelter of a curious
promontory known as Cap-au-Meule the Beaver anchors on
her arrival from Amherst, and here she awaits the return mails.
Cap-au-Meule may have earned its name by supplying grind-
stones to the early settlers, or it may bear some fancied resem
blance to that useful article; it is an odd-looking and lofty cliff,
mainly composed of yellow sandstone, now and again varied
with layers of blue and orange. Between its wave-washed base
and a long, low projection of red sandstone called Cap Rouge
one may find any number of beautiful agates and pieces of jasper,
bloodstone, and chalcedony. There are two lobster " factories "
in this neighborhood. Near here is a Protestant chapel, and here
the Rev. Mr. Chambers resides. This gentleman most kindly
invited us to visit the collection of geological specimens found
by him on the Magdalen Islands. Some of these stones have
been polished by a lapidary in England, and are really exquisite
specimens of jasper, bloodstone, and onyx.

On high land overlooking Pleasant Bay is the parish church
dedicated to St. Jean Baptiste. It is a neatly-built little edifice
and boasts a really handsome " Way of the Cross."

Grindstone and Alright Islands co-operate in the formation

* A Naturalist in the Magdalen Islands. By Charles B. Cory. Boston, 1878.

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 3/7

of a harbor; between them runs a deep channel, where there is
always a small boat with a stalwart ferryman ready to convey
one across. On the Grindstone side are the stores of the wealth-
iest man of these parts. The trade at this end of the island
gives employment to 'a large number of people. Here we were
presented with several long ivory tusks, trophies that the sea
occasionally yields of the walrus once so plentiful on these shores.
Near the stores is a hill of trap rising from the shore of the
lagoon, and it is said to be rich in mineral treasures.

Crossing the ferry to Alright Island, we come to the settle-
ment of Havre-aux-Maisons. In this port seventeen schooners
are registered. Here are stores and lobster-canning establish-
ments. About a mile distant is the beautiful church of Ste. Ma-
deleine with its handsome presbytery, and clcfse by is the con-
vent of Notre Dame. In this establishment four of the devoted
daughters of the venerable Marguerite Bourgeois teach a flour-
ishing day-school and undertake the care of a band of fifteen
boarders. This convent is beautifully situated, and very plea-
sant in summer; but when the winter winds rage over the frozen
surface of Pleasant Bay, and the storm-king rides on the lofty
hills that surround Havre-aux-Maisons, when six long months
must pass without bringing word or letter to these self-exiled
women, it must require a very strong vocation indeed to " serve
the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with a
song." The church of Ste. Madeleine is frescoed and contains
three valuable old oil-paintings, one of the Crucifixion, one of St.
Margaret of Scotland, and a large and beautiful study of the
death of Ste. Madeleine.

From Alright and Grindstone run out long, narrow sand-
ridges varying from five hundred to two thousand yards in
breadth, extending in a northeasterly direction for twenty-two
miles, and enclosing a narrow sheet of water called the Great
Lagoon. About the centre of these sand-ridges is Wolf Island,
a small elevation partially covered with wood. Here there
is a telegraph-station and a house of refuge for wrecked sailors.
The southern end of the Great Lagoon is formed by House Har-
bor, already mentioned ; its northern termination is the fine sheet
of water known as Grand Entry. North and east of this harbor
lie Grosse He and Coffin Island, both of which once formed
the clergy reserve, and are now the property of the Dominion
government. Here reside twenty Catholic families and twen-
ty Protestant. There is a Protestant chapel,* and a Catholic

* This Protestant church was built by the late proprietor at his own expense.

378 IN AND AROtJND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. [June,

church is shortly to be built. There are thirty-eight boats
registered for this harbor ; two or more lobster " canneries " are
constantly at work, and here are the best seal-hunting grounds.
Rich cranberry-fields are also in this district, but for the most
part it is wild and desolate, surrounded by dangerous reefs and
shoals. Ten miles to the north lies Bryon Island ; its rocky
coast has proved fatal to vessels, the bones of many a hardy
sailor have bleached upon its sand, and, worse still, those who
have escaped the sea have sometimes perished from hunger upon
its silent shores. Now, however, a few families are resident
there, and it is to be hoped that soon a light-house will be erected
to warn mariners from approaching too near its sterile banks.
Twelve miles northeast of Bryon Island are the far-famed Bird
Rocks. They are two in number, and are called respectively
the Great Bird and the North Bird. The Great Bird rises to a
height of one hundred and forty feet perpendicularly from the
sea. It has four square acres of ground upon its,summit. Here
about twelve years ago a light-house was built, where, for a
salary of twelve hundred dollars per annum, a man is content to
live almost alone in the middle of these raging waters. To call
upon this gentleman requires more " pluck " than is usually de-
manded by a visit of ceremony. By the aid of a crane and wind-
lass a wooden box was lowered, into which we packed ourselves
with, it must be confessed, a slight misgiving. The word was
given and this primitive elevator began to ascend. Up we went,
past countless denizens of the feathered kingdom gannets, puf-
fins, guillemots and gulls, birds of all sizes, shapes, and colors.
The air was full of birds, and the air was also very unpleasant
by reason of the contents of these birds' larder being somewhat
decomposed ; everywhere were scraps of decaying fish, and bits
of eggshell, and birds, tame, fearless almost to stupidity. The
ascent took about half an hour. Those who possess the spirit of
adventure will find it well worth their while to call on the light-
house keeper in his " sky-parlors " on Bird Rocks. The light is
a fixed white light, visible for twenty-one miles ; with the station
is connected a telegraph-office to report accidents. The noise
made by the birds here is something deafening a " horrible
clamor " Mr. Cory justly calls it. The Jesuits visited this spot in
1632, and called the rocks " Les Colombiers"; and very like a
vast dove-cote they looked from a distance, with the white plu-
mage of the gannets, that are especially numerous. In 1720 Fa-
ther Charlevoix says of his experience of the Bird Rocks : " We
fired a gun, which gave the alarm through all this flying com-

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 379

monwealth, and there was formed above these two islands a thick
cloud of these birds which was at least two or three leagues
around. It is wonderful how in such a multitude of nests every
bird immediately finds her own."

On our return journey we visited the well-kept light-house
at L'Etang du Nord. From its gallery we saw the weird rock,
nearly two hundred feet in height, known as Corps Mort, or
Deadman's Isle, so called from its shape, having a resemblance
to a human corpse floating on the water. It is a bare, solitary
rock nine miles west of Amherst. We also visited the settle-
ment and light-house at West Point, where the keeper kindly
displayed the working of his marine telegraph, or semaphore.
This locality was once a favorite pleasure-ground of the walrus ;
they used to climb up the sandstone cliffs and lie basking and
wallowing in the sun. In passing through Basin we alighted at
the house of a venerable lady who remembers being confirmed by
Bishop Plessis, and who, though more than eighty-one years of
age, yet retains not only her faculties but her good looks. Her
mother, who died a few years ago, one hundred and seven years
of age and her death even then was the result of a fall was a
native of Miquelon, but came to Acadia early in life, and up to
the day of her death would converse familiarly about the Acadian
persecution, the siege of Louisburg, and such-like remote historic
memories. In front of Mme. Chaisson's house stands a cross
blessed and erected by 1'Abbe Allain in 1809. In those days
there were no roads, the church was distant and not always ac-
cessible, and this cross was put up as a station, where the people
were wont to come and pray. It is of simple pine, but has
neither rotted nor fallen in all these years.

Once back at Amherst, the courtesy of the reverend cure,
Mr. Boudreault, placed at our disposal notes concerning the
beautiful islands which all who visit must find interesting. In
1857 a petition was laid before government in which the Magda-
len Islanders begged for emancipation from 'feudal tenure.
Since then overtures were made to Captain Coffin, who, how-
ever, refused an offer of $60,000, the price he sets on his seign-
eurie being $100,000. The rent is now twenty cents per acre ;
it is probable that, like other landlords, Captain Coffin has some
unremunerative tenants.

It is a matter of serious regret that the five thousand Magda-
len Islanders do not pay more attention to the cultivation of
their seventy-eight thousand acres of land. It is true that the
sea generally yields them a rich harvest ; that mackerel, herring,

380 IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. [June,

and codfish are theirs in abundance; that in the spring thou-
sands of seals fall under their guns ; that seal-oil and cod-
liver oil are valuable commodities ; still, some seasons the re-
turns are poor and the people have nothing to fall back upon.
For six months of the year these islands are inaccessible from
the mainland, and in 1882 the inhabitants suffered from famine.
The fall of 1881 closed in early; one of the vessels bringing
winter supplies from Quebec was lost; added to this, the potato
crop had failed, and as spring advanced the sufferings of the
poor people became really terrible. Flour was not to be had, not
literally for its weight in gold. The rich could not help the
poor, for money was not bread ; all shared in the suffering. Not
until the. 25th of May could a schooner make her way among
the floating ice, when the people literally ran out- on the loose
cakes to meet her and to welcome her as their rescuer from the
most terrible of deaths. Had their farms been well stocked
this state of things would have been impossible, and with such
soft and fertile soil they would have but little trouble in raising
abundance of grain. At House Harbor they have a yearly
agricultural exhibition, which is a step in the right direction.
The Magdalen Islanders have a great deal for which to thank
their indefatigable representative at Ottawa, Dr. Fortin, M.P.
for Gaspe. It is owing to his exertions that the four light-houses
have been built and the invaluable telegraphic communication
established. There are ten stations on the islands and a sub-
marine cable running from Grosse Isle to Meat Cove, Cape Bre-
ton an inestimable boon to a population that for half the year
is cut off from the rest of the world.*

A funny story is told of the early days of the telegraph here.
Being something new, it was therefore something to be sus-
pected. The people could not understand it at all. After hold-
ing counsel with a few fellow-doubters one man determined to
investigate matters for himself, and, climbing up one of the new-
ly-erected posts, put his ear to the wire and listened. " En-
tends-tu quelque chose? " asked one of his comrades. " Si j'en-
tends ! Mais oui, je t'en parle ; croyez-moi qu'il en passe des nou-

velles, mais c'est tout du s e anglais que je ne comprends

plus que ma vache ! "

March and April are months devoted to the dangerous pur-
suit of seal-hunting, when not unfrequently men employed in the

* There is one important work that the legislators from these districts ought endeavor to
have carried out ; that is the closing of the Straits of Belle Isle, which would be an incalculable
benefit to the Magdalens, and indeed to all the neighboring coast.

1884.] IN AND AROUND THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS. 381

chase leap from cake to cake of the frozen ice and are carried
away to the ocean to perish miserably. They kill these animals
in different ways on the floating- ice with sticks and guns, and
in boats with nets and trawls. Six thousand is considered a good
catch. In May the herring-fishery sets in. Seventy-seven thou-
sand barrels of these fish have been taken in a season. In June
spring mackerel and codfish engage the attention of the fisher-
men, who usually take in about twenty thousand quintals of the
latter fish. The total number of vessels registered for the
islands is twenty-five schooners and three hundred and twenty-
five sail-boats. The fish that the men know so well how to
catch, the women know equally well how to cook, and their
mackerel chowder and codfish tongues delicately fried in batter
defy criticism. A marine treasure that they make little use of is
the Irish moss found in abundance on Amherst Island. A great
number of the Magdalen Islanders go every year to the Labra-
dor fishing-grounds, and weird and horrible are the stones which
they bring home to while away the hours of the long winter even-
ings. It is firmly believed among them that the devil has singu-
lar power in those wild regions, and that those who can be drawn
into holding intercourse with him can make strange bargains.
One story was told us in solemn good faith of a man with whom
the devil, in the guise of a sailor, fished the whole season.
" And," said our informant, "you may be sure that when the time
came to divide the fish my grandfather was very particular in
giving him his full share and bidding him begone."

That Jerseymen, as a rule, go home to Jersey on Saturday
night by supernatural means, and are back on the Labrador
coast in time for Monday morning's fishing, is here universally
believed. Strange and awful faith that brings the unseen so
close to our mortal grasp ! Here in the centre of the trackless
ocean, where the voice of God comes freshly to our world-worn
hearts, where the hills and the valleys lie as his hand created
them, where artifice and deceit are unknown, such traditions
seem not out of place.

Perhaps it was after hearing one of these stories that Tom
Moore, when passing Deadman's Isle in 1804, wrote as follows:

"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador,
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tossed !

" Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim, blue fire that lights her deck

382 KATHARINE. [June,

Doth play on as pale and livid a crew
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.

" To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast ;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world."

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER III.

DESPITE her aspiration for " a lot of children " in the future,
Kitty was by no means eager for childish society in the present.
Full of health and vigor, she delighted in active sports which
called her muscles into play, in much the same way that a kitten
does ; bilt she threw herself into them with so much ardor that
their zest was soon exhausted and she once more ready for re-
pose.

" Kitty," said her mother once, " does all she does with all
her might. When I insist on her sewing she sets every stitch
neatly and exactly, although, to be sure, she does not set a great
many. She runs until there is not a dry thread on her, and
when she has a book she is deaf and blind to everything beside."

The child often uttered a wish for the brother and sister
whose names were so familiar to her, but whose faces she had
never seen, with an indefinable conviction that had they lived
they would have been more interesting than the small compan-
ions whom she knew. But she belonged already to the race of
the solitary, and would have found herself alone, no matter how
close and intimate her home surroundings might have been.
The love of reading does not necessarily tend to that result
often, indeed, it is an eminently social passion, leading, on the
" love me, love my dog " principle, to those lasting friendships
built on a community of tastes. But to Kitty, although as yet
she did not know it, books were interesting and useful chiefly
in the capacity of keys, unlocking to her that interior world,
already so much more entertaining than the world without, and
so much better known, although still so full of trackless mys-
teries. Her parents would gladly have seen her more com-

1884.] KATHARIXE. 383

panionable, but so many of the children whom she met in church
and Sunday-school shared the sad experience of little Dolly
Roberts, the minister's daughter, when she came in her best
frock, carrying the big wax doll which, to her thinking, had been
the most valuable result of the last donation-party, that Kitty's
solitude within her own doors was in the end left practically
unbroken.

" That is a nice doll," she said when Dolly came in smiling,
with the precious burden in her arms. " My father bought it
for you, and Aunt Rebecca dressed it. She can make beautiful
things bead purses, and mice out of apple-seeds, and elephants
out of cotton and canton-flannel. She made the one I brought
to the donation. I had two like that last year, one in trousers
and jacket and one in a pink frock. I liked Tommy best, but I
left him in the sun and his head melted, and mother burned him
up. And Maggie I took to bed with me, and she fell out and
broke, so she went into the stove, too."

" And haven't you any now ? " asked compassionate Doll)'.

" Oh ! yes," said Kitty, dragging out a large one of home
manufacture. " This is Polly Hopkins. She is made of rags,
and father painted her head and face. I like her best of all.
To-day is too nice for dolls. Come out on the back stoop and
swing, and then we'll play tag in the yard and have a game of
ball. I have a splendid big rubber ball."

" Ball is for boys," said Dolly. " Let us stay here and play-
house."

" No," protested Kitty, " I hate dolls when the sun shines.
They are only good for rainy days. When I can't go out, and I
am tired of reading, I take Polly up in the garret and make a
lot of little ones out of rags and pretend they are my children,
and I am very poor and must work hard to get them something
to eat."

" That isn't a nice play at all," objected Dolly. " I always
make believe to be very rich, with a nice big house, furnished
like Captain Livingston's, and not have to move every two
years."

" Go up-stairs now, Kitty," admonished her mother, "and
play as Dolly wishes." And she added, whispering in the child's
ear : " You must be polite when you have company."

" Very well," said Kitty ; " give us an apple -and a cooky,
and I will get out my tea-set and keep house."

The garret was Kitty's favorite indoor play-room. One half
of it, stretching out under the steeply sloping roof to the eaves

384 KATHARINE. ["June,

at the back, was unfloored, and Kitty had a wholesome yet not
altogether unpleasant dread of the dark spaces between the
great beams which separated it from the ceiling of the room
below.

" If we should go in there," she said to Dolly, pausing to
look over the low railing which separated it from her own do-
main, " I suppose we'd fali all the way through into the cel-
lar, perhaps."

The other half was higher, and the great brick chimney
which came through at one end, and in the space behind which
Kitty kept her box of toys, was usually warm. A swing hung
from one of the rough brown beams, and cobwebs festooned
them all. Here and there old-fashioned gowns depended from
iron hooks, and on one was the great rag-bag from which the
little girl drew her impromptu babies.

" It isn't very clean," objected dainty Dolly, prudently mind-
ful of her Sunday frock.

"No," responded Kitty, "but I'll dust the floor by the mid-
dle window, and you can have my stool. Here, I'll open it,
because it is so warm to-day." And she lifted and propped up
with a stick the single sash, one pane high and three wide, which
swung inward at the level of the floor.

So long as the cake and apple lasted all went well, but when
the monotony of " how-do-you-dos " and "good-bys " could no
longer be varied by real feasting Kitty grew weary of it, and
proposed an investigation of the contents of an old trunk on
which she had been sitting. Dolly, nothing loath, consented.
At first sight it seemed full of dusty ledgers and old papers,
with an occasional black spider scurrying out of the sudden, un-
welcome daylight ; but Kitty's hand, rummaging well down,
presently fell on something which felt more promising.

" Here are two story-books," she said, her practised eye
running rapidly over the well-worn pages of The Abbot and The
Monastery. " This must have been mother's trunk," she added,
looking at the E. F. in brass-headed nails which adorned the
rough hair lid ; " I suppose they have been here ever since before
she married father. You can have one and I'll take the other."

" No," said Dolly ; " I can't read very well, and I don't like
to anyway. I came here to play."

" Well, then," said Kitty, with a suspiciously ready adapta-
bility to what seemed to be required by circumstances, " you
be the mother and take both the dolls, and I'll be the father and
go down to the mill. You can call me when dinner is ready."

1884.] KATHARINE. 385

And down she sat on the floor, and was soon so far away in
the company of' Halbert Glendinning and the White Lady of
Avenel that poor Dolly, finding her insensible to all appeals, at
last went down-stairs in just displeasure, and, meeting nobody
in the sitting-room, put on her bonnet and walked home to tell
her doleful adventure. Mrs. Danforth, coming out of class-
meeting, met the little one at the parsonage stoop and tried to
persuade her to go back and stay to tea.

"No," persisted offended Dolly, " Kitty has a book and don't
want me ; and if she doesn't, I'm sure I don't want her."

Mrs. Danforth found her daughter still on the garret floor
beside the window.

" What have you done with Dolly ? " she said, taking away
the book.

" Nothing," said Kitty. " We are playing house. Where is
she? She was sitting here just this minute."

" Kitty ! Kitty ! " lamented her mother, " I don't know what
to do with you. You offend all the children now ; what will you
do when you grow up ? Dolly went home an hour ago, and
says she doesn't want to come again."

" Well," replied Kitty, with a cheerful air of resignation, " I
don't think I care much."

" But that is the worst of all," expostulated her mother.
" You ought to care. It is selfish to be so wrapped up in one's
own pleasures as to forget everybody else."

" I wish I didn't," said Kitty penitently, " for I don't like to
see you look so sorry. But I can't help it. That book is lovely,
mother, and here is another that looks like it. I found them in
that little hair trunk with brass nails." Mrs. Danforth glanced
down at the volume in her hand, and at the other which the
child picked up from the floor, and her face lighted up with a
smile of pleased recognition.

" I thought they were lost," she said. " I had them when I
was a girl. Yes, Sir Walter Scott is always pleasant, but Ivan-
hoe is better than either of these."

And the two went down-stairs together with the recovered
treasures, their little misunderstanding quickly hidden under the
bond of a common sympathy, a mutual pleasure.

The company of her elders on the rare occasions when there
was a social gathering in the house was far more agreeable to
this little girl than that of her equals in age. Like most children
brought up in the society of intelligent adults, her curiosity and
interest were more awakened by the topics discussed among
VOL. xxxix. 25

386 KATHARINE. [June,

them than by the vapid and idle prattle current among little
folks. With children she was an innovator and a leader, either
inciting them to noisy and romping plays which usually brought
her into disgrace as the efficient cause of torn frocks and broken
chairs, or filling their ears with tales drawn partly from her
reading, partly from her imagination, which, when repeated,
sometimes made their parents shake their heads with mingled
surprise and disapprobation. "Company to tea," however, was
a somewhat rare occurrence in Kitty's home. In her heart of
hearts her mother was as little gregarious in her tastes as the
child promised to be, and neither paid visits nor received them
with such frequency as would have pleased her husband. Once
a year, on his birthday, there was a ceremonial gathering of all
his own relatives. Grandmother Danforth came, a smiling, kind
old lady, with a false front under her cap, and red, youthful lips,
although all her teeth had been gone these thirty years. But she
was a frequent guest at all times, and so was Aunt Anne, and,
though not so often, cross Uncle Horace, whom Kitty disliked
because he fretted so at home when she went down to make a
visit, and whom her mother was not fond of, " because," she said,
u two or three times he has joined the church when he was very
sick, but as soon as he gets well he says he was out of his head
when he did it, and stays away again."

Then, too, Uncle John snatched an evening from his law
papers, and brought his stately wife, whom Kitty regarded with
a certain awe, eying with respect her heavy satins and fine laces,
admiring her large, red-brown eyes, and speculating much on
the prophetic significance of the " widow's peak" of dark auburn
hair which grew so low down on her smooth, broad forehead.
They came but seldom, except on formal invitation ; for Aunt
Mary belonged to a family of rich Scotch brewers with Presby-
terian views, who rather looked down on Methodists, and Uncle
John went with her to church, although, to his own great sur-
prise and somewhat scornful amusement, he had recently been
notified of his election as one of the vestrymen of tjie solitary
Episcopalian church of the city. He was serving his term, too,
in the State Assembly, and was much occupied and working
hard, being already conscious of failing health and the necessity
of making betimes all possible provision for the little lads, Kitty's
favorite cousins.

In addition to this gathering there was always a church tea-
party in the course of each winter after the revival a large
, one, when Mrs. Danforth filled her square parlor and her long

1 8 84.] KA THARINE. 387

sitting-room, determined, as she said, " to get it all over at once,
and done with." Those were great occasions to Kitty, both in
preparation and in actual occurrence. They involved the labor
of days, during which the kitchen was full of the stoning of rai-
sins, the beating of eggs, the application of frosting, the boiling
of ham, and the roasting of an immense turkey. More delightful
than all, this was the period for the annual production of Mrs.
Danforth's chef-d azuvre in the culinary line her famous preserves
of whole Spitzenberg apples, cored and pared, and standing each
one a rosy-white island in a lake of transparent amber syrup.
Kitty was her father's child in her fondness for sweets and savory
viands, and was not at all of her mother's mind when she heard
her say, as sometimes she did, that for her part she could make a
satisfactory meal with nothing on the table but " a loaf of bread
and a salt-cellar." A mistress of the theory and practice of
cookery, and in the special line of preserving and pickling one
of the model housewives of her generation, she yet regarded it,
on ordinary occasions, rather more in the light of a necessary
but deplorable concession to man's weakness than was altogether
desirable. But when the " members " and the minister were
coming she spared neither labor, expense, nor skill to make the
occasion notable.

On this snowy February afternoon, the mid-day meal having
been despatched with less than usual ceremony, and Kitty's hair
rebraided and tied with her Sunday ribbons of brown lute-string,
she had donned her blue merino and her dainty bib apron of
dotted Swiss, and by two o'clock was standing at the parlor
window watching for the first arrivals. There was no danger
of any failures, although the air was still thick with falling
flakes, and the front steps rapidly piled up again with the dry,
white powder after each application of Hannah's untiring broom.
Mrs. Danforth was still in her chamber, putting the finishing
touches to her toilette of dove-colored cashmere with collar and
cuffs of " real thread," but Aunt Rebecca had just come down in
striped silk, and the ugly head-dress of black lace and purple
ribbons which she preferred, as more youthful than a cap, and
serving equally well the purpose of hiding her rapidly thinning
hair. She came and sat down in one corner of the long hair-
cloth sofa, opposite the mahogany bookcase, with glass doors
and thin, spindling legs, which stood beside the mantel-piece, and
at once unfolded the velvet slipper she was embroidering with
steel beads.

"You'd better get your sampler, Kitty," she advised, "and

388 KA THARINE. [June,

try to be a good girl this afternoon. Speak when you are spoken
to, but don't keep asking questions."

" Father says," replied Kitty, turning round from the window,
" that little girls would never learn anything if they didn't ask
questions."

" They should choose the right time and place for them,
though," said her aunt, " as Paul told the women in his letter to
the Corinthians."

"How was that?"

" Why, if they want to learn anything, he tells them to keep
silence in the churches and ask their husbands about it at home."

" In our church," objected Kitty, " the women talk whenever
they want to, except in sermon time. And if you had waited to
ask your husband about things you wouldn't know anything yet."

"Oh! well," said Aunt Rebecca, laughing, "I don't always
agree with Paul. That is one of the places where we differ.
Wheiryou are alone with us it is in order for you to ask as many
questions as we can answer, but when company comes they will
prefer talking to each other. Run to the door, Kitty ! There
is Mrs. Deyo. She is always the first-comer. It is only half-
past two, and Eliza not down-stairs yet ! "

The room rapidly filled up with ladies, who, after going up
into the spare chamber to lay off their wraps and put on the caps
which they had brought neatly pinned up in handkerchiefs, came
and sat down in cheerful, chatty groups, retailing household gos-
sip such as women love, while their hands were busy with their
sewing. A late-comer brought a scrap of news, gleaned, she
said, from the new Advocate and Journal, that came while she was
tying her bonnet, which caused some living comment. A former
minister, whose pastoral term had not long expired, had seceded
from the Methodist ranks and joined the Baptists, by whom he
had been warmly welcomed and promptly installed in a promi-
nent and wealthy New York church.

"So Tom Armiton is gone at last!" had been Mrs. Dan-
forth's exclamation. " I knew he was uneasy, and I suspected
he had a hankering after the loaves and fishes."

" Come, come, now, Sister Danforth," wheezed fat Mrs. Deyo
in her asthmatic voice, " we must be charitable to hevery-
body. Brother h' Armiton 'ad 'is doubts about hinfant baptism
these many years. 'E told me so when I wanted 'im to sprinkle
my Tommy when 'e was down with scarlet fever."

" There are always plenty of reasons when uneasy people
want to make a move," said .Aunt Polly Gould ; "and this time

1884.] KATHARINE. 389

the rolling- stone will gather more moss than if it had stayed
where the Lord put it in the first place."

" It does seem a pity," chimed in another, " that there should
be so many different churches. We all want our liberty, but
we can't take it more than once without scandalizing- all our
neighbors. It was a long time before I could make up my mind
to join anywhere, just on that account."

Here conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the
minister's wife. She apologized for her tardy advent by a hu-
morous and yet pathetic account of her day's labor in her under-
ground railway office. A thorough-going abolitionist in the
days when to be so was not to court popularity, her kitchen,
wherever temporarily lodged by the itinerating system, had long
been known as a place of rest and refreshment for runaway
slaves on their journey to the Northern frontier. She was a
heavy woman, in the neighborhood of forty, with a muddy com-
plexion, cheeks that promised to be baggy and unpleasant in
later years, black, piercing eyes, and square, uncompromising
jaws. She had lodged a whole family this time, she said father,
mother, and a pickaninny.

" Not a whole family, either," she added, " for the poor things
left two more in l ole Virginny.' Left 'em with a Methodist
class-leader, too. If the Lord don't take vengeance on this sort
of thing pretty soon I'm all out in my calculations. And if the
next General Conference doesn't cut all connection with the
Methodist Church South, why, I know two people who will cut
their connection with it in very short order."

A look ran round the circle at this revolutionary announce-
ment.

"Which way will they go in that case?" asked Mrs. Dan-
forth. " Follow Tom x\rmiton to the Baptists, or strike out a
line of their own ? "

" So he's gone, has he ? " responded Mrs. Norton " wallow-
ing back into the mire of ordinances ! No, no meddling with
forms and ceremonies for me. I was brought up to believe,
with good old John Wesley, that slavery is the sum of all vil-
lanies, and the Baptists are as deep in that mud as the Metho-
dist Episcopalians are in the mire. There are more ways than
one to climb out of a ditch."

Kitty had been sitting, deeply interested, at Mrs. Norton's
knee. She did not admire her she had, in fact, one of her in-
stinctive half-aversions for her but she liked her graphic way
of describing a situation, and had a profound respect for her

3QO KATHARINE. [June,.

charity toward the slaves. She got up now to admit the minis-
ter himself, a tall, thin, stooping man, with a high but narrow
forehead and mild eyes, whom Kitty was beginning to be fond
of. He came earlier than the other men, whose business de-
tained them until the supper-hour, and brought his only son, a
lad some three or four years older than Kitty, who had now
passed her tenth birthday. Richard, a well-grown, rather sullen-
looking, but intelligent lad, in a blue roundabout and gray trou-
sers, immediately adjourned, on the little girl's invitation, to the
kitchen, where she was to keep the biscuits from burning while
Hannah laid the tables in the dining-room. He and Kitty were
fast getting to be friends ; for, his reading and other pleasures
being greatly curtailed and otherwise interfered with at home,
he had of late fallen into the habit of frequently dropping in at
Mr. Danforth's, where books were more plenty, and the new
magazine issued by the great Methodist publishing-house, full of
wood-cuts and secular reading, came regularly every month.

" Richard," Kitty said to him as they stood by the kitchen-
window looking at the snow piling up in the yard, " how kind
your mother is to those poor black people ! "

But Richard was by no means so sympathetic as might have
been expected.

" Yes," he said shortly, " she is so kind that I sometimes
wish my father and I were runaway niggers. There will be a
runaway of another sort some of these days, if she don't look
out."

And then, his cloudy eyes brightening at the sight of Kitty's
astonished face, " See here, Kitty," said he, drawing a memoran-
dum-book from his pocket, " I'll show you a picture I made of
the people she had in the kitchen this morning. They are a
sorry lot, and I'm glad our folks do what they can for them."

The sketch was a spirited one, and Kitty examined it with a
pleased and respectful admiration which soon smoothed the
boy's ruffled plumage.

" I don't mean all I said just now," he went on. " I think my
mother is an excellent woman."

" Why, of course," said Kitty. " Everybody's mother is good.
And I heard father say that no minister's wife had done so much
for the poor of the neighborhood. And then think of the slaves
and what she does for them ! "

But here again she had touched the wrong chord.

" Kitty," said the boy, "my mother adores slaves out of pure
perversity. When they belong to other people she pities them

1 884.] KA THARINE. 3QI

immensely. But she is a born slave-holder herself. She rules
my father with a rod of iron. I go out-doors and swear when I
can't stand any longer the sight of the way she imposes on him.
I told him this afternoon that if it were not for him I would cut
my stick and be off. The poor man had to come out of his
study to-day to sew the buttons on his shirt before he could put
it on ; and as for mine "

He stopped short again, reading the result of his revelations
so unmistakably in Kitty's expanding eyes that the touch of his
mother in him which made him so keen a critic of her faults, and
which included a sense of the humorous side of things even
quicker than her own, brought him to a laughing pause.

" You think I'm a nice boy, don't you ? " said he. " Ah ! well,
I'm very fond of my mother, all the same, and I know that little
mouth of yours can shut close over what I say to you. If you
will sit up there on the table by the window I'll make a picture
of you in that pretty white apron."

This occupation busied them until tea-time, and Richard,
whose candor was less indiscriminate than Kitty's and reserved
for her alone, took her yet farther into his confidence.

"I am going away next year," he said, "to my father's
brother, who is a doctor and lives near Boston. I have made up
my mind to be a surgeon. Mother wants me to be a minister,
but I hate the very thought, and Uncle Dick, who has no child-
ren, has offered to take me in hand. One of these days I shall
come back here and see whether you look like this still." And
he held up what Mrs. Danforth, coming out just then to speak
to Hannah, thought a capital likeness. She asked for it, but
Richard put it in his pocket.

" Some day," he said, " I will make another, but this one I
will keep."

There were two tables to-night, each running the whole
length of the dining-room. At the head of one presided Mrs.
Danforth behind the tea-service ; at the other was Aunt Re-
becca with a steaming coffee-urn beside her. Opposite her sat
Mr. Danforth with Mrs. Norton at his right, and the minister
occupied the foot of Mrs. Danforth's table. Kitty passed up
and down with a tray, helping Hannah to wait on the guests.

" Tea or coffee ? " she asked in a soft little voice at Mrs. Nor-
ton's elbow as soon as the bustle of taking seats after the bless-
ing invoked by the minister was fairly over. That lady had been
sniffing with a displeased air from the moment of her entrance
into the room. Now she said, rather crossly :

392 KATHARINE. [June,

. "I never drink intoxicating drinks. Bring me a cup of tea."

Mr. Danforth lifted his eyebrows.

" That sounds mysterious, Sister Norton," said he. " Sup-
pose you tell us what it means while Kitty goes for your tea
and Sister Livingston's coffee. We call ourselves temperance
people here."

" I was blind myself once," was the reply. "I could no more
get along without my strong coffee, twice every day, than any
other drunkard can without his favorite dram. It is simply poi-
son to the nerves. I have never allowed an ounce of the stuff in
my house since I made up my mind about it, and I preach a cru-
sade against it wherever we go."

"And Brother Norton?" inquired Mrs. Livingston, who was
quietly stirring sugar into her cup of the denounced beverage.
' I thought he seemed to enjoy it greatly when I offered him
some the other day."

Mrs. Norton's forehead contracted and her square jaws set
close.

" There are many people in this world," she said, " who can't
be trusted to know what is good for them, no matter how often
it is pointed but."

Kitty, whose quick ears had caught the last remarks, and
whose mind was still full of Richard's disclosures, ran off with-
out further delay to Aunt Rebecca, from whom she presently
brought the cup of coffee, which she set down, unasked, at the
minister's elbow, receiving from him in return one of those
patient smiles which were the secret of her fondness for the
good man.

"I suppose you want coffee too, Richard?" she said, coming
last of all to her friend. " I didn't ask your father, but just took
it to him."

The boy laughed. "Well done, Kitty," said he; "you are
as quick to take a hint as my mother herself. And now fetch
your own, and take this empty place beside mine."

Mrs. Norton came behind her husband's chair when supper
ended. He had not yet risen, and his half-filled cup was in his
hand.

" At your dram again, Mark Norton ! " she said in a hard
tone, audible to all who stood near.

Her husband emptied and set down his cup. Then he rose
and said in his gentle way :

" My dear, I took what was given me and asked no questions
as I always do."

1884.] KATHARINE. 393

" There is always a devil on hand to supply folks who think
that a good excuse," she retorted, brushing by in a temper
already ruffled by the good-humored badinage with which her
host had declined her advice on the same subject.

CHAPTER IV.

MARK NORTON, as he called himself, refusing the customary
title of reverend on the same principle by which he denied that
of saint to the apostles and evangelists, was, if not a philosopher,
at least a man who knew how to take the minor annoyances of
life philosophically. Opinions differ as to what annoyances are
minor. Many men in his position, with a wife whose domineer-
ing temper was so little under control that she either could not
or would not hinder its display on every provocation, would
have been permanently soured and rendered profoundly un-
happy. But these two had come together in early youth, and
had cemented the tie of a sincere affection by an almost simulta-
neous adoption of the religious tenets of .the sect in which each
had been reared. At bottom, on all matters of principle and con-
viction they were one ; but the man, in reality the stronger
nature, though his strength perfected itself in what seemed weak-
ness, had long ago resolved to accommodate himself to the
whims and wilfulness which, to his mind, were only the rough
husk that hid a really kind and honest heart. In the early years
of marriage he had, it is true, recognized that one of the duties
he owed his wife was that of trying to induce her to curb her
temper and master her own will ; but she, with all a woman's
armory at the service of her selfishness, had so plied him, now
with cajoleries, now with tears, now with improvised attacks of
illness whenever she was thwarted, that he had at last abandoned
the struggle altogether. Thereafter he took his religion more
than ever on its purely spiritual side, and was in good earnest
trying to follow the divine Model in the path of abnegation and
self-denial. There were two ways of considering the result on
him. To his son, who held from both his parents, but was dyed
most deeply by his mother, it seemed altogether deplorable, and
growing more so as the years went on. He loved his father, but
he also pitied and half-contemned the weakness that always
yielded, not as yet recognizing the strength that would have
endured martyrdom for a conscientious scruple, and daily en-
dured its domestic counterpart for the sake of what he had in the
end accepted as. salutary discipline. He was like a first-growth

394 KATHARINE. [June,

pine in one of our northern forests, which, crowded on all sides
at the root, strikes deep and springs up slender and straight, its
green head out-topping all its fellows.

But this was in the spiritual and moral region. For the rest,
his reading was narrow, and so, too, were the limits of his intellec-
tual horizon two circumstances which, combined with his other
qualities, fitted him eminently well for the profession he had
chosen, and insured his remaining, if not in his present position,
at least in one not fundamentally unlike it. Two things he held,
as he believed, with equal firmness, -but only one of them had a
radical basis in his mind and a moulding influence on his charac-
ter. That germinating and forceful power was his faith in the
incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Eternal Son of the eter-
nal Father, by means of which he had entered into that personal
relation with him which is the salt that keeps sweet many a soul
that goes through life unconsciously blinded by circumstance and
training to what is involved in that belief as the oak is in the
acorn. He would have told you also, if asked, that he believed
in the verbal, literal inspiration of the Scriptures, and in the
absolute sufficiency of the enlightened private judgment as their
sole necessary interpreter. In reality he did not thus believe ;
no man ever did. He also " differed with Paul," and had his
own opinion about Peter, using his private judgment, not merely
as a staff for his own support, but as a standard by which to
measure, and a rod by which to correct, the deviations of his
fellows, with an innocent unconsciousness of the incongruity be-
tween his theory of inspiration and his theory of interpretation
from which a natural logic or a sense of humor, had he possessed
either, might have saved him. But all orthodox Protestants of
that elder generation which is fast passing, leaving behind it so
faint an intellectual trace, supposed themselves firmly convinced
of both those affirmations. The mind of man, however, has been
so made that two radically contradictory opinions on matters of
fundamental importance cannot really share it. One of them
yields in practice and is quietly ignored, or else they threaten to
tear it in twain, and so wake up the soul in which they war to a
sense of fatal incongruity. What usually happened in this case
was an unfruitful compromise in which belief weakened while
individualism grew strong if growth be not altogether an inapt
figure for the disintegrating and barren process which counter,
feits liberty at the start, but in the end reveals itself as intellec-
tual and social death. And yet, as what makes the calamity of
heresy in every case of so long life is the amount of truth it car-

1 884.] KA THARINE. 395

ries with it from the primitive source, there were upright souls
who drew their own nourishment from the sap of divine truth
which lingered in the branch after the axe of revolt had severed
it from the parent stem, as a bud expands in a vase of water and
yet never reaches the full and sweet maturity of reproduction.

That is what had taken place in Mark Norton, whose mind
was at this time busy meditating another of those divisions which,
if divine truth propagated itself like a sponge, by repeated sec-
tions, would by this time have regenerated the face of the globe.
Like his wife, he had a horror of negro slavery, which had repeat
edly found voice in a protest against prolonged corporate union
with unrepentant slave-holders. He had met with so many
rebuffs from his superiors in the Methodist hierarchy that he
had also begun to question the theory and practice of church
government obtaining in that body, and was fast finding the yoke
too galling for his shoulders. To-night conversation, after trick-
ling into numerous side-channels, poured its full volume into this
one, started at first by an allusion to the late secession from the
Methodist ranks, and then accelerated by an item, which the
minister himself read out from an evening paper, concerning the
progress of Puseyism in England and the exodus to Rome of
a number of Anglican clergymen. As he finished, some one
asked him how he accounted for such facts in an age so en-
lightened and so well persuaded of the corruption of that mother
of iniquities.

" To my mind, Brother Harrison," he answered, " the church
which these men are leaving is not less corrupt in principle than
the one to which they are going ; and if it is less corrupt in prac-
tice, that is due to the moral pressure exerted on it by the dis
senting bodies. Rome itself, in these days of triumphant Pro-
testantism, is doubtless more pure outwardly than in former
times."

" That is just like Mark ! " interrupted his wife ; " he can't say
a good, hearty word of fault-finding even with the Scarlet Wc-
man. Pure, indeed, with Father Mike's ear at one hole in the
confessional and daughter Biddy's mouth at the other ! For my
part, if I could shut up all the rum-shops, free all the slaves, and
drive every Romish priest out of the country, I should begin to
think the millennium was at hand."

" I said outwardly pure, my dear," responded her long-suf-
fering spouse. " As to the English Church, it was the unwilling
mother of our own. It erred by not casting off every rag of
popery in the outset, and ours has done the same. What need

356 KATHARINE. [June,

have we of bishops when we all belong to the royal priest-
hood?"

" Well," said Mr. Danforth, on whose knee Kitty had, as usual,
perched herself, "John Wesley found that church good enough
to live and die in, and I sometimes wish the rest of us had fol-
lowed his example. The thing is done and over now, and I find
myself well enough off where I am. But I don't want to see any
more schisms ; there are more than plenty now."

" I was saying that this afternoon," said a woman's voice at
his elbow. " I declare, when I was first converted, I would have
gone into my poor old mother's church, if there had been one in
the town. But there wasn't, and so I joined the Methodists be-
cause they were the handiest. But I have a great deal of sym-
pathy for Brother Armiton."

" That is pretty much the history of all of us, I suppose," re-
joined the minister. " Our hearts are warm then, and the easiest
thing is to follow our friends without looking too close at the
road they are taking. Afterwards we stumble over a good
many stones of offence as we go along. For my part, I find the
papacy the root and ground of error, because it puts the word
of man in the place of the Word of God, and I find popery living
and thriving in our own hierarchy to an extent which to me is
growing intolerable."

" But, man," objected Moses Hicks, who had just sold out
his grocery as a preliminary step to removing, with his wife and
young family, into the neighborhood of the theological school
where he proposed to fit himself for the ministry, " there must
be some rule and order in the church of God. We cannot all
preach, we cannot all ordain. A head is needed for every body."

" A blockhead is better than none for some folks," sweetly
remarked Mrs. Norton. " A head that ordains slave-holders and
lives by the price of flesh and blood might as well be cut off
and done with."

" For my part," said her husband, "it is not so much what a
hierarchy does that I object to, but the very fact of its existence.
As to ordination, I remember the time when I thought my right
to preach the Gospel had been given me by Bishop Ames. To-
day I should think my license very worthless, if that were the
root of it."

" See here, Brother Norton," said Mr. Danforth, " neither you
nor I believe that God appointed the present legislature, nor
that every law they may pass this winter is certain to be strictly
binding on the conscience. Yet both of us, being good citizens,

1884.] KATHARINE. 397

propose to obey them. To my mind there is the same necessity
of law and order, a judge and an executive on one hand and
obedience on the other, in religious matters as in the affairs of
state."

" If Luther had been of your mind," replied Mr. Norton, " we
should have had no Reformation. I hear that argument every
year at Conference^ and I see slavery spreading like a upas-tree
and no protest made, because Methodism is growing fat and
comfortable under the shadow of it."

" Oh ! well," said Moses Hicks, " aren't you putting it a little
too strong? When things come to such a pass of corruption
as Luther found them in, it is time to make a move. But you
don't mean to assert anything like that of our communion. You
don't stand alone ; we all know what is in the air. But I confess
I understand better men who act like Armiton, because they
stick at doctrines, than people like you, who, as I understand it,
are as firmly a Methodist in your belief as on the day you were
ordained."

" Yes ; but as I find myself bound in conscience to refuse fel-
lowship with open sinners who justify their sin, so I must also
protest against all authority except that of God's written
Word."

" What do you say to that Word when it tells you the church
is the pillar and ground of truth? "asked Kitty's father. The
little girl had been following the conversation, which had taken
a turn new in her experience, with an interest doubtless greater
than her comprehension ; but Richard, who had been standing
near the astral lamp, looking at some engravings in a magazine,
came up now, and, touching her on the shoulder, proposed an
adjournment to the dining-roorn.

" How sick I am of all that endless talk which leads to no-
thing ! " he said when they had seated themselves, with Kitty's
box of dominoes between them. "You don't hear so much of
it, I suppose, for you actually looked interested. As for me, I
am almost washed away in the constant flood of it that goes on
at home."

" No," said Kitty, " our folks talk about religion, but not that
way. When all the children were getting converted this last
revival father said a good deal to me about my soul. I would
like to join the church, but I don't feel as the rest do, and they
won't have me."

" The minister's son and the deacon's daughter are the black
sheep of the flock," said Richard, laughing. " I don't exactly

398 KATHARINE. [June,

know how they account for it in my case, but your trouble,
everybody agrees, is that you read too much trash and have
your own way more than is good for you."

" I didn't understand all they were saying to-night," said
Kitty, " but I don't see why there should be so many churches."

" What I don't see," replied the boy, with sudden energy, " is
why there should be any. My father talks about the Word of
God ; how does he know the Bible is the Word of God at all? "

" Because it sounds true, I suppose," said Kitty. " That is
how I know it."

Richard laughed.

" You have good ears," he said. " Everything sounds true
to you that your parents tell you with a sober face."

" No, it don't," answered Kitty. " At least, of course I be-
lieve all they say, but all things don't sound the same way. It
is like what they give you to eat at your meals. It is all good,
but you like some things better than others. Some seem to be-
long to me and I never forget them, but others go out of my
mind as fast as they go in. What did your father mean to-night
about Rome and popery ? "

" The Catholic Church," replied the boy. " And that, they
all agree, was the first one, and yet it is so bad that they never
think of going back to it."

" I was in one once," said Kitty, " when I was very little."

" I wonder at that. Our folks would as soon see me fall into
the river as go into a church of that sort."

" So would ours, I suppose. One of our hired girls took
me, and they sent her away. I liked it better than ours. The
girl told me all Protestants were heathen. I never forgot
that."

".It sounded true, did it?" said Richard, with a laugh.
" Come, let us have a game and leave the church question to our
elders and betters. You will have to teach me, for wickedness
of this sort isn't allowed in our house."

They were deep in their play when the bustle of dispersion
began in the other room, and did not notice Richard's mother
until she stood behind them. A little pack of cards, belonging to
the childish game known in those days as " Doctor Busby," lay-
face downwards on the table, and a line of dominoes stretched be-
tween the silent players. To the little girl's dismay, a heavy
hand suddenly scattered the pieces on the floor, and then caught
up the cards, while its mate administered to her partner's ear a
sudden cuff which brought him to his feet with an execration,

1 884.] KA THARINE. 399

and a face so like that bent upon him that Kitty felt herself turn
cold. Her cards went with a toss into the open stove.

" That is the way I serve the devil's bible wherever I find it,"
said the angry woman. " As for you, my fine fellow, I'll give
you a lesson on gambling to-morrow morning."

There were now two or three spectators of this scene.

" What does this mean, Kitty ? " asked Mr. Danforth, whom
the sound of the blow and the cry the little girl had uttered as
it fell had brought to her side without delay.

" I don't know, father," she answered with a sob. " We were
playing dominoes when she came in and threw my ' Doctor
Busby ' cards into the fire."

Mr. Danforth turned upon his guest a look in which strong
impatience struggled hard with courtesy.

" I don't wonder," she said in answer to it, " that you pray in
vain for this child's conversion. What business have gambling
games in the house of a Christian ? "

" This passes belief, woman," he retorted, his anger rising to
a level with her own. " When I want advice about my child it
is not at your hands I shall seek it."

" James," begged his wife, laying her hand on his arm, " for
pity's sake avoid a squabble before these people. They will all
be coming in here, if they hear your voice. Sister Norton, pray
go back into the parlor ; your husband is about to lead in prayer.
I will attend to these children."

Her voice, quiet and cold, brought her guest to a sense of ill-
behavior which sobered her at once. She made a brief apology
for her hasty zeal, and the party broke up without more than
half a dozen becoming aware of the unpleasant scene. Mr. Dan-
forth came back into the parlor with a laugh after turning the
key upon the last departure.

" Well, mother," said he, " I don't wonder that poor fellow is
tired of bishops. He has all the pastoral crook he needs besicfb
his own fire."

" She will have trouble with that boy, I fear," responded his
wife. " He is her very spirit and image."

TO BE CONTINUED.

400 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS UNDERSTOOD BY [June,

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS UNDERSTOOD BY THE
" EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE."

WE are warned in the Proverbs of Solomon that though we
should bray a fool in a mortar his folly would not be taken from
him ; also that the wicked hardens his face, whereas the right-
eous man corrects his ways. When, therefore, we find people
with whom we have to deal obstinately reiterating absurdities,
failing to recognize facts and reasons plainly presented to them,
refusing to correct false statements, we naturally are led to
conclude that either they are intellectually deficient and that
no amount of braying will give clearness to their minds, or that
they are morally perverse and cannot be made, by any means
at our command, to acknowledge outwardly what they really
know and understand.

Now, in spite of a common preference the other way, it is
really better that a man shoulol be considered a fool than a knave,
as he is responsible for the latter condition, but not for the for-
mer. It is, therefore, more charitable to ascribe irrelevancy,
misstatements, and evasions in our opponents to mental rather
than to moral deficiency, and it becomes our duty to follow this
course as far as possible. In the case, therefore, of an opposition
of the sort above described, the first of the two proverbs men-
tioned is our principal discouragement, though sometimes we
cannot avoid applying the latter. Their joint effect is certainly
very great in some cases ; still, it is seldom well to let ourselves
be entirely overcome by them.

These remarks are suggested by a document entitled a
Protest of the Evangelical Alliance of the United States, and direct-
ed against the bills which have been introduced in the Legisla-
ture of this State to secure freedom of worship for the inmates of
public institutions. This protest has, we regret to say, the char-
acteristics which suggest in the mind of the reader the painful
alternative of which we have just been speaking. It is not
worth while to bring these out in full ; we have to expect them
as a matter of course in all the productions of those professing
the peculiar style of religion enjoyed by the authors of this pam-
phlet. A couple of instances, found side by side, may, however,
be given. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is stupidly spoken
of as a branch, a " religio-political lay affiliation," of the Jesuits,

1884.] THE "EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE." 40 1

and the terrible fact is brought out that the popes have actually
given them indulgences. In this last there is evidence of that
something worse than stupidity which we cannot always shut
our eyes to. These men who sign their names to this document
know very well that an indulgence is not a permission to sin,
or anything sinful at all ; notwithstanding their intellectual defi-
ciencies, which we cheerfully concede, the true meaning of this
word has been too often explained for them any longer to fail
to understand it. We repeat, they understand it very well ; but
in spite of this they deliberately try to convey the idea, as dis-
tinctly as they dare to, that the society, by using indulgences,
shows itself to be an immoral and dangerous organization. In
short, they are simply here guilty of a wilful calumny, all the
more cowardly because only implied.

But we cannot waste time over points such as these. Pro-
testants of the type which the authors of this protest represent
would not be themselves if they were not continually making
ludicrous mistakes in history, and serving up threadbare slan-
ders, once attributable to ignorance, but now no longer so, over
and over again. We propose at present simply to call attention
to their general muddle- headedness on the abstract subject of
freedom of worship, which is the main point at issue ; and here
we really believe that, though they no doubt are somewhat actu-
ated by prejudice and malice, they are to a great extent excusable
by the fact, only too evident, that they have very dim and cor.
fused ideas of what they are talking about.

Of course they do not in their pamphlet define religious
liberty, of which they profess to be the enlightened champions
against these horrible Romanists who are seeking to undermine
this glorious inheritance bequeathed to us by the founders of our
nation. Nemo dat quod non habet ; having no clear definition of
the term in their own minds, they cannot, in the nature of things,
undertake to give one to others. We are obliged, therefore, to
bring out the vague notion which it suits their present purposes
to entertain into distinct shape for them. We shall have to
deduce it from the opposition which they make to our request
that such of our people as have the misfortune to come partly
under their control shall be furnished, to some limited extent at
least, with the ordinances of that religion which they prefer.

Their idea, then, of freedom of religion is simply got at by
changing one little word into another. Freedom of religion,
with them, means freedom from religion. It means keeping
people from its influence as much as possible, keeping them in

. VOL. xxxix. 26

402 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS UNDERSTOOD BY [June,

the dark about what it teaches, not allowing it to speak for itself
or to present its own claims. Instead of -the idea entertained by
the founders of our republic namely, that of giving all reli-
gions a fair field and no favor their notion of a broad and
comprehensive religious toleration is to constitute themselves
into a tribunal to decide what are the essentials of religion, to
force all creeds to drop their distinctive features and fit them-
selves into this Procrustes' bed prepared for them.

It must not, however, be supposed that this plan of action is
the one which they at heart prefer. What they desire, and will
always carry out as far as they are allowed, is to force, by fair-
means or foul, their own peculiar tenets on every one whom
they can reach, and specially on the children of Catholic parents. '
Like the scribes and Pharisees of the time of our Lord, they
go round about the sea and the land to make even one prose-
lyte, and to make him well, the rest of the text is sufficiently
familiar. Accordingly, they establish soup-schools in every
Catholic neighborhood which they can reach ; by slanders, by
bribes, by flattery, by offers of employment, by appeals to pride
and sensuality, they drag into their net as many as possible of
those whom a straightforward policy cannot capture. They
consider that their own religion ought to be as free as the air ;
that its ministers should have unrestricted access to every one ;
that they should be not only tolerated but welcomed, and given
every facility to preach their doctrines in the midst of exclusive-
ly Catholic countries ; and here among us, when circumstances
permit, they gladly take similar liberties. Yes, they like free-
dom for themselves very well, but they do not approve of it for
us ; that is the reason for their tactics in this case. They do not
wish to enter into an open contest with us, and will not risk it
if it can be avoided. So if we can only be bound hand and foot
they are willing to give up part of their own liberty to accom-
plish so desirable an end. It suits their ignorant prejudice far
better to let the world lapse into atheism than to have it retain the
Catholic faith. We say "ignorant prejudice" advisedly; for
there is not one of these men who knows what the system which
he calls " Romanism " really is, or who is 'willing to take the
slightest trouble to inform himself reliably with regard to it.

This is the whole moving spirit of their opposition to the real
religious liberty contemplated by the framers of our national
Constitution. To extirpate the Catholic religion ; to prevent
its voice being heard, even by its own adherents this is the sum
total of what they call religious freedom ; and for the realization

1884.] THE "EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE" 403

of it they are willing, if need be, that the name of Christ nay,
more, even that of their own sect should be forgotten by man-
kind.

But they do not expect to have to make so great a sacrifice
for their object. They know Avell enough that if what they call
a " non-sectarian " service is introduced into the public institu-
tions of the state, that service will in fact be distinctively and
positively Protestant to all intents and purposes. It will not
favor Methodists against Presbyterians, or one set of Baptists
against another ; but it will, by conveying the idea that the
essence of religion consists in reading the Bible and listening to
extempore effusions which go by the name of prayer, make the
Catholic religion seem something altogether strange and foreign,
obliterate its memory altogether from the hearts of its children,
and dispose them to fall into the hands of the first anti-Catholic
preacher after all, it does not so much matter which, either to
them or to us within whose influence they may subsequently
come.

It is, perhaps, hardly worth while to draw out at any length
facts so obvious as these. Still, as even Catholics themselves
are sometimes weak or inconsiderate enough to be deceived by
this " non-sectarian " cry, it may be that the above short state-
ment will not altogether fail to be of use. This non-sectarianism
is a remarkably shallow trick ; still, there are some here and there
who are not up to it.

And let it not be said that what is meant by religious freedom
is not the freedom of each religion to teach and preach its own
doctrines, and to conduct its services for its own members and
for others who may choose to attach themselves to it, but the
freedom of each individual to choose a religion for himself, and
not have any particular one forced upon him. For it is only too
obvious that the choice, on their system, is reduced to that variety
generally associated with the name of Hobson, and that a par-
ticular kind of religion, and a very poor and unsatisfactory one
into the bargain, is palmed off on the unfortunate inmates of
these " non-sectarian " institutions, with the implied insult, both
to them and to the Author of all religion worthy of the name,
that, poor as it is, it is good enough for such as they ; that pre-
ference in this matter is a luxury which those may enjoy who
are able to pay for it. But enough ; all that has been previously
said applies to this view of the case also. To prevent the pos-
sibility of the Catholic religion being adopted or retained by any
of the state's wards is the object of the whole scheme of these

404 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS UNDERSTOOD BY [June,

" Evangelical " impostors ; if they were not afraid of losing sup-
port they would come out with it at once.

It is indeed strange if any one is deceived by the mental con-
fusion under which they labor, and which they endeavor to pro-
duce in others. The only possible senses of the term religious
freedom, or freedom of worship, are, first, liberty for each re-
ligious denomination to make itself and its doctrines known ; and,
secondly, liberty for each individual to adopt or retain the one
to which, whether by study, education, or other cause whatso-
ever, he feels himself inclined. How far these liberties should in
fact be allowed is a question which every one will see must be
answered according to circumstances ; no one in the civilized
world, probably, would vote to tolerate the impure, soul-and-
body-destroying rites of pagan Rome ; and it will be generally
admitted that, when a community is of one faith, it is not un-
reasonable, though to some it may be undesirable, for it to pro-
hibit the introduction of other sects opposed to it. If it be
maintained, as in the New York Herald, quoted by the authors of
this pamphlet, that* this is a Protestant county, its proper policy
might be to exclude the Catholic Church, and the course which
they recommend would be quite rational ; only, logically, it
ought to go farther. But, unfortunately, that is not the view
taken by the Constitution of the United States, nor, as we be-
lieve, that entertained by the majority of the fair-minded Ame-
rican people. The genuine American idea has always been to
iet every religion have fair play, and get and keep all the adhe-
rents it can without resorting to violent or tyrannical means.
The country was in its prevailing sentiment Protestant certainly
.at the start, and still remains so ; but nothing was said by the
great men who established its independence and its government
against immigrants who should come here retaining their Ca-
tholic faith and transmitting it to their children, or against the
descendants of Protestant ancestors returning to the religion
which those ancestors abandoned, should they choose to do so,
and thus making the country similarly Catholic, should their
numbers suffice.

The whole case, then, can be stated in a few words ; it can
all be put in a nutshell. Religious liberty, that liberty which
we have inherited from those who gave us our national indepen-
dence, does not consist, as our " Evangelical " brethren seem to
imagine, in a guarantee that Protestantism shall always prevail
here and Catholicity be required to apologize for its existence ;
nor does it mean that Americans shall always be restricted to the

1884.] THE "EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE" 40$

reading of the Bible, and listening to comments thereon by Pro-
testant ministers, as a means of arriving at religious truth. No ;
it means that all religions shall have free exercise and equal
rights, and that no one shall be prevented by the action of the
state from acquainting himself with or embracing any one
of them which he shall choose. " Let truth and falsehood
grapple ; who ever knew truth to be worsted in a fair field ? "
This was the maxim of the founders of our nation ; this is all
that we ask ; this is what our opponents fear and shrink from.
Proselyting on our part they do not really dread. Vainly will
they endeavor to show any attempt on our part to proselytize,
in any offensive sense of the word. Soup-schools and the like
are an invention of their own. Even in our academies, to which
some Protestant parents by preference send their children, the
religious convictions of all pupils are respected as much as is
possible in a professedly " sectarian " institution. In Protes-
tant establishments, similarly, we do not expect any fuller pro-
vision for our wants ; but in those which are not Protestant, but
simply American, we reasonably claim that Catholic principles
as well as Protestant ones shall be recognized ; that Catholic
wants as well as Protestant ones shall be provided for. This
is all there is in the matter ; it is as plain as a pike-staff to all
intelligent persons who are willing to see it.

We cannot conclude this brief notice without calling atten-
tion to one salient instance of the false and absurd charges made
against us by these intelligent and worthy gentlemen. They
speak of the " dogma that all marriages, however celebrated by
Christian churches or by the state, which are not made as Rome
directs, are invalid." This is probably for the most part gross
ignorance, though it hardly can be considered entirely so. It is,
of course, utter nonsense. We regard the immense majority of
all the Protestant marriages in this country as absolutely valid
and binding, if not entered upon by divorced persons or with
an intention excluding perpetuity. It is this last intention, un-
happily now becoming rather common, of remaining in so-called
marriage only as long as it shall suit both parties, which does,
where it exists, indeed reduce this holy state to that of concu-
binage. The statement above quoted is a good specimen of the
usual incapacity shown by Protestant bigots for correctly appre-
hending or stating a single thing about our faith or discipline,
which comes partly from inherent dulness, partly from a deter-
mination not to learn. To say that we treat " American wives
as concubines, American children as bastards," and "encourage

406 PA UL. [June,

immorality by releasing husbands and wives from their marital
obligations," is simply a stupid blunder, to take the most favora-
ble view of it.

We notice that the table " collated by Mr. Dexter A. Haw-
kins," the fallacy of which was lately shown in this magazine,*
is simply reprinted, with the remark that " it is believed no error
has been shown to exist " in it. Perhaps they may not have
seen the refutation ; no doubt they take care not to read any-
thing of the sort, if they can help it. But we fear that this is
somewhat too charitable an explanation.

PAUL.

FROM THE POLISH OF H. SIENKIEWICZ-LITWOS.

ALTHOUGH Paul was always careful to turn the lamp down,
the light would sometim'es wake me from my sleep, and I could
see the little fellow bent over his books, hard at work studying,
until two or three o'clock in the morning. I could hear his low,
sleepy voice as he softly repeated his Latin and Greek declen-
sions to himself. His face would be pale with fatigue and he
could scarcely keep his eyes open. Yet when I called him to
put out the light and come to bed he would answer : " But,
Herr Stanislas, I don't know my lessons yet."

From five o'clock to eight, and then after supper from ten
until midnight, I used to go over his lessons and exercises with
him, and never went to bed until I was sure that he was well
prepared for his recitations in school next day. I will confess
that I thought then, and still think, that his work was made alto-
gether too hard for him. He had so many lessons every day
that by the time he had made himself perfect in the last he had
forgotten all about the first, and so must go over them all again.
Then the Latin, Greek, Slav, and Russian languages, which, in
a school managed on the Russian system, the pupils must learn
in addition to the ordinary branches taught children, made a
regular chaos in his brain. He was given so much more than

* THE CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1884,

1884.] PAUL. 407

he could digest that it produced a sort of mental dyspepsia.
So it often happened that the more he studied the less he could
grasp ; and he became so confused that he could not sleep.
Perhaps I ought not to have allowed him to strain at work so
much beyond his powers. But then what could I do? If he
did not know his lessons he would be expelled from the school,
and that would have been a terrible blow to his mother, Madame
Adelaide. She was a widow, and Paul and his little sister Lola
were her only children ; and she built all her hopes of the future
on the success of her boy.

In reality I could see that he had a very poor prospect of
success. Excessive study and a sedentary mode of life were
rapidly undermining 'his strength. He should have taken a
great deal more exercise than he did ride, walk, and play in the
open air. But where could he find opportunity for such things?
Every moment of the time that his health demanded should be
spent in physical exercise was taken up by his studies. It used
to make me sad to see how his shoulders trembled under the
weight of his knapsack full of books when he started for school
in the morning. But I could not interfere. I was accused, as it
was, of spoiling the boy and encouraging him in idleness. They
said one could easily see from his recitations "that he did not
study enough at home ; that his bad Russian accent was, in fact,
my fault. These things pained me, for no one knew half so well
as I how hard Paul studied and how faithfully I tried to help
him.

His parts were not above the average, but for perseverance
and strength of character, in spite of his gentleness, I never saw
his equal among children of his age. The great mainspring of
his life was a passionate love for his mother. He had been told
that her health was so delicate that the grief she would feel if
he failed in his studies might easily bring on her a sickness that
could prove fatal. ' And so he wore himself out, slaving away at
his books night after night, to prevent such a terrible catas-
trophe. When he received a low mark for a poor recitation he
often could not keep from crying. But it never occurred to his
teachers to ask the reason of these tears, or to learn how terri-
ble a responsibility he felt at such a time. What did they care
about that ? It was no business of theirs. He had a bad Rus-
sian accent that was all.

As for me, I did not pet or coddle him. But I understood
him better than the others, so instead of scolding him when he
made a mistake I tried to comfort him. Such an idea never oc-

408 PAUL. [June,

curred to them. To be kind to a boy because he had blundered
in his lessons why, it was ridiculous ! But I have suffered my-
self ; I have endured pain, have been misunderstood, have but
oblivion swallow the past ! When I think of it I could grind my
teeth for rage, only that doesn't help it any. Nothing does any
good for that. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth while even to
live. This may be the reason why I feel the sorrows of other
people. I can sympathize with them. When I was Paul's age
I had at least good health and plenty of amusement ; my lungs
had not begun to trouble me then. To be sure I was often
beaten, but I forgot that as soon as I ceased to feel the pain.
But he had a much sadder boyhood than I. It often seemed to
me as if his soul were laid on an anvil and hammered at day
after day. So my pupil was a thoughtful, sorrowful little man,
generally tired in mind and body, and literally bowed down un-
der the weight of his books. I am a professor myself, and I don't
know what would become of me if I were to lose my faith in the
value of study and the good that comes of it. Only study is
made too serious a thing for children nowadays.

He had been my pupil for more than six years at first at
Zalesina, his mother's place in the country, and afterwards in the
city. I had had 'time, you see, to know him well and to love him
dearly. Besides, he was the son of the woman for why should
I conceal it ? who was the dearest in the world to me. She
has not the slightest idea of this, and she never shall have, at
least as long as I live. I always remember that I am only
Stanislas Waginciewicz, an insignificant private tutor, while she
is Adelaide Tschaikowski, the daughter of a noble house. Her
rank is away above mine. But in this noisy and bustling world
of ours a man must set his heart on something ; he must love some
one. And my narrow, lonely life clings to hers like a limpet to a
rock. What difference do my feelings make to her ? I do not
ask any more of her than I do of the summer sunshine that
warms me as I sit writing this at my window. For five years I
lived under the same roof with her; when her husband died
I saw how she rose above her own grief in her love for her
children, and well, it had to be. I could no more keep from
loving her than I could keep my heart from beating. Only my
feeling is a holier sentiment than commonplace earthly love.

Paul often reminded me of her. Many times it seemed as
if she were looking out of his great eyes. He had the same
delicate features as she, the same high forehead shadowed by
heavy locks of dark hair, the same eyebrows, and, above all, the

1884.] PAUL. 409

same voice. Moreover, they had the same character, enthusias-
tic, honorable, and affectionate. They belonged to that class of
people who are capable of great self-sacrifice, and who, in this
never-ending fight with adversity which we call life, find but
little happiness, because they give themselves for others. They
are not the fittest to survive in the struggle for existence, as they
say nowadays, because they have a heart-weakness they love
too much. The Tschaikowskis had been powerful and rich, but
they had all loved too much. Like many others in unhappy
Poland, they had offered up their lives and fortunes in the cause
of their country. The greater part of their possessions had been
swept away, so that, while not in want, they were straitened in
circumstances. Paul was the last of his name. So Madame
Adelaide loved him not only as the only son of his mother, and
she a widow, but also as the person on whom the future of the
family depended.

Unhappily, she saw, with a mother's fond blindness, remark-
able abilities in him. The truth was that, while he was not at
all dull or stupid, he was only moderately endowed by nature
and developed slowly in mind and body. Under more favor-
able circumstances, in another country, he would probably have
passed his university examinations with moderate credit to him-
self and become useful in some branch of the public service.
But under the system which prevailed in the Russian schools,
unjust in the extreme towards Polish children, he was only able
to wear himself out without accomplishing anything. The dread
of his mother's disappointment was the sharpest sting in his
failures. I have seen strange things in this world of ours, but
one of the strangest was to see how this boy's strength of will,
character, legitimate ambition, and love for his mother his very
best qualities all worked together to break him down. It was a
sad anomaly.

I labored with him as if my own future depended on the
stand he took in his class, and he did his very best ; for he and I
had but one aim in all we did to please her. When he had done
well in school he would come home radiant. He would come in
on a run, and, flinging his books on the floor, would cry :

" Halloo, Herr Stanislas ! guess what I got in geography to-
day. Oh! how glad mother will be when she hears of it."

Of course I would pretend I couldn't guess, and then, running
up to me and throwing his arms around my shoulders, he would
shout in my ear :

" Five ! Yes, sir, five the very best mark a fellow can get."

4i o PAUL. [June,

And we would both be as happy as can be. He used some-
times to wonder how it would feel if he should ever get five in
everything. I remember one such happy evening, as we sat in
the dark after supper before taking up the books, he said :

" When the Christmas holidays come we will go home to dear
old Zalesina. It will snow, and we shall have to go in sleighs, and
it will be evening when we get there. But mother will be
watching for us, and she will hug me and kiss me. And by and
by, after supper, she will ask me for my report. And I I will
look just as sorry as I can for fun ; and then she will read, ' per-
fect, perfect, perfect.' O Herr Stanislas ! " And his eyes filled
with happy tears.

Instead of turning his thoughts away from this picture I let
my own imagination follow his. I, too, saw the peaceful yet
stately house lighted up in honor of our arrival ; and I saw her
her whom Paul's "perfect" would make so happy.

At such a time I used to tell him that she was more anxious
that he should grow well and strong than that he should be the
head of his class, and that he ought not to object when I told
him to take long walks and play in the open air. She used to
write me to look after her boy's health. But I became daily
more certain that the health of the scholar was the last thing
thought of in our schools. If the only trouble had been the dif-
ficulty of his studies I would have simply put him in a lower
class. But that was not it. It was the long hours of confine-
ment at his desk, the bad air he had to breathe, and the amount
of work which had to be done at home that were telling on him.
And 1 could not help him here. He felt his failures, too, very
keenly. One could see in his manner in a moment when any-
thing had gone wrong. He would come in, in a listless sort of
way, and, carefully putting his books away, would begin to study
at once.

" Did you get a bad mark to-day ? " I would ask.

" Yes, sir."

" How did it happen, my boy ? "

" I didn't know the answer to the question " or, much oftener,
61 I knew it perfectly well, but I was nervous and could not say
anything right."

And little Owitski, who was the head of Paul's class, to whom
I also gave private lessons, told me that when Paul got bad
marks it was almost always because he could not express him-
self well in Russian.

As he grew weaker physically his bad marks came oftener,

1 884.] PAUL.

arid I noticed that when he sat down to study there was some-
thing feverish and almost desperate in his diligence, and that,
while he sat quietly enough, his lips sometimes quivered and his
eyes filled with tears. His habit of night-study grew on him.
For fear that I would scold him and send him to bed if I found
it out, he would slip softly out of bed, and, without dressing him-
self, take the lamp into the outer room, where he would light it
and then devote himself to his books. He had spent a good
many cold autumn nights in that way before I found it out.
After that I always went over all his lessons the last thing before
going to bed, and assured him that he knew them all. But the
poor boy was often in that state that he didn't know whether he
knew them or not.

I discovered, too, that besides his poor success in his studies
and his failing strength he had another trouble. She had asked
me to read him some Polish history every day. One afternoon,
as I was reading him about Zolkiewski, our Polish hero, he in-
terrupted me with " So it is true, then ? They aren't all fables ?
Because "

I looked up and was shocked at the fierce and hard expres-
sion of his usually gentle face.

" Because why, my boy ? "

But for answer he burst into a fit of passionate sobs. I asked
Owitski what was the matter, but he either could not or would
not say. I could guess it, however, only too easily. A little Po-
lish nobleman in a Russian school, he must hear every day
things to cut him to the heart things contradictory to every-
thing he had been taught at home. The other Polish boys did
not brood over these insults to their unfortunate country. The
hate which every Pole hides in his heart for Russia was only
strengthened by them. But with Paul these wounds festered.
He would not complain even to me, but he felt them keenly.

The boy's conscience found itself between two masters, to
each of whom it owed obedience. And these, instead of acting in
unison, commanded contradictory things. What the one called
honorable, loyal, and noble the other stigmatized as disgraceful
and despicable. The same act was to the one patriotism, the
highest duty, to the other treason, the blackest crime. He na-
turally obeyed the voice of his heart, yet he must seem to follow
the other. From morning to night, for weeks and months, he
must play the hypocrite. What a life for a sensitive child ! His
fate was singular enough. The tragedy of life does not often
make itself felt until youth gives place to manhood. But to him

412 PAUL. [June,

moral tyranny, doubt, bitterness, fruitless struggle, defeat, and
gradual loss of hope all that goes to make up unhappiness and
despair came at once, and this in his twelfth year.

His feeble body and only moderate intellect were not fit to
bear such a burden. But as success 'became more and more in-
frequent he redoubled his efforts. His mother's letters, so far
from being a comfort, only added to his trouble. Ignorant of the
true state of facts, she used to write him : " Heaven has endowed
you with unusual abilities, my boy ; do not neglect your oppor-
tunities. We all expect great things of you." The first time he
received such a letter he said to me :

" What can I do, Herr Stanislas what can I do?"
And truly what more could he do than he had been doing?
Was he responsible because he had been born without any gift
for languages, especially for Russian ? Could he do any better
than his best ?

II.

At All-Saints' day the boys had a two days' holiday, and re-
ports for the term were given out. Paul's was anything but
satisfactory. He was found "deficient" in three studies, was
" perfect " in none. I did not send this to Madame Tschaikow-
ski.

" Please, please," he begged, " don't send it home ! Mamma
doesn't know that reports are sent out at All-Saints' day. From
now until Christmas I feel sure the dear Lord will have pity on
me." I, too, thought he would do better next term. I hoped he
would accustom himself to the school routine and master that
accursed Russian, so that he could do himself some sort of jus-
tice. If I had not believed this I would long ago have told his
mother how things really stood with him.

On one of the first days of the new term he got three " fives "
in one day. One of them was in Latin. He was the only boy
in the class who had known that the perfect of "gaudeor" is
" gavisus sum." Some time before, when he had been marked
five in something, he had asked me how to say " I was glad " in
Latin ; and when the question went around the class he remem-
bered it. That night he wrote his mother a letter beginning :

" Little mother, my own sweetest little mother does she
know what the perfect of 'gaudeor' is? No, I am sure she
doesn't, and Lola doesn't either, for I was the only boy in the
whole class who knew that it is ' gavisus sum ! '

1884.] PAUL. 413

But the term did not come up to the promise of this opening.
One day Owitski and Paul forgot to tell me of an exercise they
had to prepare for the next day, and so it did not get written.
Owitski was head of the class, and so he was not called on for
it. But, Paul, poor Paul! he was severely punished. The
teacher said he had neglected to tell me of it on purpose. And
the boy,- who was the soul of honor, who would rather die than
lie, could not prove the truth of what he said. To be sure he
could have called on Owitski to show that he, too, had forgotten
it. But school-boy honor would not let him lighten his own
punishment by dragging his comrade into trouble. It did not
seem to occur to Owitski to say so himself; he was not like my
boy.

Poor Paul ! I could not comfort him ; and at the school the
principal told me that I was encouraging the boy in his deceit,
and was doing my best to weaken the authority of the teachers
with the boys. That was rather hard to hear, but I did not
mind it much. In the evening, as Paul sat with his head in his
hands, neither moving nor speaking, a letter came from Zalesina
for him. It was from his mother, and was in answer to his last
letter. It just heaped loving phrases and pet names on him in
reward for his three " perfects, " and concluded by calling him
" her brave little hope and comfort." This was too much for
him. When he read it he looked up at me, his face streaming
with tears, and sobbed out : " O mother ! mother ! mother ! what
sort of ' hope and comfort ' can I be to you ? "

He was pale and haggard the next morning, and I did not
want to let him go to school. But he insisted on going ; only he
asked me to walk with him. He was afraid to go alone, he said ;
everything seemed whirling around about him. In the even-
ing he told me that he had made another failure in class. He
knew the lesson perfectly, but in his nervousness he could not
frame his answers in good Russian. This, coming on the heels
of his neglected exercise, seemed to establish his reputation as a
deceitful and lazy scholar ; and, do what he could, he made no
headway against this opinion. Diligence and perseverance went
for nothing, and very naturally it soon came about that often the
more he studied the less he knew.

Every Thursday a letter came from Father Marinski, the
priest at Zalesina, always ending in the stereotyped phrase,
" Consider well, Paul, that not only your future but also the
health and happiness of your mother depend on your doing well
at school." As if he could ever forget it! Why, it was the fact

414 PAUL. [June,

of all facts that was always present with him ! It made all his
other troubles, numerous and heavy enough as they were, doubly
hard to bear. He thought of it by day and dreamed of it by
night. Often I heard him cry piteously in his sleep, " Mother,
little mother" (tnatkusia}, as if asking her to forgive him for hav-
ing been born.

As Christmas came nearer his standing in his class, became
poorer and poorer. We gave up all hope of a good report for
this term. And at last I did what, perhaps, I should have done
long before. I wrote Madame Adelaide a full account of the
whole matter ; told her that Paul was working himself to death,
and that after Christmas he ought to be taken from school alto-
gether and kept in the country, where he might get back some
of his lost strength. Although her answer to this was the reply
of a loving and tender mother, I fancied I could read between
the lines how her pride was touched. But I kept this corre-
spondence a secret from Paul, and only told him that, come what
might, his mother would understand him and would never
blame him unjustly. He seemed relieved from a great anx-
iety when I told him this, and was evidently overjoyed to think
that before long he would again see her, little Lola, and Father
Marinski at Zalesina. I, too, was impatient for the holidays, for
I felt as if I could not stand much longer seeing the daily mar-
tyrdom the little fellow was enduring.

Once home again he would find rest, kindness from every one,
and, above all, his mother's sympathy. He would never think of
asking despairingly if it were true that Poland did not have any
history at all. He would not be compelled to toil at hopeless
studies, but would live in an atmosphere of love and quiet which
would restore his shattered nerves. So these Christmas holi-
days came to me in the light of the child's deliverer. We kept
count of the days before they began, and our last thought every
night was, There is another day gone. But in the little part of
the term that was left things went very badly. He was again
found guilty of a capital sin. It happened in this way : Russian
was the only language allowed to be spoken in the school. But
in a heedless moment one day Paul said to Owitski in Polish :
" I am ever so fond of you, my Owitski." Of course he was
detected, and was publicly punished a second time, and was
obliged to stand for hours before the whole school, an example
of a disgracefully bad boy.

This was just before the holidays. It is impossible for me to
describe how keenly the sensitive and ambitious boy felt this

1884.] PAUL. 415

ignominy. He brooded over it and could not forget it. What a
confusion there must have been in his mind of what was good
and honorable, and what was bad and disgraceful ! His face be-
gan to take on a very pathetic expression. He h'ad always been
pale, with hollows under his eyes, but now he looked as though
he were constantly repressing a sob ; his eyes were heavy with
unshed tears and had the look of a dumb animal in pain. I have
seen a dog look just that way when it was being tortured by
cruel men. He would sit in a sort of reverie for hours at a time,
and would obey me, when I spoke, in an automatic sort of way
that seemed almost mechanical. Under this quiet patience I saw
suffering and despair. He studied his lessons and wrote his
exercises as before. But one could see that while he was re-
peating his conjugations to me he was thinking of something
else, or rather he was not thinking of anything at all. I was
afraid now to mention his mother's name before him. That
would have filled his already too full cup of suffering -to the
very brim.

I became finally seriously anxious about his health. I saw
that his books were altogether too heavy for him now, so every
morning I carried them to school for him, and every afternoon
came for him to carry them back. I did not mind the witty
things they said about me for doing this ; for I thought of no-
thing but how I might ease him of some little of his burden.
But, do what I could, he grew frailer and frailer every day. His
face was almost transparent. The delicate little blue veins on
his temples, which before were only visible when he laughed or
was excited, became noticeably prominent all the time. Sin-
gularly enough, he grew so beautiful in his weakness that he
seemed like a figure from a picture of one of the old Italian
painters. He did not look like a flesh-and-blood boy, but like a
sad and weary little angel condemned for some sin to live here
on this dreary earth until his sufferings had washed away the
stain of his fault.

At last the holidays came. The horses from Zalesina had
been waiting two days for us at the inn stables ; and the coach-
man had brought a letter from Madame Adelaide saying that
they were impatient at home for our arrival.

" I have learned, my boy," she wrote, " with what great dif :
faculties you had to contend, and I no longer hope for any
* perfects.' I only wish that your teachers were as sure as I am
that you have done your best, and have tried to make up for
your deficiencies in your lessons by your good behavior."

416 PAUL. [June,

But those teachers of his had their own ideas of what made
up "good behavior "in a Polish boy who couldn't speak Rus-
sian. Intentions were of no consequence to them. They only
cared for what he had done. And he had done so little in this
last term ! I will confess that I was bitterly disappointed when
I read Paul's report for the term. He was found deficient in
nearly every study ; and along with it came a note which said :
" Paul Tschaikowski confers no honor on the institute, and fills
the place which should be occupied by some worthier scholar.
He is therefore expelled."

Paul brought this home the evening of the last day. Outside
it was snowing softly yet heavily. In the room it was so dark
that I could not see his face ; I only saw that he went to the win-
dow, and, cooling his forehead on the pane, watched the snow-
flakes as they fell. For a while neither of us stirred or spoke.
What was there to be said ? But when it had grown quite dark
I lit the lamp and began to pack up his things, and when I no-
ticed that he did not move I said :

" Well, little chap, -what are you doing there ? "

He did not answer my question, but in a little while said, in a
voice which, in spite of his efforts to keep firm, trembled very
perceptibly : " I suppose mother and Lola are now sitting be-
fore the fire in the blue room, and she is saying to herself,
' They'll soon be home now/ '

" Yes, I think it quite likely. But why does your voice trem-
ble so ? Don't you feel well ? "

" Oh ! yes, sir, I'm all right ; only it is so very cold."

I found him shivering violently. So I undressed him at once,
gave him a cup of steaming hot tea, and put him to bed, heap-
ing all the covers I could find over him.

" How do you feel now ? Any better ? "

" Yes, thank you ; only my head aches."

Poor little head ! I could well believe it. Soon he fell fast
asleep, and I could hear his heavy breathing. When I had fin-
ished our packing I, too, went to bed very gladly. My chest
pained me a good deal, on account of the cold, and I had plenty
to think about ; but I was so tired I soon fell asleep. A bright
light shining full on my face waked me, and I could hear a mur-
muring sort of noise I knew very well. The lamp was burning
brightly, and Paul, in his night-clothes, was sitting at the table
with a Latin grammar before him. His face was flushed and
his eyes closed. With a sleepy voice he repeated, " aucliverim,
audiveris, audiverit." In a moment I was at his side and was

1884.] PAUL. 417

shaking him to wake him up. He looked at me as if he had
never known me before.

" What are you doing- here ? What is the matter ? "

" I'm only going over my lessons from the beginning once
more. I want to get ''five' in Latin to-morrow. That'll please
mother."

I lifted him in my arms and carried him to his bed. His skin
was burning hot, so I sent for the doctor at once. He felt his
pulse, asked a few questions, laid his hand on his head and
looked in his eyes, and said :

" The boy has a brain fever."

III.

The disease made rapid progress with him. He had no fund
of vitality to draw on to oppose it, and he sank swiftly. I tele-
graphed that first night for his mother; but the roads were
blocked with snow, so that it was not until the third day that she
came. How pale she looked in her deep mourning ! She seized
my arm -with unnatural strength as she asked, her whole soul in
her eyes :

" Is he alive ? "

" Yes; the doctor says he is getting along nicely."

That was a lie. He was alive, but that was about all. The
fever was growing rapidly and he was at times wildly delirious.
He did not even know his mother when she sat down by the
side of the bed and began to arrange his pillows for him. But
when she put a fresh ice bandage on his head he looked at her
more closely. He was plainly struggling with the delirium.
His lips trembled a little and then broke into a faint smile.

" Mother, little mother ! " he whispered, and then dozed off .
again. But after that one moment of recognition he did not
seem to know her, although his eyes followed her wherever she
went about the room. But her presence, though apparently
unrecognized, seemed to have an influence on the association-
of his ideas. Before the term closed he had somehow or other
found time enough to learn by heart the Latin responses of the-
acolytes at the celebration of the Mass, to give his mother a plea-
sant surprise. And now he began to repeat them. I shuddered
when I heard the stillness of the sick-room broken by the heavy
and laboring voice of the twelve-year-old boy saying, in the very
presence of death : " Quia tu es, Deus, fortitude mea, quare me
repulisti, et quare tristis incedo dum vffligit me inimicus? " The
VOL. xxxix, 27

4i 8 PAUL. [June,

quiet weeping of the mother made a sad accompaniment to
these words.

It was lively in the street. There came into the room
the busy hum of the crowd, mingled with the jingle of number-
less sleigh-bells. We could see through the unshuttered window
of an opposite house a children's party going on. A Christmas-
tree was brilliant with wax-lights, glistening with gilded nuts and
little colored globes, and surrounded by a group of little br9wn
and golden heads. The children's cries of joy and glad surprise
came clearly over the street to us. There was not a voice in all
the sounds which penetrated to Paul's bed-room which was not
instinct with happiness and the gayety of the season. Only
our boy cried with a sad voice ; " My God ! my God ! why hast
thou cast me off? "

Several .times he tried to lift up his hands, but he was too
weak. His breath came now with greater difficulty. We
could see that his child-soul was only to stay with us for a little
while, and that we were growing stranger and stranger to it.
He saw nothing, 'he felt nothing, not even his mother's face
pressed close to his. An unseen gateway was opening before
him, into which he was passing without looking at us at all.
His thoughts were far away and he was making ready to follow
them. We thought each moment that by the next the last sand
of his life would have run out.

At midnight, however, the fever left him and he fell asleep.
The doctor said that he might get well, after all. For a couple
of hours his condition improved with each moment, so that at
length I ventured to leave him. It was the fourth night I had
spent without sleep, and I was tired out. So I lay on the sofa
and fell asleep. The voice of Madame Adelaide waked me. I
thought at first she was calling me, and jumped to my feet.
But in the dead quiet I distinguished the words, " Paul ! Paul !
O my son, my son!" And I knew that his pains were over
for ever.

The next days, which I spent in making the necessary ar-
rangements, were terrible for me. She would not stir from his
side for an instant, not even when they were arranging the bier.
Every little while her anguish would come into contact with the
indifference of the undertaker's assistants. They were used to
such scenes, and their careless manner made her almost beside
herself. She insisted on arranging the cushions inside the cof-
fin herself, and I overheard her murmur as she was doing it:
" These pillows are too low and too hard for you, my Paul ! " .

1884.] PAUL. 419

Meanwhile he lay on the bed all dressed in a white robe.
We laid him in the coffin and lifted it on the bier, which we
had draped with black cloth and surrounded with candles. It
was the same room in which he had studied so diligently and
yet so unsuccessfully. But with the closed blinds, black hang-
ings, and flickering candles it looked like a chapel for the dead.

By and by those of his playmates who were spending their
holidays in the city came in, one by one, to take their last look
at him. They seemed astonished and abashed at the part played
here by their old comrade. But a little while before he had
been one of them, had received bad marks, been punished, and
even expelled. He had had a bad Russian accent ; and any one
who chose could bully him. And now there he lay, solemn,
peaceful, unapproachable, surrounded by burning candles. They
whispered to each other :

" He doesn't care any more. Even if the teacher should
come he would not get up, but would keep on smiling as he
does now. Over there he can do what he chooses even talk
Polish, if he will."

On the following day we laid him away in the graveyard,
where the earth and snow hid him from our sight.

To-day as I write this a good many months have passed since
then, but I often think of that day and mourn for you, my poor
little Paul, my too soon withered little blossom. It is true that
your Russian accent was bad and that you often could not learn
all your lessons ; but you had a true and faithful heart. I do
not know whether you can hear me now. I hope so ; but this I
know : that your poor tutor coughs more and more every day,
that this weary life grows a heavier and heavier burden for him,
and that before long he, too, will go where you have gone.

420 HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [June,

HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC

SCHOOLS.

THE principle at work in the public-school system is that
the training of human beings is a matter of secular business.
The theory is that a public power necessarily unreligious may
and should have a monopoly of the preparation of men and wo-
men for the fulfilment of their destiny. To gather together the
children of the people during their best hours, to choose their
teachers, to choose their school-books, to breathe out the atmos-
phere they are to live in, and to force the whole community to
pay the expenses such is the actual business of the state at
present. But for the Catholic religion, this prodigious attempt
to ignore the immortality of the human soul and sound princi-
ples of political government would have passed into triumphant
possession of our country without so much as a protest.

Not that our Protestant neighbors were originally lacking in
religious earnestness, but rather that their essential doctrines of
private judgment of Scripture, total depravity, justification by
experimental faith, threw around their children's training dif-
ficulties Catholics have no idea of. Such doctrines do not easily
apply to the human mind in its era of development. Further-
more, they are from any point of view too illogical and too hate-
ful to be the stable basis of human conduct, and by the time the
present system of education was accepted such doctrines had
fallen into sufficient disfavor to hinder their claiming a place
among the daily tasks of school. Now, it is the fate of men and
communities devoid of stable first principles to be taught mostly
by experience. Men know that time will tell. But time's tales
.are often dearly-bought wisdom. Right principles, when put
into practice, foretell their own results. But the doubtful mind
must wait and find out by the effect the worth of the cause.
The principle which our Protestant friends gave their children
to experiment on is that positive religion at home and in church
will save the child in spite of the unreligious influence of the
neutral school.- It has turned out that neutrality in the school
is the very pest of the religious character everywhere.

So, after the public schools have trained up a generation who
^are, as a whole, diverted from the belief and practice of all re-
ligion, the more ^devout Protestants are lamenting the exclusion

1884.] HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 421

of religious teaching 1 from the education of American youth.
The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church has
spoken out squarely for parochial schools. Other representa-
tive bodies, if not so frank, are yet plainly of the same mind.
Many able and earnest ministers declare openly for religious
schools. Orthodox Protestant journals are at least willing to
admit vigorous and unanswerable communications to the same
effect. The mystery is that all this good religious sense has
come so late too late, we fear, to do more than merit a respect-
able salvage for its pains. That upright Protestant men should
have lived this half-century face to face with a purely secular
state assuming the responsibility for the moral training of their
children is a condition of things monstrous in the extreme,
viewed either from a point of view religious, social, parental, or
political. We do not wish to be severe, but we fancy that the
expectation that, though it might hurt' Protestantism, it would
destroy Catholicism had much to do with this attitude of Pro-
testants. The very contrary has come to pass : Catholicism has,
indeed, suffered from the influence of the public schools, but they
have pretty nearly destroyed Protestantism.

Yet, as we have intimated, there is plainly a powerful in-
fluence for true Christian education now at work among Prc-
testants. We are beginning to hear many earnest voices from
among them demanding that education should be evangelical,
apostolical, Christian, moral, religious. It would, they say, be
pleasing in the sight of God if the children could be taught the
religion of their parents in the public schools ; that it is an out-
rageous crime against both God and the child to say that how
to live a good life and die a good death according to the teach-
ing of Christ is not worth teaching in school. To free ourselves
from slavery to the world, to raise our minds to God, to learn to
master our passions, to be content with the will of God, and to
long for the life to come such (say our Protestant friends) are
our life-long tasks ; and is it not amazing to realize that we have
left them clean out of the main business of forming our chil-
dren's characters ? They are beginning to see what a monstrous
thing it is that the state should by force gather up vast sums of
money, and put it into the hands of local politicians to be spent
as they deem proper in training immortal beings how to live
and die. Religious Protestant parents behold with dismay, and
are beginning to behold with horror, a system of schooling
managed by beings whose want of relish for spiritual things is
often their best recommendation to the school-board. And min-

422 HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [June,

isters and publicists and leaders of thought among orthodox
Protestants are at last becoming aware that the name of the
blight that has come upon their religious life is the common-
school system.

So here and there and everywhere we hear of the better-
minded Protestants demanding a new departure in American
education. As a specimen we ask leave to quote pretty largely
from an article in the New-Englander of January last, entitled
" The Religious Factor in Education," by the Rev. L. O. Bras-
tow. Once familiar with his peculiar staccato style, one reads
this powerful writer with much pleasure :

"Education is nothing less than the development and training of all
the potencies that have been lodged in man. It concerns itself with the
full contents of his being and with all his possibilities. The claims of
education are precisely the claims of manhood. If the idea of manhood
be low, the product of training will be meagre and inadequate. The claims
of religion upon education are precisely the claims of a complete man-
hood. If a man is worth educating at all he is worth educating roundly
as a man. If the capacity of religion belongs to his manhood it is a crime
against that manhood to ignore its rights and cripple its possibilities."

" So long as man is forced by the necessities of his own being to recog-
nize a power which is other and more than himself and other and more
than the universe in which he lives, so long religion will hold its supre-
macy." "This meagre world-power can never successfully displace that
which represents what lies beyond the world."

"There were nothing to educate or cultivate if there were not already
presupposed an original God-consciousness as its practical basis and condi-
tion. A higher world and a higher power thrust themselves into the fore-
front of all our investigation of this lower world and all lower orders of
existence."

"Man must be trained to the utmost of his capacity, and that means
that he must be trained religiously. Education can never suppress nor
displace religion. It can only pervert it, and in doing so perverts itself.
Its highest aim is to develop religion into fulness of significance and
power."

Religion "will not take itself out of the way ; cannot be explained out
of existence ; cannot be trained into permanent silence ; will not be
ignored and cannot be majestically put to confusion by the power of in-
tellectual arrogance. If religion were only a co-ordinate factor in our edu-
cation it would demand all that any other factor demands, for its rights are
as great, and an education that would crowd it out of recognition would
only be a garbled and false, and so a dangerous, education. Even those
who allow it no higher dignity or significance than belongs to a product of
feeling and imagination clearly see this. But if religion represents the
realm of the absolute, and is the central and imperative power in man, the
case is other and more. Religion does not come into man's consciousness
simply as the product of his thought. It is not a product of the intellec-
tual activity in its speculation upon the origin of all things, as rationalism

1884.] HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 423

claims. It is not a theoretic but a practical power. It is more than know-
ledge of the infinite. It is knowledge realized as obligation. . . . Religion,
therefore, as an authority from the realm of the absolute, claims the whole
man."

" Religion, then, is the root of manhood as well as its crown, and all
rational and systematic development must proceed from this centre-. A
something there must be in man which is to him what life is in the develop-
ment of organism. This somewhat is the religious factor in him. Only as
religion finds place in the growth and development of manhood do we
attain to symmetry and completeness."

" Religion has furnished a vast amount of material for general educa-
tion. No one capacity has contributed so much to the general elevation
of man. No single department of learning has the educational record that
religion has. It has made an impression upon every department of human
activity. It has colored the world's thinking and influenced the world's
training as no other power has or can."

" The best-trained races are the religious races. The experience of the
power of religion quickens and expands the intellectual faculties. Dealing
with the loftiest themes, it furnishes material for the most eager striving of
all the powers of the soul."

" No education of any sort is possible independently of the operation of
certain fundamental energies of manhood which rightly interpreted have a
religious significance, and which exist because man is a religious being."

In the same unanswerable way (unanswerable except by the
denial of all religion) this vigorous thinker combats secularism in
education from every point of view from that of literature,
philosophy, science in all its departments, and even the inspira-
tion necessary to make men and women good teachers ; main-
taining, with resistless power, that the " perfect man is not the
product of secular life and training, but of religion."

The best ideal of education is furnished by religion :

"A man in his becoming is as his ideal. Education is the work of
training men after some standard. The worth of the education is the
worth of the standard. The ideal of manhood is the ideal of education.
Independently of religion education has never succeeded in fashioning for
itself the best standards." ,

" What the world wants is men, full, complete, thoroughly-trained men,
. . . The object of education is identical with the object of existence.
One's theory of existence ought to be his theory of education. A philoso-
phical statement of the aim of education should be nearly identical with a
theological statement of the aim of existence."

Here is his conclusion against secular education :

" It is an immense question. What are the agencies which shall recon-
struct and train the manhood of the world? Secularism in our time has
shown an immense pedagogic activity. It has made vast claims. It is in
hand just here to criticise its claims and methods. Secularism lacks the

424 HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [June,

requisite first principles. Religion, whatever be its defects in historic fact,
nevertheless furnishes regulative principles which are essential to the
broadest education."

" The scheme that gives the moral and religious nature dominance is
the only philosophical scheme, and will prove itself competent to meet the
wants of the world. Neither knowledge nor intellectual training can be an
end. There is something higher and better." " Education encounters the
weightiest problems of human existence. They are problems which the
intellect cannot solve, though trained unto the utmost. Some sorts of
knowledge refuse to enter the gateways of the intellect." " Education in
its comprehensive aspects must meet the fact of sin. Secular education
would meet it by ignoring it, but still it remains to counter-work its best
efforts. Religion applies remedial agencies, introduces new principles and
motives, and develops life from a new basis."

" We need in the secularism and individualism of the time more of the
old Gentile Gospel of a redeemed humanity. We need more of the spirit of
the great apostle who laid the products of the best training at the foot of
the cross, and labored everywhere to lift men back into the dignity of their
being and into fellowship with God. Education does not know itself until
it understands the prayer of Christ, ' Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done.' "

Now, we have not the faintest doubt that Mr. Brastow speaks
the mind of the best Protestants in the country, ministers and
laymen both. We have quoted largely from him for that reason
as well as from the intrinsic worth of his argument ; we only
regret that space forbids our giving his every word. Such a
man has but to think again to regret the single blemish of his
article, the sneer at " ultramontane Christianity." But we care
little for that ; he is an enemy of this gigantic monopoly which
is employing the best talent money can hire, and spending near
a hundred millions annually of the public funds, to persuade the
children of the people that life may be good enough and death
happy enough without positive religion. What every honest
Protestant must desire is that the youth of the country shall not
become infected with vice, and that the formative influences of
school, its long hours, its steady instruction, its personal in-
fluences and examples, should be penetrated with the only anti-
dote known to vice : the love of God, the worth of prayer, the
hopes of a future eternity of happiness in a word, the principles
and aids of religion.

But we think that the recent attempts made by the advocates
of godless schools to divorce morality from religion and to
teach a morality professedly unreligious has had much to do
with the movement we have been considering. When it be-
comes the manifest purpose of the public-school authorities to

1884.] HONEST PROTESTANTS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 425

teach a regular system of morality claimed to be as colorless of
religion as any system of arithmetic, religious men of all beliefs
may well take alarm. If religion is not necessary for morality,
then what is the good of it at all ? When it was a divorce be-
tween mere science and religion the Catholic Church stood all
but alone in her antagonism to the system. When they scorn-
fully asked, What is there religious in the multiplication-table or
the geography of the State of New York ? it was the Catholic
Church alone that squarely said that without religion such things
are not worth knowing, and if taught by virtue of a public and
explicit separation from religious influences they are apt to serve
a positively anti-religious purpose. We said, You might as well
ask what need has the sword of the hilt as what connection sci-
ence has with religion. For two or three generations we stood
all but alone in protesting against schools which, to use Mr. Bras-
tow's words, undertook " to ignore the rights and cripple the
possibilities " of religious beings. Now things are changing.
Now the public-school partisans want to know not only what
arithmetic and geography but also what morality has to do with
religion ; no wonder our Protestant brethren are aroused.

The reader will be interested in the following extract from
an article entitled " The Teaching of Morality in Schools," from
Education, a bi-monthly magazine published in Boston :

" In the belief that ignorance is fruitful of vice and crime, we have
wisely established a system of popular education, which, as far as it has
yet progressed, has been very effective in intellectual development ; while,
in view of the constant increase of vice and crime, the amount of pauper-
ism, the lack in society at large of nice moral perception and of just discri-
mination between right and wrong in the daily intercourse of people one
with another, we are learning that our system is imperfect until we engraft
upon it a more thorough method of training that shall result in a higher
standard of moral character.

" In looking over this matter it is to be considered that children of the
school-age spend the best part of the day in school ; so that where the
parents are qualified and disposed to give the needful instruction, their op-
portunities for doing so are less than those of the teacher; and it is a well-
known fact that a large proportion of the homes are destitute of this qua-
lification and disposition."

The writer then sets down various moral principles, and
under each a set of maxims, t^ken from the " great moral teach-
ers " of mankind, offering them as a suggestion towards a moral
code to be taught in the schools. We copy one set of authori-
ties thus given : Moses, Hebrew Law-giver ; Manu, Hindu, B.C.
1200; Leo-tse, B.C. 604 ; Zoroaster, Persian, B.C. 589; Buddhist

426 HONEST PROTESTANTS AND TIJE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [June,

Commandment ; Paul the Apostle. Now, we are sure that hon-
est Protestants will never suffer their little ones to be taught
" morality " in whole or in part, good or bad, by heathen law-
givers. In fact, the public-school partisans have been so encom-
passed with the narrowness of beaurocracy that their opponents
will soon embrace all who believe that Jesus Christ is the di-
vinely-appointed teacher of morality to the human race. Even
yet most of them feel as secure of their possession of the peo-
ple's children as if not a breath of opposition had ever been
breathed. The complacency with which they regard an antago-
nist fired with the most potent of all human forces, the religious
sentiment, is something amazing. With them religious educa-
tion is not even respectable, and a compromise with any form of
religious education or of all combined is something entirely too
humiliating to be thought of.

The plea for a change in the public-school system is support-
ed by the two pillars of human happiness, the rights of God and
the rights of the family. There is no manner of doubt that to
observe the law of God one must be trained to it Human na-
ture is not good enough to obey the moral law, even in its
simplest rudiments, by mere instinct ; its natural knowledge of
many of the most important precepts of the natural law is vague,
and its power of observance lamentably weak. The heart of
man is with difficulty led to follow a supernatural end. The
present joy is what he covets ; the future, the unseen, the pro-
mised is difficult to choose instead of the present. This alone
proves that God never meant that any notable instrument of
training the human mind should be let go "neutral." Rather
his supremacy as the ruler and only end of every reasonable
being demands that his existence, his attributes, and his precepts
shall take the very first place in the child's education. If, in-
deed, any parents desire schools absolutely unreligious, or are
willing to limit their control over their children's schooling to
the ballot-box and the caucus, let them hang on to the fragments
of the present system. But the case with religious parents, Ca-
tholic or non-Catholic, is that they are haunted with the persua-
sion that the schooling of the child has to do with his eternal
salvation ; and that what his teachers and companions and sur-
roundings and influences are, such .will his soul become. Such
parents are consumed with the love of eternal things, and school-
time and school-life are too precious in their eyes to be thrown
aside while the scales are being freighted for the judgment.

1 884.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 427

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE RELIGIOUS STATE. A Digest of the Doctrine of Suarez, contained
in his treatise De Statu Religionis. By William Humphrey, priest of
the Society of Jesus. 3 vols. octavo. London : Burns & Gates ; New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

This digest of the great work of Suarez on the Religious State, although
abbreviated from the original, is still a large and extensive work in three
royal octavo volumes. It is published in a very handsome style in large,
clear print, conveniently divided and arranged. Every scholar knows how
exhaustively, and with what pre-eminent learning, acuteness, and thorough-
ness', Suarez handles every great topic upon which he has written. The
foundation and substance of his doctrine are taken from St. Thomas.
But he is far more minute and copious in his exposition than his great
master, and never a servile copyist, so that his works are always original
and not mere expansions of the text of another. So far as we are informed
on the subject, the work of Suarez is the best and most complete extant,
and it possesses the highest authority which any such work by a private
doctor can have. "In Suaresio tota schola loquitur." The work is
theological in its scope and method, and not of the nature of what is called
" spiritual reading." Father Humphrey has made his digest in the most
admirable manner, so that, as it comes from his hand, it is much better
than a mere literal translation would be. The third volume treats exclu-
sively of the Society of Jesus. Those who wish to know what this cele-
brated and calumniated order really is will do well to look here for their
information, instead of going to books which contain either falsified 9r at
least imperfect and meagre accounts. For theologians, confessors of re-
ligious, and the members of religious or quasi-religious institutes and
societies this digest is invaluable.

MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. By George John Romanes, LL.D.,
F.R.S., author of Animal Intelligence. With a posthumous Essay on
Instinct by Charles Darwin, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. 1884.

This elaborate contribution to the literature of evolution is characterized
by the merits and the shortcomings which pertain to the best productions
of the English followers of Darwin. It is replete with facts and the results
of close scientific observation ; and this constitutes its chief value in our
eyes, for its reasoning is loose and defective. It is strange that out of the
mass of rapidly accumulating data which our present methods of investi-
gation have enabled naturalists to collate they can give as their final out-
come nothing more novel or more savory than the crude materialism
which Broussais years ago offered to the world in the guise of science.
The interesting array of facts which Dr. Romanes has culled from zoology,
chemistry, anatomy, and physiology challenge our impartial admiration and
make us honor the devotion to science which prompted their collection ;

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June,

but the very assiduity he bestowed on these various lines of minute in-
quiry seems to have disqualified him for drawing the sole inferences which
they warrant. The time is ripe almost for clearly indicating the relations
between the indubitable truths of psychology as held by Aristotle,
Plato, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas, and the discoveries of modern phy-
siology. Dr. Romanes' work, being of almost equal importance with the
wonderful and painstaking labors of Darwin, is well calculated to furnish
a text for such an effort, and we will accordingly at a future period recur
to a fuller consideration of its views.

THE BOOK OF THE PROFESSED.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION FOR THE USE OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES. By the
author of Golden Sands, Translated from the French by Miss Ella Mc-
Mahon. Benziger Brothers.

It is sufficient to say of both these little works that, though small in
compass, they are solid and extensive in learning. They received the* ap-
probation of man)'' French bishops on their first appearance, and cannot
but be very helpful to the many devout communities of religious women
here in America for whom they have been translated.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; FROM THE DISCOVERY OF
THE CONTINENT. By George Bancroft. The Author's Last Revision.
Volume iv. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1884.

The fourth volume of Mr. Bancroft's history covers the most momen-
tous period of our national life ; indeed, it may be said to be the period of
our national birth the American Revolution ; " America takes up arms
for self-defence and arrives at independence." In the twenty-eight chap-
ters of this volume are delineated the resistance of the colonies to En-
gland's mistaken policy towards them, the assembling of a general congress,
the action of the people and of the States, the first clash of arms and the
war's beginning, the State acts of independence, and finally the national
Declaration of Independence. No one can doubt the patriotism of the
author, manifested throughout the work with true genuineness. No one
can fail to appreciate the study and care which characterize these pages,
manifested both in their historical material and in their classical language.
This is one of the finest of American books ever written in the English
language. It cannot fail to be admired wherever that tongue is spoken,
nor to be translated, as preceding editions have been, into most of the lan-
guages of civilized nations. Mr. Bancroft's account of Catholic emanci-
pation in Canada is interesting, yet not wholly disingenuous. We do not
agree with him that by the measures then adopted by Great Britain
towards Canada the Catholic worship was as effectually established in
Canada as the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. The restoration to the
Catholics of Canada of their ancient churches and ecclesiastical revenues
was a simple act of restitution. It thus turned out that the blundering
policy of the mother-country resulted at once in the independence of the
American colonies and the disenthralment of the Canadas. We think New
England and Massachusetts are given undue credit and prominence in the
struggle for independence, and we regret Mr. Bancroft's long and studious

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429

life has not subdued his prejudices. In his first volume he makes the first
Maryland colonists consist of a majority of Protestants ; in the present vol-
ume he reduces the Catholics of Maryland to "scarcely an eighth, perhaps
not more than a twelfth, part of the population." He attributes to Great
Britain worldly or political motives for emancipating the Catholics of
Canada, and the same motive to Congress for extending to Catholics " the
principle of religious equality and freedom."

WHAT is "CASTLE GOVERNMENT"? A question answered for Americans
interested in the Irish Question, by the Irish National League of Ame-
rica. Chicago : The Irisrl National League of America. 1884.

" This is one of the most valuable pamphlets we have read on the Irish
question. Except in Mr. Healy's Why there is an Irish Land League, so
much accurate and clearly-expressed information on an Irish political topic
has not been given in so small a compass. The brochure is ostensibly is-
sued for the enlightenment of "Americans interested in the Irish question "
(and that phrase includes, or ought to include, all the publicists of all kinds
in the United States) ; but Irish-Americans and Irishmen who may think
they know all about public affairs in Ireland will find on reading this pam-
phlet that the)'- have yet something to learn. We confess ourselves in-
debted to it for a considerable expansion and clearing of our own views.

How often do we hear that phrase, " Castle government," yet how few,
if challenged, could give a complete and accurate answer as to what it
means. An extraordinary difference exists between the form of government
in vogue in Ireland and that in vogue in England, though both countries are
technically under the same constitution. Laws are made for Ireland in
England by Englishmen, but the Irish government to which they are
handed over to be administered Castle government is so constituted that
it can exercise a most galling system of tyranny without the aid of any laws
from London. It is an entirely irresponsible, unrepresentative despotism.
How few understand clearly the difference between this despotism and
the almost republican freedom enjoyed in England. How few can define
the functions of the lord-lieutenant, his privy council, his chief secretary,
his law adviser; or know the important difference between the permanent
and the non-permanent officials of Dublin Castle ; or understand the circum-
stances that make the Irish judiciary dependants and tools of the Castle,
while the English judiciary are independent of the government and fearless
administrators of justice ; or are aware of the modern system by which Irish
juries are "packed" as effectually as they were in O'Connell's day ! All
this, and more, the pamphlet under notice explains. It is written in a bright
and picturesque style perhaps a little too rhetorical for its purpose, al-
though that makes it easier reading for the general public.

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By Oliver Goldsmith. With a preface and
notes by Austin Dobson. Parchment Library. New York : Appleton
&Co.

Here is dear old Noll's imperishable masterpiece enshrined in all the
daintiness of vellum covers, linen paper, antique typography, and a preface
and notes by that daintiest of literary virtuosos, Austin Dobson ! Having

430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June,

seen this " Parchment Library " edition of the Vicar of Wakefield, nobody
who truly loves that lovable chronicle will want to see it in any other
edition. Rarely do a publisher and editor produce such perfect harmony
between a work and its setting. Mr. Austin Dobson, than whom perhaps
there is no litterateur living better versed in eighteenth-century lore, has
put his best work into what must have Ibeen truly love's labor for him.
His notes are a charming pendant to the text : full of out-of-the-way in-
formation gathered and selected with evident care, illustrating every illus-
tratable point in Dr. Primrose's quaint narration, and given with that sunny
touch which imparts to the result of intense painstaking the effect of a
casual gossip by a library fire. To give a t^ste of their quality we will ex-
tract a portion of one of the notes. In the note on the vicar's cure of
" thirty-five pounds a year" some curious illustrations are presented as* to
the miserable condition of the Protestant inferior clergy and the inferior
clergy numbered half, if not more than half, of the entire body in England
in the eighteenth century. Mr. Dobson quotes a paper that appeared in
the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1763, the object of which was to
obtain some increase of their emoluments. "After describing them," says
the note, " in many places as ' patrolling the streets from door to door' at
stated times 'to pick up a paultry subscription ' ; in others, as 'involv'd in
debt and drench'd in poverty,' and in most as 'drudging on for water-gruel
and naked wablings, in a threadbare coat,' the writer finally proposes that
assuming the wife's portion to be enough to place the children in the
world they should certainly be allowed ' sufficient to maintain a man, with
one or two domestics, as necessity requires, and to supply the various
exigencies that commonly happen in a family.' What this sufficient main-
tenance, or competency, should be he goes on to explain, and the explana-
tion is significant : ' Not the pay of a first-rate officer in the army. No, I
would hardly ask that of a supervisor in the excise, much less the thousands
of the commissioners. But I would have him set above the swarm of ex-
cisemen with their jf/7/. I would have his place, which is of more impor-
tance than any other in the nation, to be at least as good as my lord's
honest steward's, and somewhat better than his butler 's or valet de chambres.
I presume no reasonable man will think 8o/. a year, at least, too much for
a clergyman to live upon as he ought.' " We can agree with Mr. Dobson
that the modesty of this demand goes far to prove the pleader's conten-
tion.

Mr. Dobson's Preface is a bright and graceful little piece of criticism.

MEMOIR OF CHARLES LOWE. By his wife, Martha Perry Lowe. Boston :
Cupples, Upham & Co., Old Corner Bookstore. 1884.

. Mr. Lowe graduated with high honors at Harvard University in 1847,
was afterwards tutor, studied for the Unitarian ministry, and was engaged
in various avocations connected with his profession until his death at the age
of forty-six. He was the founder and first editor of the Unitarian Review.
His'character, as portrayed by Mrs. Lowe, was one of singular sincerity, up-
rightness, and amiability, and the story of his life shows that he endeavored
from his childhood up to fulfil his duty, as his conscience dictated it to him,
with fidelity and earnestness. Some of the best and most pleasing phases

1 884.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 43 1

of New England character and life, simple and charming scenes of home-like
virtue v and happiness, episodes of foreign travel and of our late civil war,
described in a natural and quiet style with a lady's perfectly correct taste
and sense of propriety, relieve and diversify the narrative of the profes-
sional and official career of the subject of the biography. In this career
Mr. Lowe undoubtedly acquired a very important influence, and won for
himself an unusual amount of esteem and affection from persons of very
various opinions and sympathies in his denomination. We have no wish
to say anything on this head, although it is not devoid of interest as per-
taining to the religious history of the descendants of the Puritans. Let it
suffice to express the opinion we have formed after reading this Memoir,
that Mr. Lowe was one of those who had his face and not his back turned
toward God and heaven, toward the light of Christianity and the hope of
improving the world by religion and not by agnosticism. He sought to
preserve and fan the dying flame of belief still left among the offspring of
the Puritans, and to preach the pure and high Christian morality which is
giving way before a paganism slightly, when it is at all, veiled by a nomi-
nal respect for the Christian law. The tone of the biography shows that
his true and faithful companion is of one mind and heart with him. It is
morally wholesome and pure, as well as genial, and we think will have a
good influence upon that class of persons who are likely to read it, in
checking the tendency to scepticism and materialism.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. From the French. By Mrs. Cashel Hoe) r .
i vol. i2mo. London : Burns & Gates; New York : The Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co.

This is another of those delightful stories which have made Mrs. Cashel
Hoey's name a word to conjure with in Catholic homes. With all the
grace and lightness of touch which give to the work of French writers so
peculiar a fascination, What Might Have Been is a novel of the whole-
somest kind. Its scene is laid in France, chiefly during the period covered
by the Franco-Prussian war ; and some of its incidents are exciting epi-
sodes of battle occurring to characters in the story who are attached to the
Army of the Loire. Not seldom does it happen that books of the whole-
somer kind are found to be heavy reading for young people. Here is a
book whose plot and incidents are as thrilling as its lesson is exalting.

HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING ; or, Why to Plant, Where to Plant,
What to Plant, How to Plant. By Nathaniel H. Egleston, Chief of
Forestry Division, Department of Agriculture, Washington. New
York : Appleton & Co. 1884.

As we do not pretend to have any special knowledge about tree-plant-
ing, we will not presume to criticise this handy little volume. But there
can be no doubt of the importance of the subject it treats of, and there
can be little doubt that the author is well fitted for his task. He says his
book is " not designed so much for the amateur or the ornamental planter
as for the one who is desirous of cultivating trees on the large scale, and
with a view to profit rather than to adornment or mere aesthetic effect " ; but
he has " endeavored to treat the subject in such a manner as will make the
work a proper guide to the tree-planter, whoever he may be or whatever
may be his object in planting."

43 2 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [June, 1884.

EDITH : A Tale of the Present Day. By Lady Herbert. London : Richard
Bentley & Son. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

Lady Herbert is noted for her crisp, graphic style and her power of
manipulating dramatic situations. In this book all her rare gifts are dis-
played at their best. Edith is a story of absorbing interest, told with con-
summate skill and fine feeling. It is a tale of actual life in the present
day, and the characters are not sticks but flesh-and-blood people. Need-
less to say its tone is pure and truly Catholic. From all points of view it
deserves high commendation.

A GRAVEYARD FLOWER. By Wilhelmine Von Hillern. From the Ger-
man by Clara Bell. New York : W. S. Gottsberger. 1884.

This flower has a deathly odor. Wilhelmine Von Hillern is a very sen-
timental person, intent only on searching for means of exciting emotions
of an unwholesome nature and touching the morbid sensibilities of frivo-
lous readers. The heroine of the story, daughter of the gardener of the
graveyard, being placed in a difficult dilemma between two lovers, a count
and a hearse-driver, extricates herself, although an innocent and pious Ca-
tholic girl, by taking poison and dying, after devoutly receiving the last
sacraments. The count buries her in his own tomb, and Walter, her other
lover, drives the hearse. After the funeral Walter passes all his leisure
time sitting on the ground near her tomb, where he is found one morning
by the grave-digger, dead. " Not far off lay a thrush frozen to death. The
winter wind had been merciful to Walter, and had laid an icy hand on his
fiery griefs. Peace brooded over all the graves." Would that all such
literature as this might share the fate of the thrush ! It is fit only for those
silly girls who wander into the woods hand-in-hand and take Paris-green.

A SHORT MEMOIR OF ESTERINA ANTINORI. Translated from the Italian
by Lady Herbert. Dedicated to the Children of the Sacred Heart in
England, Ireland, and America. Dublin : Gill & Son. 1884.

Little Esther, the daughter of the Marquis Antinori, was a pupil of the
Roman Academy of the Sacred Heart, who died during the Christmas week
of 1 88 r, at the age of seventeen. She was just one of the loveliest and
best of that numerous band of maidens who may be counted by thousands
in the convent schools. To these, and more than others to the pupils of
the Sacred Heart, this charming Memoir from the graceful hand of Lady
Herbert will be specially interesting. Esterina was about to enter the
novitiate. However, the Lord took her with her wreath and blue ribbon
and premium of excellence, instead of waiting until she was decorated with
the cross and ring. May her bright example encourage her fellow-pupils
to follow her footsteps in the path which leads to the blessedness she is
now enjoying !

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIX. JULY, 1884. No. 232.

MEXICO OF TO-DAY.

THE recent opening of railroad communication between the
United States and the capital of Mexico draws a large share of
attention to the republic on our southern border. It is a fact,
if a strange one, that up to the present time Americans in gene-
ral know less of their immediate neighbors on this continent
than of almost any other part of the civilized world. The .poli-
tics, the social life, the religious feelings, and the material re-
sources of any nation of Europe are better understood here than
those of Mexico. The frontier vaqueros and gamblers are the
typical Mexicans of popular ideas in this country, much as the
cowboys and miners of the Western States figure as repre-
sentative Americans to certain classes in England, Germany,
and France. Revolutions and highway robbery are believed to
be the chief employment of the Mexican population, and lazi-
ness and ignorance their general characteristics. Of the social
organization, the industries, the literature and art, and all that
constitutes the civilization, properly so-called, of the Mexican
people, the immense majority of Americans know absolutely
nothing. .

It is not uncommon with a large class to look on the Mexi-
cans as mere temporary occupants of a part of this continent, des-
tined to pass away like the uncivilized Indian tribes, or at best to
be absorbed into the population of the United States, like the
original French settlers of Louisiana and Missouri. It is as-
sumed that what has happened in California and Texas will be

434 "" MEXICO OF TO-DA Y. [July,

repeated in Mexico itself, and that the native population will dis-
appear in the tide of foreign immigration. The position of the
Mexican population, however, is very different from that of the
scattered colonies that have been so easily absorbed. The Span-
ish-American settlers in Texas and California were only a hand-
ful of new-comers, scattered over a wide and fertile territory.
The present Mexican republic has a population little less dense
than that of the United States. Moreover, that population is, in
the full sense of the word, a nation, possessing a history, a long-
established social organization, and habits of life suited to the
circumstances of its country and widely different from those of
any part of the United States. History shows how difficult it is
to dispossess an entire nation from its country. It may be con-
quered by an invader, and a foreign aristocracy established in
possession of its soil, but the people remains unchanged. The
Norman conquerors of England, the Lombards and Germans in
Italy, the Teutonic tribes who founded the French monarchy,
and the Spaniards themselves in Mexico and Peru all failed to
change permanently the populations of the conquered countries.
And so it would be in Mexico, were it conquered to-day by a
foreign invader. Nations may be exterminated by the sword,
but they do not die out of the countries where they have once
established themselves. Mexico is occupied by a population of
ten millions, which, moreover, is growing more rapidly than that
of most long-settled countries. Humboldt, at the beginning of
this century, considered, on close investigation, that with the
continuance of peace the population of New Spain would double
in nineteen years. The constant revolutions of which the coun-
try has been the theatre since has certainly prevented any such
growth; but there seems no reason to suppose that with their
cessation the population will not rapidly increase once more.
Even in California and the other portions of the Union acquired
from Mexico the Spanish population is much larger to-day than
it was when they first became American territory. It has been
outnumbered by other elements, but where are immigrants to
come from in sufficient numbers to absorb the ten millions of
Mexico in their own land?

The existence of a large laboring population in any country
has always proved an insurmountable obstacle to its coloniza-
tion by laborers of another race, unless the condition of the latter
were lower in point of material comfort. The English in India
and the French in Algeria are comparatively a mere handful
among the native races which hold their ground as the bulk of

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 435

the population. The influx of immigrants which has built up
the Western States with such rapidity is almost wholly made up
of working-men in search of work at better rates than they
could find it at home, and of cheap and fertile land. Neither
inducement is to be found for immigration to Mexico. The
wages of labor are scarcely, on an average, one-third of the rates
current in this country, and there is no reserve of public land
worth speaking of open to settlement within the actual limits of
the republic. The greater part of the soil is already, and has been
for generations, in the hands of private proprietors, who are un-
willing to sell except at large prices. The mines are in a similar
condition. For over three centuries mining has been the chief
industry of Mexico, and every district has been visited by keen-
sighted prospectors. Of course it is possible that new mines
may be discovered by foreign explorers, or that the introduction
of improved machinery may render abandoned mines once more
profitable ; but such cases will be necessarily rare. The cheaper
labor of the Mexicans will always command the preference of
capitalists, whether native or foreign ; and even were another
Comstock Ledge to be discovered in Mexico it would have
small effect in producing any permanent immigration. It is sig-
nificant that the Chinese immigration which has caused such
serious dissatisfaction throughout the Pacific States of the Union,
and which is fast superseding the native population in the
Hawaiian Islands, has never been turned to Mexico. The native
laborer works at lower rates than the Chinese could. This fact
shows how little likelihood there is of any industrial invasion by
immigrants of the white race either from this country or from
Europe.

Apart from the comparative density of the population and
the cheapness of labor, the climate of a large part of Mexico,
and that by far the richest in soil and natural products, offers
almost insuperable obstacles to immigration from this country.
It is remarkable that European colonization during the last three
centuries has never succeeded in planting a population of its own
race in the tropics in the same way as has been repeatedly done
in the temperate zones. It has been easy enough to conquer
land, but the difficulty has been to induce white colonists to
work it. If there were no native laborers available, men of
other races had to be imported for most heavy work, like the
negroes in the West Indies and the Kanakas in Queensland
to-day. The attempts at founding French colonies on the Coat-
zacoalcos River some fifty years ago, though encouraged by

436 MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July,

large grants from the Mexican authorities, proved a miserable
failure from this cause. The transition from life and work in
France to life arid work in Mexico was too great to be compen-
sated for by any richness of soil or diversity of products. The
farmers and mechanics abandoned the colonies completely and
either returned to France or scattered. From the old Scotch
colony at Darien in the days of William of Orange, down to the
Brazilian experiment made by our own Southern planters imme-
diately after the war, the same result has attended all attempts at
planting a white population within the tropics, and it need not
be supposed that it will be otherwise in Mexico.

While there seems little likelihood of any considerable dis-
placement of the Mexican race, it is unquestionable that its pre-
sent condition will be considerably changed by the increased
intercourse with the outer world which must henceforth pre-
vail. There will doubtless be some infusion of foreigners into
the business classes, and it is not impossible that the railroad
companies may take an active part in political intrigues for their
financial interests. Moreover, the process of amalgamation be-
tween the different elements of the population, which has been
going on slowly for three centuries, is likely to be greatly accel-
erated with the facility of travel through the country. In Mexi-
co both the distinctions of class and those of race are well
marked. The Indians, even around the capital, manage their
own affairs and government with little interference from the
higher authorities beyond the collection of taxes. Each Indian
village forms a self-governed community, whose laws are impli-
citly obeyed by the members. In the general affairs of the state
they take no part, though at times they may be pressed into the
army or compelled to take part in a revolution, willing or unwill-
ing. It is rarely, however, that they show anything like strong
feeling on any side. In the past they have at times rallied with
enthusiasm to particular leaders of their own race. Tomas
Mejia, who shared the fate of Maximilian in 1867, was such a
leader; and more recently still Lozada, who ruled as sovereign
for many years in Tepic and lost his life in an attempt to revo-
lutionize the government of the State of Jalisco. As a general
rule, however, the Indians who reside in their own villages take
little part in politics. They are peaceful, laborious, and honest,
and usually devout Catholics. Neither highway robberies nor
revolutions can be fairly charged to them, and they are faithful
in their contracts and other dealings. There is, however, a good
deal of variety among these Indian 'communities. The Mayos

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 437

and Zapotecas are more restless and brighter than the Aztecs,
and in Yucatan the authority of the central government is little
more than nominal. Though the Indian languages are still re-
tained in private, these pure Indians generally speak Spanish
also. In some places traces of the old heathen practices still
survive in private, but they are not usually much more than the
Hallow-Eve incantations practised a generation ago in Ireland
and Scotland. In other respects the Indians are thoroughly de-
voted Catholics, fully as much so, indeed, as any population in
Europe. The services rendered to their race by the church,
which through the whole period of the Spanish dominion was
ever the protector of the Indians, have not been forgotten. The
faith transmitted from the early missioners is still the faith of
the Mexican Indians, and in all the revolutions of the last sixty
years they have never wavered in their spiritual allegiance to
the true church. The spoliations of unscrupulous rulers of
European blood have more than once been baffled by the ener-
getic defence of their churches by the pure Indians of Mexico,
the descendants of the Aztec idolaters. Even to-day there are
numerous Indian villages in which the settlement of European
strangers is strictly forbidden ; but an exception is always made
in favor of the Catholic clergy, of whatever race. Taken alto-
gether, in morals, in respect for the rights of others, and in patient
industry, the bulk of the pure Indians of Mexico may fairly com-
pare with the peasantry of most European countries. They are,
it is true, indifferent to politics and have little desire to change
the conditions of life handed down to them by their fathers, but
it may well be questioned whether their patient contentment
with their lot is not a nobler quality than the restless envy
which seems to be the dominant passion in the working-classes
of many civilized lands.

The Indians who have retained their separate communities
are only a part, though a large one, of the aboriginal population
in Mexico. Under the Aztec empire considerable cities and what
would to-day be called an official class existed before the Spanish
conquest, as well as the rural population, which has' handed down
its ways of life to its descendants almost unchanged. The In-
dians of the cities have adopted many European ways unknown
to the rural tribes, and have become intermixed with the Spanish
conquerors to a very considerable degree. The mines and pub-
lic works have also drawn a large number of the inhabitants from
pure Indian villages, and these in course of time have adopted
to a greater or less extent the habits and ideas of their employ-

438 MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July,

ers. These half-Europeanized Indians and mixed races form the
larger part of the population at the present day and furnish the
truest type of its national character. The Creoles of pure Span-
ish blood number somewhat over a million, the pure Indians
probably four, and the mixed races, shading off by imperceptible
degrees between the two, fully five millions. The Mexican
nationality to-day is essentially a mixed one. It does not repre-
sent either the Spanish conquerors or the conquered Aztecs, but
a mixture of both. The revolution was not an Indian revolt
against the European dominant race, nor was it merely a revolt
of the Spanish Creoles against the mother-country. Originating
from the convulsions of the Spanish monarchy caused by the
invasion of Napoleon and the War of Independence in Spain, the
Mexican insurrection enlisted both the race-antipathy of the
Indians to their conquerors and the political aspirations of the
Creoles. The first rising, under Hidalgo, was mainly supported
by the Indians. At a later -period the idea of an independent
Mexican nation was adopted by the Creoles of European descent,
who sought allies in the Indian population. Various measures
were taken to conciliate the support of the latter. The annual
commemoration of the conquest of the Aztec empire was abol-
ished after the revolution, and the Aztec symbol of the eagle and
cactus was taken for the flag of the new Mexican republic.
The blending of the Spanish and Indian races in the Mexico of
our time is still incomplete, but it is going on rapidly. The In-
dians had no national system of government to revive nor any
political education as a class,, and hence the outward form, so to
speak, of the republic is that of a modern community of Euro-
pean race. In practice, however, from the indifference of the
pure Indians to politics and the superior wealth and intelligence
of the pure white race, it is rather a semi-military aristocracy
than a democracy. It could not well be otherwise in a nation
so constituted. When the independence of Mexico was estab-
lished the only form of government with which its people were
acquainted was the absolute bureaucracy of the Spanish office-
holders. The power of the viceroy of Mexico had been jealous-
ly limited by the policy of the Spanish court. Boards of audi-
tors, corporations of magistrates, and similar bodies composed
of officials directly appointed by the home government, held
the chief power in the government of the country. So strictly
were the viceroys watched that on one occasion St. Croix, who
held that office, was reprimanded severely for commuting the
punishment of an ordinary criminal, and another viceroy was

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 439

arrested and deposed by a decree of the auditors. The Spanish
king, though absolute in theory, was too distant to exert much
influence in the internal administration of his dominions beyond
the Atlantic. The colony was thus governed by a system of
boards or commissions for the various departments of the ad-
ministration. With the downfall of the Spanish dominion the
whole system became unworkable, and it was necessary for the
Mexican leaders to wholly remodel the very form of government
for their country. That only a small class should have any
comprehension of the nature of such a task was inevitable.
The great mass of the population was bewildered at the idea of
taking an active part in the formation of their own government,
and even still the majority take little interest in politics. The
small political class consequently controls the government com-
pletely. The state authorities are practically subject to confir-
mation by the president and Congress, and the control of the
army, which is now highly organized and well drilled, makes the
president very nearly supreme over Congress. Such a system
is strange to American ideas, but it is hard to see what substitute
could be recommended in the present condition of the Mexican
people.

It must be remembered, in justice to the Mexicans, that theirs
is not the only country which has to contend with difficulties in
the introduction of popular government. Italy and France have
had experience of a similar character, and the number of votes
cast at most elections in the so-called constitutional countries of
Europe shows that the Mexican Indians are not singular in their
indifference to political affairs. Neither need it be assumed that
the race-distinctions now existing must necessarily continue al-
ways. The Norman-French conquerors of England during
fully two centuries held their Saxon vassals in as complete a
political isolation as the Indians were kept in by the Spaniards.
Yet after the connection with France was broken the two races
rapidly fused into one. The dynasty and government of the
Normans were adopted as their own by the conquered Anglo-
Saxons, who, like the Mexican Indians to-day, had lost the practi-
cal knowledge of any political system of their own. Considering
the amount of fusion that has already gone on between the races,
and the part played in the government by pure Indians like
Juarez and Porfirio Diaz, there seems good reason to expect that
in a few generations the different races may blend as perfectly
in Mexico as did the Saxons and Normans in England.

Race-distinctions are not the only point of distinction, how-

440^ MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July,

ever, between the Mexican population and its northern neigh-
bors. The social distinction of classes is strongly marked, apart
from the question of race. The upper or ruling class is quite
distinct socially from the lower orders. The line between the
aristocracy and the working-classes is drawn as definitely in
Mexico to-day as it was in France under the old regime or in
England of the last century. It is true that there are no titles
of nobility recognized by law and no legally privileged class,
such as exists in Germany and England, but still the control of
the government is virtually in the hands of an aristocracy. The
Mexican aristocracy differs in its origin from the feudal aristo-
cracies of <Europe, and has more affinity with the modern English
system. It is composed of the rich land-owners and mining
proprietors, the wealthy bankers and merchants, and the official
classes, with the families connected with and depending on all
those classes. In social refinement and education, as well as in
general ability and astuteness, the upper class in Mexico will
bear comparison with any population of Europe or America.
While the infidelity of modern French life is a good deal spread
among them, it is far from having; a deep hold on the public mind.
A Mexican will often rail against the clergy, but he seldom
attacks the dogmas of Christianity or expresses any dislike for
religion itself. The spirit of Paul Bert or Virchow is not that of
the Mexicans, even the most radical. Their family life, too, is
purer than in the upper classes of France or Prussia. All the
Mexican races are represented in the upper classes, Indian as
well as white, though, as might be expected, the Spaniards of pure
blood form the largest element. The aristocracy is not confined
to the capital, but spreads throughout the country. The South-
ern planters before the war resembled pretty closely the pre-
sent country aristocracy of Mexico.

The Indians who retain their tribal organization, as already
mentioned, are chiefly employed in cultivating their own lands.
When they hire out as laborers, either on public works or for
private employers, the contracts are usually made with the chief
of the tribe, not with individuals, and the time is always specified
at which the services are to end. Like many other customs,
this system has been handed down from the days immediately
following the conquest by Cortez. It was introduced by the
Spanish court to prevent the enslaving of the Indians or the risk
of their being transported to distant provinces under the pre-
tence of hiring their services. It has certainly protected the
personal freedom of the natives in the past, and their condition

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 441

under it at present is in many ways better than that of the rest
of the working population. Like the aristocracy, the latter is
made up of different races. On the frontiers, where the Indians
remained hostile during long periods, Spanish blood predomi-
nates even among the laboring population. Such is the case
in Sonora and Chihuahua, where the Apaches, Navajoes, and other
tribes continue independent. In the mining districts, such as
Jalisco and Guanajuato, though there is a large amount of white
blood in the lower classes, it is generally mingled with the Indian
races. In Guerrero and Vera Cruz a negro element is to be
found, but in general the negro plays a very small part in the
population. The ancestors of the present negro population were,
of course, introduced as slaves, but slavery never existed on a
large scale in Mexico and was wholly abolished soon after the
establishment of independence. The liberated slaves have re-
mained on the plantations of their former masters, and are among
the most light-hearted and at the same time the most indolent
part of the whole Mexican population.

The material condition of the Mexican working-classes is
much worse than that of laborers in any part of America.
Thirty cents a day is the common rate of wages in the country,
and for that they are contented to perform the heaviest labors.
Farm-work, mining, factory-labor, and domestic service are all
alike paid low. The custom of making loans to laborers to be
repaid by work is common and tends materially to prevent their
social advancement. The large factories which are not uncom-
mon in certain districts are thus enabled to retain their hands
as long as they desire. The latter are not allowed to leave their
employment till they have paid their debts ; and as that is gene-
rally impossible out of wages which are barely enough for sup-
port, the debtor continues a virtual prisoner to his life's end.
The food, clothing, and lodging of the Mexican laborer is of a
very poor quality, though, in general, the mildness of the cli-
mate and the absence of overcrowding make his condition less
miserable than that of the lower classes in the cities of Europe.
Amid all his privations the Mexican laborer is cheerful and
polite. The spirit of discontent with his lot or envy of the con-
dition of others is far less shown in Mexico than either in Eu-
rope or this country. The ties of family are warmly preserved
among them ; and however poor a Mexican may be himself, he
is ready to share whatever he has with his more needy fellows.
That the Mexican peons are much behind the standard of either
this country or western Europe in book-learning, in general

442 MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July,

knowledge, or in self-reliance must be admitted. The condi-
tions under which they have existed for generations may, how-
ever, be reasonably held accountable for much of the deficiencies
shown by them in such respects. In intelligence they are by
no means lacking. They acquire the skill required for manu-
factures and trades as readily as most European races, and the
children exhibit marked quickness in picking up knowledge at
school. A certain degree of precocity is, indeed, to be noted
among the children of all classes, but it does not seem to be
accompanied by the same tendency to early decay as in other
countries.

The increase of schooling facilities for all classes is a favorite
object of the recent governments of Mexico. The primary
schools and tjie colleges have both received a good deal of at-
tention of late years. The higher colleges in the capital, espe-
cially the School of Mines, are fully up to the rank of similar
institutions in the United States or Europe. In addition every
. State possesses its own college, and primary schools are tolerably
numerous and increasing in numbers. To found a good system
of public instruction is, however, at least as hard a task as to
found a suitable system of government, and it is to be feared
that the present educational movement in Mexico is guided more
by theories derived from other lands than by practical expe-
rience of its people's wants. The learning of reading and writ-
ing alone has no special tendency to promote self-reliance or
energy in a people ; and those are the qualities which are spe-
cially needed in Mexico at present. The hostility to the church
of the heads of the government is also a most serious difficulty.
There can be no education worthy of the name without moral
training, and such training cannot be expected from men actu-
ated by no higher motives than those of the ordinary politician
in Mexico or elsewhere. It may be hoped, however, that the
existing spirit of hostility to the church i only a temporary feel-
ing. The bulk of the population still retains the faith firmly,
and if it takes a larger share in the government in the future
than it has done in the past the change cannot but be favorable
to the church, which is besides identified with the best traditions
in the country's history. In the meantime, however, so long as
the government maintains its attitude of hostility to the church,
which the nation at large regards as the only authority in either
morals or religion, but little need be expected from the public
schools for the improvement of the Mexican people, though,
without doubt, the list of schools and colleges organized of late

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 443

years will fill a large place in the letters of special correspon-
dents during the next few months.

From what has been said of the various elements composing
it, it will easily be seen how difficult it is to institute a fair com-
parison betvyeen the Mexican population and that of this country.
Nations, like individuals, have distinct characters, and difference
of national character is very far from implying inferiority on the
one side or superiority on the other. One race may be superior
to another in military or political qualities, and wholly inferior
in social organization or intellectual endowments. No impar-
tial observer would call the Turks a higher class of mankind
than the Greeks or Arabs, yet for several centuries the Turks
have ruled over both races. The Spaniards for over two cen-
turies held sway over the Italians in the south of Europe and
the Belgians in the north ; but no one to-day will claim that the
people of Spain are naturally a superior race to those of Italy
and Belgium. Nevertheless there are few points on which the
majority of men are more ready to form judgments off-hand than
on the characters of other nations. The average German re-
gards the French as 'a nation of mere noisy braggarts, incapable
of serious thought or steady exertion in any direction. The
Frenchman, on his part, regards the German as little more than
an intellectual barbarian, alike devoid of social polish and inter-
national honesty. The English until lately looked upon the
other nations of Europe as naturally unfit for free institutions,
and, in fact, in every respect inferior to themselves. The most
trivial differences are often taken as proofs of national inferiority
on the part of foreign nations. " I hate the French because they
are all slaves and wear wooden shoes," is the remark put by an
essayist of the last century in the mouth of a typical English
sailor, whose kinsfolk, no doubt, often dispensed with the use of
shoes of any kind. The temporary good or bad fortune of a
people, too, is often taken as a permanent result of its character,
and the ' latter is judged accordingly. Nations, not less than
men, have their periods of success and times of failure, alternat-
ing in succession, yet men judge them as if the present were
the final moment of decision for all time. The majority to-day
in this country look upon the military supremacy of Germany
as the natural outcome of the superior fighting qualities of the
Germans, wholly forgetful of the fact that three generations ago
Germany and all Europe lay helpless at the feet of Napoleon.
So it is with many among ourselves when we speak of Mexico
or the rest of Spanish America. We look at the material pro-

444 MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July*

gress made in our country and there during the last half-cen-
tury, and we at once ascribe the difference to the want of energy
of the Spanish races, as if there had never been a time when
Spanish adventurers spread their conquests and colonies from
the Rio Grande to Patagonia. We look on the revolutions of
Mexico during two generations as conclusive proof of the natu-
ral turbulence of its people, arid we forget that the same people
has passed three centuries of existence in a peace unbroken by
the slightest revolt against authority.

That the politicians of Mexico are thoroughly unscrupulous
is a notorious fact. The majority of the higher officials, gov-
ernors, generals, and senators, make no secret of their raids on
the public treasury. The late President Lerdo is believed to
have accumulated an immense fortune during his tenure of office,
and his example has found numerous followers in the officials of
every grade. A few months ago the governor of an important
State, who is also a general in the federal army, deeded a valu-
able piece of the State domain to himself as a reward for his
military services to the general government, and the transaction
scarcely attracted a passing notice. Such occurrences are of
every-day occurrence in Mexico ; but, with our own experience
of political rings, we may well pause before passing any sweep-
ing condemnation on the Mexican people for the rapacity of
their public men. The highway-robbers who play such a part
in modern descriptions of Mexico were essentially a product
of the disturbed condition of the country. Under the Spanish
viceroys the roads were perfectly, secure, and to-day, with the
reorganization of the army and the vigorous measures adopt-
ed by the State governments, the highwaymen have practically
disappeared again. It would be as unfair to charge the Mexican
people as a wfiole with their deeds as it would be to judge the
American people by the doings of Quantrell's bushwhackers
during our civil war. In ordinary life the rights of property
are as fully respected in Mexico as in any civilized country.
Even during the revolutions which preceded the empire of
Maximilian, M. de Fossey, an impartial French writer, who had
resided for thirty years in the country, declared that if Paris
had no more efficient police force than the city of Mexico then
had it would be absolutely uninhabitable ; and yet life and pro-
perty were fairly safe in the latter city. That such a state of
things should exist is the best proof of the naturally law-abiding
character of the Mexicans. Commercial dishonesty is much
rarer than in the United States, and the long credits given by

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 445

the foreign merchants to the country traders are very rarely
attended with any loss. In purely civil matters, too, justice is
respected in the Mexican courts at least as scrupulously as in
this country. These facts ought to vindicate sufficiently"' the
character for honesty of the Mexican people.

The lack of industry which is often laid to their charge is
equally unwarranted. Labor of all kinds is patiently performed
by the working-classes of every race, and there is no lack of abil-
ity among them for technical work of all kinds. Business enter-
prise is certainly wanting on the same scale as it is now found
in the United States, but the circumstances of the country dur-
ing the last sixty years amply account for that fact. The works
executed in every part of the country during the times of peace
may well compare with those of any country of Europe of the
same population. The extent to which mining explorations
have been carried on, even without the aid of modern machi-
nery, in almost every part of the country, is surprising, and may
challenge comparison with the most remarkable displays of
energy in the same line in the United States. It is worth note
that the attempts made by English and other companies to work
celebrated Mexican mines, such as those of the Real del Monte,
have given far less satisfactory results than the labors of the
Mexican miners. In the cultivation of the soil through the tern-
perate districts the evidences of the industry of the people are
remarkable. Land which would be neglected in Texas or Cali-
fornia is carefully cultivated, even in small patches, by the
peasants of Chihuahua and Durango. Irrigation is applied
wherever practicable with a skill and patience unknown in the
United States. In the parts of the country where water is
scarce the annual rains are collected in huge reservoirs, the con-
tents of which are gradually distributed over the adjoining
ground during the spring months, and when the water has
been all drawn off the bed of the reservoir itself is carefully
planted and cropped. Such a system in a thinly-peopled coun-
try does not warrant the reproach of indolence against the
people that practises it. The public works of the country exe-
cuted before the Revolution are also on a scale of such magni-
tude as few European nations can show. The cathedrals of
Mexico, of Lagos, of Leon, of Puebla, and other cities may
fairly be classed among the great churches of the world, and the
Desague, or canal to carry off the surplus waters of the lakes
around the capital, is one of the greatest engineering works of
the last three centuries. It is not easy to reconcile the construe-

446 MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July,

tion of such works with the character for indolence so lightly
attributed to the whole population of Mexico.

In literature Mexico is fairly well represented, in spite of the
isolation which has hitherto marked her position. Two hundred
years ago the Mexican dramatist Alarcon furnished models to
the greatest of French tragedians Corneille and light literature
is to-day extensively cultivated by the upper class of Mexicans.
It is in art, however, that the Mexican intelligence specially
excels. Both Europeans and Aztecs are naturally artistic, and
music and painting are cultivated to an extent unknown in the
United States. The military bands, com posed .chiefly of Indians,
render the most difficult music with a precision and feeling that
cannot be excelled in any capital of Europe, and the taste for
music is shared by the whole population. Painting, too, is a
favorite study, though but few schools have yet been established.
The decorations painted on the commonest articles by the In-
dians in some districts show a genuine art feeling, even among
the lowest classes, such as is not to be met with in other parts
of the continent. It is fair to add, too, that in natural politeness
the Mexicans are much superior to any of their neighbors, nor
is their politeness merely superficial. Their family relations
are warmly cherished, and the affection between parents and
children is far more marked than unfortunately it is in many
cases in our own land. Traits of character like these may riot
strike a stranger so powerfully as business energy or political
aptitude, but they are worthy of consideration in judging the
true civilization of a nation and the character of its people.

That Mexico, during the sixty years that have passed since
she finally threw off the Spanish government, has not succeeded
in establishing a stable political system is true. Her presidents
have been almost as many as the years of her political existence,
without counting the two empires, and nearly every State has
had besides domestic revolutions. Since the overthrow of Maxi-
milian, though the changes have been much fewer, there have
been two military uprisings, one of which was successful in re-
moving Lerdo de Tejada from the presidency. Even now the
permanence of the government, though in name representing the
free choice of the people, rests chiefly on the army. The main
cause of the comparative peace of the last decade has been the
increased efficiency of the army, which, under Porfirio Diaz, has
been armed and drilled to a point that will compare with that
of most troops of either Europe or America. The extension of
railroads, by making easy the transit of troops to different parts

1884.] MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 447

of the republic, will no doubt considerably increase the power
of the army as an instrument of government, but it can hardly be
counted a satisfactory state of things when a powerful military
force is the chief guarantee of freedom and self-government. For
the present, however, nothing else can support any government,
though if peace be maintained for some years with the forms
of self-government habit and increased political activity may
gradually make these forms realities.

The hostility towards the church shown by the recent libe-
ral governments has been extremely bitter. The expulsion of
the Sisters of Charity from the city of Mexico on the sole
ground of their being members of a religious community was
a scandal to humanity, and the authorities continue to display in
various ways the same spirit. We hardly know whether it adds
to or lessens the guilt of the Mexican assailants of religion that
they have not the satanic hatred of Christianity which is shown
in many parts of Europe. Mexico, since its independence, has
been constantly the sport of political theories. A Bourbon mon-
archy, a national empire, an aristocracy, a democracy, a confede-
ration of States, and a republic one and indivisible, have 'all been
attempted by politicians wholly unacquainted practically with
any one of them. In each case it was not the spirit of loyalty, of
liberty, or even of political fanaticism that suggested a new form
of government. It was simply a theory drawn from the political
theories far oftener than from the practical workings of foreign
countries, and put boldly into practice by men who themselves
only looked on it as an experiment. So it is with the anti-Catho-
lic policy of the liberal government. The seizure of the church
property was a tempting bait to men demoralized by constant
revolutions, and its confiscation was dictated by simple rapacity,
not by any hatred of Christianity. Since the downfall of the
empire^ however, the warfare against Christianity which has
broken out so violently in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and
Switzerland has attracted the imitation of the Mexican liberals.
They have adopted persecution as they adopted new forms of
government from fashion, not from conviction or even passion.
Like other fashions in Mexico, it will pass away, but in the mean-
while its continuance is a source of incalculable evils. At a time
when every moral force in the country should naturally be de-
voted to raising the national character, and when, even as a mat-
ter of political prudence, a sagacious government would endeavor
to enlist the religious feelings of the people on the side of the es-
tablished order, the rulers of Mexico wantonly array themselves

448 MEXICO OF TO-DAY. [July,

against the faith of the nation. Paul Bert or Clemenceau would
fain destroy the church because they hate -her doctrines and re-
ject her moral law. The Mexican politicians expel religious and
try to have infidelity taught in the schools simply because they
look on such measures as part of the programme of liberalism.
It is a matter of theory, not of belief.

Whether the existing government will be overthrown by some
new revolution, or whether it will gradually strengthen into a
permanent military aristocracy, is somewhat uncertain. In either
case it is unlikely that the warfare against the church will be
long continued. In the meanwhile it is well to understand that
the war is waged by the politicians, not the people, of Mexico.
The latter may be blamed for permitting its continuance, but it
must be remembered that self-government in Mexico is only a
theory, and that the bulk of the people have as little to do with
electing their rulers as in any despotism. That the effect of the
persecution itself will be purifying on the Mexican church we
have little doubt. Long peace had led to abuses, and discipline
among the clergy in the remoter districts had been much re-
laxed even before the Revolution. That it had not been strength-
ened during the confusion of constant revolutions, when means
of travel and the means of educating subjects for the priesthood
were alike wanting, may easily be understood. The zeal and fer-
vor of the Mexican church under more favorable circumstances
had' been proved long before. The missions of California, the
latest of which were almost of qur own day, showed a self-devo-
tion and an intelligent zeal among the missionaries, many of whom
were drawn from Mexico, that would honor any clergy in the
world. Among the secular priesthood on the frontiers, however,
discipline was necessarily relaxed by the difficulty of making
episcopal visitations or in any way keeping up much intercourse
among the clergy. That the hostility of the government should
awaken the zeal of both people and clergy there is reason to ex-
pect. Moreover, the want of ready communication among them-
selves and of facilities for the proper training of students has
been a main cause of whatever disorders have grown up. It
would be a strange irony of events if the policy of the liberal
government in building railroads through the country should
help to revive the zeal and strengthen the bonds of discipline
among the Mexican clergy. History shows many such instances
of how man proposes and God disposes, and the Mexican liberals
may be destined to furnish one example more in the results of
their present policy.

1884.] Is THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC AN ANOMALY? 449

IS THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC AN ANOMALY IN

HISTORY?

LORD MACAULAY'S prophecy as to the ultimate destiny of
American democracy, and the gloomy forebodings of other En-
glish political writers, have frightened not a few honest persons
for the future of the United States. Our foreign critics usually
agree in saying that history has pronounced against the possi-
bility of stability in republican institutions. They are much too'
ready to cite history in support of their theories, without being
sufficiently careful to separate the accidental from the essential,
to allow for special influences, and not to be distracted from the
realities of things by superficial similarities. If republican forms
of government are in their nature unstable and passing, what has
become of the governments of the Pharaos and the Csesars, the
Bourbons and the Bonapartes ?

One would suppose from the. teachings of European critics of
America that monarchy was the normal form of government, and
that republics had never been anything but doubtful experiments
of rare occurrence. Political writers, with a few vague allusions
to. Greek and Roman democracies, usually pass over completely
the important and instructive Italian republics of the middle
ages, and, moralizing on the short duration of the French repub-
lics, warn the United States of an early end. Mr. Freeman went
so far as to give as a title to one of his histories, The History
of Federal Governments from the foundation of the Achaian League
until the disruption of the United States, the work being pub-
lished at the beginning of our civil war. He explained it after-
wards by saying that the United States was really broken up
and began again at the close of the war. We may wonder if
he would say that the English monarchy came to an end with
Charles I., and a new monarchy began at the Restoration ?

The fact is that although monarchy may be the form of gov-
ernment best suited to the comparatively modern nations of
northern Europe, yet the history of those ancient races to whom
the world is really indebted for modern civilization is, when
rightly viewed, the history of the struggle of republican and
democratic ideas and institutions with the despotic and aristo-
cratic forms of government peculiar to their barbarian invaders.

It is by a mere fiction that monarchy is supposed to be an es-
VOL. xxxix. 29

Is THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC [July*

pecially stable form of government. The French monarchy, as
it existed in the eighteenth century, really only dated from Riche-
lieu ; the French Revolution has testified to its stability. The
earlier government under the Capets and Valois was a suzerainty
over great feudatories nearly the equals of the monarch. And
what a mere matter of words to call the monarchy of Victoria
and of William Rufus by the same name ! The Czar Nicholas of
Russia was accustomed to say that there was no alternative be-
tween despotism and republicanism ; that constitutional mon-
archy is a mere temporary halting-place in the progress of gov-
ernments.

Our English critics who still persist in the delusion that
American character resembles the English have, for the most
part, like Lord Macaulay and Mr. Matthew Arnold, resorted to
the constructive powers of their inner consciousness in forming a
notion of American character. Mr. Freeman, even after travel-
ling in this country, failed to see the radical differences which
exist between "the two branches of the English race " in spite ot
their community of descent. Political speculation founded on
their supposed identity of political character is valueless and
vain.

The appearance of the Italian republics in the middle ages
was not, as writers seem to assume, a mere sporadic breaking out
of democracy, but a direct inheritance from the days of the Greek
and Roman republics, which, in breaking up, left many smaller
republics on their own model. Of the ancient republics the
most strikingly interesting to Americans, as offering many points
of resemblance to the Constitution of the United States, was the
Achaian League, which was a genuine federal government. The
one chief magistrate, like our President, was chosen directly by
the people for a definite term of service (our system of choice by
electors being, of course, practically the same thing), but, unlike
our President, sat as a member 'of the legislative council. The
object of the Achaian League was the union of all Peloponnesos
in a free and equal democratic confederation. The sovereign
power was vested in a popular assembly. The people alone en-
acted laws, elected magistrates, contracted alliances, and declared
war and peace. There existed absolutely no property qualifica-
tion for attendance at the assembly, which was, as we say, a pri-
mary assembly.

Like that of the United States, the constitution was federal.
Each city remained a distinct state, sovereign in its own affairs.
In all external affairs the federal government was supreme.

1 884.] ' AN ANOMAL Y IN Plisron Y? 451

Besides the assembly there was the Achaian senate, which
was a committee of the assembly and consisted of one hundred
and twenty unpaid members. The ministers of the president
(or general, as he was called) were not chosen by himself, but
chosen at the same time and by the same electors. Besides
these officers there was a secretary of state, an under-general,
and a general of cavalry. It is strange that Calhoun argued for
two presidents in the United States, citing the ancient republics,
and quite overlooked the example of the Achaian League. One
fault in the Achaian constitution was ingeniously avoided by
the framers of the Constitution of the United States. The cities
of the League, irrespective of size or population, had equal votes,
which was an injustice, while our Constitution provides that the
representatives be chosen in proportion to the number of the
voters, but provides for the interests of the smaller States in
allowing an equal number of senators to each State. The League
lasted for one hundred and fifty years, and then fell before the
overwhelming forces of the Romans, not from causes inherent
in the body politic.

The republics of Rhodes and Byzantium lasted until Rome
became an acknowledged monarchy. The republic of Cherson,
whose site was that of the modern city of Sebastopol, lasted for
a thousand years after Sparta and Athens had ceased to be free,
in independence, ruled by Greek presidents. The intense vital-
ity of republican institutions is abundantly shown in their long
endurance among the inheritors of the ancient democracies, long
after the parent republics had succumbed to the brute force of
barbarian invaders, and sufficiently contradicts the ignorant and
absurd notion that instability is more inherent in republican and
democratic forms of government than in monarchical.

It would be useless to attempt, within the limits of this paper,
more than a glance at some of the salient points of the Italian
commonwealths, whose municipal forms of government began
to revive when the pressure of feudalism was somewhat light-
ened by the first Otto, who gave permission to the cities to raise
walls and take measures of defence. Among the most direct in-
heritors of Roman and Greek institutions were the republics of
Venice, of Naples, and of Amalfi (to Amalfi we are indebted
for the preservation of the Pandects of Justinian). The founders
of Venice had Roman blood in their veins and preserved their
family names at a time when the custom was disused in other
parts of Europe. The Venetian government, from its founda-
tion in the fifth century until the so-called Serrata del Consiglio

452 Is THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC [J u b r >

in 1299, was a democracy. The people, without distinction of
rank or wealth, had the elections in their hands. In 1032 was
instituted the Council of the Pregadi, chosen by the doge from
the most illustrious citizens, and in 1172 was founded the Grand
Council of four hundred and eighty members, named annually
by twelve tribunes or grand electors, of whom two were chosen
from each of the sections of the republic. Later the govern-
ment consisted of the doge, six counsellors called the Signoria,
the Pregadi, now limited to sixty members; and in 1249 the
doge was chosen by a commission of forty-one members of the
Grand Council, selected by a system of alternate choice and lot.
In 1511 was founded the Council of Ten, which consisted of six-
teen members ; after this the number of the Grand Council was
no longer limited to four hundred and eighty. Although the Ve-
netian government since the Serrata del Consiglio has generally
been considered the type of aristocratic governments, it would
perhaps be more just to consider it as the government of one
democracy by another. As the right of entrance in the Grand
Council w r as only limited to the descendants of the original
families possessing that right, the council came at last to include
many of no position or means that distinguished them from the
middling classes. The unique position and character of Venice
especially favored the original usurpation. The principal fami-
lies were at once merchants and warriors, and their vessels at
once ships of war and merchantmen. The consequence natu-
rally was that, holding the naval forces in their power, they
utterly debarred the people from offering any effective resistance.
It may be here remarked that the Italians never formed a
true confederation. The nearest approach to confederation were
the two Lombard leagues against Frederick I. and Frederick II.
of the house of Hohenstaufen. These leagues, though some-
thing more than leagues, were never true confederations. Their
deliberations were carried on by a sort of 'congress consisting
of the consuls and podestas of the towns, who submitted their
resolutions to their towns-people, and chose an officer who acted
as president at their deliberations. This was analogous to our
own first Congress of the Revolution. The governments of the
Lombard towns were of much the same plan, founded on Roman
customs : two consuls, a Grand Council, and a Consiglio di Cre-
denza ; later a podest&, nominated by the emperor. The fact that
the Lombard leagues never solidified into a regular confedera-
tion may be partly explained by the comparative difficulty of
communication in a country constantly harassed by the feudal

1884.] AN ANOMALY IN HISTORY? 453

barons. In those days the castles of the predatory lords could
sustain a long siege, and in order to subdue a tract of country
every stronghold had to be taken, one by one ; whereas in our
day no country would think it worth while to make any further
resistance when its army had surrendered.

It may be worth while to examine in detail the constitution
of Florence, as many of the republics of central Italy were
modelled upon it. The popular government founded by the
Florentines in 1250 consisted of the following elements: The
citizens Divided themselves into twenty companies, according
to the quarter of the city they represented, to each of which
they gave a chief and a standard-bearer, and replaced the impe-
rial podesta by a judge, who bore the title of captain of the
people. His deliberative council consisted of twelve anziani,
of whom two were chosen from each quarter of the town.
This council was called the Signoria, and was renewed every
two months.

It was in the year 1^82 that the Florentines established the
form of government which lasted until the fall of the republic.
The members of this government were galled the Priors of the
Arts, to indicate that the republic was to be represented by the'
chief men of the principal occupations. These priors, at first
t three in number, were afterwards increased to six, to represent
the six quarters of the town. They were entrusted with the
supreme power, but only remained in office for two months ;
they were elected by their predecessors in office, by the chiefs
and the council of the major arts, and by certain other electors
who represented different quarters of the town. These priors
were kept close prisoners like jurymen in the palace, where they
lived together at the public expense.

In 1323 the Florentines introduced into their elections the
odd custom of drawing by lot. In 1328 the following method
of election was adopted : A list of eligible citizens, Guelfs of at
least thirty-five years of age, was drawn up by a majority of
five magistracies: the priors in the name of the government;
the gonfaloniers in the name of the militia ; the judges of the
commerce represented the merchants ; and the consuls of the
arts, industry.

This list was revised by a " balia," or commission consisting
of the magistrates in office and the deputies chosen by the divi-
sions of the town. The commission erased from the list the
names of incapable persons and classified the remainder accord-
ing to their suitability. Finally the names were divided in series,

454 Is THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC AN ANOMALY? [July,

so that the " purse " from which the Signoria was to be drawn
contained twenty-one tickets, each ticket having the names of a
gonfalonier and six priori. Similar purses were prepared for the
election by lot of the magistrates of the republic. This arrange-
ment was to last three years and a half, when a new " balia "
began.

The causes that led to the downfall of the Italian free states
came rather from without than from within.

The resistless forces of the monarchical governments of the
rest of Europe were too powerful for the Italian republics, even
if the latter had been able to subdue their jealousies sufficiently
to form a really united confederation.

One of the greatest political blunders of the century is the
attempt to organize United Italy under the form of a despotism.
Even after the long period of foreign oppression the republi-
can spirit is still active in Italy ; and possibly another generation
may see a strong united Italian confederacy that will leave to
each section, free and intact, its own peculiar autonomy.

The great size of the republic of the United States as com-
pared to the republics we have reviewed, so far from being
dangerous to its stability, is in many respects a safeguard.
With modern facility of communication, political intrigues are
known almost simultaneously in all parts of the country, and
the community of language prevents the innumerable causes of
misunderstanding which in Italy arose from the difference of
language and habits, which made the inhabitants of a town
twenty miles away foreigners. The personal influence of indi-
viduals or cliques cannot make itself felt over such a vast space
with sufficient force to be really dangerous. In the old repub-
lics a political intriguer was seen daily, and his presence aroused
excitements that led to violent outbreaks. In addition to these
advantages the delicate organization of modern business affairs
makes a vast network of interests. As Carlyle put it, an Indian
cannot quarrel with his squaw on the shores of Lake Winnipeg
without affecting the European market in furs. The slightest
political disturbance is at once felt on the Exchange. In the
mediaeval, commercial Florence the city might be in an uproar
over the quarrels of the Pazzi and the Medici, or the Buondel-
monti and the Araedei, and yet mercantile affairs might be in a
highly flourishing condition. The mercantile system was one of
great profits and great risks, with little extension of credit.
One feature in our Constitution which has been much criticised,
.-and unjustly, is the office of President and the mode of his elec-

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 455

tion. The recurrence of the election every fourth year is un-
doubtedly a disturbance, financially and socially, to the country,
but it has the advantage of arousing interest in national politics
and counteracting the tendency to political lethargy which
might become dangerous. The length of the term is sufficient
for continuity of policy, but not so protracted as to make the
passions of party dangerous. In the disputed Tilden and Hayes
election, although in the South I heard of a few fiery gentlemen
who professed to be ready to " die in their boots " rather than
let Hayes come into office, never was there any serious danger
of trouble. If the term had been for life or for twenty years it
might have been very different.

Mr. Herbert Spencer called our government a government
founded on a " paper constitution," but the men who framed it
drew from their consummate knowledge of the character of their
countrymen and from a practical sense of the exigencies of a
purely modern state of society.

A TRAGI-COMEDY.
i.

IT was a very great effort. The orchestra had just finished
Beethoven's " Hope" when Bernard Devir stepped forward, with
a bow he had practised for several weeks at intervals, and un-
rolled a manuscript. His collar was high and uncomfortable,
and the rose in the buttonhole of his shining black coat made
him feel the stiffness that always afflicts the male sex when over-
decorated.

His father and mother, in the third row of benches from the
platform, felt that the eyes of the assembly were upon them.
They sat very straight, and Mr. Devir, as a relief for his nerv-
ousness, smoothed his new silk hat with his handkerchief. The
room was warm; there was a flutter of fans, a scent of June
roses from the nosegays ; not a breath of air was stirring ; a
man, utterly without a soul, on the back bench, had snored dur-
ing John Dempsey's impassioned parallel (thirty-six pages of fools-
cap) between Mohammed and Arius. Even his grace, who sat
in an arm-chair on the platform, surrounded by several of the
reverend clergy, had been observed to hold his hand before his

456 A TRAGI-COMEDY. [July,

mouth during the lengthy but eloquent essay on u Grattan as a
Patriot/' and while Dick Weldon was making a beautiful apos-
trophe of five pages to the Italian republics in his " Examination
of the Genius of Machiavelli " something like a look of gentle
melancholy was seen to steal across the face of his grace, which
deepened as Dick rustled twenty more leaves, written on both
sides. Everybody, except the dignified personages on the plat-
form, looked eagerly at Bernard Devir when he appeared. His
father thought it was the halo of genius on his son's brow that
attracted this attention ; his mother thought it was his personal
beauty: how nice he looked in his high collar, with his hair
plastered in a hyacinthine half-circle on his forehead, and a thin,
reddish down visible on his upper lip in a certain light how
superior to that sallow-faced South American who had preceded
him, in broken English, with a paper on "Arctic Expeditions " !
Mrs. Devir waved her palm-leaf fan and felt that she was indeed
blessed. She did not know that this noticeable eagerness was
due to the fact that the audience was trying, with all its failing
mental strength, to guess how many pages were bound up in the
valedictorian's manuscript.

It was a fine effort. He opened with a quotation which pre-
pared his auditors for something entirely original. " Timeo Da-
naos et dona ferentes" he said, and then he began an examina-
tion of " Free Thought and its Relations to the Poetry of the
Renaissance in Italy."

"'Rheni pacator," he exclaimed, " et Istri
Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit
Ordinibus ; laetatur eques, plauditque senator, ]
Votoque patricio certant plebeia favori."

These words sent a thrill through the hearts of the father and
mother of the valedictorian. With one accord they turned
their eyes towards his grace to see how they affected him. He
was engaged in wiping his forehead with a purple silk handker-
chief. Mrs. Devir ^wondered how anybody could think of such
a trivial thing at this awful moment.

The valedictorian descended into English. He cast long,
lingering glances into the past ; he prophesied of the future ; he
talked to Mr. Gladstone in a way that no man with any respect
for himself ought to stand ; he fearlessly told Prince Bismarck
what he thought of him ; he raised Erin from her prostrate state
and told her how she ought to behave herself ; he quoted " Let
Erin remember the Days of Old." This brought out a vol-

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 457

ume of applause, and the first violin, suddenly awakened and
fancying- that the end had come, played the opening- bar of the
waltz in the " Merry War."

The valedictorian went on, however; he give a sketch of
Darwin, and then, soaring upward, told why Raphael had in-
cluded Dante among- the theologians of the church in a famous
picture ; he castigated the pagan spirit of the Renaissance with
fury, and, coming down to modern life, gave Swinburne a blow
that almost moved his mother to remonstrate.

" Sure, Terence," she whispered to her husband, " he's very,
very hard on that wan."

" Whoever he is, he deserves it," answered that good man.
" Barney knows what he's talking about."

"But I think he's making very free with the pope."

It became plain even to Mrs. Devir that her son was attacking
Alexander Pope, and not Pope Alexander. The rolling of a cart
outside obliged the orator to pause, and for an instant nearly
everybody felt as if gentle dew had fallen from heaven. He
dropped Pope and grappled with Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Six pages were turned, while all watched him in silent suspense.
Suddenly, with lowered voice, he addressed his classmates as
" dear companions of his scholastic pursuits," and when he got
to " your right reverend prelate and reverend clergy, whose
presence here, etc., etc.," the first violin laid his bow on the
strings ; but when he said, " If in the dim vista of the future, hid-
den from us by wisest dispensation, we meet together, perhaps
crowned by Fame and made the elect of her temple, with tear-
dimmed eyes we shall look back on the roseate, studious, and
tranquil hours spent in the sylvan shades of our Alma " the
first violin could restrain himself no longer : the strains of the
" Merry War " rang out, and a weak, small voice was heard to
murmur, " Deo gratias ! " The breeze seemed to stir up sud-
denly ; tired nature was at once restored ; the man on the back
bench awoke for the fifth time, to find happiness all around him.
His grace smiled most benevolently, shook hands with Bernard,
and said kind things to everybody. All the graduates, adorned
with medals and loaded with gilded books, were presented to
him. All was joy, congratulations, wilted roses, perspiration, and
expectation of luncheon.

There were no happier people in the crowd than the Devirs.
Mrs. Devir put on her well-kept broche shawl, which Bernard
held for her, and fastened the big round cameo brooch with
ceremony at her throat. It was the happiest moment of her

453 A TRAGI-COMEDY. [July,

life, for his grace had just said to Bernard, " It was a fine
effort." Bernard kissed her, and gave the precious manuscript,
tied with blue ribbons, into her keeping.

Jack Dempsey, now B.A., elbowed his way through the
crowd and shook Bernard's hand, noticing, with a pang for he
was an orphan the proud, tender look in the eyes of Bernard's
mother.

" That composition of yours knocked us all cold," said Jack
Dempsey heartily ; he wanted to say something complimentary.
Mrs. Devir started. Was this the young, orator who had a
short time ago grandiloquently discoursed on Grattan a
scholar who wore a medal and who could quote Latin? "We
needed cooling," continued the unconscious Jack. " I am glad
I'm done with the whole business.",

Mrs. Devir's horrified attention was drawn from the free-
and-easy young Bachelor of Arts to a slight, pretty girl w'ho
came towards them, bearing a big nosegay with the regulation
lily over-topping it. She smiled, showing two rows of dazzling
teeth.

" Mother sent this for Bernard," she said, " but I couldn't get
it to him."

" Thank you, Marie," said Mrs. Dempsey a trifle stiffly.
Bernard was out of college now, and intended for the highest
vocation in life, and Mrs. Devir was anxious to guard him from
all possible danger.

" They are too late now, Monsieur Bernard."

" Pas du tout, mademoiselle," said Bernard, with a slight
blush and a bow. " I will take a rose and keep it, and you will
keep the rest."

" D'ye mind that, now?" murmured Mr. Devir, nudging his
wife. " There's more learned in college than Latin."

Mrs. Devir did mind it. Even her son's readiness in French
did not reconcile her to it. Jack Dempsey was not slow to
claim a rose, too, which Marie Regnier gave him with a pretty
blush.

" She's a bold piece ! "

Mr. Devir did not hear this ; an acquaintance of his from the
same place in Ireland was pouring into his ear encomiums on
Bernard's " effort."

Marie Regnier, with a parting smile which included the
whole group, retired very modestly, and Mrs. Devir, relieved,
took Bernard's arm to walk to the station.

By this time Bernard had said good-by to half a hundred peo-

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 459

pie, and the precious manuscript had been given to a reporter,
who had no intention of having- it printed, but who did not want
it to fall into the hands of a rival. This tribute of the Press to
Genius was very grateful to Mrs. Devir. The next morning,
when she seized the early newsman at half-past four A.M. and
found only six lines of it in the Herald (and all the Latin left
out!), she felt that the art of printing was a delusion and a
snare.

Jack Dempsey's eyes had rested with longing and sympathy
on Mrs. Devir as she stood so proudly at her son's side ; it was
beautiful to see her, but she was by no means beautiful. She
was a thin, worn-looking woman, with faded blue eyes, and fea-
tures sharpened by care and hard work. There were two deep,
upright lines on her forehead, and her hands, encased in large
mitts, were wrinkled and knotted at the joints. She wore a gala
bonnet decorated with two small blue cabbages and a bunch of
cherries, a rusty black silk gown which had been packed away
carefully after each family festival and holiday for many years,
and her cherished red broche shawl of the palm-leaf pattern.

Her husband was wrinkled and stooped, too. He had a keen
blue eye and a stern mouth ; a fringe of white whiskers ran all
around under his chin ; his broadcloth frock-coat hung uneasily
on him, and his trousers, also broadcloth, were rather white and
baggy at the knees naturally, since he had knelt in them at Mass
for more Sundays than any pair of trousers not embalmed care-
fully every Monday morning until the following Sunday can
endure.

" Go forth, young men," the eloquent person who had de-
livered the address to the graduates had said " go forth ; use
the gift of tongues your Alma Mater has given you to enlighten
them that sit in darkness. You will adopt professions, and per-
haps rise to eminence in those professions ; but in the midst of
opulence, adulation, if Fame should herald one of you as the poet
of the age, the Virgil of our time ; if one of you should gain the
highest prizes of statesmanship ; if one of you should scale the
heights of military glory, which, unfortunately, leads but to the
grave remember the Alma Mater that cherished your high as-
pirations, guided your steps aside from the * primrose path of
dalliance/ and will ever crown your highest ideals with her bless-
ing, until you are at last dazzled by that fierce, white light
which beats around the Throne. Vale et ave ! "

And so they went forth. A stranger, hearing all that had
been said, might have imagined the world was longing to crown

460 A TRAGI-COMEDY. [July,

them with bays or to put them on triumphal shields, or that
they had been furnished such an equipment as princes and barons
in older days gave the young servitors of their household when
the time for the conferring of knighthood had come. It seemed
strange to go out into the sunny, every-day atmosphere and find
that the world was not standing still. The railroad conductor
collected tickets from Bernard Devir and Jack Dempsey with-
out any apparent consciousness that he touched hands that
had penned the essay on " Grattan as a Patriot " and that fine
effort, " Free Thought and its Relations to the Poetry of the Re-
naissance in Italy." But for one woman the world was trans-
formed. Mrs. Devir had suffered and toiled. One by one her
children had passed away. For this one the pride and hope of
her soul she had worked like a slave. To see him serving the
altar was the desire of her life. To-day it seemed very near to
her. If she might be permitted to live to see her son say his first
Mass, she could, with all her heart, join in the prayer of the holy
Simeon.

It was the happiest day of her life. Jack Dempsey, careless,
free-and-easy Jack, looked at her wrinkled hands and sighed.
What a glory it was to have a mother ! He laughed and joked,
kissed his hand out of the car-window right and left ; but, for
all that, he missed none of the tender, prideful glances that the
worn, tired woman cast upon her son. Jack, in his heart, felt
sad ; it seemed to him that a mother's love is born to suffer of
all earthly things the nearest to heaven, yet of all earthly things
most pathetic in its disappointments.

" He's a gay blade," said Mr. Devir.

" There's no thought about him at all," answered Mrs. Devir
as Jack Dempsey bade them good-by. " They say his uncle
wants to make a priest of him. He'll never do it ! "

II. t

That essay on " The Relations of Free Thought to the Poetry
of the Italian Renaissance " was the result of many days of toil
and many nights of anxiety of early rising on cold winter morn-
ings and late working on sultry summer evenings. It was like
one of those gorgeous blooms that show on prickly and ugly
cactus plants. The rough plant endures, in those regions where
it flourishes, storms of dust and thousands of scorching rays from
the sun ; but when the flower, yellow and vermilion, appears, it
doubtless forgets the dust and the sun. The toil and the trouble

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 461

of producing that essay had not fallen upon Bernard. He had
known where to find the material for it, and he had put it to-
gether. The bricks (to drop into metaphor) were the traditional
property of college orators ; he had only supplied the mortar.
The real work of forcing the flamboyant exotic had been done by
his father and mother.

To bring forth the flower which was supposed to represent
the result of four years of college culture Mr. and Mrs. Devir
had gone to market before dawn and stood behind the little gro-
cery-shop near the Bowery for many weary years. It was one of
Mrs. Devir's boasts that during this time they, had never had a
bottle of whiskey in their establishment. Customers who would
not buy unless they were " treated to a sip " behind the screen
might go elsewhere. The " old man " was more lenient, but his
wife was firm.

Bernard had been kept at school, and " held up his head with
the rest there." His fclothes had been as good as those of Jack
Dempsey, whose uncle was a great Wall Street millionaire.
Spending-money had not been grudged to him, and he had been
advised to entertain his friends at a down-town restaurant on the
unfrequent holidays when he had leave of absence from college.
Mrs. Devir flattered herself that she was a woman of the world ;
she said that the ways of Bernard's friends were not her ways,
and she wouldn't shame the boy by having him bring his friends,
with their Latin, and their Greek, and their French, into the back-
room of a grocery-shop.

Bernard would not have cared, if there had been a billiard-
table in that little back-room; it would have been jammed on
holidays with the young persons of culture whom Mrs. Devir
would have delighted to- honor. His quarterly bills for tuition
and books had been promptly met ; his subscriptions to the vari-
ous college schemes had always been ." decent." Sometimes it
required sharp pinching to do all this and avoid drawing on the
sum deposited in the " Emigrant's." And Mr. Devir was strongly
tempted to introduce the black bottle behind the screen for such
of his female customers as were afflicted with " goneness " or
" sudden palpitations," with a view of increasing sales ; but Mrs.
Devir, true to her principles, would not hear of it.

Bernard had been graduated with honor. His parents felt
that they had given him what was to be his fortune an educa-
tion. They had never had much learning ; Mr. Devir could
write his own name, and Mrs. Devir could make her mark. They
both had an unbounded reverence for " education " that won-

462 A TRAGI-COMEDY.

derful gift which was " more than a mint of money to any poor
boy " ; they had been coining their lives into the education which
had culminated on Commencement Day in that fine effort, " The
Relations of Free Thought to the Poetry of the Italian Renais-
sance."

This education was to be the key with which he was to open
the treasures of the world. His parents rated it at the value of
the sacrifices they had made. His 'mother had resolved that he
should be a priest, and his father, in the beginning more worldly
and hoping to see him in the Assembly some day, like Dennis
Rooney's son, had finally come to regard it as settled that Ber-
nard should, when the time came, go up for examination for the
seminary.

In the meantime there was a vacation before him. He had
worked hard ; his mother felt that he, with his stores of Greek
and Latin and his wonderful accomplishments, ought not to be
confined to the grocery-store or its little back-room.

" He'd look nice rolling up his sleeve and diving into the
brine-barrel for mackerel! " she whispered to her husband as she
watched Bernard, who was talking to a classmate in the seat be-
fore them, "or selling a bunch of garlic to one of the Eye-
talians."

" It's no worse than his father did before him," responded her
husband.

Mrs. Devir looked at him as an aesthete of the most intense
cult sometimes gazes at a hopeless Philistine. She felt that there
are some things which a man ought to know without having
them told to him ; and, as most women do some time or other,
whatever the cynics may say, she showed her sense of the im-
pregnable stupidity of her better-half by silence. This is a me-
dium, by the way, very expressive in the hands of women, be-
cause it is so seldom used.

She arranged, in her mind, that Bernard should not spend
much time in the store, which was no place for him. He should
go to some aristocratic sea-side resort, if she had to draw some-
thing from the " Emigrant's Industrial." It would not do to
have him wasting his time in the store. The father and she were
used to the little place and to the ways of the neighborhood.
But how could Bernard, in his frock-coat and white shirt, endure
it ? No ; he must go, as it were, from the college to the semi-
nary without any interregnum of the store.

Before they had reached home Mrs. Devir had settled it 'all
with her husband. It was decided that Bernard -should start on

1884.] A TRAGICOMEDY. 463

the next day for Far Rockaway. There, as Mrs. Devir said, he
would " meet-the society of his equals " and recuperate after his
studies.

Mr. Devir shook his head dubiously. His vanity was some-
what wounded by the open preference his wife showed for his
son ; he had worked for him like a slave, but not that he might
be placed so far above him. Now, Mrs. Devir, being- a woman,
had no vanity of her own ; all her qualities, all her foibles, seemed
to be absorbed in her son.

ill.

Far Rockaway is a very lively sea-side place in the summer.
There are cottages and hotels, and much music in the morning
and evening. Ail the popular airs are played on all sorts of
pianos by the accomplished young ladies that frequent the place
inrtime of villeggiatura. There is lawn tennis, sailing, bathing,
and fishing. Dancing, too, is a favorite amusement.

Bernard Devir met Jack Dempsey in this festive town, and
they had a good time. Bernard indulged in all the amusements
of the place, which would have included a flirtation with the
most forward of the three Misses Clarke, the belles from Syra-
cuse ; but their mother, hearing that he was a " student," put an
end to that with virtuous indignation.

There was little time for thought ; and Bernard gave small
consideration to his future until one day, when he and Jack
Dempsey were out sailing, Jack said :

" Are you going up for the examination ? "

" I suppose so/' Bernard answered carelessly. " Those
fellows in that boat have an immense load of blue-fish I suppose
so ; the old folk want me to."

Jack was silent for a moment. Bernard, watching the fortu-
nate man in the bow of the other boat haul in another fish, forgot
the subject.

"Well, Bernard," continued Jack, "if that is the way you
feel about it you'd better give the idea up. I'm not much of a
preacher; but I'll say to you I'd rather cut off my right hand
than go into that seminary in that way."

Jack's face flushed. Bernard smiled.

" You're awfully in earnest." And then, with a touch of seri-
ousness himself, " What can I do ? I can construe Virgil a
little ; but I haven't any money to keep me while I grind at law
or medicine. You know I am a thoughtless-- fellow, Jack /

464 ^ TRAGICOMEDY. [July,

know I am but I have come to the conclusion that I can't have
the old people working for me any longer."

" I'd go into the grocery-store first."

Bernard laughed. The suggestion was too absurd.

During the few days that followed Bernard did think ; and,
more, he prayed. He was glad when the last day of his vaca-
tion at Far Rockaway came.

Supper was waiting in the little back-room of the grocery-
store when he arrived at home. He went behind the counter
and kissed his father, to the admiration of several waiting cus-
tomers. He found his mother in her seat at the neatly-spread
table. The soft light of the glittering kerosene lamp showed her
how brown he had become. She clasped him to her in fond
pride, and called to her husband to leave the store in charge of
the " boy."

Bernard was waited upon like a young prince who had hon-
ored an humble roof by his presence. His father even offered
him a cigar out of the best box, apologizing for it. The parents
listened with pleasure to all Bernard had to say.

" They'll never make a priest out of that Jack Dempsey,"
said his mother, as that young man's name was mentioned.

" There's more chance for him than for me, mother. He feels
that he has a vocation, while I I can't go in for the examina-
tion, that's all."

The silence was unbroken. Mrs. Devir set down her teacup
and looked at her son. Mr. Devir took his pipe out of his mouth.

" What did you say, Barney?" she asked tremulously.

" I'm not worthy to be a priest, mother, and I can't try."

"Not worthy!" cried Mrs. Devir. " You're joking ! And
you, with all your beautiful education and all the prayers that's
been sa.id for you ! "

" I can't help it, mother. God knows it almost breaks my
heart to tell you the truth. But I can't think of it, mother I
can't. I know it's the best thing, the highest, the holiest thing,
on this earth to be a priest of God ; but it's a very hard thing to
be a good priest, and I haven't the vocation, mother."

Bernard said all this rapidly. He felt as if a weight had been
lifted off his heart when he had spoken.

" That Marie Regnier has bewitched the boy," cried Mrs.
Devir bitterly, speaking out a hasty thought and then regretting
it at once when she saw the look of pain on her son's face.

" Mother ! "

Mrs. Devir could no longer lift the teacup to her lips. She

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 465

covered her eyes with her toil-worn hands, and tears trickled
slowly between the wrinkled and knotted fingers. Her husband
toyed nervously with his pipe. The boy in the store was whist-
ling a careless tune. The lull of twilight had fallen even on the
busy city. Bernard felt as if the whole world were reproaching
him.

Where was his halo now ? Where was the sunshine that a
moment before had shone on him from the eyes of these two old
people ? His father seemed stunned ; his mother, after a vain
effort to restrain herself, burst into sobs.

And this was the end of it all? The end of the toiling, the
hoping, the praying; the downfall of pride, which had been so
great in this poor mother's heart that she would have become
the humblest of the humble to gratify it !

After a time of silence, broken only by his mother's sobs and
the whistling of the boy in the store, Bernard arose and took his
father's hand, which lay limply on his knee. The old man
seemed not to notice him ; he did not turn his intent gaze from
his wife. Bernard clasped the hand tighter. Surely his father,
whose love would be less unreasonable than a womaw's, could
understand ; but his father, with no eyes for anybody except the
weeping mother, pushed him away.

Bernard's heart swelled. Suddenly his mother raised her
head in sudden hope.

" You'll not make up your mind until you've seen Father
Rodman at the church ? "

" I have just come from him, mother."

Mrs. Devir's head sank again.

" You're breaking your mother's heart, you spalpeen! " cried
his father, bringing his fist down upon the table. " Go up to
bed ! It would have been better a thousand times if I'd kept
you in the store here, instead of cramming your head with Latin
and Greek, of no manner of use if you're not to be priested.
And I'll be ashamed of my life to face the neighbors ! "

Bernard, no longer a boy, but a man, heavy of .heart, crept
up to bed. He did not dare to kiss his mother; she sank her
head lower as he passed her. He threw himself on his knees at
the side of the white-spread bed and was silent. He put his
hands up towards the little picture of the Sacred Heart, which
had hung there ever since he could remember; he could not
pray, for all things, fraught with the tenderness of that mother
whose broken voice he could hear from below, seemed to blame
him.

VOL. XXXIX. 30

466 A TRAGI-COMEDY. [July,

What refuge was there for him ? His father and mother had
turned against him. " I will go down," he thought, in a burst of
passion, "and I will tell her that I will do as she wishes; but I
will wash my hands of it the sacrilege will be upon her head."

Then another thought calmed him. " I cannot," he thought,
" act the part of Pontius Pilate, even for my mother."

IV.

It was generally acknowledged among the neighbors and
relatives of the Devirs that the " student " was a failure. To be
intended for the seminary and to refuse to enter the seminary
was a deep disgrace in the eyes of these good people. Mrs.
Devir had talked of her son as a future priest ever since the boy
had entered college. The humiliation was bitter. She could
not say, as she had said in her many afflictions, " It is the will
of God." She did not believe it was the will of God ; it could
not be the will of God that her son should not serve the altar.
She still attended to Bernard's wants, but in cold silence. His
father "kept sternly quiet, too. One Saturday, when Bernard
went into the store and tried to help in the work, his father
roughly told him that he had no business there.

" It's my place, father," he said. " It's my turn to work
now."

" We don't want Latin and Greek here. Your mother and
me have done without help so long, we don't want it now."

Bernard went upstairs again, with bitterness in his heart.
The food he ate almost choked him. He felt that he was a
pauper; and, consciously or unconsciously, they made him feel it.
There was little consolation in his books. He thumbed over his
Cicero in the little, dark room, and copied the " Relations of Free
Thought to the Poetry of the Italian Renaissance " and sent it to
one of the magazines. It came back in a few days, accompanied
by a slip of printed paper :

" The editor regrets that, owing to a press of manuscripts,
he is obliged to return the enclosed."

He could hardly believe the evidence of his eyes. What !
that " fine effort," which had been praised by everybody and
applauded so cordially, returned to him, no doubt unread ? His
cup of humiliation was over-running.

The friends of his earlier boyhood who sat on the disused
arts left in the street at nights, and sang songs, or practised
dancing steps on the corners after the day's work, nodded when

1884.] ^ TRAGI-COMEDY. 467

he passed by. He was neither fish nor fowl in their estimation.
He was invited to join the " filite Chowder Club," which drove
down to Coney Island in decorated wagons, with flaring^ torches
and blaring horns, several times a year ; and the well-written
note of regret which he sent to the secretary procured him some
temporary scrivening work at the time of election. That was
the only work he succeeded in getting, although he answered
hundreds of the newspaper advertisements. Nobody seemed to
want him. He was too old to be taken as a learner of a trade.
There were hundreds of young men who could construe Virgil
in the same position as himself. People who could do " any-
thing " were a drug in the market.

His best coat became white at the seams, and his trousers
baggy at the knees. Mr. Devir said over and over again that
//<? couldn't afford to keep a " dude." Mrs. Devir said nothing.
His room was always neat and his food ready ; but when it was
necessary to speak to him she uttered only monosyllables.

It was a wretched life. The mother suffered as acutely as the
son. It never occurred to her that she was not acting a virtuous
part. It never occurred to the father that his son needed his
assistance. Bernard had been richly and rarely educated. If he
could not make his way in the world with this costly equipment
he must be worthless. What could they ignorant, hard-work-
ing people do for him, except keep him in bread and butter?

The key to the Temple of Fame, of which the college orator
had spoken so grandiloquently, would not open the meanest
tenement. Around him he saw poor boys, who had been -running
of errands while he was declining mensa, cheerfully working,
independent and prosperous.

In despair he plead for work on the wharves. He was
laughed at ; a stripling with white hands and soft muscles could
not do a stevedore's work.

If he had not been a devout and earnest Catholic he would
have sunk himself, his doubts, and his wretchedness in the East
River. To be a burden on two old people ; to eat the bread
of idleness ; to have no earthly hope ! It was heart-breaking.
Not only to be a burden, but to be, in the eyes of all, a failure
and reproach ! And then the utter impotence of being penniless !
The bootblacks were better off than he ; he could not have
bought a box and brush.

Jack Dempsey had written from the seminary, preaching
courage. On one of Bernard's gloomiest days, as he sat in his
room scanning for the ten-hundredth time the advertisements in

468 A TRAGI-COMEDY. [July,

the newspapers, his mother, silently as usual, brought him a let-
ter. It was short. Bernard opened it ; another piece of paper
fell from its folds upon the floor.

" DEAR BOY: There is not much time allowed here for use-
less writing, so I will be brief. My cousin, Will Dempsey, has
had a full account of you from me. He is a queer fellow, an old
bachelor, you know, with plenty of * chink.' He thinks he can
make you useful down on his ranch in Texas, as he can't have
me. Will you go ? San Lorenzo Ranch, Medina County,
Texas make note of it. I enclose his check for expenses. I've
been trying to bring this about for a long time. Hope you'll go,
etc., etc."

Bernard clasped the letter and the check in his hand as a
drowning man might catch at a spar. How good God was, after
all ! His heart went up in gratitude. He telegraphed his an-
swer to Jack as soon as he cashed the check.

Mrs. Devir took Bernard's announcement of his early depar-
ture with apparent calmness. Mr. Devir's mouth twitched a lit-
tle, and he evidently kept back some demonstration of affection,
but he only said :

" Well, I can't say less than God bless you, though you've
been a sore trial to me and your mother."

His mother carefully packed his valise and neglected nothing
that might add to his comfort. But she would not remain alone
with him ; she would give him no chance for a tender word.
When the time came for him to go he lingered in the doorway
of the 'little room and whispered /' Mother." She was behind
the counter waiting on Marie Regnier, who was a very thrifty
seamstress in the little French colony around the corner. Ber-
nard went out into the store. His mother turned her cheek
coldly towards him. He touched it with his lips, and paused.
.She paid no further attention to him. And he, sad arfd desolate,
left her.

There is no being on earth who can inflict more pain with a
-calm face than a good woman in the consciousness of her good-
ness.

Marie Regnier's eyes became misty. She understood the
-scene. With a sudden impulse she held out her hand and said:

"Au revoir. Monsieur Bernard. I pray that the good God
and his Blessed Mother may keep you safe ! "

Bernard could not speak ; he tried to say " good-by." Mrs.
Devir contracted her brows and darted a quick, jealous look at
the girl.

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 469

She went to the door and watched him disappear. Once,
when he turned back for a last look, she dodged hastily into the
store. When she could see him no more she went up to her
room and sobbed as if her heart would break, kissing over and
over again a faded daguerreotype of a. little boy. And yet she
had let him go without a word of kindness. David, mourning
for Absalom, probably forgot a son's transgressions. This mo-
ther mourned her son's obstinacy with bitter regret and a sense
of deep injury. It was only when she saw him as a little boy
that she could love him without feeling the humiliation of his
failure.

Bernard had glanced back. He did not see his mother, but
he saw Marie Regnier, looking very nice in the morning sun-
shine, waving her hand to him. It gave him some comfort, and
he waved his in return ; he could do no less. As he did it Hope
seemed to spread her wings over him again.

Jack Dempsey's cousin was a hale, hearty Tipperary man, a
good Catholic and an ardent nationalist. There are some people
who think that these qualities cannot be united, but they can.
He had a comfortable adobe house on his ranch, which was
well stocked with sheep. His family consisted of a dozen small
dogs and a formidable array of revolvers. The first warned him
of the approach of tramps ; the second proved useful when the
tramps arrived with hostile intent.

He was a bachelor of fifty-five, erect as a dart, ruddy as a
winter apple, with side-whiskers as white as the wool on a
sheep's back at shearing-time, and clear blue eyes that bulged
out a little to show that nothing escaped them.

He received Bernard cordially. He said frankly that he
liked his looks. He put him at the roughest work he could, " to
take the starch out of him," and Bernard worked with all his
might. It was good to get out among the mesquite, in the soft,
dry air, and to know that at last he was of use in the world,
although he was earning only a ranchman's wages and eating a
ranchman's rations.

After a time old Will Dempsey and Bernard became friends.
Bernard acquired some new tricks in the making of corn-bread
and the cooking of beef that warmed the heart of old Will, who
had never had much skill in the culinary line. He soon knew
Bernard's story ; for the two had many a long smoke and talk

"A TRAGI-COMEDY.

by the fire in the chilly time of the year. He smiled when Ber-
nard alluded to Marie Regnier's leave-taking, and, much to Ber-
nard's surprise, warned him solemnly that he was " very
young." At this time Bernard could not see the drift of this.
Old Will rarely talked of himself ; he seemed to find littLe inte-
rest in any subject outside of Irish politics and the affairs of the
ranch. Once, smiling at a letter he had gotten recently, he
told Bernard an episode in his life. When he was prospecting
in Mexico, or rather searching for one of those mines said to
have been worked by the Indians before the coming of the
Spaniards, he had had a partner named Marianno Galdez "a
greaser, but an honest man." Galdez had died of fever ; after
the priest had anointed him he had asked Will to look after
his wife and children. " In fact," said Will, with a twinkle in
his eye, " he asked me to marry her, if she'd be willing. And I
think I'd have promised, only the Galdez children were twins.
Somehow or other it seemed too much to ask as things were ;
but I promised to look after the mother and the little ones. It
wasn't a hard thing to do, as I made several good strikes and
kept flush. But the mother and one of the children died of the
same fever, which was raging like a lion, before I could reach
Laredo, where they were. A priest there wrote to me that
Maria, the other one, was a handsome child, and said that he'd
see after her bringing-up, if I'd pay the expenses poor Gal-
dez died before I made the strikes, as poor as a church mouse.
Troth, I was glad to get off so easily. I don't know much
Spanish, but I think Maria's letters do her credit. And here's
the only photograph I have of her. I've never seen her myself ;
she must be about seventeen now. Some day I'll take you
down to San Jacinto and introduce you, my boy."

Bernard looked at a photograph of a fat baby with black eyes.
The letters were written in a large, sprawling hand and signed
" Maria " with a flourish.

" It seems that the good priest, who is a Spaniard, thinks that
Maria ought to learn English, out of compliment to me, and he
has hired a Frenchman, his sacristan, to teach her; and this lin-
guist writes me a specimen letter to prove his proficiency. Just
read it ! "

" SAN JACINTO, April 6, 18 .

" RESPECTFUL SIR : Maria Jose Galdez is shameful not to
possess your astringent language, to thank his benefactor of his
kindness ineffable. Maria demands that I to you write this epis-
tle, to you give information of progress. Be not astonish that

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 47 1

in a few monthes my pupil write so perfectly the English as me ;
we spealoall the day English and with my sister, who late comes
from New York, which he has not seen me since we parted a
little babee at the eyes blue in Paris. Maria speak so well that
the sheepses well comprehend the English, saying ' go Ion',' and
the sheepses ' go Ion'.' The good presbyter implore to thank
you a hundred thousand times. I hope my composition please
you. For me, I would come to see you and bring Maria; but
I am .co ward of the cowboys. With sentiments of the most pro-
found respect, me, I am, your obedient, E. REGNIER."

Bernard laughed. " Maria will speak English well, at this

rate."

" Her husband shall teach her," said old Will. " In a year or
two I intend to find her an American husband. I wish she could
write English, for I can't read her Spanish letters. I'm sure
she must be a very pretty girl, for her mother was just like one
of those dark-eyed colleens more power to them ! that I've
seen in Waterford."

During the six months that followed this conversation there
was a great deal of talk between Will Dempsey and Bernard on
the subject of Maria. It was a subject on which the elder man
liked to dwell, and which rather bored the younger one. Seve-
ral letters came from San Jacinto, purporting to be written in
English. The rattling up of genders in these missives was ap-
palling. Maria seemed unable to tell the difference between he
and she, much to her guardian's amusement.

Two letters came from New York, both dictated by Mrs. De-
vir to a friend who wrote after the manner of the Polite Letter-
Writer. The tone of these letters, although enriched with orna-
ments of style by the amanuensis, did not give much comfort to
Bernard.

Will Dempsey amazed Bernard by proposing that he should
assume the management of the ranch and offering him an in-
terest in the land and flocks. After some talk the veteran said :

" You see Jack's going to be a priest ; he has a patrimony, and
his uncle will leave him something, too. Now, I've nobody, ex-
cept Maria Galdez, that has any claim on me. You're a good
boy ; you've unlearned a lot of useless things here and tried to
make me comfortable. Attention ! This house is a good house,
and I've spared no expense on it ; but it needs a woman in it
to complete it. How would you like to marry Slaria and bring
her here? "

472 A TRAGICOMEDY. [July,

Bernard was stunned.

"Couldn't you see that I've been aiming at that aM along?
Come, now ; ride down to San Jacinto and take a look at my
little twin. If she likes you, just talk to Badre David and bring
her back the wife of the best fellow I know."

" But if she shouldn't like me ? "

" Faint heart. Faith, if I were your age I wouldn't throw
away the chance of marrying a pretty girl, plea-sing a friend, and
coming into a place like San Lorenzo Ranch."

Bernard's color rose. The face of Marie Regnier would flit
across his memory.

" We must have a woman t look after matters here, /can't
marry I'm too old for illusions; you ought to. Is it yes or
no ? "

" Well, I'll go," said Bernard reluctantly. " Remember, if
she doesn't like me I can't help it."

Will Dempsey chuckled. " Padre David will arrange it.
Mexican girls are not so particular or so independent as your
Americans of the North. She'll like you ! "

Bernard did not find this assurance at all consoling. At any
rate, he would humor his kind friend's caprice ; so he mounted
his mustang and started on a day's ride to San Jacinto.

" If she doesn't like you ! " cried old Will in stentorian tones,
" bring home somebody else. I won't have you hece unless you
marry a wife." And he chuckled over and over again, mutter-
ing against the absurdity of American sentimentalism in regard

to marriage.

Bernard's ride was not an enjoyable one. He had not
thought about marriage ; it had occurred to him that, if he ever
married, he would like to have a wife like Marie Regnier. But,
in his imagination, he had always sent Marie to a convent.

What if this Miss Galdez should take a fancy to him ? What ?
If? Why? the whole proceeding was ridiculous; and yet not
so ridiculous after all, since marriages after this prosaic and
practical manner were very common among the Spanish-speak-
ing people around San Lorenzo. Well, he needn't marry her,
if he did not like her ; and she couldn't marry him in spite of
himself. He felt like a fool, and turned back. What was the
use of that? Will Dempsey ivould only laugh at his sentimen-
talism. He went on, wondering whether Maria Galdez was at
all like Marie Regnier or not. He considered Will's photograph
of the fat little Galdez baby hideous ; but ugly babies are pro-
verbial for becoming pretty.

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 473

It was an unpleasant ride ; and yet, when the oleanders in
front of Padre David's house met his eyes, he was mildly ex-
pectant. He looked up and down the road before he dismount-
ed, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young lady before she saw
him.

Three people were standing in the garden. One was Padre
David, gray-haired and bent, with soutane tucked up around
him, reading his breviary. Bernard was anxious to attract his
attention quietly. Singular as it may appear, he wanted to get
permission to " brush up a little " before the Mexican beauty,
who dwelt somewhere in San Jacinto, would see him. The other
persons in the garden were a stout, light-haired man who had a
spade, and a slim, dark youth who had a book.

The stout man caught sight of Bernard and opened the gate.

" I recognize you, monsieur," he said in French. "You are
the friend of whose distinguished features M. Dempsey has
been kind enough to send us a portrait. I am Emile Regnier,
sacristan of the church here."

Bernard bowed. The sacristan spoke to Padre David, who
came forward with a kind smile to shake hands with Bernard.

" And this young gentleman," said the sacristan, with an-
other elaborate bow, " is Senor Maria Jose Galdez."

Bernard opened his mouth. The slim young man smiled
and held out his hand.

"You can't he can't she can't "stammered Bernard
" are you the twin ? "

"The only twin," cut in the sacristan, with a bow.

" Is this Maria? I thought there was a lady "

" This is Maria, the ward of M. Dempsey," interrupted the
sacristan, looking a little puzzled. " One will speak the English,
if you prefer it. The only lady here is my sister : here she is ! "

And from the clump of camellias which shaded the door of
the priest's modest cottage came Marie Regnier, carrying Padre
David's cup of foaming chocolate. She was brighter and pret-
tier than ever. Her cheeks rivalled the oleander blossoms when
she saw Bernard.

" Monsieur Bernard ! "

Then there followed more exclamations and explanations, but
Bernard was prudently silent. Marie had something to tell
Bernard of his mother. It was not much : she had seen his
mother at Mass once or twice ; but it was pleasant for Bernard
to hear.

Bernard was in no hurrv to return to San Lorenzo Ranch.

474 A TRAGI-COMEDY. [Juty,

Padre David had many sermons on abstruse theological subjects
to read to him, and the good priest, happy in having such an ap-
preciative listener, said :

"Ah! amigo, you ought to have been a Levite ; how fortu-
nate would I have been with such an assistant ! You ought to
have been a priest, my boy."

Bernard shook his head. " It is not God's will, father. My
father and mother especially the dear old mother longed with
a holy and steadfast longing that I might serve the altar. It
nearly broke my ; heart, and I am afraid it broke hers, when I'
found that I had no vocation. It was the saddest "

" You had proper direction ; you prayed, you "

''Yes, yes," interrupted Bernard. "My confessor knew me
thoroughly, and I prayed with all my heart for light. But it
was plain that I had no vocation for the highest, holiest, most
difficult calling under heaven. Think what it is to be a priest !
And yet, seeing how my mother had set her heart on giving me
wholly to God, I was almost tempted to please her. It was the
saddest day of my life when I told her it could not be ! " Ber-
nard's eyes moistened, and he paused. " O Father David ! how
beautiful her desire seemed to me. You don't know how she had
worked for it half her life, how she had thought of it, prayed for
it. But it takes more than even a good mother's will to make
a priest. I would have given ten years of my life to make her
happy ! You see how pure, how unselfish was her ambition."

Padre David thought for a moment. Then he smiled slightly
and took a pinch of snuff.

" And now the little Marie Regnier is teaching you to make
chocolate in the Mexican fashion ! Ah ! the poor old mother.
But she will live again in her grandchildren and pray that one
of them may be a priest."

Bernard reddened and asked Padre David to go on with his
sermon the one for Palm Sunday, which was short.

Bernard Devir, on his return to San Lorenzo Ranch, present-
ed a very amiable and charming person to gld Will, to whom he
said :

" I have brought back a wife, according to your instruc-
tions."

Will Dempsey gradually permitted himself to be captivated
by Marie ; but for some time he denounced the Mexican fashion
of calling " boys by girls' names." He declared he would never
forgive the twin for " being a boy." Finally he relented.

1884.] A TRAGI-COMEDY. 475

The old couple talked many times, after the sharpest grief of
Bernard's leaving had been blunted, of the glory of that Com-
mencement Day. Jack Dempsey visited them occasionally, and
they were very proud of these visits. He was as jolly as ever,
but there was a recollection about him as of an interior but sub-
dued brightness. Again and again Mrs. Dempsey had said, with
a sigh :

" Wouldn't his mother be the happy one if she could have
lived to get his blessing after his first Mass ! "

One day she said to Jack : " I'm afraid the father and me
were too anxious about Barney, and may be we worried him a
bit. But indeed, Mr. Dempsey, it was only the will of God we
wanted done, and it seemed as if he were running against it."

The bitterness of the disappointment seemed to be fading
away. So soon as this mother began to feel that her son might
be doing the will of God, although not having received the
highest grace, she thanked God for his goodness.

When the letter came from San Jacinto, asking the blessing
of the father and mother on the marriage of their son, her lip
trembled ; but she recovered herself.

" Sure," she said, " it was right to wish the best for Bernard ;
but, if he's got the second-best, let's be thankful. His wife's a
good Catholic, anyhow."

" He says himself you were right," said Jack Dempsey, who
had brought the letter, " to wish that he should be given to God,
and he regrets that he was not worthy of the grace of a vocation
to the priesthood."

" Cheer up ! " chimed in Mr. Dempsey, as he paused to scold
the boy for leaving a bundle of brooms out in the rain. " Cheer
up, acushla ! Matrimony's a sacrament, and, if Barney has re-
ceived it worthily, there may be a priest in the family yet ! "

Mrs. Devir smiled through her tears.

" And after Mr. Dempsey here is priested we'll take a trip
down to see them."

" Well, well, I will, dear," she said ; " But Barney belongs to
another. I could never think him to be the same boy."

476 THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR. [July,

THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR.

FATHER ALEXANDER CROW AND HIS CONFLICT WITH THE EVIL
SPIRIT IN YORK CASTLE IN THE YEAR 1586-7.

[Scene A cell in the 'castle large enough to hold two prison-
ers namely, Alexander Crow and a layman. They have only
one bed and a single taper in the room. The time is night.]

Layman.

Might I not watch with thee,

By love enticed,
With thee so soon to be

Martyr of Christ ?

Alexander.

Leave me, brother ; time is ending :

Life and time they set for me ;
This last night with Christ I'm spending,

Praying, wrestling, lonely, free.
Not like other nights this last one :

Spirits call from far around,
With strange murmurs hovering past one,

Summoning me to battle-ground.
Calm and fearless I'll betake me

To still depths of secret prayer.
Naught can force me, naught can make me

False to Christ ; I'm with him there.

[The layman has to lie down, and Alexander kneels down as
far away from the bed as possible, while the light burns near him.
He thus prays :]

Lord of all joy and sorrow,

Stretch out thy arms benign ;
Full largess let me borrow

From treasure-stores divine :
I'll give thee all to-morrow,

All that was ever mine !

1884.] THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR. 477

Think for me while I'm dying

Helpless as once thou wert ;
I'll share thy crucifying

Like thee, with love begirt,
Though past all prayer, all sighing,

Through press of deadliest hurt.

Now, while my brain can tender

Its service warm and keen,
Take, Lord, the free surrender,

Love's draught from chalice clean
Hidden yet strong Defender,

On whom all victims lean !

[Soon there rises up a hideous Apparition, the sight of which
causes Alexander's flesh to creep and his hair to stand on end.
It begins a furious assault upon the servant of God, striving to
hurry him into some act of despair. The spirit -begins scof-
fingly :]

What if thy words should prove but vain,

Poor fool, what say we then ?
Thy path lieth not through sunlit plain,

Like that of favored men !

[Alexander looks up horror-stricken and exclaims :]

Whence comest thou, O loathsome form
Born of some world of curse and torm ?

Apparition.

I've come to warn thee, come to teach.
Rough is my mode : truth loves rough speech.

Alexander.

Thou hast no part with those who serve
High Heaven with every breath and nerve ;
Child of foul lies, who set thee on
To tempt Christ's servant? Fiend ! begone !

Apparition.

Thou art no servant of heaven's King,
No more than murderer yet unshriven ;

Fond wretch, with wild hopes dallying,
Thou art no martyr marked for heaven !

478 THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR. [July,

Alexander.

Thou liest, fiend ! To-morrow's morn
For Christ I die, for Christ I bleed ;

For him long- years of suff'ring borne
Right tenderly my cause may plead.

Apparition.

I know heaven's saints and martyrs well :

They all wear signs 'that spirits feel ;
When forms we meet where such signs dwell,

Trembling and cringing, home we steal.
In thee no faintest shade or trace
Of such high sign hath room or place ;
The One whose Name I must not name
Leaves thee as ours : he makes no claim.

. Alexander.

What! claim me not, when for his sake
Such heavy cross I've loved to take?
For him each drop of blood, each breath,
I've given in life, will give in death?
Thou know'st not, fiend, love's mysteries ;
I'm mine no more I'm his, all his !

Apparition.

Thou tbinkest, with ambitious mind,

A martyr's crown doth thee await?
Another morn, and thou shalt find

How changed thy dreams, how drear thy fate !
They'll drag thee to the place of doom,
But not to die. In sullen gloom
They'll backward draw thee in thy chains
Back to this prison grim with pains ;
They'll bind thee fast" in cell far down
Where cold will rage and perils frown ;
Black bread will just thy hunger mock
To save thee from destruction's shock ;
There thou shalt waste, by all abhorred,
Through lengths of years with sorrow stored ;
Each hour shall wring from thee fresh dole,
And madness seize thy damned soul.

1884.] THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR. 479

A lexander.

The more we suffer, the more near.
With his deep love "he casts out fear, .
And comes to take, while fierce flames roll,
His victims when all cleansed and whole !

Apparition.

For saints and saved ones such may be ;

Thou art not thus none watch o'er thee.

Out of thy memory, lost man, blot .

All thoughts of saintship saint thou'rt not !

Deem'st thou thyself predestinate ?

Oh ! heed me : such is not thy state.

The prince I serve, before his fall,

Peered once into the Book of Life.

The names there he remembereth all ;

With sun-red gleams that book was rife :

No vestige of thy name was there.

Cease, then, to pray ; cease, then, to care :

All striving with celestial powers

Is breath but lost. Thy soul is ours.

How canst thou with thy stern fate cope ?

I've brought thee knife, I've brought thee rope :

Choose speedy death ; 'twill be small gain

To wade through periods of sheer pain.

[Here he unrolls a long cord and brandishes a knife of keen
edge. Alexander recoils, shuddering. Then the Apparition re-
sumes :]

Senseless to talk of grace with one
Through core and marrow all undone ;
Heaven's censers hold not thy poor prayers,
To solace thee no angel dares ;
Unmarked, unpitied pass thy sighs,
Like blackened leaves beneath bleak skies ;
Dark spirits in the dust down tread
Each dawning virtue ere it spread.
See, now, with thee I'm frank, I'm bold :
With saints small converse could I hold.
Long sorrows build up haunted cells ;
What power fiend-influence thence expels?

480 THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR.

Alexander.

Power of endurance, power to find
Silent resignment to God's mind.

Apparition.
But when each hour awakes fresh sense

Of being abandoned as our spoil,
When links of dire experience

Press round thee with their dangerous coil,
What then ? Forsaken then by all,
Own then thou'rt ours, our slave, our thrall !

Alexander.

'Oh ! say not " ours " ; that word is pain
That scorcheth heart and blighteth brain !

Apparition.
I'll say it once again : thou'rt ours !

Alexander.

Not yet, by heaven's resplendent towers
And Christ's red Blood that poured in showers !

Apparition.
But not for thee.

Alexander.

Why not for me ?

Apparition.

Where of Heaven's love is sign or proof?
Are there bright threads in life's dark woof !

A Te zander.

Blasphemer, peace !

Apparition.

I will not cease.

Alexander.

I'll name the Name thou may'st not name ;
For one night more his love I'll claim.
Monster, go hence ! Than bear thy sight
I'll shroud me in the gloom of night.
Cease to wage war (I know thou'lt not repent)
I scorn thy purpose, scorn thy vile intent !

1884. ] THE LAST NIGHT OP A MARTYR. 481

Apparition.

How ! scorn me, when thy locks and brow are wet
As with the heaviest drops of dread death-sweat ?
I'll make thee feel my withering yoke ;
A dark, fresh power I'll now invoke.

[Alexander here rises to put out the light, and cries out in
terror : ]

Come, darkness ; I'll extinguish thee, poor spark !

Apparition.
All vain ; my eyes glare on thee in the dark !

[Alexander turns away from the lurid eyes of the spectre and
finds his way, nearly in despair, to the further end of the room,
where his fellow-prisoner lies, apparently asleep. A few faint
moonbeams shed a little light through the heavily-barred win-
dow. In great excitement Alexander accosts the layman : ]

Brother, awake from sleeping ;

I am pained and alone.
Drear vigil I am keeping ;

My strength is from me flown.
Wild waves and storms are urging

My bark into the deep ;
Billow on billow surging

Hell's revelry doth keep.

[The layman springs from the bed, takes hold of Alexander's
hand, and tries to calm him. He says in the gentlest manner :]

Sweet father, speak not thus
In tones so drear and tremulous.
Gird up thy loins, and courage take ;
I'd watch three nights for thy dear sake.
We'll weep at Mary's feet,

As wandering children wail ;
Her hands, with gifts replete,

Shine from beneath her veil.
Sure of a safe retreat,

We'll tell in tears our tale.

[Then they both kneel down together in the moonlight in
front of a little picture of Our Blessed Lady. They first pray
VOL. xxxix. 31

482 THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR. [July,

in silence to God ; then the layman says a few words to the Im-
maculate Virgin, in order to give time to his exhausted friend to
recover from his excitement in some degree :]

Layman.

O Virgin Mother ! fairest, tenderest,
Where could thy gentle heart or seek or find

One more assailed, more suffering, more oppressed,
Than here amidst these perils weird and blind?

Pluck the sharp thorns, sweet Lady, from his breast ;
He is thy son, thine own, in love enshrined !

[Meanwhile, revived by the sympathy of his companion,
Alexander recovers a good deal of his courage and fervor. He
resolves upon a last effort and prays to Mary aloud in his turn.
He says :]

When first my young love saw thee

In contemplation's golden hour,
A sacred instinct told me pain would draw thee

With an unresting, mighty magnet power.
If it could draw r thee, then my heart were willing

To bear this on and on until it break ;
What though fiend's voice, through nerve and fibre thrilling,

Set my heart trembling, bid my flesh to quake !
Say, is all lost ? Hath Christ his face averted ?

Shall I not die for him, as once I thought ?
Am I foredoomed, abhorred, accursed, deserted ?

Look at my chains, my tears are all these naught ?

[At this moment the scene changes : when Alexander lifts up
his fettered hands to heaven two beautiful forms present them-
selves before him for his consolation. The frightful Apparition
has to disappear with all the shame and humiliation which be-
long to him, and the Blessed Virgin addresses herself to Alexan-
der in reply to his last words :]

Not condemned, not abhorred, not lost, not unloved,
True hero in roughest of conflicts now proved !
Christ's champion in battle-stained raiment confessed,
O favored one, trusted, high-honored, caressed !
Thou shalt bear thy cross ; 'twill be rough to the touch,
But Christ guards his heroes, and counts thee as such.

1884.] THE LAST NIGHT OF A MARTYR. 483

We will not free thee nor loosen thy chains :

That would not rejoice thee, for true love complains

If it have not a gift that some sorrow hath dyed

In the rich, purple hues that he wears as his pride.

Thou shalt keep all thine hours of hardship unbroken,

But reckon each pang as a jewelled love-token.

Men may talk from the rising till setting of sun

Of the graces of others : there are none, oh ! none

Flow so fresh and so sweet from Christ's Sacred Heart

As the martyrdom grace ; and martyr thou art !

Once more thy fiend-foe shall assail thee, but then

'Twill be easy to trample him back once again.

Farewell for an hour, for a night-time of sorrow ;

We shall meet when death crowns thee on glad to-morrow ;

One night of thirst, and of chains, and of fever,

And then rest and rapture and glory FOR EVER !

A hush of peace is in the air,

A sanctity of pain and prayer,

And God's sweet influence kindling there.

York Castle seems transformed, disguised

In light, almost etherealized.

Right through the ponderous bars
That hide the ardent stars

There steals athwart the prison gloom

A fragrance faint of rare flower-bloom :
One half could think to one that night 'twas granted
To hear from Eden's hills Christ's Passion chanted.

484 PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS.

" ONE swallow never makes a summer," was the remark of
a Southern gentleman, made to the writer after reading the
sketch of Benjamin Banneker, the negro asstonomer, which ap-
peared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for December, 1883. In this
sketch of Phillis Wheatley appears a second swallow. Nei-
ther do two swallows make a summer. But more are at hand.
And as a multitude of those little birds betoken the near approach
of that season in which Nature is most lavish of her gifts, so let
us hope that a brighter day, indicative of a fairer show for the
colored race, is about to dawn, when their capabilities and abili-
ties will be acknowledged let us not say as human, but far more
generally.

Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa, and, taken captive, was
brought in a slave-ship to Boston in 1761, being a child of tender
years. The length of the passage and the rough usage quite
weakened her ; and as she stood for sale, a little, helpless child, in
the public market, with no other clothing upon her than a piece
of dirty, ragged carpet tied around her waist, and so weak that
;she could scarcely keep her feet, there seemed little chance of
any kind of purchaser. Fortunately the wife of a rich citizen
named Wheatley was in want of a slave, whom she hoped to
train up as a body-servant. Mrs. Wheatley had several slaves,
who, however, were much enfeebled with age ; and so a younger
was needed, who could be handy in the many little services ex-
acted by ladies of means. The sickly look of the child, as she
stood among her more robust companions, nearly ruined her
chances of being purchased. Mrs. Wheatley hesitated to take
her, not being anxious to increase her home burdens with a new
one in the person of a delicate slave-girl. Something, however,
in the expression of the dark countenance, so gentle and so mod-
est, won her heart, naturally very kind, to the little one, who
was finally bought in preference to many others far stronger.

The little child was taken by her mistress into her chaise,
brought to her future home, there put into the bath and cleansed,
and then dressed out in clean clothes, the first, 'doubtless, of her
life. These kindnesses were but the forerunners of countless,
others. In an unknown tongue the child spoke, but mixed up
with it were a few words of broken English, picked up, probably,

1884.] PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 485

on the slave-ship. By signs and gestures she at first made her-
self understood, but very soon she was able to express herself in
English. Whence she received the name of Phillis is unknown ;
such, however, is the name by which the Wheatleys' always
called her.

When Phillis was able to converse her kind mistress, with
all her family, was very anxious to learn from the little slave
what she could tell of her own dark continent. Whether it was
from her tender years for she was only seven or eight when
bought or because of her hardships and the terror of her be-
wildered mind, is unknown, but she remembered nothing about
Africa, except that she used to see her mother every morning
pour out water before the rising sun. In a poem addressed to
the Earl of Dartmouth, the English Secretary of State for North
America, Phillis thus in after-years speaks of her capture :

'" I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatched from Afric's fancied happy seat :
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labor in my parents' breast!
Steeled was that soul, and by no misery moved,
That from a father seized his babe beloved :
Such, such my case."

Phillis' first attempt at poetry was probably made in a
spirit of gratitude at securing through her forced exile the
knowledge, imperfect as it was, of God and the Saviour whom
he sent. The poem, written when she was about fifteen, thus
runs:

"ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA.

'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too :
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye :
' Their color is a diabolic dye.'
Remember, Christians, negroes black as Cain
May be refined and join th' angelic train."

After being a little more than a year in her new home Phillis
gave proofs of wonderful improvement. Evidently she pos-
sessed uncommon intelligence, coupled with which was a great
desire of learning. She had so far mastered English that she was
able to speak correctly, and, characteristically adds her puritan-
ic biographer, " to read fluently in any part of the Bible." She
was often found trying to form letters with charcoal on fences

486 PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

and walls. This thirst for knowledge was not peculiar to Phillis ;
it is in .many of her race. The writer has been told how, in the
years before the war, colored boys and girls, anxious to taste of
the sweets of knowledge, would steal out in the dead of night
with their books, few in number and sadly soiled from use, hid
under their garments next the skin. These secreted gems of
lore were thus concealed so that, if their possessors were stop-
ped and not too carefully examined, they, liable in any case to
punishment for being out of the quarters at forbidden hours,
would escape the more dreadful punishment inflicted on such
as were caught with books about them. Speaking of his people's
thirst for knowledge, the historian of the negro race says : " The
work of education [after the late war] for the negro at the South
had to begin at the bottom. There were no schools at all for
these people ; and hence the work began with the alphabet. All
the way from six to sixty the pupils ranged in age, and even
some who had given slavery a century of their existence, crowd-
ed the schools established for their race." To those who have
given any thought or study to the matter it is clear as the noon-
day v sun that an eagerness for knowledge and a fondness of
books are strong among our colored brethren.*

The daughter of Mrs. Wheatley, seeing Phillis so eager to
learn, undertook to teach her how to read and write an offer
which the poor slave only too gladly accepted. The young lady's
task was an easy one, for her pupil learned with astonishing
quickness. Her progress in knowledge was only equalled by
her ever-amiable disposition. In a short while all the members
of the family became so much attached to her that, by a common
understanding, everything was done to facilitate her studies and
enrich her powers. She was exempted from rough household
work and employed only in light and easy services. Her mis-
tress, whose as well as her daughter's constant companion she was,
affectionately called her " My Phillis," and seemingly was as fond
of her and as proud of her attainments as if she were her own
child. She even allowed the young slave fire and light in her
little apartment, that she might the better prosecute her studies.

* Generally the bent is in a worldly direction ; and where the so-called philosophical and
theological sciences are taken up they are but a tissue of errors. And it is to be regretted that
nowhere among us can we offer to these parching lips the true fountain of wisdom. Really
wonderful are the shifts colored youths of both sexes resort to in order to drink deeply of the
Pierian spring : going, for instance, during the summer to various popular resorts, there to
gather enough by hard work and still harder saving to support themselves at some school or other
during the autumn and winter. Their colleges, too, give them eveiy facility, often reducing
the pension, and at times receiving some without means, who oblige themselves to pay as soon as
possible.

1884.] PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 487

In so rugged a climate as Boston must have been one hundred and
odd years ago, fire, one would fancy, should have been a neces-
sity. It seems it was not, however, as this is noted as an extra-
ordinary favor, and even quite a luxury, granted to the slave-girl,
who, a native of the tropics, must have keenly felt the cold. In
language more forcible than any coming from the" most gifted
pen does this little kindness tell of the severity of the slave's
sufferings. Phillis received many books, as presents or as loans,
from friends of the Wheatleys. Her stock of knowledge was
continually increasing. She began to excel in geography, his-
tory, and English poetry, of which last she was particularly fond.
After a while she was found trying to master the Latin language,
which she so far accomplished as to be able to read and under-
stand it. Her knowledge of the classics was seen in some of her
poems for instance, the first in her published poems, and ad-
dressed to Maecenas, evidently imitating Horace in this respect.
From it are the following lines :

" Great Maro's strain in heavenly numbers flows,
\ The Nine inspire, and all the bosom glows.

Oh ! could I rival thine and Virgil's page,
Or claim the Muses with the Mantuan sage,
Soon the same beauties should my mind adorn,
And the same ardors in my soul should burn ;
Then should my song in bolder notes arise,
And all my numbers pleasingly surprise.
But here I sit and mourn a grov'ling mind
That fain would mount and ride upon the wind.

" Not you, my friend, these plaintive strains become
Not you, whose bosom is the Muses' home ;
When they from towering Helicon retire
They fan in you the bright, immortal fire.
But I, less happy, cannot raise the song :
The falt'ring music dies upon my tongue.

" The happier Terence all the Choir inspired,
His soul replenished, and his bosom fired.
But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace
To one alone of Afric's sable race? "

At the name of Terence Phillis has this foot-note : " He was
an African by birth." Proud the poor girl was to claim as her
countryman the immortal comedian of imperial Rome. " Ter-
entionon similem dices quempiam." For Terence, "genere Afer,
civis Carthaginiensis," was one of the captive slaves of Scipio
Africanus, though afterwards his boon companion.

488 PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

Fortunate was it for Phillis and her race, since her life and
works cannot but be a strong plea for them, that Massachusetts
neither in her days, nor, indeed, in any subsequent time, forbade
teaching the colored how to read and write. In fact, the study
of the many statutes of the various States, both in the North
and the South, regarding the teaching of the negroes, would be
a wide and interesting field, calculated to repay the labor therein
spent by at least awakening a warmer interest in this neglected
people. Our heroine, however, proved herself worthy of know-
ledge, not simply by her mastery of its various branches, but
particularly in the noble sentiments which kept pace in her
heart with her advance in books. The following stanzas, taken
from a poem entitled " On Virtue," give evidence of an aspira-
tion which many think above her despised race, too grovelling,
as they fancy, for anything higher than the brute :

" O thiou, bright jewel ! in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare,
Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.
I cease to wonder, and no more attempt
Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound.
But, O my soul ! sink not into despair :
Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head.
Fain would the heav'n-born soul with her converse ;
Then seek, then court her for her promised bliss."

Phillis naturally was of a religious turn of mind ; in fact, all
her poems breathe a spirit of piety, and we must deeply regret
that the church, the mother and mistress of all that is noble
and lofty, was a stranger to her. Following in the footsteps of
her owners, at sixteen she became a member of the congregation
worshipping in the Old South Meeting-House. " This was an
exception to the rule that slaves were not baptized into the
church," remarks the historian of the negroes. The unctuous
Puritans must have believed the slaves had no souls or else were
not included among the Saviour's redeemed. The following
lines from her poem "On the Death of Rev. Dr. Sewall, 1769,"
will give some notion of the piety of Phillis, who was then in her
sixteenth year :

"Lo ! here a man, redeemed by Jesus' blood ;
A sinner once, but now a saint with God.
Behold, ye rich, ye poor, ye fools, ye wise,
Nor let his monument your heart surprise;
Twill tell you what this holy man has done,
Which gives him brighter lustre than the sun.

iS84-J PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 489

Listen, ye^ happy, from your seats above :]

I speak sincerely, while I speak and love.

He sought the paths of piety and truth,

By these made happy from his early youth.

In blooming years that grace he felt

Which rescues sinners from the chains of guilt.

Mourn him, ye indigent, whom he has fed,

And henceforth seek, like him, the living bread

Ev'n Christ, the bread descending from above

And ask an int'rest in his saving love.

Mourn him, ye youth, to whom he oft has told

God's gracious wonders from the times of old.

I, too, have cause this mighty loss to mourn,

For he, my monitor, will not return.

Oh ! when shall we to his blest state arrive ?

When the same graces in our bosoms thrive ?" )

As in her mistress' house, so in the meeting-house and among
the congregation, PhilhV character and deportment soon at-
tracted notice, and she shortly became a great favorite. At home
her poems were brought out and read to the visitors, among
whom were the clergymen and such literary lights as Boston
in those early days could boast of. When out visiting in the
houses of the better classesS, where she was a welcome guest,
she was always lionized ; as her biographer states, " they liked
to show her off as a wonder." And truly she was a won-
der ! black as ebony, of slender build, delicate constitution, and
thoughtful mien, herself a slave and the offspring of a race hated
and despised as much in those days as in our own ! Most young
girls, and of the favored race at that, would have had their
heads completely turned by so much attention. Retirement and
modesty, however, seemed the handmaids of Phillis, who ever
retained the guileless and simple way that had won Mrs. Wheat-
ley on seeing the tender child in the market, so evidently out of
place among her wretched companions. Among them she was,
but not of them, save in her skin's color, called by an author,
whom the girl herself quoted, " a diabolic dye."

Sometimes when Phillis was visiting " she was invited," runs
her biography, " to sit at table with the other guests ; but she
always modestly declined, and requested that a plate might be
placed for her on a side-table. Being well aware of the com-
mon prejudice against her complexion, she feared that some one
might be offended by her company at meals. By pursuing this
course she manifested a natural politeness which proved her to
be more truly refined than any person could be who objected to

490 PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

sit beside her on account of her color." T.he same is related of
Benjamin Banneker, the negro astronomer, while engaged with
the commissioners and surveyors in laying out Washington.
The colored race, indeed, are generally retiring and civil, partly,
no doubt, an effect of their long servitude, and partly because
civility is natural to them. For Banneker was no slave, nor did
Phillis ever have to feel her thraldom. In speaking of colored
people of settled age travellers almost always agree in recogniz-
ing their tractable temperament. A choice foundation that to
build upon in securing new children for the divine Master, whose
chief task required of us is, " Learn of me, because I am meek
and humble of heart."

In Phillis' story we are now about the year 1772. At that
time throughout Massachusetts a formidable opposition was
growing against slavery of every kind against, in the first place,
the English yoke, and, in the next, against that in which man
held his fellows as chattels. The Provincial Legislature under
both governors, Hutchinson and Gage, passed various ordi-
nances against slavery, which both refused to sign on the ground
of not being authorized by Parliament, and because their in-
structions forbade them "assenting to any laws of a new and
unusual nature." The slaves themselves, being the most inte-
rested, did not stick at plotting together for liberty. It is evi-
dent from the following extract from a letter of Mrs. John
Adams to her husband, the great patriot, dated at the Boston
Garrison, September 2, 1774: *

" There has been in town a conspiracy of negroes. At present it is
kept pretty private, and was discovered by one, who endeavored to dis-
suade them from it. He,' being threatened with his life, applied to Justice
Quincy for protection. They conducted in this way : got an Irishman to
draw up a petition to the governor (Gage), telling him they would fight
for him, provided he would arm them and engage to liberate them if he
conquered. And it is said that he attended so much to it as to consult
Percy upon it, and one Lieutenant Small has been very busy and active.
There is but little said, and what steps they will take in consequence of it
I know not. I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in this province ;
it always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for
what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a
right to freedom as we have. You know my mind upon this subject."*

The conspiracy, as was to be expected, failed. Before this

the slaves had struck another and a stronger blow for that free-

. dom which every man loves not a blow men of brute instincts

* Letters of Mrs. Adams, quoted in History of the Negro Race, i. p. 227.

1884.] PHIL LIB WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 491

would have thought of, nor, again, one always adopted by men
when under unjust treatment. They brought their cause into
the courts and partly won. The slaves of Greece and Rome
petitioned for the amelioration of their yoke, but they were
honorable slaves captives of war ; the negro was not such, and
hence his stand was nobler. In his diary under the date Wed-
nesday, November 5, 1766, John Adams has the following:

" 5, Wednesday Attended court ; heard the trial of an action of tres-
pass brought by a mulatto woman for damages for restraining her of her
liberty. This is called suing for liberty the first aption that I ever knew
of the sort, though I have heard there have been many." *

The case was that of Jenny Slew vs. John Whipple, Jr. Jenny
lost in the lower court, but on an appeal she won in the higher,
receiving as damages 4 with costs taxed at 9 9*. 6d. Later on
John Adams himself had a slave as client in one of these " free-
dom cases," but lost in both courts; so these suits went on, at
times being decided in favor of the slaves, often against them,
and frequently they were settled by compromise. On the side
of the slaves the chief argument was that, by the laws of En-
gland, no man could be deprived of his liberty but by the judg-
ment of his peers, and that the royal charter expressly declared
that all born or residing in the province were as free as the
king's subjects. The masters, in their turn, argued that slavery
was recognized by the laws of the province and that slaves were
bought and sold in open market. . In cases of troublesome and
also decrepit slaves the masters let the cases go almost by de-
fault, thus ridding themselves of annoyance in regard to the
unruly and of the burden of supporting the others in old age.

Amid the discontent and suspicion of both, slave and master it
is a surprise to read of Phillis' position in society. She certainly
must have carried with her many claims in her favor to be able to
move as she did, considering how disagreeable her fellow-slaves
were making things for the masters. The girl was not destined
to long enjoy her social pleasures. Boston now has a very try-
ing climate, and in her days it must have been much worse. It
told severely on Phillis, who was naturally delicate, and when
nineteen years of age her health became so shattered that the
physicians advised the Wheatleys to give her a sea-voyage.
The young heir of the family was about going to England, and,
at his mother's request, took Phillis along. Before her depar-
ture her master emancipated her, thus gracefully putting a finish-

* Adams' Worjis, quoted as above, i. p. 228.

492 PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

ing stroke to the generous treatment of years. To part with her
mistress was a great blow to the affectionate girl, who in the
following poem thus expresses her feelings. Its stanzas are ot
unequal merit, but we venture to give the entire attempt :

A FAREWELL TO AMERICA.

TO MRS. S. w. [Susannah Wheatley}.

Adieu, New England's smiling meads ;

Adieu, the flow'ry plain :
I leave thine op'ning charms, O Spring!

And tempt the warring main.

In vain for me the flow'rets rise

And boast their gaudy pride,
While here beneath the Northern skies

I mourn for health denied.

Celestial maid of rosy hue,

Oh ! let me feel thy reign ;
I languish till thy face I view,

Thy vanished joys regain.

Susannah mourns, nor can I bear

To see the crystal shower,
Or mark the tender, falling tear

At sad departure's hour;

Not unregarding can I see

Her soul with grief oppressed ;
But let no sighs, no groans for me

Steal from her pensive breast.

In vain the feathered warblers sing ;

In vain the garden blooms,
And on the bosom of the Spring

Breathes out her sweet perfumes,

While for Britannia's distant shore

We sweep the liquid plain,
And with astonished eyes explore

The wide-extended main.

Lo ! Health appears. Celestial dame !

Complacent and serene,
With Hebe's mantle o'er her frame,

With soul-delighting mien.

To mark the vale where London lies,

With misty vapors crowned,
Which cloud Aurora's thousand dyes

And veil her charms around,

1884.] PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 493

Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow ?

So slow thy rising ray ?
Give us this famous town to view,

Thou glorious king of day !

For thee, Britannia, I resign

New England's smiling fields ;
To view again her charms divine

What joy the prospect yields !

But thou, Temptation ! hence away

With all thy fatal train,
Nor once seduce my soul away
By thine enchanting strain.

Thrice happy they whose heav'nly shield

Secures their souls from harms,
And fell Temptation on the field

Of all its power disarms !

In England Phillis received marked attention far greater
than she had experienced at home. An utter stranger she was
not, for when in Boston " her correspondence was sought, and
it extended to persons of distinction even in England, among
whom may be named the Countess of Huntingdon, Whitefield,
and the Earl of Dartmouth." * Amidst her honors Phillis was
ever the same simple-hearted girl. A relative of Mrs. Wheatley
wrote to that lady : " Not all the attention Phillis received, nor
all the honors that were heaped upon her, had the slightest influ-
ence upon her temper and deportment."

In 1773, shortly after her arrival, Phillis, urged on by her
many admirers, published her poems. This is the only com-
plete edition of her writings, a few of them having previously
appeared in Boston in pamphlets. This edition is a small vol-
ume of one hundred and twenty-four pages, containing thirty-
seven poems, together with a rhyming charade by some person,
answered in rhyme by our poetess. The frontispiece is a wood-
engraving of Phillis, who is seated on the old-fashioned high-
back chair at an oval table. Before her are a book, an inkstand,
and paper. While in her right hand she holds a quill, her left,
resting on the table, supports her chin. She is evidently in a
thoughtful mood. Upon her head is a cap like that worn
by nurses nowadays ; from underneath its frill border the
woolly hair of her race peeps out. Every lineament of the full-

* Sparks' Writings of Washington, iii. p. 298, note.

494 PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

blooded negro is seen in her countenance, which withal -has a
gentle and modest look, while the whole appearance is of a wo-
man of very slender build. Inscribed on the oval border of the
picture are the words " Phillis Wheatley, Negro^Servant to Mr.
John Wheatley, of Boston." Underneath is the publisher's at-
testation required by Act of Parliament. The title-page reads
thus: "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By Phillis
Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston in
New England. London : Printed for A. Bell, Aldgate, and sold
by Cox and Berry, King- Street, Boston. 1773." The poems
were dedicated to the Countess of Huntingdon. The following
is the preface :

"The following poems were written originally for the amusement of
the author, as they were the products of her leisure moments. She had no
intention ever to have published them ; nor would they now have made
their appearance but at the importunity of many of her best and most gen-
erous friends, to whom she considers herself as under the greatest obliga-
tions. As her attempts in poetry are now sent into the world, it is hoped
the critic will not severely censure their defects; and we presume they
have too much merit to be cast aside with contempt as worthless and tri-
fling effusions. As to the disadvantages she has labored under with regard
to learning, nothing needs to be offered, as her master's letter [a summary
of her life] will sufficiently show the difficulties in this respect she had to
encounter. With all their imperfections the poems are now humbly sub-
mitted to the perusal of the public."

In the course of this sketch are given enough extracts to en-
able the reader to form a fair estimate of the girl's powers.
Two further selections are here added. The first is from a poem
addressed to a lady on the death of three relations :

" We trace the pow'r of death from tomb to tomb,
And his are all the ages yet to come.
Tis his to call the planets from on high,
To blacken Phcebus, and desolate the sky ;
His, too, when all in his dark realms are hurled,
From its firm base to shake the solid world ;
His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole,
And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole."

A friend, no mean votary of the Muses himself, especially in
lyrics and sonnets, to whom were sent Phillis' poems, thus
writes : " It seems to me that ' The Hymn to the Evening ' is one
of the best things in the book. She is less artificial here than else-
where. Towards the end of this poem she reminds me somewhat
of Newman."

1884.] PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 495

HYMN TO THE EVENING.

Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain ;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.

Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dyes are spread !
But the west glories in the deepest red :
So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!

Filled with the praise of Him who gives the light,

And draws the sable curtains of the night,

Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,

At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refined ;

So shall the labors of the day begin

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes :
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

The reader -will be astonished, no doubt, that a slave-girl
should write so many poems from the fifteenth to the twentieth
year of her age a time of life when most girls are given to all
giddiness. The lofty sentiments of her mind are still more won-
derful when Phillis' race is remembered. The wandering child
of the worst-treated among men, she seems in some measure to
have tasted of those lights which the God of nature bestows,
thus realizing, though never so faintly, the prophecv, " Before
him the Ethiopians shall bow down." There was a like aston-
ishment in London in her own days. It was mooted about that
no slave-girl could do what Phillis did. It was simply impos-
sible. So strong were the suspicions afloat that the publisher
felt constrained to get a solemn declaration in defence of the
girl's claims to be the 'author. We give it entire with the sig-
natures, among which are some names familiar in American
history :

"TO THE PUBLIC.

"As it has been repeatedly suggested to the publisher, by persons who
have seen the manuscript, that numbers would be ready to suspect they
were not really the writings of Phillis, he has procured the following at-
testation from the most respectable characters in Boston, that none might
have the least ground for disputing their original :

"'We, whose names are underwritten, do assure the world that the
poems specified in the following page [manuscript] were, as we verily be-

496 PifiLLis WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

lieve, written by Phillis, a young negro girl, who was but a few years
since brought, an uncultivated barbarian, from Africa, and has ever since
been, and now is, under the disadvantage of serving as a slave in a family
in this town. She has been examined by some of the best judges, and is
thought qualified to write them.

" ' His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Governor.
"' The Hon. Andrew Oliver, Lieutenant- Governor.
"' The Hon. Thomas Hubbard. The Rev. Charles Chauncy, D.D.
" ' The Hon. John Erving. The Rev. Mather Byles, D.D.

" ' The Hon. James Pitts. The Rev. Ed. Pemberton, D.D.

" ' The Hon. Harrison Gray. The Rev. Andrew Elliot, D.D.

" ' The Hon. James Bowdoin. The Rev. Samuel Cooper, D.D.
" ' John Hancock, Esq. The Rev. Mr. Samuel Mather.

" ' Joseph Green, Esq. The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead.

" ' Richard Carey, Esq. Mr. John Wheatley, her master.' "

While Phillis was being honored in England her mistress,
partly from grief at her absence, was taken seriously sick. A
copy of the engraving which adorned the frontispiece of her
poems had been sent to Mrs. Wheatley, who had it hung up so
that she could always see it from her sick-bed. TJie sight of her
favorite, even in miniature, consoled the patient, who on one oc-
casion, pointing it out to a visiting relative, exclaimed : " Look at
my Phillis ! Does she not seem as if she would speak to me ? "
As her health was surely failing and her strength wasting away,
she sent a most loving message to her dear servant to come to
her as soon as possible. In a spirit of gratitude, claimed as un-
known to her race, Phillis left the freedom and honor she was
enjoying in England, returning in all haste to her sick mistress.
It seems she arrived merely to pay the last offices to her beloved
lady, who died very shortly after her arrival. Mrs. Wheatley 's
death was the first draught of the cup of sorrow for Phillis. Till
the end of her young life this cup never left her. Mr. Wheatley
died soon after, and then the daughter, Phillis' kind instructor
and more than companion. The son, marrying abroad, settled in
England. Phillis, alone now, remained for a short while with a
relative of the Wheatleys, but finally, hiring a room, lived by
herself.

The Revolutionary War was now going on. Lexington and
Bunker Hill had been fought, and Washington with his army
was besieging Boston, where the British were cooped up. Dur-
ing the siege, in October, 1775, Phillis sent a poem to Washing-
ton a bold stroke for a negro girl of twenty-two living within
the enemy's lines. There is nothing wonderful, however, in her

1884.] PHILLIS WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. 497

love of freedom. Every slave loves it. And she, after describ-
ing her own forced captivity, thus writes :

"Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway ? "

Her poem to Washington is lost beyond recovery. Sparks thus
writes :

" I have not been able to find among Washington's papers the letter
and poem addressed to him. They have doubtless been lost. From the
circumstance of her invoking the Muse in his praise, and from the tenor of
some of her printed pieces, particularly one addressed to King George
seven years before, in which she compliments him on the repeal of the
Stamp Act, it may be inferred that she was a Whig in politics, after the
American way of thinking ; and it might be curious to see in what manner
she would eulogize liberty and the rights of man, while herself, nominally
at least, in bondage."*

In a letter to General Joseph Reed, dated from Cambridge,
February 10, 1776, Washington alludes to the poetess thus:

" I recollect nothing else worth giving you the trouble of, unless you
can be amused by reading a letter and poem addressed to me by Miss
Phillis Wheatley. In searching over a parcel of papers the other day, in
order to destroy such as were useless, I brought it to light again. At first,
with a view of doing justice to her poetical genius, I had a great mind to
publish the poem ; but not knowing whether it might not be considered
rather as a mark of my own vanity than as a compliment to her, I laid it
aside till I came across it again in the manner just mentioned." t

From the silence in regard to Phillis' color and station in life
it would seem she was known to Reed. Speaking to a warm
personal friend, Washington gives probably 'his true opinion of
our heroine's efforts ; eighteen days later he thus writes to
herself :

"CAMBRIDGE, 28th February, 1776.

"Miss PHILLIS: Your favor of the 26th of October did not reach my
hands till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have
given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occur-
rences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the at-
tention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the
seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite
notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed ; and however undeserving
I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a
striking proof of your poetical talents ; in honor of which, and as a tribute
justly due to you, I would have published your poem had I not been appre-
hensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of

* Sparks' Writings of Washington, iii. 229, note, Boston, 1834. t Ibid. iii. p. 288.

VOL. XXXIX. 32

498 PHILLIS. WHEATLEY, THE NEGRO POETESS. [July,

your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and
nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints. If
you should ever come to Cambridge or near headquarters, I shall be
happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom Nature has
been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.
" I am, with great respect,

" Your obedient, humble servant,

" GEORGE WASHINGTON." *

Phillis' early 'friends were now dead or scattered abroad, and
she was alone in the world. She was consequently easily led to
accept the hand of a colored man named John Peters, who is
thus described : " He kept a grocery in Court Street, and was
a man of handsome person. He wore a wig, carried a cane,
and quite acted out the gentleman. And though he was a man
of talents and information, writing with fluency and propriety,
and at one period reading law, he proved utterly unworthy of
Phillis." The man was so much disliked, because of his bad
treatment of her, that the neighbors would never call her by his
name. She was always known as Phillis Wheatley. Whether
she was the mother of one child or more is uncertain, but it is
certain that her offspring, one or many, died before herself, In
addition to her other sorrows poverty came upon her, for during
the trying days of the Revolution there was much want, which in
her case was heightened by her husband's incapacity for busi-
ness. Some descendants of her lamented mistress' family, learn-
ing of her distress, sought her out, but it was only to sooth
the last days of the dying woman in making more cheerful her
cold, comfortless room, not so much by the blazing fire as by
their presence, which spoke to her of bygone days, of her happy
childhood. In 1780 or 1784 she died, being in her twenty-seventh
or her thirty-first year. Let Spftrks, % the great biographer of
Washington, end this sketch of a highly-gifted slave-girl : " In
whatever order of merit they (her poems) may be ranked, it can-
not be doubted that they exhibit the most favorable evidence on
record of the capacity of the African intellect for improvement.
The classical allusions are numerous and imply a wide' compass
of reading, a correct judgment, good taste, and a tenacious
memory. Her deportment is represented to have been gentle
and unpretending, her temper amiable, her feelings refined, and
her religious impressions strong and constant." f

* Sparks' Writings of Washington, iii. 297. \ Ibid. iii. p. 298, note.

1884-] THE A GOT AC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. 499

THE AGOTAC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES.

AMONG the various peculiarities attaching to the Basque
country and the neighborhood of the French and Spanish Pyre-
nees, there is one which has, from time to time, greatly excited
the interest and attention of thoughtful men namely, the exist-
ence throughout those provinces of a race of outcasts, who
have been for many centuries under the ban of the populations
among which they dwell, and in regard to whom the deeply-
rooted prejudice of ages is even now not wholly removed.

This race and its offshoots * are known as Agoths, or Ago-
tac, Cagots, Crestiaas, Cascarottes, or Cast-Agoths, \ Capots,
Caffos, and sometimes Gahets. Their origin, problematical
even in the middle ages, and becoming more hopelessly ob-
scure with every passing century, has been the subject of in-
numerable conjectures more or less probable or imaginative.
This, at least, is certain : that these beings, stamped with some
mysterious seal of malediction, were everywhere repulsed and
kept apart from their fellow-men, as if the} 7 were lepers or
stricken with the plague. And yet they were neither the one
nor the other. They have, it is true, been confounded by some
writers with lepers, as also with git anas, or gipsies, with cretins
and gottreux ; nevertheless the Agotac, or Crestiaas, are totally
distinct from any of these classes of persons. They did not lead
a nomadic life, but dwelt in fixed abodes, were Catholics, like the
people amongst whom or rather, it should be said, apart from
whom they lived, and they earned their living honestly by prac-
tising useful trades. They are, as a general rule, tall, well made,
and of fair complexion. M. Francisque Michel,^ after visiting
every commune of the Basque provinces and the Baztan, wrote :
" The only annoyance I experienced in my researches arose
from the fact of my being mistaken for an Agota by the people

* Other offshoots are those of the Kakous, or Caqueux, of Brittany, the Marrons of Auvergne,
the Caliberts of Aunis and La Rochelle, the Chuetas and Vaqueros of the Baztan, and in Poitou
the Nioleurs, Cailluands, Cabaniers, etc.

t M. Guilbeau, of St. Jean de Luz, insists that the Agotac are a different type from the
Cast-Agotac, or Cascarottes, who are apparently a branch rather of the Gituac, or Gitanos.
The Cagots are usually taller than the rest of the population, and their children not unfre-
quently remarkable for their freshness and beauty.

I The indefatigable author of the Histoire des Races Maudites de la France et de PEspagne ;
Paris, Franck, 1847 the most complete and trustworthy work that exists upon this subject.

500 THE AGOTAC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES, [July,

of the country, on account of my blue eyes and brown hair ;
moreover, they could not comprehend my interest and inquiries
in regard to the 'Agote race, unless on the ground of relation-
ship. It would have been much worse for me had I sought in-
formation from the Agotac themselves, any stranger who con-
verses with these unfortunates being still regarded with great
suspicion."

Formerly, in some localities at least, they were never spoken
of or to by any distinctive personal name, their neighbors pre-
tending to ignore that they had any, and qualifying all alike by
the humiliating title of cresttad or cagot. These neighbors of
"pure race" called themselves Pelutac, or Perlutac a Basque
word, meaning those who have a right to wear long hair; the
Agotac, on the contrary, being compelled to cut theirs short.

The settlements of the Cagots were little better than collec-
tions of hovels, and always at a distance from the towns and
villages. These they were only allowed to enter under various
restrictions to bring in wood, which they were bound to cut
without payment ; to work as carpenters or tilers, and attend the
offices of religion at the parish church. But they had to quit
the town before sunset. They were not allowed to possess any
property in land, nor any animals but a pig and an ass, and for
these they had no right of pasturage on the parish common.
Those of the Agote women who spun could only sell the linen
to their own race, the Perlutac refusing to buy it, as being
escagoutibe, or " encagoted."

So strong was the conviction that Agoths in no way resem
bled other men that, with extremely rare exceptions, a father
would see his daughter starve or beg rather than let her marry
one of the hated race, however well-to-do he might be. Still,
that there were exceptions is proved by the Bearnese maxim,
Que lou marit ques descagoutibe sa henne. Even at a marriage-feast
the small loaf put by the plate of each guest at table was turned
upside-down at the places to be occupied by Agotac.

They were restricted, under severe penalties, to the use of
certain streams ; and thus there is scarcely a village in the Pyre-
nees without its houri deus Cagots^ or Cagot's spring.

They were forbidden all traffic in grain, wine, or wool ; but,
in spite of the incessant persecution, or rather repression, to
which they were subjected, some of them became men of con-
siderable property, the Agotac being, as a rule, more industrious
than their neighbors. Moreover, until the Revolution, they
never lost their ancient privilege of exemption from taxation and

1884.] THE AGOTAC OF THE PY RENE AN PROVINCES. 501

from military service an exemption which the Cagoteries were
designedly allowed to share with the Leproseries, and therefore,
if a boon, also a stigma.

The numerous and vexatious enactments passed by different
municipalities in regard to these unfortunate people prove the
strong and inveterate prejudice of all classes against them, ex-
cept the feudal nobles, who often shielded them from the blind
injustice of the bourgeoisie and populace. We also find repeated
instances of priests taking up their cause, but with little or no
result beyond an increase of annoyance to the objects of their
compassion.

The causes assigned for this accursedness are so various that
they rather darken the enigma than throw light upon it. By
popular tradition, and also in documents still existing in the
archives of different municipalities,* they are declared to be sor-
cerers and magicians, to be tainted with leprosy, to emit an in-
fectious odor, to have lobeless ears adhering (at the lower part)
to the cheek, or ears covered with hair, like those of bears, or
one ear large and the other small and round, and to be otherwise
personally objectionable ; besides being prone to vice and anger,
haughty, easily offended, pretentious and revengeful, etc. It
is certain that to the end of the seventeenth century the Py-
renean Cagots, the Gascon Gahets, and the Kakous of Bre-
tagne were alike compelled to wear a distinctive mark : a piece
of red cloth on the left shoulder, and called in the parliamentary
decrees of Navarre and Bordeaux a duck's or goose's foot
pedoque or patte d'oie. During four centuries, from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth, they constantly appealed against the treat-
ment to which they were subjected, and first the ecclesias-
tical, and later on the judicial, power was wielded in their favor ;
but they gained little from the fact beyond a few isolated ad-
vantages, the deep prejudice against them neutralizing the effect
whether of legal enactments or the censures of the church.
When, in 1789, the Revolution swept over France, the Agotac
seized the opportunity to destroy all the registers and other
documents they could lay hands on in which they were qualified
as such ; but even where writings were destroyed tradition
continued, pointing out such and such families as Cagotes. In
some localities the old aversion to them is well-nigh forgotten,
but in others generations may pass away before it is completely
cured.

* Comparatively few of these or of the parish registers escaped destruction in the Revolu-
tion.

502 THE AGOTAC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. [July,

Francois de Belle-Forest, one of the very few writers who
have spoken of the Cagots de visu, adds, after the list of tradi-
tional accusations which he repeats against them, that they are
"a fine race, laborious, and excellent workmen." * He says that
" some attribute the malediction which rests upon them, from
father to son, to the curse pronounced by Elisha upon his ser-
vant Giezi, and assure us that these men are his descendants,
upon whom the leprosy of Naaman will remain for ever."
(Here the Agoths are evidently confounded with the Gezitains
Gitanos, or gipsies.) " Others," he continues, " say that they
are the remnant of the Goths who have remained in Gascony ;
. . . others, again, that they descend from certain Albigensian
heretics, excommunicate by apostolic censure, and that this in-
ward leprosy is bequeathed to them for a perpetual sign of their
disobedience." He himself suggests th'at they may be Jews
made Christians by command of some prince, and " still doing
penance for the sin of their ancestor."

Some time later Florimond de Raemond, writing of the
Cagots, considers their supposed leprosy a popular error, "see-
ing that they are as robust and lively as any other of the peo-
ple." He believes that " they bear the penalty of the spiritual
leprosy of their fathers, being," he says, " in all likelihood a rem-
nant of the Arian Goths defeated at our gates in the time of
King Clovis ; . . . and in this belief I am strengthened by their
very name of Cagots Cans-Gots, Caas-Gots, or Gothic Dogs."f

Ambrose Pare, " the father of French surgery," deceived by
report for he had probably never seen a Cagot ranks the Ago-
tac as lepers, but is obliged to invent for them a new and special
form of leprosy, affecting the internal parts without appearing
outwardly. He, moreover, gravely asserts that these " comely
and fair-complexioned " lepers are known to emit so extraordi-
nary a heat that " one of them keeping a fresh apple in his
house for the space of an hour, it shrivelled up as though it had
been exposed for eight days in the sun." \ At the same time a

*See La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, 1575.

t L! Antichrist, par Florimond de Raemond, Conseilleur du Parlement de Bordeaux ;
Cambrai : J. de la Riviere, 1613 ; ch. xli. pp. 567, 568. The councillor adds that he has seen an
old title-deed of one of the domains of Dame Cprisande d'Andouins, Countess of Guissen, by
which her ancestors permitted their people to intermarry with the Agotac, thus proving that the
latter were not infected with corporal leprosy.

\ (Ettvres cTAmbroise Pare, premier chirurgien du roy . . . Paris, 1607 ; lib. xx. ch. vii. p.
744. Cf. the accusation of Caxarnaut against them when, in 1515, Don Juan de Santa Maria
of Pampeluna, by command of the pope, required that their grievances should be redressed.
" Even the grass withers when they tread upon it, and apples or any other fruits rot as soon as
they take them in their hands " (Races Maudites^ vol. i.)

1884.] THE AGOTAC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. 503

contemporary surgeon of Toulouse,* experienced in the treat-
ment of leprosy, declared that the Agotac were free from its
taint.

Dom Martin de Vizcay, a .priest of S. John Pied-de-Port,
wrote in 1621 as follows: "I remember that in my childhood
the Cagots were not allowed any kind of weapon but a knife
without a point. They might not sit at table with the Pelutac,
and the latter would as soon drink poison as water from a glass
which their lips had touched. . . . To such a point has the ani-
mosity against these poor people reached that defects and de-
formities are ascribed to them which it is plain they do not pos-
sess ; for instance, . . . that they are born with a long tail, and
other things equally false and absurd, which do not cease to be
spread abroad amongst us." f

The Jesuit fathers referred to in the preceding note believed
the Cagots to be the remnant of the Goths who in ancient times
cruelly tyrannized over the Pyrenean provinces, but who, after
long efforts, had been overcome and reduced to the state of pa-
riahs a state in which they were unjustly kept by those who,
under pretext of guarding their rights, ignored the rights of
their fellow-men.

Oihenhart, in his curious work on the Basque country % (pub-
lished about 1638), mentions a decree of the Parliament of Bor-
deaux which forbade the Agotac, under pain of scourging, to ap-
pear in any town or village unshod and without a piece of red
cloth sewn on the left shoulder. It was pretended that, were
they allowed to walk barefoot, the pavement would be infected ;
moreover, they were only to walk " under the spouts " (sous les
gouttieres).

Pierre de Marca, in his Histoire du Beam (1640), believed the
Cagots to be descendants of the Saracens who remained in Gas-
cony after the defeat of Abd-er-Rahman by Charles Martel. On
their becoming Christians their lives were spared, but they were
hated as being Saracens and therefore " des ladres puans" In the
latter character they were also called Gezitains, as inheriting the
leprosy of Giezi. " Moreover," says La Marca, " it is not to be
controverted that the Saracens have an evil odor, of which they

* G. Des Innocens, Examen des Eldphantiques, etc. Lyons : Soubron. 1595. See also
Littcra Societ. Jesu annorum duorum 1613 et 1614 ; Lugduni, apud Claudium Cayne, where-
in allusion is made to the injustice suffered by the Agotac.

t Drecho de Naturaleza que los Naturales de la Mirendad de San Juan del Pie del Puerto,
etc., etc. Zaragoza: Lanaja y Quartanet. 1621.

J Notizia iitriusqtie Vasconice. Authore A. Oihenarto Mauleosolensi. Parisiis : Cramoisy.
1638.

Narrated at length in the Arabian history of Roderic of Toledo.

504 THE AGOTAC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. [July,

cannot be cured, save only by baptism ; and to this, therefore,
they brought their children, the Turks continuing the custom
unto this day. . . . And thus Burchard certifies us that in his
time viz., six hundred years ago these evil-smelling Saracens
were wont to plunge into the Fountain of Egypt, in which tradi-
tion teaches that Our Lady bathed her little Child and our great
Lord, and that by virtue of this washing they were purified/'

He derives from the same source- the mark like a goose's
foot which they were compelled to wear, as being " le charactere
le plus expres " to symbolize" water or the frequent ablutions en-
joined in the Koran, seeing that " Foye est un animal qui se plaist a
nager dans les eaux"

He suggests that the epithet of Casci-GotJis, or Cans-Gvts, in the
sense of hunting-dogs, or Goth-hunters, may have been given
them in derision of the boast of Alboacer, one of the Moorish
leaders, and king of Coimbra, who, having reduced Spaing called
himself " The Hunter of the Goths.'' Finally, he thinks that
their separation at the first, as catechumens, from the rest of the
faithful, passed from a custom of ecclesiastical and temporary dis-
cipline * into a permanent social state, out of hatred to the race
and the suspicion of leprosy attaching to it. " Nevertheless," he
adds, " these poor people are not in anywise tainted therewith,
as the most learned physicians attest among others the Sieur de
Nogues, the king's physician who, having examined their blood,
find it pure and praiseworthy."

So strong, however, in Beam was this suspicion that in 1460
the states petitioned Gaston de Beam, Prince of Navarre, to de-
cree that any Cagot found walking barefoot in the streets should
have his feet pierced with a hot iron. It is satisfactory, to learn
that this petition was rejected. Already the ancient For de Beam
made the testimony of seven Agotac needful as equivalent to that
of one Peluta. In Upper Navarre even priests made difficulties
about receiving the confessions of Cagots or administering to them
the sacraments of the church. It was on this account that, in
1514, they appealed to the Vicar of Christ, Pope Leo X., who
forthwith issued a mandate commanding all ecclesiastics to re-
ceive them to the sacraments and other ordinances of the church,
and to make no difference between them and the rest of the faith-
ful.

With regard to the notion held by some that they were de-

* ' ' The catechumens may not eat with the baptized nor kiss them ; still less may the gen-
tiles or pagans " quoted by P. de la Marca from the acts of the fifth chapter of the Council
of Mayence, held under Charlemagne.

1884.] THE AGO TAG OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. 505

scendants of the Albigenses, P. de Marca justly observes that the
Agotac are more ancient than they. These heretics began to
appear in Languedoc about A.D. 1180, and were ruined in 1215;
whereas the Cagots, under their name of Crestiaas, are mentioned
in the Cartularia of the abbey of Luc as early as the year 1000.
Also, in the For de Navarre, compiled in the time of King Sancho
Ramirez, about 1074, they are named as Gaffos and treated with
the same rigor as in the For de Beam*

And now, instead .of spending more space on the speculations
of later writers, we proceed to give the conclusion arrived at on
this subject by M. Francisque Michel a conclusion which seems
justified by the evidence brought to light by his researches, and
apparently furnishes the right key to this ancient enigma, the
origin of the pariahs of the Pyrenees.

Charlemagne, implored by the Christians of Spswn to .succor
them from the oppressions of the Saracens, crossed the moun-
tains A.D. 778 and besieged Saragossa. The Mussulman popu-
lations armed in such numbers on all sides to surround him that
the emperor was compelled, by the inequality of forces, to raise
the siege and hastily retreat back into Gaul. Immediately fol-
lowing in his track, multitudes of the' Spanish Christians, whose
position was now far worse than before, thronged into Septi-
mania to escape the vengeance of the Saracenic conquerors.
" The posterity of these Christian refugees," says M. Fauriel,
" long subsisted in Gaul, distinct from the rest of the population,
and under the special protection of the Carlovingian kings."
This fact is attested by a decree f given A D. 812, by which Charle-
magne bestowed upon them extensive tracts of waste land, which
they were to dwell upon and cultivate permanently for their own
use. For this land, however, they were to do fealty to the
Comes, or feudal lord in whose seigneury they might be.

They had not long entered into possession before quarrels
arose first among the settlers themselves, and soon afterwards
between the two races. No sooner had the former got their
lands into cultivation than the people of the country either seized
what they could or claimed a right to do so. The colonists
complained to the emperor, who issued a second edict confirm-

* Histoire de Beam , . . Par M. Pierre de Marca. Paris : Vve. Camusat. 1640. Fol.
ed., liv. i. ch. xvi.

t This decree is given in full in the Capitularia Regum Francorum (ed. Stephano Baluzio),
and is quoted by Du Cange. The names of a large proportion of the settlers are evidently
Gothic e. g., Atila, Fredemir, Ofilo, Ardaric, Vasco, Witeric, Langobard, Odesind, Elperic,
Wai da, etc. Some are Arabian names Zuleiman, etc.

506 THE AGOTAC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. [July,

ing- their rights. This, however, on the death of Charlemagne,
being- disregarded, John, Archbishop of Aries, obtained for them
from King Louis a third decree, more explicit than either of the
foregoing, but had no power to enforce its observance. A fourth,
issued by Charles the Bald, was equally useless in. presence of
the mutual ill-feeling- between the races. The violent jealousy of
the Gallo-Romans against these strangers, protected by a series
of royal edicts, at last broke forth in a renewal of the old accusa-
tion against their ancestors. The deeply-ro.oted conviction that
the Goths, being Arians, were therefore tainted with leprosy, en-
abled the Aquitanians to assert that the colonists, their descen-
dants, had inherited this frightful disease. There is thus great
reason for believing the Cagots to be the descendants of those
Goths of Spain who fled from Mussulman oppression, only to
bring themselves under a still heavier yoke, and who owed their
long- miseries in the first place to an act of ill-judged munifi-
cence.

Between the four Carlovingian documents mentioned above,
and the Prceceptum of Gaston Phoebus respecting them in the
fourteenth century, there remains no record of their history or
fate. We find them, however, in 1365 isolated in so many parts
of Aquitaine, Beam, Poitoii, and the Basque country that it
would seem as if they had been first deprived of their lands, and
then, by force, widely dispersed and allowed to have no com-
mon centre. Although they were not deprived of their liberty,
such as it was, no occupations were open to them, except such as
were regarded as the meanest of all. Among 1 these trades that
of a carpenter seems to have been especially held in evil repute,
because those who practised it were bound to make, erect, and
keep in repair gibbets and various instruments of torture and
death. The Agotac of St. Gaudens, in particular, were stigma-
tized as the descendants of the men who made the cross of
Christ*

Apparently for the same reason, rope-making was, from time
immemorial, the special occupation of the Kakous (or Cacodd)
of Brittany, who twined the cord by which prisoners were
bound and malefactors hung. There, in fact, " Kakous " and

* These poor people were rehabilitated early in the present century, when the grand vt-
caire of the diocese went processionally to receive them into the principal entrance of the par-
ish church. From that time all humiliating distinctions have gradually ceased. At Guizerix,
near Bagneres de Bigorre, the Archdeacon Louis d'Aignan du Sendat, on the occasion of some
great function, being determined to abolish all distinction of race in the house of God, passed
through the entrance reserved for the Agotac, accompanied by the cure of the parish and a
number of clergy besides. Since then no difference has been made between the two races.

1884.] THE A GOT AC OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. 507

" cordwainer " have become synonymous terms ; * not that the
Kakous, any more than their brother-Cagots of the south, ever
speak of one another by these ignominious titles, but invariably
by the title of cousin.^ This is one reason, among others, for
supposing the Breton Kakous, or " Caqueux," to be identical
with the Pyrenean Agotac, some of whom, when despoiled of
their lands, migrated farther north ; so that, from Bordeaux
to Basse Bretagne inclusively, Cagots are to be found, under
various names. One of these offshoots, called the Trangots,\ or
" Stranger Goths," seem to have been held in even greater de-
testation than the Cagots. The dread with which they were
regarded is expressed by the prayer or adjuration still in use
among old people : " Deu te" preservt de la man de Trangot et del
dint det Cagot /"

It remains to say a few words on the more ancient appella-
tion of Crestiads applied to the Agotac. Most of the writers
on this subject have inserted an h into this word, and then ta-
ken infinite trouble to excogitate the reason why a race called
" Chrestiaas," as if par excellence, should nevertheless be for ages
under the ban of the fellow-Christians who called them so, these
writers never dreaming that the word has nothing whatever to
do with Christianity or its divine Founder.

When the Agotac, being accused of leprosy, were compelled
to wear on their shoulder or head-gear a patch of scarlet cloth,
rudely jagged like the up-turned web-foot of a goose, the symbol
bore some imagined likeness to a crest cresta in the language of
the south and those who wore it were called crestats, or the " crest-
ed men." As time wore on, though the word remained, its etymo-
logy was lost, and the more completely so when the compulsory
edict which gave rise to the title had ceased to be enforced.
Lastly, the insertion of an h wholly changed the derivation of

* la the Franco-Celtic dictionary of the Benedictine Father Gregory de Rostreven we find,
as equivalents to cacodd, not only Qacousery, but also Qordonnerez : " Ker ar gaconsyen" etc.

f- The word cousin (consobrinus) was, in Brittany, an importation, the Breton word being
kenderf, or kenderv, kevenderf, kefiniant, etc., according to nearness of kin.

I The word " bigot " may have a closer connection with the present subject than we are
aware. Previous to the sixteenth century it was not used in the sense of hypocritical devotee,
for which the word was then papelard. The etymology given of it in Racfs Maudites makes
it a contraction of Visigoth equivalent, in the popular idea, to an Arian passing himself for a
Catholic or an exaggerated devotee. Hence we find the term "bigot" concurrent in the
Pyrenees with the terms Agote, Cagot, Ostrogoth, Trangot, and Gahet, and equally applied to
the same class of supposed reprobates. For an instance of the earlier meaning .attached to the
word see the Memoir es de Messire Philippe de Commines : "Audit temps (1482), le Roy fist
venir . . . grand nombre de bigots, bigot tes et gens de devotion, corn me hermits et sainctes
creatures, pour sans cesse prier Dieu qu'il permist qu'il ne mourust point," etc.

" God keep you from the hand of the Trangot and the money of the Cagot ! "

508 THE AGO TAG OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. [July,

the word, and this change was most welcome to the " Chres-
tiaas," whose title would now, they hoped, plead for some con-
sideration from their fellow-men.*

Capot, another synonym for Cagot, implies that these unfor-
tunates, in their intercourse with outsiders, used every effort to
throw a cloak over the fact of their race. Thus the expression,
faire capot, means to cover with confusion, to strike dumb ; for
often, when conversing with other men as equals, they have sud-
denly been addressed by the name which they abhor. At this
epithet all the faculties of the Cagot forsook him ; he was para-
lyzed " // demeurait capot"

The chief centre of the Agotac of Upper Navarre is at Ariz-
cun, in the valley of Baztan, where they still subsist, distinct
from the rest of the population, in a separate quarter called
Bozata. Here may be found more traces than anywhere else of
their past condition.

Before the commencement of this century they were never
allowed to halt in the square, QIC plaza, of Arizcun, join in the
game of football, sit on the benches in the churchyard while
waiting for Mass or Vespers to begin, or take any part in the
dancing on the Plaza d' Arizcun, except in the quality of musicians
to the dancers. So numerous, indeed, were the vexatious restric-
tions imposed upon them by the " Arizcunenses " that Goye-
neche, Count of Saceda, founded a village called " New Baztan,"
to which those of the Agotac who wished could migrate, and so
escape from the contemptuous treatment they suffered at Bozata.

In some hamlets, as at Mailhoc, they had a small chapel apart,
not being allowed to enter the parish church. When the " na-
tional property " was sold at the Revolution a Cagot of Mailhoc
bought and demolished the miserable building to which he and
his forefathers had been restricted for their public worship. At
Saint-Pe also they had a separate church, called Gleisiate ; but
this being destroyed or falling down, they were admitted into
the " vestibule," or ante-chapel, of the parish church.

At Lourdes there are still some families of Agotes, but they
intermarry with the rest of the population. There are not a few
at Reouilhes, on the Gave, at the northwestern extremity of the
Forest of Lourdes. The Cagots of this neighborhood differ from
the rest of their race in being of shorter build, the head large,

* It is doubtless from this word crestias that the more modern word cretin has been
formed. The epithet of " short ear," applied in derision to the Agotac, was, although appli-
cable in some few localities, far less so in regard to them than to the wholly distinct class of
cretins and goitreux, with whom they have sometimes been erroneously confounded.

1884.] THE AGO TAG OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. 509

and the ears round without lobe. Until recently all were car-
penters, and there is a saying in those parts, " A la maisoii deu
Cagot la gouttere " (The Cagot's house lacks a spout), which is
another form of the French proverb, " None so ill-shod as the
shoemakers."*

Several centuries ago (so says tradition) the Agotac 'of
Reouilhes fought with the people of Lourdes, and, coming off
victors, played at bowls with the heads of the slain on the Place
de Saint- Pe. For this act of ferocity they were condemned by
the Parliament of Toulouse to a number of rigorous restrictions,
any of which if they failed to observe, they were further con-
demned to have two ounces of flesh cut from the whole length
of the spine.

Numerous popular ballads and rhyming dialogues, French
and Agote, in Basque and " Romane," exist, commemorating the
struggles between the races, and all alike indicating how galling
and incessant were the provocations on the part of the Prankish
populations. At the same time not a few of these simple rhymes
testify also to a spirit of cheerful resignation on the part of the
Agotac, as well as to a certain dignity and moderation wholly
lacking to the opprobrious songs made by their adversaries at
their expense :

"Although," thus they sing, "we are all Cagots,
We do not vex ourselves for that.
Are we not all the sons of Adam ?
Children of our first mother, Eve ? "

" In our country this is our thought :
God, who created other rnen, also created us.
Our Maker will in no wise cast us off."

And again

"Will you never make an end, ye insolent ones?
Will you never leave our people in peace
Our people, who never seek to molest you ?
For why should we waste time in doing so ?
We work in order that we may have bread,
And in order that we may reach heaven at last." t

Nor do these popular rhymes alone furnish indications that
they were better Christians than their tormentors. Near the
church of Taron, in a small plot of ground called Peyras, and
which is the burial-ground of the Agotac, stands a column of

* Les cordonniers sont tonjours les plus mal chausss t
t Races Maudites, vol. ii. p. 152, etc.

5io THE AGO TAG OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. [July,

masonry surmounted by a small stone cross. On one side the
column bears the date 1663, and on the other an inscription
which, on that spot, has a touching significance :

"A15SIT GLORIARI NISI IN CRUCE DOMINI."

' At Idron and Gelos certain Agotac, desiring to join the Con-
fraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, were contemptuously re-
pulsed and allowed only to join that of the Rosary. At some
places they might belong to that of St. John. At Ousse even
the Angelus was rung separately for them, and in a different
manner, after the ringing of the ordinary Angelus. At Jurangon
they were compelled to have the figure of a man sculptured in
stone before the principal door of their houses. It would be
curious to know what these figures were like, but all were care-
fully destroyed by the Agotac as soon as they could demolish
them with impunity.

There is in the canton of Pau a belief* that at the new or
full moon Cagots are subject to a kind of delirium, throw away
their tools, and wander wildly about, committing all kinds of
follies. At Espis and Undurein they were suspected of bewitch-
ing the flocks. At Monbert, near Auch, they were regarded as
being descended from the Jews who crucified our Saviour. Here
they might not approach the sanctuary for Communion : the
priest administered it to them at the rail which marked them off
from the rest of the congregation.

Previous to the Revolution the Agotac of Villefranque, near
Ustaritz, and at St. Just, also in the Basque country, met in a
house once a week for a conference, the object of which has
always remained secret. It would, however, fill a volume, were
we to note down the characteristic particulars of each separate
commune in the Pyrenean provinces with reference to the
Agotac ; we will, therefore, conclude this notice with a few
general remarks.

Lower Navarre contains the most numerous settlements of
the Agotac, the principal being those at St. Etienne de Baigorry
and St. Jean-Pied-de-Port. In this province, moreover, they are
always to be found in the neighborhood of castles, the lords of
which the more willingly protected them because they alone,

* We do not know whether a proverb in use at Sauveterre has any connection with this be-
lief. There, in order to give an idea of a person's giddiness or headstrong folly, it is said that
he is " worse than the Cagot de Gamachie" though no one can tell who this Cagot was. In
Oloron, also, if a spinster seems bent upon pairing it is remarked that " she would marry even
the Cagot de Gabachies" allowing us to suppose that, with him, beauty and brains were alike at
a discount, but that is all.

1 8 84.] THE A GO TAG OF THE P Y RENE AN PRO VINCES. 5 1 1

among the inhabitants of the Basque country, would do homage
to the feudal power or submit to a state of vassalage. Neverthe-
less even their enemies have never been able to reproach them
with want of courage.* They seem to have always been the first
to be summoned for any work or emergency requiring strength
or daring.

They are remarkable for longevity ; many live until past
ninety, and occasionally (within the memory of the living) to
the age of one hundred and two and one hundred and three or
four.f But notwithstanding any advantages of constitution they
may possess, or, in many cases, of fortune, intermarriage of the
two races, as a rule, is rare, and is regarded with the utmost re-
pugnance by the Peluta relatives. A rich man of Agote descent,
living at Agnos, has no less than six times arranged a marriage
for his son, and each time, when his lineage has been discovered,
the contract has been broken.^

When a maiden is sought in marriage the aspirant invites all
her family to dinner. The courtesy is returned ; but if, during
the meal, the fair one turns the loaf upside-down it is a sign that
his suit is not accepted. At Castelnau Magnoac to this day,
when, at the family meal, a master turns the loaf on its upper
crust, those present touch nothing more, and the meal is at an
end. In each case the meaning conveyed is that, if the parties do
not desist, they must be content to pass for Cagots.

Thus, although this hapless race has now for many years en-
joyed full liberty de jure, it is, in certain localities, still far from
enjoying it de facto. The church, when appealed to, has invariably
taken the part of these her oppressed children against their tor-
mentors, and the bull given at Rome in their favor in 1513 was

* In the numerous songs made against them we find verses like the following :
" Kits que soun come us pores ladres, (They are like measly swine,

Que nou an nat ressentiment : ' Which have no feeling :

Eits qu'enduran mille outrages, They bear a thousand insults

Chaque die, chaque moument ; Each moment, every day ;

Mes a soun tour la vengerice But vengeance in its turn

Nou manque pas d'arriba. Fails not to follow.

Si eits ben nade resistence When they resist at all,

Qu'es baten dinque creba. They fight till they are dead.

A baig dounc la Cagotaille : Down, then, the Cagotaille !

Destruisiam tous lous Cagots." Destroy we all the Cagots !)

t " M. Guyon, passing through Chubitua, saw a man of seventy-five digging in his garden;
his wife, quite as old, had climbed into a cherry-tree and was picking the fruit. Beneath, on
the turf, sat a woman of eighty three, having her hair combed arid arranged by her great-grand-
daughter. She had all her teeth and was healthy and robust " (Races Maudites).

% The children of mixed marriages are (at Orx) called macouans, or mules. It is noticed
that, in some parish registers, all the Agote marriages took place on Wednesday.

If a Cagot, on entering a house, found a loaf upside-down or with the cut side towards
the door, he had a right to take it.

5i2 THE AGO TAG OF THE PYRENEAN PROVINCES. [July,

enforced by the ecclesiastical authorities of Pampeluna, under
penalty, in case of disobedience, of a tine of five hundred ducats
and the censures of the church.

In 1518 Charles V. issued two edicts, commanding- the Perlu-
tac to treat the Agotac in all things on an equality with them-
selves, under penalty often thousand maravedis. In 1658, under
Philip II., the Agotes of Bozata prosecuted the people of Ariz-
cun for their incessant insults, and in consequence of the appeal
the " Arizcunenses " were condemned to a fine of one thousand
maravedis (about two dollars) each time they called a man an
" Agota." In 1683 Louis XIV. of France sent letters-patent to
secure the liberties of the Agotac. In 1722, on an a'ppeal from
them, the Parliament of Navarre annulled the rigors of the
ancient and as yet unrepealed For by a decree which was
practically the beginning of their emancipation. This was fol-
lowed, in 1818, by a law of the Cortes permitting them to enter
the liberal professions, prohibiting the appellation of " Agote,"
and abolishing all distinctions of race. In 1842 the ecclesiastical
tribunal of Pampeluna, at the prayer of the people of Bozata,
reinforced and amplified the injunctions given more than three
hundred years before by Pope Leo X.

Even since this date (1842) the church at Arizcun has twice
been the scene of blows and confusion once, on Good Friday
itself, from the endeavors made by the Perlutac to hinder their
Gothic brethren from joining in the ceremony of " the Adoration
of the Cross." Subsequently, however, the tact and patience of
the parish priest, Senhor Don Angel Oscaritz, a man of great
gentleness, firmness, and wisdom, succeeded in bringing his peo-
ple to a state of peace and charity in harmony with the religion
they profess. Under what amount of difficulty he must have
reached this happy result may be imagined from a fact told to
the writer only a few months ago.

A young man, Agota by descent, became a priest, and, on his
ordination, was sent to a seminary college. Here, having occa-
sion to punish a refractory pupil, the latter cast it in his face that
he was " nothing but a Cascarotte." From that moment not a
boy would obey any order he gave. The bishop removed him
to another district and other work the stigma accompanied him ;
and again to a third sphere of occupation. He has now, therefore,
been removed altogether out of the diocese to a distant parish
where his origin remains unknown. His only fault was his race ;
" for," said my informant,* " he is an excellent priest."

* The Abbe Remes, a native of St. Jean de Luz.

1884.] A LESSOR OF LIFE. 513

To the Welsh the English are always " Saxons " ; to the
Bretons the French are still " ar C'halloued " (the Gauts) ; and a
southerner of Provence or Aquitaine speaks of his northern
neighbors as a " Franciman." * The history of the Agotac is a
more striking instance than any of the foregoing of the tenacity
with which names indicating antagonism of race are perpetu-
ated for ages.

A LESSON OF LIFE.

' A LITTLE girl was waiting alone in her nursery for the arrival
of a new governess. Being of a restless turn, and feeling the
occasion to be one of great importance, she had manifested her
anxiety and impatience by wandering from window to window,
flattening her nose against each successive pane, and staring
wistfully out at the bare, smooth lawn and at the great trees
shaking down their last few raindrops as they shivered in the
cold March wind. She was a pretty child of an unusual type,
with a skin of milky whiteness, gray eyes so dark and deeply set
that they passed at first sight for black, and an abundant crop of
short, fair curls. Tired of the dismal prospect out of doors, she
had sauntered again to the hearth, and was idly gazing at the
smouldering logs, when the door opened and a tall girl with
brown hair and bright, brown eyes stood smiling on the thres-
hold.

" She has come, Essie," she said, " and father has sent for
you."

" O Lesley ! " And the child sprang hastily forward and
caught her sister's frock. "Is she nice? Do you like her
looks ? "

" She is lovely," was the assured reply ; " and you cannot fail
to like her, unless you are an obstinate little monkey. But come
along ; they are waiting for you now."

Essie ran down-stairs and across the hall, then, seized with a
sudden fit of shyness, stood hesitating at the library door, until
her companion, as though fearing she might slip away altogether, -
took her arm and pushed her gently in.

" This is my little sister, Miss Grantly," she said briefly, as a

* " De sabens Francimans
La coudannon a mort dezunpey trescens ans."

Las Papillotas de Jasmin.

VOL, xxxix. 33

5 14 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

young girl dressed in black rose from the sofa and came forward
to meet them. " And unless she is going to learn a great deal
more quickly for you than she ever did for me, you will have
good cause to possess your soul in'patience."

Miss Grantly colored, and laughed a little, low, musical laugh,
If not absolutely lovely, as Lesley had pronounced her to be, she
was certainly very pretty, with a delicate, babyish face, and an
appealing look in her clear blue eyes that had won its way into
many an unguarded heart. She sat down now and drew Essie
to her side, holding the passive little hand and smiling at the
sober, up-turned face.

" I am not easily frightened," she whispered, " and I don't
feel a bit discouraged by what your sister says. She has no
idea what a student you are going to make by and by."

She spoke lightly and with a caressing grace that seemed
irresistible, but there was no response from the silent figure by
her side. The child's gray eyes wandered slowly for a moment
over the charming face before her, and then drooped in sullen
coldness, while two small, perpendicular wrinkles dented her
smooth, white forehead. The signs were plainly visible to all
who chose to read them, and they said, as distinctly -as words
could speak, that Miss Essie's first impressions had not been
favorable. Even Miss Grantly seemed conscious of this, and
drew back a little, looking hurt and puzzled, while Lesley tapped
her foot impatiently as she glanced at her father's darkening face.

" Essie," he said sharply, " when you have shaken hands with
Miss Grantly, and have shown her that you are not absolutely
without manners, you may take her up to her room. Lesley,
ring for a servant to carry the wraps, and let us have lunch
directly."

He spoke with manifest annoyance, and his orders were
quickly obeyed. Alone with his older daughter, who stood
looking absently out at the rain-washed path, he pushed aside
the book he had been reading, and sat for a few moments absorbed
in thoughts that were evidently not of a pleasant nature. " Les
ley," he said suddenly, " it is very strange that you cannot teach
Essie to be more courteous."

The girl turned slowly and shrugged her pretty shoulders.
She was well accustomed to have all her little sister's misdeeds
charged to her account, and yel the process never failed to nettle
her afresh. " How can I h.elp it, father?" she said. "Essie's
whims are far beyond me, but I never dreamed she would be. so
rude to-day."

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 515

" Rude to-day ! But why should she ever be permitted to be
rude at all ? I am sure you were never brought up to suppose
that you had the option of being polite or not, as you felt
inclined."

Lesley laughed. " No, I was not," she frankly admitted.
" But then Essie is a very different child, and has more ideas and
opinions of her own than I was ever allowed to indulge in.
Look at her chosen friends ! She is hand-and-glove* with every
old woman and bare-footed boy in the village, and half the time
I cannot keep her away from the very servants."

The frown on Dr. Stanhope's face deepened into a curious
look of mingled fear and anger. " Do you mean to say that you
permit Essie to associate with these people ? " he asked. " If so,
her manners need no longer be a source of wonder."

" Permit it? No ! But sometimes I cannot help it."

" But you must help it in the future ! Do you understand
me, Lesley ? You must absolutely forbid Essie to have anything
to do with the servants or with the village children, and punish
her every time she disobeys you. I will not have it in your
power to say that your sister gratifies a taste for low company,
which you should have checked in the start."

Lesley flushed crimson. The implied reproach was almost
more than she could bear. Why, after all, should her father's
annoyance with Essie always take the form ol covert anger
against herself? She felt distinctly the injustice of her own posi-
tion, but offered no remonstrance to it. If she had gained no-
thing else in her guarded and disciplined childhood, she had at
least learned how to be silent under provocation ; and this power
of self-restraint gave a strength and dignity even to the simpli-
city of her youth and inexperience. No one recognized that fact
more clearly, or suffered from it more frequently, than her father.
He felt now, as he had often felt before, that he had been unfair
to her, and he knew that she would give him no opportunity
either to make good his words or to revoke them. Under which
discouraging circumstances he fidgeted for a moment or two
and then, went back to his book, out of humor with both his
daughters and with himself as well, yet able to take a half-comic
view of his own discomfiture. " She is a true disciple of Pallas
Athene," he muttered ruefully when he was left alone. " And
vast are thy powers, O Silence ! "

But Lesley took no pleasure in her triumph. Indeed, she did
not even know that she had triumphed, as she lingered in the
hall, looking moodily through the stained-glass window which

5i6 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

lent a false brightness to the dreary world outside. She was but
twenty-two, and had known very little of the cares or tumults
of life, yet was far from thinking so. If any one had said to her
that

" Her soul was a fair, desert temple of beauty,
Unshaded by sorrow, unhallowed by duty,"

she would have offered an indignant denial and pointed out the
greatness of the mistake.

Had it not been a sorrow when her own mother died, leaving
her a very little girl to the care of aunts who loved her too
well so they said to make her childhood anything but a bur-
den ? Had not that sorrow been keener still when these same
relatives came in solemn state to the boarding-school where their
twelve-year-old niece was struggling with fractions and the
French grammar, and informed her, with a strong implied dis-
approval of the act, that her father had taken another wife ? And
when at last she was released from school, and sent with a trusty
body-guard of maid and courier to join her parent abroad, was
it not to find him a broken-hearted widower, with a foreign-
looking and atrociously-dressed child of five, who could not
speak a word of English, and to whom she, Lesley, was expected
to fill the part of a mother? And was it not an ever-present sor-
row that this child, brusque, wilful, and old-fashioned, should be
so much dearer to his heart than she had ever been ? Yes, Les-
ley felt that she had many trials, and sometimes wondered that
she was not more melancholy over them. While as for duty
surely she had tried to do her duty loyally, both to the father
whom she dearly loved and to the little sister whom she had
never learned to love at all. On that score, at least, she was free
from self-reproach.

And Essie was devoted to her with childish and unexacting
ardor ; but then it was not difficult for Essie to love any one.
Lesley's affections were few and of a slow growth, but Essie's
heart was capable of taking in all by whom she was surrounded.
:She loved her father and her half-sister best of all ; but she loved,
too, her old nurse, who told her stories without end ; and the
^cook, who saved for her benefit the most tempting of cakes and
tarts ; and the gardener, who would stop on his busiest days to
carry water for her drooping flowers ; and the groom, who liked
nothing better than to canter alongside of her little pony ; and
the village children those hurtful associates who worshipped
with one accord the very ground she trod on. Certainly Essie's

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 517

affections were many and warmly repaid, which made it all the
more irritating" that she should have taken an unreasonable dis-
like to a governess who was, in Lesley's opinion, charming. And
this having brought her back to her original grievance, she stood
pondering over it until a welcome and unexpected sight drove
the recollection from her mind.

Up the muddy road came riding a young man on a chestnut
mare, and in a moment the girl had flung open the door and
stood waiting on the porch, her eyes sparkling, her hair blown
about by the damp wind which brought a freshened color into
her cheeks. The rider dismounted, ran up the steps, and took
her into his arms with more of the matter-of-fact cordiality of a
husband than the eager devotion of a lover. " Why, what were
you doing at the front door," he asked, " looking as irresistible
as Circe at her palace gates ? "

Lesley shook her head. At this moment all her trials had
vanished, and she was ready to wonder how she could ever have
fretted over them. " I believe," she said hesitatingly, " that I
was moping a little before I caught sight of you."

" Moping ! What about ? Nothing wrong, I hope? "

" Oh ! no, nothing wrong. Only Essie chose to be rude to
her new governess, and father, as usual, discovered that I was to
blame, and I felt inclined to be cross over the whole matter."

The young man laughed and drew her a little closer. *' My
dear child," he said, " if you are destined to shoulder all Essie's
misdeeds your burden is likely to* be a heavy one. And as for
being rude to her governess, you surely can't expect a youngster
to like her governess, can you ? I used to have one myself when
I was a little boy, and I have a very distinct recollection of being
rude to her nearly all the time, and of being perpetually sent to
bed in consequence which is more than will ever happen to
Essie. But, to come down to practical matters, I hope that I am
in time for luncheon, for I feel myself trembling on the very
brink of starvation. In two minutes, you say ? Then I will ride
Jess to the stable, and be back with you in two minutes at the
furthest."

He was gone, and Lesley's mind was at peace with herself
and with all around her. She had only been engaged for three
months, and love still seemed to her a panacea for all the ills that
flesh is heir to. What were a few vexations, more or less, when
into her life had come this great happiness ? What did anything
matter, after all, when she could fall back upon this hidden spring
of joy ? By the time Mr. John Burroughs had given his mare in

5i8 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

charge of a groom and had returned to the house Lesley had
tacitly made peace with her father, had said a few politely apolo-
getic words to Miss Grantly, and had abstained from scolding
Essie three very distinct results of that short and stolen inter-
view in the hall.

However inauspiciously the new governess had begun her
reign, it continued without any of those tragic instances which
had made the pastime of Jack Burroughs' infancy. Dr. Stan-
hope was warm in her praise ; Lesley, with true womanly sym-
pathy for her early orphanhood and her dependent condition,
endeavored to surround her with little pleasures and to make her
life as bearable as she could ; and Essie, if her dislike remained
unaltered, had been cajoled or threatened into a state of passive
civility. Indeed, Miss Grantly possessed that rare tact which
would have made good her footing wherever chance had thrown
her; and far more potent than her youth or beauty was the
subtle consciousness of people's minds and moods, which intui-
tively enabled her to please. She understood when to speak and
when to let her appealing eyes speak for her with a mute and
irresistible eloquence. She was incapable of jarring upon the
vanities and weaknesses of those around her ; and while carefully
refraining from open flattery that rock upon which so many
vessels split she had learned from Shenstone the important
lesson that " deference is the most complicate, the most indirect,
and the most elegant of all compliments." Accordingly she had
taught herself to veil her nafural self-reliance, to ask for advice
in all emergencies, to listen to it with grateful attention, and
even to make a feint of following it. She permitted Dr. Stan-
hope to feel that he was her wisest counsellor, Lesley to think
that she was her kindest friend, Jack Burroughs to suppose that
his occasional attentions both flattered and fluttered her which
vvas far from being the case and every servant in the house to
believe that he or she ministered in an especial manner to her
wants.

On her little pupil alone was all this tact and judgment
thrown away ; for Essie, not clever enough herself to appreciate
cleverness in other people, trusted entirely to her instincts, and
was as unreasonable in her fancies as the terrier that barks at
one guest and fawns upon another, with more innate penetration,
perhaps, than we are apt to give him credit for. The child's
truthful soul looked through her clear gray eyes, and in her sim-
ple directness there was something which her father thought
half-barbarous, but which Lesley, single-minded herself, was

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 519

quick to understand and appreciate. Nor can it be claimed, in-
deed, that her studies advanced as rapidly as Miss Grantly had
predicted ; but then book-learning was not at all in Essie's line.
She was quick to remember all she heard, quick to draw infer-
ences from all she saw, but hopelessly slow in extracting any
information out of a printed page. To Lesley, looking back
upon her own early efforts, Essie's stupidity seemed almost in-
comprehensible. Why, at nine years old she was studying books
whose titles her sister could barely spell, and of whose contents
she was likely to be long in happy ignorance. " She is either
hopelessly lazy or a little idiot ! " pronounced Lesley with de-
cision, and Miss Grantly merely shrugged her shoulders and
smiled her softest smile. It was exactly her own opinion, but
she hesitated about giving it utterance.

By this time spring was over and June had put forth her
bravest array of flowers. The outside world was so very fair in
Essie's eyes that the hours in the school-room seemed longer
than ever, with a hundred voices from the fields and woods call-
ing her to come out and be happy in their midst. Her thoughts
wandered from the intricacies of the first reader, or the hideous
complications of a written sum, down to the orchard where the
birds were singing, untaught and consequently untroubled ; or to
the mill-stream beyond, where the lazy little fishes darted hither
and thither, with no definite aim to mar their tranquil enjoyment.
Essie often wished that she was a bird, or a fish, or anything that
was not expected to know the multiplication-table or to write its
own name. She envied Lesley, who was done with all this
weariness and could ride out for hours with Jack Burroughs
by her side. And perhaps Miss Grantly, looking through the
school-room window and seeing the pair canter gaily down the
winding path, envied them a little, too, and comforted herself
with the thought that all things come in time to those who know
how to wait. It was certainly pleasanter to ride through the
fresh June morning than to sit cooped up in a quiet room trying
to teach a stupid child ; and perhaps it was because the day was
so fine and their hearts so light that the two young people were
tempted to prolong their ride far beyond its usual limits. In
consequence of which Mr. Burroughs discovered when nearly
home that he had scant time to keep an engagement of some
importance, and said good-by to Lesley in the shady lane lead-
ing to her father's gate.

Left alone, the girl suffered her horse to walk, while she sat
lost in a maze of happy memories. It was very quiet, for " noon

520 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July*

lay heavy on flower and tree," and through the net-work of leaves
overhead the sunbeams wrought out shifting patterns of gold
along the dusty road. Lesley never forgot those few moments,
when the stillness around answered to the hush within herself ;
for it seemed as the turning-point of her whole life, and marked
her last hours of unbroken happiness. As she drew near the
lodge she became dreamily aware that an old man was plodding
on before her in the dust, and that he stopped now* and waited
for her to come up a poor old man, shabby and travel-stained,
from his limp and greasy hat down to his boots worn into gaping
holes. He mopped his forehead with a rag of a handkerchief,
and peered with dull blue eyes into Lesley's face.

" I beg your pardon, miss," he said slowly, " but I'm think-
ing that it's somewheres near here that Mr. Herbert Stanhope
lives?"

"My father, Dr. Stanhope, do you mean?" she answered,
somewhat surprised. " He lives just at the end of the lane.
You will be there in a minute."

" Your father ! " repeated the old man, with a vaguely bewil-
dered air. " And you are Dr. Stanhope's daughter ! But he has
another little one besides ? "

" Yes," said Lesley shortly, resenting the question as imperti-
nent, but softening in spite of herself at the wearied, puzzled
face turned to her own. " Here is the lodge, and you can come
right in. Do you want to see my father especially, or would
you like to go around to the kitchen and have your dinner?"
half-suspecting that he was a beggar, and pitying his too evi-
dent poverty.

" Dinner ! And is it I who would eat food under his roof?"
returned her companion, waking for an instant into the semblance
of life, and then relapsing into his former apathy. " No, no ; it's
no dinner I want, but to see Dr. Stanhope himself ; and may be
you'll take me to him ? "

" Yes, I will," said Lesley, jumping off her horse and running
lightly up the steps, her pliant figure and clear-cut features
contrasting sharply with the dilapidated ruin by her side.
" Come ! " as the door was opened, and, leading him directly to
the library, she pushed aside the curtain and looked in. " Father,"
she said softly, " here is an old man whom I met on the road
and who wants to see you particularly."

Dr. Stanhope put down his newspaper with a resigned air
and turned carelessly around ; then sprang to his feet and angrily
confronted the intruder. " Halleran ! " he gasped, and Lesley

1 884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 521

saw that he was white to the lips, and that the chair he leant on
shook under his nervous grasp.

"Yes, it's I, Edward Halleran," returned the stranger slowly,
and never taking his eyes off the doctor's startled face. " And
I've come many a long mile to ask what you have done with my
daughter's child."

His daughter's child ! Could it be that this, miserable crea-
ture was Essie's grandfather ? Lesley stood as if thunder-struck,
but Dr. Stanhope never seemed to notice her presence. " What
is that to you ! " he said hoarsely. " Your daughter, my dear
wife, died, as you are aware, in Algiers. How do you know that
she ever left a child? "

" How do I know? " repeated the old man, his voice quaver-
ing with emotion, his dim eyes dimmer still with tears. " I know
because I have her letter the only one she ever wrote after you
took her from me. You put half the world between us for fear
we should disgrace you ; but when her heart was breaking in
a far-off country she remembered then that she had a father
still."

If Dr. Stanhope had grown pale before he was ashen now,
and his eyes burned with suppressed fury. "It is a lie!" he
whispered. " I loved her with my whole soul, and at no time
did I ever give her just cause to regret her marriage with me.
If I separated her from her family and former associates it was
for her happiness as well as for my own, and she consented to it
as inevitable before she became my wife."

" Ay, that she did," said the unhappy father. " She loved
you well enough to give up for your sake all that had been dear
to her heart. But, more than father, or mother, or home, she
abandoned for you her faith and her God ; and that was the
thought that weighed heavy on her dying soul. If I have hunted
you out and it's been weary work it was not of my own will,
but because I've been obeying my darling's last prayer."

He stopped and drew from his breast a torn, crumpled letter,
which he unfolded with trembling fingers that were hardly equal
to the task. Smoothing it out tenderly, he hesitated a minute,
and then turned with instinctive trust to the girl by his side.
" Will you read it to your father? " he said humbly. " I have
never let it out of my hands before."

Lesley flushed scarlet and stepped a little forward. " Shall
I do so, father?" she asked in a low voice, "or shall I go
away ? "

The pain she felt was manifested in look and tone, but Dr.

522 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July*

Stanhope had regained his ordinary composure and never
seemed to notice it. " You have heard this much," he said
dryly ; "you may as well know all."

He sat down again by the table, leaning his head upon his
hand, and permitted her to take the letter. It was worn, soiled,
and almost illegible. The writing was weak and straggling like
that of a child. It was ill-spelt and ill-constructed, but terribly
real in its misery and pain. What a production for her father's
wife ! was Lesley's first thought, as she held it in her dainty fin-
gers, and, standing in the deep enclosure of the window-place,
began to read :

" DEAREST FATHER : I have been an ungrateful child to you, and God
has punished me, and my punishment is more than I can bear. I gave up
you, and my mother, and my faith to be a lady and have my husband love
me ; and now I am dying before I have been married a year dying in a
dreadful country, where they said I should grow strong again, but where
there is no one near me I can trust ; -dying so far away from you, and so
far away from heaven, without a priest for my own soul or to baptize my
baby. And I am pretty still, and my husband loves me still, and yet I can
never get well. Father, dear father, it is too late to help me now, but pro-
mise me you will help my baby. It is a little girl, and she is named Hester
after me ; and some day please try and find her, and tell her I was a Ca-
tholic, and make her be baptized. She is mine, and I give her to you.
Don't forget her as I forgot you, and don't ever let her know what a bad
daughter I was.

" HESTER STANHOPE."

Poor, pleading letter ! Poor, weak soul, who, trembling at the
doors of death, casts back even then a longing look upon the
pleasures of a misspent life ! " I am pretty still, and my husband
loves me still, and yet I can never get well." Forced to face
eternity, only because earth was slipping fast from her feeble
footsteps, the mother-love asserts itself even in this trivial spirit,
and enables her to dimly realize for what she has bartered away
her vSOul.

There was a long silence in the room after the letter had been
read, for the three who had heard it were each absorbed in their
own thoughts. Down Halleran's wrinkled face the tears were
running like rain, and Lesley, as she watched him, felt a great
pity rise in her heart for him, and for her father, and most of all
for Essie. Poor Essie ! What wonder that she was brusque and
hard to train ! What wonder that study was bitter and freedom
sweet to one whose mother could not spell and whose grand-
father was unable to read ! The prejudices of birth were very
strong in Lesley's soul. She had been carefully and conscien-

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 523

tiously trained by her aunts to believe that she, whose great-
grandfather came over from England rich and well-born, must
necessarily be better than those whose ancestors arrived carry-
ing their baggage in a handkerchief ; and that the possession of
a great-great-grandmother, in itself a rarity, was enhanced in her
case by a much-diluted drop of noble German blood. Of her
father's second wife she had been told nothing, save that she was
an orphan without relatives ; and had never given the matter a
further thought, until now the whole truth was savagely thrust
upon her.

There was a certain sense of justice in Lesley's mind, which
forced her to realize that the old man standing crying by her
side had been hardly treated, and that some sympathy and con-
sideration were due to him ; but her strongest feeling at this
moment was one of fastidious disgust. There was something
painfully real, and consequently unattractive, about Halleran's
grief and poverty. He was not in the least like similar old men
in books, picturesque in a rugged simplicity. He was merely
ragged and unkempt, and far from clean. Dust and heat and
tears had streaked his withered face with grimy marks, and the
handkerchief with which he sought to smear them off made Les-
ley wince. He stood humbly, hat in, hand, and with no pretence
of equality in his son-in-law's house. He was broken in years,
and health, and spirits ; and to those who did not under-
stand the hidden purpose which urged him on it would have
seemed an easy matter to crush up his presumptuous interfer-
ence. Perhaps Dr. Stanhope thought so as he sat wrapped in
moody contemplation. He had loved this man's daughter with
the strongest affections of his heart. Her beauty had .tempted
him to break down the barriers of caste, and it stung him sharply
to know that in her trouble she had turned weakly away from
him for help and sympathy ; that not even in the end had she
given him her trust and confidence; and that, having lavished
all things on her, he had yet failed to make her happy. For
Halleran to come seeking his grandchild was, in Dr. Stanhope's
eyes, preposterous ; and that his long-guarded secret should be
shared by his older daughter was a bitter humiliation to his
soul. He glanced up now and met her clear brown eyes fixed
on him with a mute inquiry that roused him into speech.

" Give him back the letter, Lesley," he said wearily. " I did
not know that it had ever been written, or I could have supple-
mented it with some further information. On one point, Halle-
ran, you may set your mind at ease. Hester, two days before

524 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

she died, confessed to me her desire to see a priest, and I pro-
cured one for her. He was a French Jesuit in charge of a mis-
sion in Algiers, and he administered to her all the rites of her
church and baptized her little girl. Are you contented now ? "

The old man came forward a few hasty steps, peered anxious-
ly into the other's face, and then drew a long breath, as if a
heavy burden had been suddenly lifted from his soul. " Thank
God ! " he said simply, " and may he reward you ! " Then, after a
pause, he added, with sad humility, " I'll be going away now, it
you wish it. It's enough for me to know that my child's child
will be brought up in her mother's faith, and I'll not so much as
ask to look in her pretty eyes."

Dr. Stanhope stirred impatiently in his chair and glanced
again at Lesley, who was watching him with silent earnestness.
" You mistake me entirely, Halleran," he said dryly. " I am no
advocate of any especial sect, nor do I regard the selection of
one as a matter of vital importance. I never actually opposed
Hester in the practice of her religion, and I would not for worlds
have denied her its consolations on her death-bed. Essie may
join whatever church she pleases when she is old enough to
decide with propriety ; but I have no intention of educating her
in your fantastic creed. Nor will I permit any interference in
the matter. As for seeing her, you may do so, if you wish, on
condition that you do not tell her who you are. I will send for
her before you leave. And now one thing more and, believe me,
I do not want to be unkind. I fear that your circumstances are
very poor, though they were not so when I first knew you. If
this be the case I am ready and willing to make ample provision
for you and your wife, for the sake of her who is gone ; but you
must see for yourself that it will be best to leave here at once."

He paused, and Halleran looked at him steadily, his dull eyes
quickening into a dangerous light. " My wife is dead," he said
slowly, " and my daughter is dead, and my grandchild is dead
to my old age. I would starve and rot before I tasted a crust of
yours ; but leave the little one to you I will not while there is a
breath still in my body. She shall one day learn the truth."

Dr. Stanhope took a step forward. " She shall never learn
it!" he said distinctly. "You say that I put half the world
between you and your daughter. I will put* it again between
you and Essie, and, if ocean and land can keep you apart, she
shall never see your face. And now "

" Father," interrupted Lesley in a low voice, "look! "

He turned and saw Essie standing by the curtained door,

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 525

watching- them both with wondering, frightened eyes, her fair
skin and golden hair brought into sharp relief by the sombre
background against which she leaned.

"Essie," he said huskily, "go away! This is no place for
you."

The child never seemed to heed him. Her forehead was
contracted, her eyes half filled with tears. Slowly she came
forward until she stood by Halleran's elbow. " And are you
my real grandfather?" she asked, with a puzzled look and tone.
" Were you truly my mamma's father, and have you come here
just to see me?"

He stooped and kissed her gently. " She is like my own
come back to me," he murmured, " and no lovelier than my
darling used to be."

Essie looked at him curiously, but without a particle of the
innate disgust that dwelt in Lesley's eyes. She felt no repug-
nance to his rags and poverty ; only a pity and a wonder that it
should be so. "You need not cry," she said softly, as she
touched with her little fingers his frayed and torn sleeve. " You
know we can buy you plenty of new things."

" Essie ! " cried her father, " I told you to leave the room !
Lesley, take her away and teach her, if you can, to be silent. Go !"
he added angrily, as she lingered still, and Lesley, taking her by
the hand, drew her to the door. Here she stopped for an instant
and turned around, her little face serious and troubled, her deep
eyes wandering wistfully from her father's averted head to the
bowed figure by his side. She would have run back even then,
but Lesley held her firmly ; and as the dark curtains hid her from
their sight the two men turned and faced one another, each with
a new determination in his soul.

PART II.

After a social storm there follows generally a profound lull
which makes us wonder now and then if anything has really
happened to mar the accustomed evennes of our lives. So it
was now in Dr. Stanhope's household. Lesley, when she left her
father's study, took Essie up to her room and tried to make her
understand that this visit of her grandfather's was something she
must not talk about to any one. To the child's rapid questions
she returned a few guarded but truthful answers. There had
been enough deception in the matter already, and Lesley was
determined that she would be accessory to no further conceal-

526 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

ment beyond that afforded by mere silence. When she met her
father again at lunch the unwelcome visitor had departed.
What had passed between them no one knew ; but Dr. Stanhope,
though a trifle paler and quieter than usual, had regained his
accustomed manner, and seemed in nowise troubled by the
morning's interview. He never alluded to the subject but once
afterwards, and then only to say a few cold words of warning,
and to accede reluctantly to Lesley's demand that Jack Bur-
roughs should be told all.

." I am sorry to ask it of you, father," she said firmly ; " but I
will marry no man while concealing anything from him. I could
not look my husband in the face, if I were keeping a secret he
might any day discover."

So Mr. Burroughs was informed of the truth, and took it
very easily. He laughed a little at the doctor's predicament ;
hoped the matter would be smoothed over without a squabble ;
told Lesley she was a good girl to insist on telling him every-
thing, and then apparently forgot all about the subject. Indeed,
there seemed to be other and more important matters weighing
on his mind, for he had grown restless and troubled of late, and
had lost a great portion of the careless good-humor which had
always characterized him. Lesley saw the change and pondered
over it, wondering now and then why she felt so heavy-hearted,
and why no one seemed to be just as they were before. Her
father was silent and absorbed, her lover distrait and unrespond-
ing ; Miss Grantly alone retained her even gentleness of manner,
and in her company Lesley found a welcome distraction from
unpleasant thoughts.

As the weather grew -warmer Essie's school-hours were short-
ened, and she was permitted to roam unmolested over the
grounds, while her sister and governess idled away the days
together sometimes alone, often with Mr. Burroughs as an
escort in their walks and drives. For Mabel Grantly these
hours of pleasant luxury were golden ones, and she extracted
from them all possible flavor ; being one of those rare characters
who, while always watching the future, can yet pause to enjoy
the present. She exhausted the resources of her wardrobe in
trying to look her daintiest, and accepted willingly enough
Lesley's generous gifts without ever warming into a spark of
loyalty towards the giver. She had been cast upon the world
to carve out her own fortune, and, with no positive ill-will
towards any one, she would not have deviated a hair-breadth
from the clear path of self-advancement to have picked up a

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 527

fainting sister by the way. Lesley, too honest to be a shrewd
observer, thought her merely a young and charming girl, whose
hard lines gave her a double claim to sympathy and liking, and
whose undoubted refinement made her a pleasant companion for
lonely hours. She was not given to violent, fancies or to the
swiftly-formed attachments of girlhood ; but she was slower
even to distrust than to love, and was content to read others by
the key-note of her own integrity. And so the ill-matched
couple became what most people would call friends ; and Dr.
Stanhope said his daughter was fortunate in having such con-
genial society ; and the neighbors said it was a lucky thing for
that pretty little governess that the rich Miss Stanhope seemed
to be so taken with her ; and perhaps in her secret heart Mabel
Grantly thought that luck sometimes changes with the tide.

It was a heavy afternoon in August, and Lesley, too restless
to read or work and too languid to venture out of doors, had
wandered, book in hand, around the house until she was tired of
her own company. Miss Grantly had confessed to a headache,
and had gone to her room to nurse it. Essie was invisible, and
Dr. Stanhope was execrating the hot weather in the shady cool-
ness of his library. Out in the sunshine two little children toiled
up the path carrying a heavy basket between them, and stopping
now and then to take breath and wipe their streaming faces.
Lesley had often before noticed the thin, drooping figures bearing
the same burden with unchildish patience, but it had never
occurred to her to feel especially sorry for them. They were
the washer-woman's little girls, and if it belonged to their station
in life to drag around heavy baskets it was natural, of course, that
they should do so. But to-day the sun shone down so fiercely
on their unprotected heads, and their weariness was so apparent
in every step, that her heart smote her as she watched them, and
into her mind crept the unbidden thought : " Had Essie's mother
ever been a child like these ? "

Shading her eyes, she opened the French window and stepped
out on the lawn. " You poor hot little things ! " she said.
" How far do you have to come ? "

The children stared at her, shy and startled by so much
notice. " It's a good half-mile, miss," said the older girl faintly,
while the younger pushed back her hair and shifted the basket
from one hand to the other in embarrassed silence.

" Half a mile, and in such weather! Why, it's enough to kill
you ! You must have some milk and fruit, and rest awhile
before you think of going home."

528 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July*

" Thank you, miss ! " said the child who had spoken before,
while her sister grinned a silent approbation ; and Lesley, forget-
ting- the heat, strolled part way up the garden-path and gave
orders that the tired little things should be fed and rested and
given some peaches to take home. Then she turned off in the
direction of the orchard, where the shady, low-branched trees
promised a welcome retreat from the scorching sunbeams which
flecked the gravel-walk with points of light and quivered over
the long, hot garden and the sleepy fields beyond. But she
never reached the leafy shelter that she sought, for out of the
shadow of the trees and into the dazzling sunshine stepped two
figures, a girl in white and a man who was talking low and ear-
nestly. The blood rushed fiercely into Lesley's face, and, shrink-
ing behind the hedge, she watched Mabel Grantly pause, laugh,
and turn coquettishly away, and saw her affianced husband kiss
the little hand so carelessly held out to him. The next instant she
confronted them, standing white and silent in their path, with a
look of mingled pain and scorn in her brown eyes that one at least
of the offenders never forgot until his dying day. With the shame
of his dishonor upon him, Jack Burroughs had no word of self-
defence to offer ; but it was plain that Miss Grantly viewed the
matter in quite a different light. There was no trace of agitation
in the smiling face or in the clear, even tones ; but there was an
evident determination to hold her own, and a subtle triumph lurk-
ing in her manner, as if she knew that the day was hers.

"Are you surprised to see my headache so much better?"
she asked composedly. " I have always found that the fresh air
is the best remedy after all, and to-day it has done me a world of
good already."

Lesley did not answer. She had no intention of being drawn
into a war of words, though a swift, half-pleading glance at her
fianc6 seemed to beg for an explanation of the mystery. But the
eyes which should have met hers were heavy and downcast, and
for a minute nothing broke the silence save the impatient chirp
of a robin over their heads. " Have you nothing to say to me ? "
Lesley asked.

Jack Burroughs looked up, his bronzed face suffused with
scarlet. " Forgive me ! " he whispered. " I could not help it,
for I love her with my whole soul."

The girl quivered as if she had been struck ; but her natural
self-control was stronger to,. help her now than even her wounded
pride. " I will release you/? she said simply ; " and I hope that
to her, at least, you will be true."

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 529

She slipped off her engagement-ring and held it out to him,
but he made no motion to take it, and the glittering diamond
dropped upon the grass. Mabel Grantly took a step forward.
" You need not be so premature, Miss Stanhope," she said coldly.
" I have no intention of marrying Mr. Burroughs, and have
never given him any right to claim me. I considered him as
bound in honor to you."

Lesley smiled a little, bitter smile. " You were very con-
siderate," she said.

" Perhaps I was," was the light rejoinder ; " but, at any rate,
there is no reason why I should separate you two. I repeat, I
am not going to marry Mr. Burroughs."

"Mabel!" he said appealingly, but she never noticed him;
her eyes were fixed on Lesley, who had turned into the path
leading to the house. " I will not have you leave me thus ! "
she cried abruptly. " I have done nothing so very amiss, and
am not responsible for your lover's fickleness. You shall not
throw the blame upon me ! "

There was no answer; Lesley, with a silence more con-
temptuous than words, never even looked at her, but continued
quietly on her way. Mabel Grantly followed and laid a detain-
ing hand upon her arm. She was pale now, and her soft blue
eyes sparkled with an evil light. But she stood erect and un-
abashed, for her hour of triumph was at hand, and all things had
come to her who knew how to wait. " Lesley Stanhope," she
said, " you must hear me. If, you do not choose to respect me
as your sister's governess, you shall as your father's wife."

She paused and noticed with cruel amusement the white, puz-
zled face turned to her own, and heard the sharp sound of Jack
Burroughs' foot upon the gravel. " It is true, 3 ' she repeated
slowly. " I have only been engaged to Dr. Stanhope for two
days, and I am going to m take Essie to the sea-shore for the rest
of the summer. In November we will be married."

She stopped, included them both in a little, mocking bow, and
strolled away. Lesley, without a word, turned sharply in another
direction ; Mr. Burroughs was left under the apple-trees alone.

Safe in her own room, Lesley sat for hours trying to realize
the change that had come into her life. Dazed with the shock,
she saw the whole fabric of her earthly happiness crumble at her
feet, and felt vaguely conscious that she stood deserted and
alone ; the past closed for ever, the future 1 stretching blindly on
before. She was too confused as yet for grief, or even for a full
appreciation of her position ; she only knew that her idols had
VOL. xxxix. 34

530 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

been shattered, and, in her youth and inexperience, she believed it
impossible to survive their loss and live. Spiritual resources she
had none ; courage and fortitude were things she understood, but
resignation was a word omitted from her vocabulary, and of
whose very meaning she was ignorant. True as steel, generous
in her impulses, and just to all, she had never found much cause
for self-reproach. Her life had always been a happy one, and
her sleepy conscience at ease with itself and the rest of the
world. Now suddenly cut adrift from her sheltered moorings,
she began to realize that her soul was driven by fiercer storms
than she had ever dreamed of, and to wonder vainly where she
should turn for safety. She had been taught to hold religion in
unquestioned reverence, at the same time letting it as much
alone as possible. To drive to church on clear Sundays was the
correct embodiment of an excellent principle ; to visit the poor
occasionally, a laudable work, provided always that the poor
selected were respectable, tolerably clean, and free from con-
tagious diseases. Beyond this it was best never to meddle in
these matters, and Lesley, not being spiritually inclined, had been
content hitherto to follow her instructions. She knew nothing
of that warning which has come down to us through genera-
tions : " He that clingeth to the creature shall fall with its fall-
ing." She had given her whole trust unhesitatingly to those she
loved, and they had failed her in her need.

Her painful reverie was broken at last by a message from her
father, saying he would like to se her for a few minutes in the
library ; and, rousing herself, Lesley went wearily down-stairs.
The skies were darkened with an approaching storm, and a
deathlike stillness, brooded over the tall tree-tops, which hung
heavy and drooping in the sullen air. The same atmosphere of
breathless expectancy seemed to pervade the house, as though
the ominous lull which precedes the rising wind held it, too, in
check. In his dim and quiet study Dr. Stanhope was pacing up
and down, with a look half angry, half resolute on his face and
an impatient, troubled step. He turned sharply around as his
daughter entered.

" Lesley," he said, " I have something important to tell you
something you will be sorry to hear."

" Do you mean your engagement, father ? " she asked in a low
voice.

He stared at her ahd continued his walk. " No, no," he said.
" Of course I meant to tell you that as well, but I. am very glad
you know it already. It is the only softening spot in my sum-

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 531

mer's annoyance and worry. She is a lovely girl, and I am most
fortunate to win such a gentle and judicious mother for Essie
and such a charming little wife for myself. Now I can see you
married with a better heart."

Lesley made no answer. She was not thinking now of Mabel
Grantly, but of her own young mother, who lay in the church-
yard near, and of Hester Halleran, who slept forgotten by the
Mediterranean Sea. Was there no such thing as faithfulness in
the world ? Her lip curled scornfully, but her eyes were dim
with tears, and for the first time a sensation of pity for the low-
born wife who had sacrificed so much to gain so little filled her
soul. She had resented her taking her mother's place, but now
they were both alike forsaken, and she felt that their cause was
one.

Dr. Stanhope took a few steps in silence, and then continued
in a lower voice and with an altered manner : " What I want to
speak to you about is something I have just heard of Essie.
That scoundrel Halleran, whom I thought well out of the road,
has eluded my vigilance, and has actually been all this time in
the neighborhood ; and, what is much worse, Essie has had con-
stant communication with him."

"Impossible !" cried Lesley, startled out of^her self-abstrac-
tion. " Where could they have met ? "

" Oh ! that was easy enough, thanks to the child being un-
watched all day long. He is living in a little cottage behind the
Stewart mill, and all she had to do was to cross the mill-stream
unnoticed and spend as much time with him as she liked.
Heaven only knows what nonsense he has taught her by this
time ! "

"I am very sorry father," said Lesley, taking, as usual, the
blame upon her shoulders. " But Essie has always been accus-
tomed to run about where she liked, and I did not know there
was any cause for apprehension."

" Nor I, or this folly would have .come to a speedy end long
ago, as it shall now. Did Miss Grantly tell you she was going
to take Essie to the sea-shore ? "

" Yes, she mentioned it to me."

" Well, I have changed my plans, and, to insure her being safe
in future from Halleran's pertinacity, I intend sending her abroad
at once."

" Abroad ! " repeated Lesley, " and with Miss Grantly ? "

" Of course with Miss Grantly. They are to leave early to-
morrow morning, and will sail from New York on Thursday. I

53 2 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

have arranged for their spending the rest of the summer at Nice,
and in the fall I will go over to them."

" And be married abroad, father?"

"Yes ; it suits me best, and I shall be spared the fuss and no-
toriety of a home wedding. It is a heavy trial for me to part
with Essie for so long, but I feel the necessity to be imperative,
and I shall know her to be in good hands."

One great rebellious tear dropped from Lesley's eyes, and
she succeeded with difficulty in choking back its fellows. She
felt so lonely and desolate that it seemed doubly hard to know
that all her father's hopes, and plans, and affections were for
those two, and that she alone bore no part in his calculations.
She might, perhaps, be useful to him, but that was all.

" The reason why I sent for you," Dr. Stanhope went on,
" was to ask you to get Essie's things together quietly, so that
she will be ready to start in the morning without making a stir
among the servants. Miss Grantly says that old Alice is ruin-
ing the child by over-indulgence, and she prefers not taking her
along. So they will cross alone, and secure a French maid in
Paris. Also I want you to break the news to Essie to-night, so
that she will have a good sleep on it, and not treat us to a scene
to-morrow."

" Father," pleaded Lesley, " I think the child will be very
unhappy if you send her so far away without even her old nurse
to comfort her. She is so painfully shy with strangers, and
has not yet grown fond of Miss Grantly."

" That," said Dr. Stanhope pithily, " is pure nonsense. Be-
tween you and Alice, Essie has been greatly spoiled, and the
quicker she gets under new influences the better. Besides, she
will learn to love Miss Grantly all the more reatiily if she has no
one else to fall back upon. My mind is quite made up on the
subject, but I want you to reconcile her as far as possible to the
separation. Once among new scenes, she will soon grow happy
.and contented."

Lesley offered no further remonstrance. In the midst of her
own sorrow her heart ached for her little sister ; but she was
powerless to help her, and nothing remained but to tell her as
gently as possible of the approaching change. She packed the
trunk without asking assistance from any one, and when night
came took Essie to her room and told her in a few kind words
what was to happen in the morning. But it was in vain that she
spoke of the delights of crossing the ocean, or described in glow-
ing terms the beautiful places they were going to see. Essie,

I884-J A LESSON OF LIFE. 533

with her face hidden on her sister's shoulder, would listen to no
consolation, but wept and wept as if her little heart were breaking
with its grief. " If you were only going with me ! " she sobbed,
"or papa, or Alice. But O Lesley! I hate her so, I hate her
so!"

" Hush, Essie ! " was the weary answer, " and listen to me.
Miss Grantly will not be unkind to you, and you must try and
learn to like her better. I am sorry for you, dear, but you know
you have brought this on yourself."

A fresh burst of sobs was the only reply, and Lesley went on :
" It is too late to help it now, -but I always believed, Essie, that
you, at least, were honest and truthful. How could you keep
such a secret from us all? "

The child raised her flushed face for an instant and met her
sister's eyes. " It was not my secret," she whispered, " so I
could not tell it. And he is my own dear mamma's father, and
he loves me just as he used to love her when she was a little
girl ; and I cannot go away without saying good-by to him.
Lesley, dear Lesley " and the small arms were wound tightly
around her neck " may I see him just once before I leave only
once to say good-by ? "

Lesley shook her head. " You know very well, Essie," she
said, " that it cannot be. Father has forbidden it, and you are
only a little girl and must obey him. He is going after you in a
few months."

" To bring me home again ? "

" Perhaps so ; or may be you will go to school and have a
nice time with other children. And now I wtfl put you to bed
myself, for if Alice comes up you and she will cry half the night,
and I want you to be my brave little sister."

" But I cannot sleep ever," moaned Essie fretfully, "when it
stqrms so."

" Nonsense ! I will close the shutters, and then you won't
see the lightning."

" Yes, I will ; it shines through the chinks. And, besides, I
can hear the thunder all the same, and the wind. I am not afraid
of them one bit, only they keep me awake. O Lesley ! I wish
there would be another flood, so that papa couldn't send me
away in the morning."

In truth, the night was not one conducive to peaceful slum-
ber, and when Lesley had at last escaped to her room she lay for
hours listening to the rain beating furiously against the panes,
and to the hoarse wind that now crept stealthily around the

534 d LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

house, pushing- the scattered leaves before it, and now sprang
fiercely at the casements, rattling them like an angry man deter-
mined to force an entrance. Oppressed with a vague sense of
fear stronger even than her dejection, the voices of the storm
seemed fraught with a dismal meaning to her ears ; and if she
dozed for a minute it was only to find herself battling with the
elements or driven helplessly hither and thither by their unrest-
ing fury. Twice she arose and went with noiseless step into
Essie's room, and the dimly-burning lamp showed her each time
the child sleeping peacefully, one little arm thrown above her
head, the other hand holding fast to something Lesley could
not see what that she wore around her neck. With a strange
softening in her heart and an affection never felt before Lesley
stooped over the bed and kissed her sister's face, upturned as
though to meet her own ; then, going back to her room, locked
herself resolutely in, determined to leave it no more that night.
Towards morning the storm abated, and at last she fell asleep,
never wakening until the sun was streaming brightly in her win-
dow.

A low tap at the door startled her from her drowsiness, and
she opened it to see Alice, the nurse, standing outside, with a
white, scared face and trembling fingers that plucked absently
at the strings of her apron. " Miss Essie?" she asked hurriedly.
" Is she in here with you?"

" With me ! " answered Lesley. " Certainly not. She slept
in her own bed last night."

The girl gave a low cry. " She is not there now," she said.
" Cdrne and look*for yourself."

Snatching her wrapper, Lesley flew bare-footed to her sister's
room. The night-lamp was burning still, though the open shut-
ters let in the cheerful light of day. The little bed was empty,
and Essie's night-dress and one tiny slipper lay across the foot.
Glancing in the closet, Lesley saw that the coat and hat which
had been hung there in readiness for the morning were gone.

" Alice," she said, " when you came in the room were the
shutters open or closed ? "

" Tight shut, Miss Lesley, all but one in the corner here. I
opened the rest myself."

" Then Essie must have gotten up before daylight and
dressed by the lamp. She has probably gone out for a last run,
and will.be back in time for breakfast. Now, don't be foolish and
hysterical, Alice, but go down-stairs at once and tell Dr. Stan-
hope, if he is up. I will be dressed in a few minutes, and we can

1884.] A LESSON pp LIFE. 535

go and look for her then. There is no need to speak of the mat-
ter to the other servants."

The girl obeyed, and Lesley, hurrying on her clothes, ran
down to meet her father in the library. He looked troubled and
anxious, but was outwardly composed, and spoke in his usual
manner. " I am going out now to hunt up Essie and bring her
home," he said. " Where do you suppose she has run to? "

Lesley hesitated. " I think," she said " that is I am afraid
that she has gone to say good-by to her grandfather."

Dr. Stanhope muttered something between his teeth and
took a few hurried steps in evident anger and dismay.

"She was very anxious to see him once more," Lesley went
on, " and I fear that, wakening early this morning, she slipped
out for that purpose before it was quite light."

She paused, and the two exchanged a silent glance, each one
reading a mutual fear in the other's averted eyes. " The mill-
stream ! " groaned Dr. Stanhope, " and the heavy rains last
night ! Halleran shall answer "

" Hark! " cried Lesley, turning white. " What was that ? "

A woman's scream rent the air, a pitiful cry of grief and ter-
ror ; and there at the door stood Halleran himself, gray and hag-
gard in the morning light, holding a dripping burden in his
arms. Alice, trembling and weeping, was at his side, but he
never noticed her. His eyes were fixed on Dr. Stanhope's face,
and at his feet he laid without a word the drowned body of his
little daughter.

For an instant there was a breathless silence, as if the dead
stood looking at the dead ; then, with a sharp cry, Lesley fell on
her knees and raised the lifeless head upon her bosom. The fair
curls hung dank and matted over the white forehead ; the eyes
were closed, the little face peaceful in its last sleep. With a vain
regret she kissed the sweet, cold lips, and felt her heart ache at
the thought of the love she might have given and had withheld.
Then for the first time she ventured to look up at her father, and
saw him standing silent and rigid, his eyes fixed with a strange,
blank stare on Essie's face, as if the horror of the thing had driv-
en him mad. Suddenly he stooped and took his little daugh-
ter in his arms, her fair head resting on his shoulder, her cheek
pressed close to his. " Hester," he whispered, " she is yours
now. Forgive me, dearest wife ! "

Halleran took a step forward. He spoke in answer to a look
of inquiry from Lesley, for Dr. Stanhope never noticed him at
all. " It was early this morning," he said in a low voice, " and I

536 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July,

had gone out for a breath of fresh air. The storm had kept me
awake all night, and something seemed to be weighing heavy-
like on my heart. The mill-stream was swollen by the rain and
was running very fast ; it had washed away part of the bridge,
and the rest looked rotten and slippery. Down by the willow-
tree there was something entangled in the branches that grow
into the water, and I went to look what it was. There I saw my
darling's child lying cold and dead, with her innocent face turned
towards heaven."

His voice trembled and broke ; he struggled for a moment
with his tears, and then grew calmer. It even seemed to Lesley
that his grief had invested him with a new dignity, and that he
had risen to a nobler level. " She is safe with her mother now,"
he said simply, " and I am alone. May it please God to call me
in his good time! "

He stole a last lingering look at the child, still in her father's
arms, and turned silently away, going out in his helpless old age
to meet the last buffets of an unkind world. Weak, and broken,
and poverty-stricken, he went forth, as he said, alone ; and neither
Lesley nor her father ever saw or heard of him again. That his
story was true none could doubt. The state of the bridge con-
firmed his words, and clinging to a splintered board was found
Essie's straw hat, showing too plainly where the little feet had
slipped.

A silent house, where all day long the servants speak in whis-
pers and stand crying in the halls, yet take a certain pleasure,
nevertheless, in conjecturing with many tears just how the
tragedy was brought about. Outside the village children gather
in little groups, and weep, and tell each other for the twentieth
time how it all happened, and wonder what the drowned child
looks like, and whether they will be admitted to the funeral. If
curiosity and a breathless interest sweeten their sense of a grief,
it is none the less honest for that; and their tears are heart-
felt as they recall the well-known little figure cantering down the
lanes. Isolated in his library, Dr. Stanhope has refused all con-
sola,tion and sympathy, and will admit no one to his solitude.
His best hopes and affections lie dead with his lost child, and for
the time his sorrow crushes him. Miss Grantly also keeps her
room, save when carriage-loads of commiserating friends arrive
and she alone can see them. Her pale, tear-stained face is- by far
the most attractive in the house, and all who meet her go away
charmed and touched by her graceful and well-bred distress.

1884.] A LESSON OF LIFE. 537

She lays up for herself golden opinions in these few days which
will do her good service by and by. Dr. Stanhope's refusal to
see her now does not trouble her in the least, for she knows well
how soon a selfish grief exhausts itself ; and she knows, too, that
the only influence strong enough to conflict with hers is gone
for ever. Henceforth she rules alone.

And Lesley, forgotten in her father's heart, and no longer the
mistress even of his home, is conscious of nothing but her own
sorrow and pity. She glides around the house, white and silent,
the ghost of her old gay self, but composed and rational still ; so
that the servants shake their heads when they meet her, and say,
with many a shrug and sniff, indicative of stro*ng disfavor, that it's
wonderful how some people can bear up under their losses. She
sees that her father's meals are sent to him regularly, and dines
alone in the big, gloomy room, with little appetite, poor child !
and to the great disedification of the cook, who considers that
unlimited tea-drinking in her apartment would be a more fitting
expression of her grief. When the day of the funeral comes she
and Alice prepare the little corpse for its last resting-place.
Around Essie's neck is a narrow white ribbon, and fastened to it
a small, much-worn silver medal. Lesley looks at it curiously,
but can make nothing out of the few dim outlines or the half-
erased inscription. She feels sure that it was Halleran's gift, and
that it was this that her sister held in her hand the night before
her death. But what she does not know is that the same smooth
bit of silver has been worn by Essie's mother when she, too,
was a child. She hesitates a moment Lesley is not partial to
charms of any kind and then, moved by a feeling she could not
explain, replaces it carefully around her little sister's neck and
hides it under the white frock. " If you loved it you shall keep
it, dear," she whispers, kissing the closed eyes, " and no one shall
take it from you."

All is in readiness now, and, going out in the corridor, she
stands by the darkened window, absorbed in painful thoughts.
Suddenly a hand is laid upon her arm, and, turning around, she
sees Jack Burroughs looking keenly at her with eyes that tell at
once their pity and their shame. " Lesley," he says imploringly,
" I have come to beg for pardon."

The girl lifts her heavy lids. " I forgive you, Jack," she says
wearily. " It was not all your fault."

" I was a mad fool ! " he mutters, with angry bitterness ; " but
that bad dream is over at last, and I have come back to you.
Will you try and trust in me again ? "

538 A LESSON OF LIFE. [July*

She looks at him now for the first time, and without emotion
of any sort. " I could never trust you again," she says dis-
tinctly.

A crimson flush mounts into his cheek, but he resolutely holds
his ground. "Lesley," he says in a half-whisper, " this is no
time to talk of love, but it maddens me to think how desolate and
alone you are. Your father's house will be no home for you
after he is married, and if you cast me off who is left to protect
you ? I have been frightfully to blame, I know, and have allowed
a pair of blue eyes to draw me away from you for a little time;
but if you make your sentence so severe remember that you will
wreck the happiness of both. Believe me, this world is not so
full of joy that you can afford to throw away any portion of it
even for the sake of your justly- wounded pride. Think for a
moment of what our lives will be apart, and then come back
to me."

He tries to take her hand, but she draws it gently from him.
" You do not understand me, Jack," she says, sighing. " It is
not pride that stands between us, but a dead love. A week ago
I would have trusted you against the whole world ; but what
room is left for my faith now when an-other pair of blue eyes
may tempt you away again ? The affection that is built on mis-
trust is worthless, and we should only find it out too late. Even
loneliness would be easier to bear than that."

" Do you really mean it, Lesley ? " he asks. " And is your
decision final?"

" I really mean it, and my decision is final. How can I hope
to change?"

He comes close to her and looks at her pale face and in her
troubled eyes, but reads there no shadow of relenting only a
listless sorrow and indifference. " And you can talk of faith-
fulness and love ! " he cries bitterly " you who are without a
heart ! "

For an instant she stare.s at him wonderingly. " And if I
am," she answers slowly, " it is you who have helped to
break it."

He turns without another word and leaves her standing by
her sister's door, and she goes softly in. White and pure and
lovely, Essie lies in her little flower-strewn coffin ; lilies at
her head and feet, and in her waxen hands. Death wraps her
round as a mantle, and the mystery of the unseen world dwells
in the hushed figure and in the tranquil face. To Lesley, stand-
ing by her side, there comes suddenly the sharp conviction that

1884.] THE IRISH WORDS IN SHAKSPERE. 539

the loss of this child, whom she had never loved, is the heaviest
part of her sorrow. Perhaps her little sister's innate truthfulness
had been the only bond between them, but that at least was a tie
that nothing had severed. If the child had kept her pitiful
secret to the end, it was only because it was not hers to tell.
Now that the loyal heart is still and cold, and the eager spirit
fled for ever, Lesley feels with a bitter pang how dear she might
have grown. There seems nothing left to fill her empty soul,
which cries out vainly for strength and consolation. The world
is going round with her, and all that she has valued has slipped
from her powerless fingers. With a sudden cry she falls on her
knees beside the little coffin and lays her face close to the pale,
cold cheek.

" Essie, Essie," she sobs, " look down from heaven and listen
to me now ! You see your mother's face, but the face of mine
is turned away from me. You stand in the full light, and I walk
still in darkness. Help me, my dear little sister, that I may
follow you ! "

THE IRISH WORDS IN SHAKSPERE.

EVERY ONE has doubtless heard of the student in the middle
ages who was perplexed by a passage in Aristotle. He per-
spired over his Latin and Arabic versions of the Stagyrite, but
all to no purpose. At last, in his despair, he had recourse to a
conjurer, who, at his request, described a circle on the floor of a
darkened chamber and called up the devil to explain the mys-
terious passage. The devil accordingly came up with all his
horrors, and, standing on the selvage of the circle, perused the
words which the student showed him with his right hand while
holding the book tremblingly with his left. Having duly read
the passage, the " arch-felon " shook his horned head and pro-
nounced it wholly unintelligible. It was too much for him.
" But," he added with exquisite politeness, " if you will favor me
with your company " and he pointed downwards " I shall feel
great pleasure in introducing you to Aristotle himself."

Now, my object in penning these lines is to prevent any
future annotator of Shakspere from imitating the mediaeval
student and going too far for an explanation. Besides, as Stany-
hurst informs us, the devil on one occasion, when duly invoked,

54 THE IRISH WORDS IN SHAKSPERE. [July,

declared himself wholly incapable of translating Irish, describ-
ing- it, at the same time, as for him the most invincible and
unattainable of all human dialects. And an Irishman may there-
fore be pardoned, perhaps, if he infers that, though there may be
Irishmen in the regno dolente, they belong to that class of his
countrymen who do not understand the vernacular of their
native land.*

There is a passage in Shakspere which during two hundred
years has puzzled annotators as much as that in Aristotle. It
occurs in Henry V., act iv. scene iv. a scene which exhibits
a field of battle resounding with "alarms" and traversed by
" excursions." The stage is entered by three individuals " a
French soldier, Pistol, and a boy." Pistol, with the courtesy
characteristic of his nationality, addresses the Frenchman by
truculently shouting, " Yield, cur ! " To which the Frenchman
replies, " Je pense que vous tes gentilhomme de bonne qualite "
" I think you are a gentleman of good quality " ; that is, " I
may surrender to you without disgrace." " Quality ? " exclaims
Pistol, mimicking his prisoner. " Calenocustureme ! " or, as we
find it in some editions, " Calmiecustureme ! " The reader may
take his choice, but will find one form as puzzling as the other, j

Of this passage Samuel Lover says :

"Those who are familiar with Shakspere will remember how much the
speech of Pistol in the fourth scene of the fourth act in Henry V. dis-
turbed the repose of the annotators, and what strange hash was made of
the imperfect text, until Mr. Malone had the sagacity to perceive that
Pistol was repeating the burden of an old song, and that burden was, Calen
o custure me. That Mr. Malone was right in his conjecture indubitable
proof exists, although Mr. Stevens rejected his emendation, etc."

But perhaps Mr. Stevens was right in rejecting it. One
thing is certain : Warburton got over the difficulty of translating
Pistol's words by pronouncing them " nonsense " a very sum-
mary but not satisfactory mode of disposing of a difficulty. It is
very curious to find Warburton, after first pronouncing it " non-
sense," proceeding diligently to translate this " nonsense." He
says it should be read " Quality ! Cality ! Construe me ; art
thou a gentleman ? " which would not be nonsense. This is

* That the devil can speak all languages except Irish is a fact for which we have the high
authority of Stanyhurst, an English writer who lived in the reign of Elizabeth. He proves
his assertion by the case of a possessed person in Rome " who spoke in every known tongue
except Irish ; but in that he neither would nor could speak because of its intolerable harsh-
ness." We are assured by another authority that this inability of Lucifer is owing to St. Patrick,
who prayed to God that the mellifluous sounds of the Irish tongue should never be profaned
by infernal lips.

1884.] THE IRISH WORDS IN SHAKSPERE. 541

what Pistol meant to convey to the Frenchman, according to
Warburton. He meant to ask him, " Let me understand whether
thou be'st a gentleman." But this is simply a repetition of
what the Frenchman has already said in his own language. The
Frenchman says, " I think you are a gentleman of good quality."
To which Pistol replies according to Warburton " Quality !
Cality ! Construe me; art thou a gentleman?" which would
make Pistol's words an echo of the Frenchman's. Warburton's
would be a very good explanation, only for one fault it does not
explain ; it does not give us the true meaning of calenocus-
tureme. This remains yet to be elucidated.

Among the accomplishments of Queen Elizabeth was a know-
ledge of difficult music. She delighted in dancing, and, while
.she swore like a trooper, she danced like a May maid: she alter-
nately jigged and blasphemed. Even at the mature age of sixty-
nine she still continued to jig and swear. Samuel Lover quotes
"The Talbot Papers, vol. M, folio 18, given in Lodge's Illustra-
tions of British History" to show that Irish music was popular
at that period. " We are frolic here at court," writes the Earl of
Worcester to the Earl of Shrewsbury. " Much dancing in the
privy chamber before the queen, who is much delighted there-
with. Irish tunes are at this time most pleasing." Now, this
being the case, it was perfectly possible for Shakspere to pick up
the burden of an Irish song and put it into Pistol's mouth. What
Malone says is this :

" In a book entitled A Handful of Pleasant Delytes, published in 1584, is
a ' sonet of a lover in praise of his mistress to Calen o custureme' sung at
every line's end.

" Pistol, therefore, we see, is only repeating the burden of an old song,
and the words should be undoubtedly printed : ' Quality ! Calen o custure
me. Art thou a gentleman ? ' etc."

Malone's explanation, however satisfactory to others, does
not satisfy Samuel Lover. "It is strange," he says, " that Mr.
Malone, having got so far into the truth, does not clear the ques-
tion up completely." That is, Mr. Malone, having discovered
that the words are the burden of an old song, has not attempted
to translate this burden. Now, this is what Lover proposes to
do, and he remarks :

" Mr. Stevens, in rejecting Malone's emendation, says : ' Mr. Malone's
discovery is very curious, and when (as probably will b'e the case) some
farther ray of light is thrown on the unintelligible words I will be the first
to vote it into the text.' "

Lover proposes to supply the " ray of light " sought by

542 THE IRISH WORDS IN SHAKSPERE. [July,

Malone. He tells us that the mysterious words which Malone
believed to be the chorus of an Irish song, as translated by an
Irish schoolmaster named Finnegan, mean " little girl of my
heart for ever and ever." But

"They mean no such thing," says Lover; "and I cannot but wonder
that, with so much literary discussion as has taken place on the subject,
the true spelling and consequently the meaning of the burden have re-
mained till now undiscovered. The burden is, Calen o custure me, which is
an attempt to spell, and pretty nearly represents the sound of, Colleen oge
asthore (me being an expletive or possibly corrupt introduction), and those
words mean ' young girl, my treasure.' "

Now, it is not easy to see how Pistol could be warranted in
terming a French soldier " a little girl." He might term him " a
treasure" with great propriety, because the Frenchman might be
ransomed for money ; but " a little girl " he certainly was not.
All these annotators labored under a slight difficulty : they en-
deavored to translate Irish words without knowing anything of the
Irish language. To an Irishman Pistol's words are perfectly in-
telligible. They should be written : Coilean og, cas tu re me /
The first word (coilean} signifies " whelp, cur, cub, or puppy."
The second word (og) signifies " young." The third (cas) signi-
fies " turn," and comes from ;the verb casam (of which it is the
imperative mood), meaning " to turn or wind." Tu signifies
"you." Re signifies "with," and me "me." Thus Pistol with
inborn courtesy says : " You young whelp, turn with me." In
modern Irish we should be more apt to say, A coilean og tar
Horn " You young puppy, come with me."

Shakspere does not, as Mr. Malone fancied, put into Pistol's
mouth "the burden of an old song" not at all. He puts into
his mouth a sentence which is quite to the purpose, and suited
perfectly to the polite character and amiable nationality of the
speaker, even when giving a challenge. We have great respect
for Mr. Finnegan, " an Irish schoolmaster in London," but con-
fidently affirm that he had lost his Irish, if not his senses, in sup-
posing that Pistol addressed his prisoner as "little girl of my
heart for ever and ever " ! Pistol seems to have said to him-
self (" the muse interprets thus his tender thought "), " This fellow
puzzles me by speaking French ; but I'll puzzle him by speaking
Irish. A Roland for his Oliver ! "

Not only the French prisoner failed to understand Pistol at
the moment ; the long tribe of annotators who during two
hundred years have undertaken to explain the obscurities of the
" Bard of Avon " have failed to understand him.

1884.] KATHARINE. 543

As to the second version of Pistol's words, given in some
editions Calmiecustureme. If we write these words as they
should be written their meaning will be perfectly obvious, viz,,
Gal maith, cas tu re me that is, " Good stranger, turn with me."

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER V.

THE years which next elapsed brought some few outward
changes but no marked inward one in Katharine's life. There
was first the little ripple which was her share of the excitement
caused among her elders by the secession of a considerable body
from the Methodist ranks, headed by Mark Norton, who settled
down in her native city and took ministerial duty over the hand-
ful whom Kitty heard designated as malcontents and schisma-
tics. For a while they met in each other's houses, but finally
built themselves a little wooden chapel, to the erection of which
Mr. Norton himself contributed a large portion of the manual
labor necessary. The resources of his new flock were scanty,
and he had determined to supplement the trifling salary they
paid him by a return to his trade as a carpenter ; and this little
" house of prayer," as the new community styled it, was his first
job. To Kitty, who sometimes met him, tool-box in hand, on
her way between school and home, and with whom he never
failed to exchange kindly greetings and to give occasional tid-
ings of his son, there was somewhat heroic in his action, based,
as it was, on a moral scruple which, in her childish way, she un-
derstood and shared. Very little controversy on the subject
took place in her hearing. Her father, immersed in affairs which
were growing troublesome and perplexing, and averse, as he had
said, to dissensions, had regarded the slavery question as one of
internal discipline with which he had no occasion to concern him-
self; and her mother, whose mind was of that tenacious sort
which does not go back to re-examine the reasons for a course
of conduct once deliberately adopted, but clings to it like ivy to
a tree-stem, regarded his quiescence with entire approbation.

Then came the bustle of removal and installation in new
quarters, consequent upon the sale of the graveyard, when Mr.

544 K A THARINE.

Danforth converted his dwelling into shops and went farther up
town. A change of schools ensued, and Kitty, sent to the best
the city afforded, was soon plunged into new work, new friend-
ships, new reading, which filled up her time and occupied all her
thoughts. Then her aunt fell into feeble health, and for a year
or two the child watched her lapsing gradually out of a life in
which she had known no nearer ties than those of daughter and
sister, and seemed never to have struck deep root. In these last
years she took an enduring hold upon Katharine's imagination,
which was, perhaps, the strongest impression her weak vitality
had ever been able to produce. After she ceased to leave her
room the child used to go there voluntarily to keep her com-
pany, studying beside the window opposite which her aunt was
propped in her sick-chair, and glancing up now and then to meet
and ponder over the look of anxiety, doubt, and apprehension
which seemed to her to dwell within the sufferer's large, pale
eyes. Sometimes, at her request, Kitty used to read her ,the
Gospel of the Passion from one or other of the Evangelists, and
sometimes to sing her hymns which she designated, and which
bore usually upon the terrors of the final judgment. The minis-
ter went and came, offering such consolation as he had; but al-
though, as he said, her faith was sound and her hope certain, she
never lost that look of pathetic melancholy which had made her
niece say of her, years before, that she seemed never to have en-
joyed possession of anything she had really desired. That was
what puzzled Kitty most, while she sat, for the most part silent,
beside her, her aunt's malady making conversation wearisome
and painful. Nor did she share her thoughts with any one,
such being her wont when they were especially perplexing.
On her the thought of God, not as Saviour, but as Creator, Fa-
ther, Satisfier, was taking,, as she grew, more serious hold, while
at the same time all the sermons and instructions she listened to
in church and fit home were daily making less and less impres-
sion. What she wondered at now was why a life which had
vaguely impressed her as empty and unsatisfactory should not
look forward with joy to the thought of attaining the supreme
satisfaction which its faith bade it anticipate. She felt herself
seized by a sort of impotent compassion which showed itself
by all the cares within her power, but was consciously mute
and helpless in presence of a dumb appeal which moved her
strangely.

In school she was making a capricious and irregular progress,
now studious, now idle, showing great aptitude in some direc-

1 8 84.] KA THA RINE. 545

tions, and in others scarcely keeping on a level with her class.
Now and then she had a sudden spurt of diligence in which she
made up for lost time on all sides, and often she displayed an
acquaintance with general matters beyond the school routine,
which she owed to a wider reading than was common with girls
of her age, and to a memory, at once retentive and topical, that
resembled a plant drawing from the richest soil only its own
proper nutriment, and living even in the poorest, so long as that
is not absolutely lacking. During the entire -duration of one
scholastic year she abandoned herself to one of those rare but
strong attractions which once or twice filled for her the place of
such friendships as school-girls are accustomed to contract with
each other, and, through love for one of her teachers, became, for
that time, a model of studious industry and quick obedience.
Among her equals she might have been popular, for when she
herself was pleased she seldom failed of pleasing. But she had a
way, as uncomfortable to herself as it was awkward for others,
of suddenly cooling in the midst of an intimacy which she had
probably sought with flattering ardor. Her new teacher, a
young woman of unusual cultivation and breadth of mind, and
a noble and elevated beauty which had been the secret of Kitty's
attraction, finding herself the object of a plainly evident yet shy
passion which converted into the most diligent and docile of
pupils a young girl who brought with her into the class the
reputation of a brilliant idler and a hopeless yet not disrespect-
ful rebel against routine, set herself the task of gaining a more
intimate knowledge of her unexpected captive.

11 The girls complain," she said to her one day, " that you are
too capricious all warmth and sunshine at first, and then, as
they begin to be fond of you, going back into your shell like a
snail. It must have been to some one who resembled you that
Byron wrote this verse." And she recited, in the clear, well-
modulated voice that was one of her charms :

" Thou art not false, but thou art fickle,

To those thyself so fondly sought ;
The tears which thou dost cause to trickle

Are doubly bitter from that thought :
Tis this which breaks the heart thou grievest
Too well thou lov'st, too soon thou leavest."

Kitty blushed. " I know it," she said, " and I am sorry ; but
I cannot help it And, after all, I don't see why they need com-
plain. I must be just as unsatisfactory to them as they are
to me."

VOL. xxxix. 35

546 KATHARINE.

"In what way?" inquired Miss Falconer. "If you look
about you, you will see that people do not withdraw from each
other in that manner. Friendships last, families cling together,
parents do not tire of their children."

" No," said Kitty. " But some faces attract me ; they seem
like books unread, which will tell me the thing I am always
wanting to know and yet never find. The girls are like the
books they tell you a lot of things, but nothing you care about.
When I take a -little baby that has never spoken yet, I think of
how its mother must be watching to see if, when it begins to
talk, it won't remember something of what lay behind it before
it came into the world."

Her teacher laughed. " It will say the same old things," she
answered : " nothing more remarkable than goo-goo and da-da."
And then she added, more gravely : " If it is the infinite you
are seeking for you will never be happy. Nothing in this world
will satisfy a heart which desires love itself and not a thing be-
loved."

Kitty, too, looked grave. Then in her turn she laughed.

" At any rate," she said, " it won't do any good to pretend
that Mary Jones is the infinite, or for her to try to persuade her-
self that Kitty Danforth was just going to develop into it, and
then suddenly changed her mind and shut up like an umbrella."

" No ; but considering that the world is made up of Marys
and Kittys, not to speak of Toms and Dicks and Harrys, and
that you have a more or less long life to spend in it, it would be
wiser to try to accommodate yourself to your surroundings.
There is no absolute good in it, even for those whose wants are
far less exacting than yours. But there is plenty to do, and more
than plenty to think about ; and happiness is usually thrown into
'the scale for those who honestly try on their own part to fill it
up with duties well done. As far as I can see, it always eludes
those who seek it for itself, as you seem inclined to do. This
year you are working well and meeting all my wishes, but do
you know what all your previous teachers said to me about you
before you came into my hands ? "

" I can guess," said Kitty.

" I see you can. They told me I would find you at once a tor-
ment and a pleasure, to whom work was only a sort of play and
rules seemed made only to be broken."

" I never broke one deliberately," answered Kitty, " but I
often forgot all about them. Some of them are so stupid ! Why
should one go in this door instead of that, study grammar at

1884.] KATHARINE. 547

eleven and algebra at two, stand or sit in such or such a posi-
tion, work out all one's examples in one way when another is
easier and quicker?"

" But you conform to all my regulations, and they are just
the same."

" They are yours," said Kitty, with another faint blush. Miss
Falconer smiled.

" The world of school," she said, " is like the greater world
outside it made for all sorts and conditions of men, who must
be governed by average rules. I dread to see you set yourself
against it. It is tolerably sure to afford a moderate but ade-
quate happiness to all who are willing to accept it and pay for
it the regular price labor and conformity. For others it has
nothing." ' .

At another time, when their conversation had reached the
same end, though by a widely different route, Katharine asked
with some hesitation if her teacher were a Christian.

" Surely ! " she answered, with some surprise. " Are not
you?"

" I suppose not ; they tell me so at home, and so did an old
friend, Mr. Norton, with whom I walked to school this morning.
He said I would never be happy until I was converted."

" What do they mean by that, and what church do you at-
tend?"

"The Methodist."

" Ah ! " said Miss Falconer, " I understand."

" Yes," said Kitty. " I cannot get into the state of mind that
is necessary ; and, worse than that, the older I grow, and the more
I read and think about the matter, the more it seems to me that
a church is either entirely unnecessary or that there should
never have been more than one. I see no reason why we should
not go straight to God without such a medium."

" Have you ever tried? "

"Often every day; but I seem almost always to strike
against a blind wall."

" Perhaps," said Miss Falconer, "one reason may be that God
is a pure spirit, while we are hampered by our bodies. He has
met that difficulty by sending his Son in flesh like ours. And
that answers your question as to why there should be a church.
Men change and die, and there must either be a perpetual incar-
nation or an organization which will faithfully transmit what
Jesus Christ has taught. You know what he says : ' No man
cometh to the Father but by me.' '

5 48 KA THARINE. [July*

" Yes," said Kitty thoughtfully ; " it is in the Gospel of John.
But there is something else there that I find harder still : ' No
man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw
him.' "

Miss Falconer made her no direct reply. Katharine, by her
invitation, was spending- with her the time between Friday and
Monday a pleasure shyly longed for but never before enjoyed.
Presently her teacher began anew :

" As to your idea that there should never have been more
than one church, it is not far out of the way. In reality there
is but one. To-morrow I will take you with me, and see if you
will like it better than your own."

" I have been in a Catholic church once," answered Kitty.
"An Irish girl took me when, I was very small. Is it that you
mean ? "

"No," said Miss Falconer, " if, as I suppose, you refer to the
Roman Catholic ; yes, in the sense in which I understand the
word. The universal church has three great branches the
Roman, which was the main trunk, but lapsed into corruption ;
the Greek, and the English, or, as we call it here, the Episco-
palian, to which I belong."

Katharine was now about sixteen. She had made her way
through considerable history, and had also read a good deal of
such controversy as gets into religious journals and is discussed
among people who are much in earnest and yet differ widely on
a subject which is either of supreme importance or of none at all.

" These three branches," she asked " do they all believe the
same things ? "

" In essentials, yes."

" But three puzzle me as much as three hundred. Why do
they separate, if they are really the same ? You told me just
now that a church was necessary to transmit truth faithfully,
and that I understand. But when the first messenger begins to
lie how can any one be sure the second will not, and how is one
,to know what is true or false in either message ? "

" We have the Scriptures."

" I cannot understand all I read in them," said Kitty. " And,
if they are enough, why isn't it enough to read and to believe
them ? I have always done that, and yet my father and mother
are constantly grieving because I do not join the church."

" We are getting into deep waters," said her friend, " and it is
late. I think myself that the theory of an emotional conversion
is a great mistake. If you had been brought up as I was you

1 8 84.] KA THA RINE. 5 49

would have been baptized in infancy, taught your catechism,
confirmed at the proper time, and never have doubted that you
were a Christian. That is one of the most serious consequences
of the schism which produced Methodism."

" You are a Christian, then," said Kitty, with a smile, " because
you followed your parents ; and I am not, because I am waiting
to follow mine. Yet my mother thinks the church of my grand-
mother is all wrong, and that yours is nearly or quite as bad as
the Roman Catholic itself. For me, I begin to fear I never shall
belong to any. I know I never shall, unless I can find one that
really answers all the questions I wish to ask. But if it turns out
to be true that the very first has gone utterly astray, and is, -as
you and the others say, corrupt, then I shall get on as best I can
without one." t*iv!*gS

" You say ' if/ " replied Miss Falconer, " as though there were
already a doubt in your mind about the matter."

" Yes," said Katharine ; " but it is a doubt which has nothing
to support it except a vague sentiment which I have felt ever
since I was a child." Then, recounting in a few words her re-
collection of her first Christmas Mass, she went on to say :

" The moonlight and the clear, starry darkness, the shadows
on the snow and the silent streets, which were all new to me, are,
perhaps, at the bottom of it. But the very word ' Catholic ' has
always given me a curious emotion ever since, as if it woke an
echo within me which recalled the strange awe I felt there and
urged me to return."

" That church has, I know, a mysterious fascination for many
minds," said her teacher ; " yet the historical proofs of error and
corruption are so strong and evident that I have never felt in-
clined to doubt what I was taught at confirmation, that this at-
traction should be resisted as the most dangerous delusion of the
evil spirit. There was one of my schoolmates who entered it
just before that time, and our rector, Dr. Adams, devoted a great
deal of attention to the subject on that account."

Kitty smiled. "One of our ministers," she said, "told me
once, when I asked some questions about it, that only the devil
could have prompted them. If it be he, I fear he has a strong
hold over me. But it sounds to me like the same voice which,
whenever I have been idle, or disobedient, or inclined to make a
false excuse, has stopped me in one direction and urged me in
another. But for the fear of grieving my father and mother I
should have sought instruction long ago."

" The one duty that is absolutely plain to a child," said Miss

55o . KATHARINE. [July,

Falconer, " commanded by nature as well as by Christianity, is
obedience to parents. That very fact has probably shown you
that there is something dubious in your attraction."

" I have thought of that," answered Katharine. " It sounds
reasonable. They used to laugh at me, when I was little, for say-
ing that true things had a different sound from false ones. If
that were absolutely true it would be worse than foolish to send
missionaries to the heathen."

On Sunday morning Kitty ^accompanied Miss Falconer to
church. In the afternoon the latter, who had been reflecting
much on the unexpected state of mind which her confidences had
revealed, acted on a resolution taken the night before, by pro-
posing a visit to the new cathedral. The city had not only
rapidly increased its Catholic population, but was the centre of
a number of small manufacturing towns where they were so
numerous that it had been made the see of a new diocese. A
cathedral which had been for several years in course of erection
had recently been opened for divine worship. The music was
unusually good, and the church was not unfrequently visited by
Protestants. Miss Falconer, who had entered it on a week-day
not long before, had found her sense of fitness much offended by
the decorations o'f the three or four side-altars.

" Katharine," she said to herself, "is inclined to exaltation
and ideality. This gilded gingerbread, these wax dolls dressed
in lace and satin, these tawdry artificial flowers as adjuncts of
religion, will be worth all the arguments in the world to her.
She is made for the simplicity and fervor of Protestantism in its
highest form."

But, contrary to her expectation, Kitty drew back from the
proposal, objecting the probable displeasure of her parents.

" I am glad to see," replied Miss Falconer, " that you are only
a theoretic rebel. As for the rest, I will take the responsibility
on myself. Your parenlts w r ill approve my motive when I ex-
plain it to them. You appear to be haunted by a ghost, and the
readiest way to lay it will be to show you that it is only a broom-
stick dressed in rags and lighteoj up by moonshine. It is often
better to take a bull by the horns than to run away from it."

Vespers having begun before they entered, a tour of the
building was necessarily postponed until the close of the office.
The church was very large, with massive brown-stone columns,
across which the afternoon light, streaming in through the high
windows, lay in oblique lines of gorgeous colors. It was not well
filled, and they easily found seats near the high altar. Katharine,

1884.] KATHARINE. 551

not privy to the special intention of her companion, soon ceased
to think about her, and yielded to the influence of the music and
the place, which exerted on her at once their ancient spell. As
for Miss Falconer, who paid her tribute to the branch theory by
a devout demeanor and a silent prayer on entering the pew, her
face had taken, a moment after, an expression of almost stupefac-
tion, and her thoughts fell into a confusion which drove her
laudable purpose so entirely out of her mind that they left the
church without its recurring to her memory. They walked
home in silence, and Katharine, who had expected some explana-
tion of their visit, but received none, asked for it when, in the
evening, they were once more alone.

" What shall I tell my father when he asks me why we went
to the cathedral ? " she inquired, after a long silence which threat-
ened to remain unbroken.

" I shall have to explain it to him myself," answered Miss Fal-
coner, with the air of one coming out of profound thought.
" The fact is that I utterly forgot both you and what I meant to
call to your attention."

Katharine's face lighted with a pleased smile which her com-
panion was not slow to interpret.

" No," she replied to it, " you mistake entirely if you think
I shared the attraction to which I saw that you were yielding.
I have been doubting whether 1 ought to tell you ; but the
priest who read Vespers this afternoon was Edgar Adams, the
clergyman who prepared me for confirmation. When I saw him
incline his heacf as he walked past that image with its lace robe
and its ugly flowers, I had no thoughts to spare for anything but
the degradation of the man whom at your age I venerated as a
saint, and who taught me to regard the temptation to go to
Rome as the work of the arch-enemy of souls ! "

There was a long silence, which Katharine finally broke.

" He looks good," she said, " and he looks wise. I should
like to speak with him. He must have found out that he was in
error. But as to changes from one church to another, I have
seen and heard of so many in my short life that there seems
nothing very strange about them. There are only two that I
have ever been able to understand, and this is one of them. The
other I have never seen, but it would be to leave them all."

Miss Falconer made no answer, and presently, pleading fa-
tigue, proposed to her young guest to amuse herself with a book
until bed-time.

552 . KATHARINE. [July,

CHAPTER VI.

BEFORE leaving the cathedral Katharine had finally re-
solved to act upon her secret inclination and ask permission to
read and inquire more fully into the claims of the church which
all her friends united in denouncing, but which to her presented
an invincible attraction. She had already much of that sort of
knowledge which is derived from hostile sources, but her mind,
which had a naturally strong bent toward first principles, far
from being repelled by what was described to her as its intole-
rance and arrogance, had seen in such proofs of these qualities as
are usually adduced precisely the attitude she would have ex-
pected, supposing the Gospel history to be true and a church
essential. The question of doctrines had presented itself to her
as one of secondary importance ; and as to the sin of persecution
for opinion's sake, she had seen something of it on a very small
scale,/ and on a larger one knew that Protestants must plead
guilty without the extenuating circumstance that they hold uni-
formity of belief to be necessary.

If such reflections seem too serious for her age it must be
remembered that she had lived exclusively in the society of those
to whom that side of religion which concerns itself solely with
the personal relation between the soul and its Maker seemed the
only really important business of life. By counsel, by instruc-
tion, by daily and nightly prayers, the necessity of establishing
this relation had been pressed upon her from her infancy in the
way already indicated. Serious and ardent by temperament, she
would long ago have acted on the counsels given her, if her
mind had not grasped, as if by instinct, the idea she had ex-
pressed by saying that a church was either entirely unnecessary
or that there could never have been more than one. Three or
four years earlier, after listening to a sermon in which the
preacher, wishing to be charitable, had expressed his belief that
not merely would there be members of all the different sects in
heaven, but that they would retain even there their present va-
rieties of opinion, she had asked her father what heaven was like.
He gave her in reply a description, drawn from the Apocalypse,
of the celestial joys, but Kitty answered :

" That is not what I mean. I suppose people will be happier
there than here, but is that all ? Won't they know more ? "

" They will know God, and be like him, for they will see him
as he is."

" Then how could Mr. Dimock be so foolish as to say this

1884.] KATHARINE. 553

morning that Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians,
and all the rest would go on thinking about him just as they do.
now? "

The real issue had, in fact, at last presented itself so definitely
to her mind that she was consciously at the point where the two
roads separate, one of which leads to the doubt or denial of all
revelation, and the other to acceptance of it only on condition
that its interpretation is absolute and unchangeable. As yet
she knew only one side of the question, and but for the attraction
felt in childhood, and just renewed with an intensity as impera-
tive as the call of physical hunger, she would have relegated
the whole matter to the realm of things beyond knowledge, and
looked for happiness and occupation elsewhere. Her present
resolution was not taken without much hesitation. She had an
instinctive sense that her appeal would be in vain, and that, great
as was the liberty allowed her in other directions, she would find
here an impassable barrier. What she would do in that case she
refrained from thinking. She knew herself to be the apple of her
father's eye, and, though her mother was more self-contained,
Katharine was aware that to her also she was the object of a
supreme solicitude which, if it had seldom shown itself by
caresses and tender words, yet looked out of every glance of her
eye and took form in every detail of their common life. Con-
trary, therefore, to her usual habit of coming quickly to decisions
involving action, and at once submitting them to that test, she
felt inclined to dally and delay with this one, as if conscious that
a battle royal was impending in which either defeat or victory
would cost her dear. She was not sorry, then, on reaching home
after this first brief absence, to find her mother's thoughts much
occupied with a letter received that morning, and the plans and
memories suggested by it.

" How would you like, Kitty," she asked, after a tenderer
greeting than usual had passed between them, " to have a young
companion here with us in the house?"

"I don't know," answered Kitty, with a feeling of relief;
"that would depend on who and what she is it is a she, of
course ? "

" It is Anna Germain, your second cousin. Father brought
me a letter this noon frofri John Germain, proposing that we
should take her for a year or two. She wants to enter the aca-
demy and fit herself for teaching. He says she has been in the
village high-school until she has exhausted all the knowledge of
the master, and that rather than send her to New York, where

5 54 K A THARINE. [J uly ,

he would have to board her among 1 strangers, he would be glad
to put her in my charge for a while."

" That sounds promising ! When does she want to come ?
I have always had a lively curiosity about * our folks in Orange
County.' How old is she ? "

" Well, let me see. John was about your father's age, and he
married Anna Carew one of the Quaker Carews, she was, near
Chatham about the same time we did. Anna is his second
child. It is a long while since I have heard from them ; it seems
his wife has been dead three years. Well, I don't know. She
may be about your age or she may be older. He doesn't say."

" What does father think ? "

" Oh ! he is pleased, of course. He says it would be better
for you to have more company and brighten up the house."

" And you?"

" Well, I don't know. We could, just as well as not. She
could have the chamber next yours ; there is plenty of room ; so
far as that goes. But it's always risky taking in strangers, even
when they are your own flesh and blood. She oughtn't to be
flighty with such a mother as Anna Carew was ; but who knows ?
I suppose we'll have to. There isn't a soul of my folks left alive
except that family."

" I hope she will be nice. When does she want to come ? "

" As far as we are concerned she can come any time. The
sooner the better for her, most likely. So you may answer the
letter for me, and then we will go up-stairs together and see
what alterations we shall want to make. She comes from a
house where everything was full and plenty not like city house-
keeping. Still, I think she won't find much lacking. I haven't
such a linen closet as old Grandmother Germain stocked for
John, nor such piles of homespun blankets, but I guess we'll
manage to give her clean sheets and prevent her from freezing."

Kitty laughed. ''After Anna is supplied, mother," said she,
" I think there will be enough left in the dark closet to re-stock
the city hospital, if it happens to be burned out. Grandmother
Germain must have had large ideas, if she made bedding on a
greater scale than you do."

" She spun her own flax and raised her own wool, you see.
I had to buy all mine, and that makes a grand difference."

" If it were mine," said Kitty, " I think I should give it all
away except what we really use and need. It is more trouble to
keep the moths out of this pile of blankets than they are worth."

" I don't doubt it," answered her mother, shaking one out of

1884.] KATHARINE. 555

the window as she spoke. " I have always thought it a special
mercy that your head was fastened on. It would have been lost
or given away by this- time, if it hadn't been."

These were occupations in which Katharine would at any
time have taken interest, household instincts of a certain kind
being well developed in her. But to-day she was more than
usually anxious to give her mother pleasure by busying herself
with all the little cares and forethoughts demanded by the forth-
coming change.

" Poor mother ! " she thought, as she sat down to her lessons
when they were over. " How can I ever bear to torment her !
I meant to have it out this evening, and now my courage flies
when I look at her, as my toothache does when I ring the den-
tist's bell. I know as well now as I ever shall what father and
she will say. What right have I to give them pain for what may
be, after all, a mere caprice ? I will put it off, at all events."

This resolve, however, was so far from setting her mind at
rest that she .found it impossible to fix her attention on her les-
sons, and rose from her books, when her father came in to tea,
with every one of her tasks unfinished.

" My Kittykins," he said, with a great hug that almost took
her breath away, " you make a big hole in the house when you
go out of it. Mother and I have been playing Darby and Joan
in solitude these three nights, and neither of us likes the cast."

" When Anna comes," answered Kitty, bringing his slippers
and kneeling down to put them on, " you won't be so lonely
when I go away sometimes."

" No more going away for you, little girl, Anna or no Anna,"
he said, his arm around her as she stood beside his chair. " We
can't spare you. If John Germain had not half a dozen more at
home he would think twice about turning his daughter out of
doors to earn her living."

" What an idea ! Half the girls in the graduating class live
out of town, and two or three in mine are preparing to be teach-
ers. That isn't being turned out of doors. Perhaps she wants
to teach."

" That must be it," said Mrs. Danforth. " There certainly is
no need of it. Old Isaac Carew was as rich as most of those
tight-fisted Quakers are, and he halved all he had between young
Ike and Anna. And John himself was well beforehand with the
world even when he married."

" There is just one advantage in having a solitary little girl
like you, Kitty," said her father, taking his cup of tea from her

556 KATHARINE. [July,

hand : " a man don't need to be very rich to keep her at home
while he lives, and to take care that she won't lack for one after-
wards."

He spoke with a half-sigh, which his wife's quick ear de-
tected.

" Is anything new the matter, James? " she asked.
" No not much. Only Deyo is making bigger ventures
than I like, and grows more pig-headed every day. I have more
than half a mind to get out of the concern."

Kitty, too, had caught her father's sigh, and saw the look of
worry that settled on his face when he had hidden it behind the
evening paper, which, contrary to his wont, he read in silence.

" Something troubles him," she thought. "I am glad I did
not speak to mother." And, setting herself resolutely to work,
she banished her perplexities by a strong effort of her will.

The struggle, however, though put off for the moment, was
not, as it turned out, to be long evaded. As he left the break-
fast-room the next morning her father said to Katharine that, as
he was obliged to drive to Troy in the afternoon, he would stop
at the school at one o'clock and take her with him. Presenting
himself at that hour, the janitor brought up his name to Miss
Falconer, who, bidding Kitty remain in her place a moment,
went down to the library to meet him. Seeing, after a word or
two, that he was still in ignorance of what had passed on Sun-
day, she proceeded to enlighten him, alleging in excuse both the
reason that had prompted her and that which had caused it to
elude her memory. Mr. Danforth was at first inclined to be
amused at Miss Falconer's scruples.

" It is no great matter," he said ; " I had thought of taking
her there myself some Sunday afternoon to hear the music.
Kitty is far too sensible a girl to be caught in such a trap as
that."

Finding him so completely unaware of what was passing in
his daughter's mind, Miss Falconer proceeded to enlighten him.
As she did so his face grew grave.

" Katharine," she concluded, " has a peculiar and not easily-
managed character. To me she is very docile I have no pupil
so much so and I see that she is equally obedient to her mother
and to you. But, for all that, I think her quite capable of taking
her own way, if once she resolves upon it, and pushing to the
very end in spite of entreaty or resistance. She lives too much
in the realm of abstractions, and has an ideal of perfection which
nothing in this world realizes. To people of that turn, especially

1884.] THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 557

when they are as ardent and imaginative as she is, one side of
Roman Catholicism presents an almost irresistible attraction. I
have been repenting ever since that, after listening to what she
told me, I yielded to the foolish impulse that led me to expose
her to it a second time. She herself objected to going, lest it
should displease you. If I may venture my advice, I would ex-
ert to the utmost an authority which she obeys so readily."

" But," objected Mr. Danforth, " I have, as you see, had no
occasion. I never have forbidden her going anywhere. She
simply took for granted, knowing what I think of Romanism,
that I wanted her to keep away from it."

" She will some day, or I am much mistaken. When she is
older, with wider knowledge and a riper judgment, she might
perhaps be trusted, but at present I would give her every safe-
guard. For such a nature as hers I know of only one, and that
is the obedience imposed by some one she really loves, or whose
right to command she recognizes. She is at present very fond
of me, but I read her too well to flatter myself that I could stand
in her way if once she thought it right to oppose me." .

"I am not sure," said her father slowly, " that even I should
wish to stand in her way, if once it came to such an alternative
as that. Still, this case is pretty clear, and I thank you."

But as he turned away he said to himself : "I wish that
Kitty herself had told me."

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

MUCH fruitful labor has been devoted to the study of Egypt-
ology by that eminent and indefatigable French scholar, P. Le
Page Renouf. A concise volume* containing six lectures by him
on the ancient religion of Egypt gives us the latest, and there-
fore the best, information, based upon the most reliable interpre-
tation of antique monumental inscriptions and papyri, concern-
ing the doctrines held in remotest ages by the cultivated in-
habitants of that historic land. To the Christian student wish-
ing to arm himself against the false theories and superficial learn-
ing of some modern unbelievers an acquaintance with the true
nature and characteristics of the earliest historic religious creeds

* Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of Ancient
Egypt. By P. Le Page Renouf. London : Williams & Norgate. 1880.

558 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. [July,

of man, outside of Biblical records, are of substantial service. In
these pages we. find a full confirmation of the great primary
truths of natural religion held, and developing a magnificent and
solemn ritual the same fundamental truths so distinctively
maintained by the ancient Jewish patriarchs, the fathers of the
human race. From this may be drawn a strong scientific argu-
ment corroborative of the ordinary theory which deduces the
basal elements of. all religions, exclusive of their corruptions,
from one original system such as Adam may have transmitted to
his universal family.

First of all, it is now clearly established that the form of re-
ligion prevalent in Egypt some centuries before, and at the be-
ginning of, the Christian era was but the latest and basest cor-
ruption of a far more ancient and supremely purer doctrine of
perfect monotheism. The early Christian writers adopted the
style of the classical pagan writers of Greece and Rome in de-
riding the religious practices of the later Egyptians. It is curi-
ous to notice the placid coolness with which sarcastic Juvenal
ridicules their worship. " Who does not know," he asks, " what
kind of monsters demented Egypt adores ? Some worship the
crocodile, others quake before the ibis gorged with serpents.
The golden image of a sacred, long-tailed ape glitters where the
magic chords resound from mutilated Memnon and ancient
Thebes lies in ruin with her hundred gates. There whole towns
venerate cats, here a river-fish, there a dog, but no one Diana.
It is impiety to violate and break with the teeth the leek and
onion. O holy races ! to whom such ^deities as these are born in
their gardens " (Sat. xv.)

Anaxandrides, a Greek comic writer, jests with equal volu-
bility at the religious follies of the Egyptians. " I never could
be your ally," he says, " for neither our customs nor our laws
agree. They differ widely. You worship an ox, but I sacrifice
him to the gods. You consider the eel a mighty demon ; we
think him by far the best of fish. You do not eat swine-flesh,
and I am particularly fond of doing so. You worship a dog, but
I thrash him whenever I catch him stealing meat. . . . You
weep to see a cat ailing s but I like to kill and skin him. A shrew-
mouse is an object of great veneration with you, not of the least
with me."

In like manner Clement of Alexandria, in Pcedagog., 1. iii. c. 2,
ridicules, in a lengthy descriptive tirade, the customs of the
Egyptian priests. He -describes their manner of preserving un-
der rich hangings, in gorgeous temples, monkeys, crocodiles, and

1884.] THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 559

serpents for the worship of the devout. So, too, Origen de-
plores the degrading superstitions which he must have witnessed
in his native country among the pagans ; and we find a curious
chapter upon the same subject in the eighth book of St. Augus-
tine's great work on the City of God.

Nevertheless we calinot wholly rely upon the account given
of any religion by an opponent. We know that the Jewish law
was a hateful thing to the polished Greek and idolatrous Roman. .
The Christian belief was declared an exitiabilis super stitio (Tac.,
AnnaL, 1. xv. c. 44), and both were denounced as sanctioning the
worship of the ass and the swine, as in Petronius Arbiter, p. 224 :
" Judaeus licet et porcinum numen adoret." Hence, although
the later practices of the Egyptian religion might indicate in its
external symbols what was charged against it, there is no neces-
sity of admitting, at least upon the evidence of its professed ad-
versaries, that it was wholly and essentially of a degraded nature.
Moreover, some writers, not favorable to the Egyptians, explain-
ed the animal-worship as merely symbolical ; that under the form
of living objects the divinity was the real term of their reve-
rence. Thus Celsus strongly denies that they worshipped brute
creatures as such Vita Apollonii, vi. 19; and Porphyry, De Ab-
stinentia, iv. c. 9, gives a pantheistic explanation of this animal-
worship : " Under the semblances of animals the Egyptians wor-
ship the universal power which the gods have revealed in the
various forms of living nature."

In corroboration of this we find that in the earlier ages even
the external observances were of a much less .gross character
than later. Plato and Herodotus are good witnesses to this fact.
They distinctly inform us that Ammon, Osiris, and the other di-
vinities received the worship of this people, and that a belief
in the immortality of the soul was one of the primary dogmas
of their religion. So the farther back we are led by the light
of history, the purer and simpler will appear those fundamental
truths which we find under the superincumbent mass of even the
most complicated religious rites. The results of investigation
recently made by learned men are somewhat parallel with the
valuable works of art brought to light from beneath the growing
rubbish of centuries by Schliemann in his excavations around the
scenes of ancient Troy.

But in nowise can this be shown so satisfactorily as from the
ancient, genuine language and formularies of the remotest pe-
riods in the religious history of Egypt itself. Its ritual is an
invincible testimony of its doctrines. Engraved upon the ada-

560 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

mantine granite of its obelisks and sarcophagi, and clearly writ-
ten upon its wonderfully-preserved papyri, is found the doctrine
of the original belief in one omnipotent, omniscient, all-ruling
Power, creating and preserving the universe through the agency
of all-embracing Law.

Ever since 1822 this knowledge has* been growing steadily
more definite and exact. In that year the genius of Champollion
interpreted the inscription on the celebrated Rosetta Stone, now
in the British Museum. This was a monument erected to the
memory of King Epiphanes one hundred and ninety-three years
before the Christian era. The inscription is in three languages
Greek, the Egyptian vernacular, and the ancient hieratic. The
Greek plainly states how this was ordered and accomplished.
With the aid of the Greek the hieroglyphic characters have fur-
nished a key by which all the treasures of rich papyric history,
as well as of the tombs and obelisks, are becoming the common
property of inquisitive men. The assiduous labors of scholars
like Burnouf, who devote their lives to this commendable work,
are interpreting those hitherto mysterious symbols of long-hid-
den, marvellous lore. From the musty resting-places of the mum-
mies, beneath the immovable guardianship of sphyrix and pyra-
mid, comes forth the venerable voice of antiquity to fortify the
basis of Christian faith and hope a resurrection of the natural
religious spirit of man, to testify to the truth of his present
sublime, revealed doctrine !

As in the history of all nations the most authentic records, as
well as earliest evidences of civilization, are found to be of a re-
ligious character, so, too, is this remarkable in Egypt. Her re-
ligious monuments transmit her earliest learning. The tombs
of her kings and great men are essentially of a religious character ;
the most valuable papyri that have been discovered relate di-
rectly to her ritual ; the inscriptions and drawings which adorn
her obelisks declare her religious doctrines and practices. The
farther back is traced her culture, the purer it is found and the
more inseparably united with religious principles.

From the recorded successive births of Apis is derived the
most accurate historical certainty. From the time of Cambyses,
or even from the later Ptolemaic period, we are led back with
the greatest security from error, seven hundred years before the
Christian era, by these Apis inscriptions. We find the recorded
events of the reign of Taharga (the Tirhaka of Scripture), " who
was the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, with whom begins
the latest period of the Pharaos " (p. 37).

1884.] THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 561

As to the great antiquity of Egyptian civilization, as proved
beyond reasonable doubt from monuments now extant and clear-
ly interpreted, we may quote the opinion of Renouf himself :
" The essential point which I wish to insist upon is that the
Egyptian monarchy, according to the most moderate calculation,
must have already been in existence fifteen hundred years at the
very least, but probably more than two thousand years, when the
book of Exodus was written " (p. 50).

How remote this was has not yet been ascertained beyond
doubt. The flight of the Israelites from Egypt must have taken
place previous to the year 1310 B.C., and the beginning of the
Egyptian historic period must be placed at least two thousand
and fifty years anterior to that event. Renouf considers the
Great Pyramid not to have been erected later than three thou-
sand years B.C. This is a wonderfully ancient record, yet not
such as to determine the far greater antiquity of the human race
in Egypt. And the Egyptians are derived from the same stock
the Aryan as the Indo-European, whose original seat is traced to
central Asia. This is now proved very thoroughly by ethnologi-
cal as well as by linguistic arguments.

Even the social and artistic excellence of the highly-civilized
Egyptians helps to corroborate the fact of their great historic
antiquity. The bright and beautiful colors of their paintings
still preserved seem as pleasing to the eye as is the healthful
moral tone of their domestic and public life transmitted by their
perennial monumental records. In the variety of musical instru-
ments depicted on the walls of their temples we find proof of
their proficiency and delight in that art. Flutes, harps, pipes,
guitars, lyres, tambourines, etc., are represented as accompani-
ments to vocal music in the celebration of their religious and
social festivals. Their religion partook deeply, indeed, of the
serious and sombre, yet it did not refrain from inviting to a joy-
ous participation in the rational delights of life. An ancient
song of King Antuf, of the eleventh dynasty, condemns a morbid
hankering for the accumulation of worldly treasures, and ex-
horts to cheerfulness : " Fulfil thy desire while thou livest. Put
oils upon thy head ; clothe thyself with fine linen, adorned with
precious stones ; . . . fulfil thy desire with thy good things whilst
thou art on earth, according to the dictate of thy heart. The
day will come to thee when one hears not thy voice. Feast in
tranquillity, seeing that there is no one who carries his goods
with him " (p. 71). At the same time righteousness of life is com-
mended : " Mind thee of the day when thou shalt start for the
VOL. xxxix. 36

562 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. [July,

land to which one goeth to return not thence. Good for thee will
have been a good life ; therefore be just and hate iniquity, for he
who loveth what is right shall triumph " (p. 73).

And it must be borne in mind that the moral code inculcated
in their ancient laws is of a high order and continuously taught.
The final superiority of right over wrong, truth over falsehood,
is repeatedly proclaimed. J^. Chabas says that the Christian
virtues which are also natural are inculcated : " piety, charity,
gentleness, self-command in word and action, chastity, protection
of the weak, benevolence, deference to superiors, respect for pro-
perty in its minutest details, ... all is expressed in good lan-
guage " (p. 74).

As a specimen we find in the tablet of Beka, now in Turin,
the following description of one departed : " I was just and true
without malice, placing God in my heart, and quick in discerning
his will. I have come to the city of those who dwell in eternity.
I have done good on earth ; I have done no wrong ; I have done
no crime ; I hava approved of nothing base or evil, but have
taken pleasure in speaking the truth, for I well know the glory
there is in doing this upon earth from the first action of life even
to the tomb. I took pleasure in righteousness conformably with
the laws" (p. 76). The value of truth is repeatedly extolled, as
well as kindness to neighbors and assisting those in distress :
" Doing that which is right, and hating that which is wrong, I
was bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the
naked, a refuge to him that was in want ; that which I did to him
the great God hath done to me."* For the good deeds of a
righteous life the king is declared blessed for heaven: " God
hath inclined his countenance to me for what I have done ; he
hath given me old age upon earth, in long and pleasant duration,
with many children at my feet, and sons in face of his own Son." f

Monotheism of a very pure and exalted character was indis-
putably the earliest religion of the Egyptians. Yet we find in-
numerable deities mentioned and worshipped in later times ; so
numerous, indeed, that Burnouf abandoned the attempt to clas-
sify or enumerate them. How can this be reconciled with the
statement which makes them monotheists ? First of all, it is a
fact that all ancient religions show a degeneration in their down-
ward growth. One of the strongest evidences of this is found in
Brahminism, which was originally a worship of the one, great
First Cause, the Power from which all things had being. This

* Duemichen, Kalenderinschriften, 46.

t Bergmann, Hieroglyphische Inschriften, vi. i, 8.

1884.] THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 563

leads us back to the origin of our race as recorded in the Bible,
whose simple narrative we find in accord with the results of the
deepest investigations of the most advanced scholars, who, like
Max Miiller and Renouf, are unfolding the long-concealed vol-
uttvqs of oriental learning. As nations grew and spread over
the earth the powers of nature appealed to poetry for a theolo-
gical interpretation, and a multiplicity of imaginary deities ob-
scured the earlier ontological fact of the soul the idea of the.
unity of God.

To enforce this proposition no more eloquent testimony may
be adduced than that of the eminent Emmanuel Rouge. In
a " Conference on the Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," deliv-
ered before the Catholic Circle, April 14, 1869, and published
in the Annales de la Philosophic Chrdtienne, tome xx. p. 327^ he
says : " No one has called in question the fundamental meaning
of the principal passages by the help of whicn we are able to
establish what ancient Egypt has taught concerning God, the
world, and man. I said God, not Gods. The first characteristic
of the religion is the unity of God most energetically expressed :
God, one, sole, and only ; no others with him ; he is the only
Being, living in truth : Thou art one, and millions of beings
proceed from thee. He has made everything, and he alone
has not been made. The clearest, the simplest, the most pre-
cise conception. But how reconcile the unity of God with
Egyptian polytheism ? History and geography will, perhaps,
elucidate tbS matter. The Egyptian religion comprehends a
quantity of local worships. The Egypt which Menes brought
together entire under his sceptre was divided into nomes, each
having a capital town. Each of these regions has its principal
god, designated by a special name ; but it is always the same doc-
trine that reappears under different names. One idea predomi-
nates, that of a single and primeval God ; everywhere and
always it is one substance, self-existent, and an unapproachable
God."

From the radical meaning of Nutar God, Power, Being we
have the same idea as that conveyed by the Hebrew El, revealed
to Moses, and like to the original signification of Brahma ; so
that the central thought in these three most ancient religions of
the East is the unity of God self-existent, which is the basis of
Christianity.

Nutar, in all the stages of their religious history, is used in
the singular number. It signifies the First Cause, from which
all secondary powers or causes spring, and, in Renout's Ian-.

564 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. [July,

guage, " it is unquestionably the true and only God, ' who is
not far away from any of us, and in whom we live, move, and
have our being,' whose eternal power and Godhead and govern-
ment of the world were made known by that light ' that enlight-
eneth every man coming into the world.' '

It is further explained that nutriu, the poivers, are the manifold
forms under which the One Gause manifests itself. These came
to be called gods at that period of Egypt's religious history
when the original beautiful and perfect monotheism took a pan-
theistic turn which finally triumphed in later stages of degene-
racy.

From this pantheistic corruption arose the mystic Ra, the
Sun-God, undoubtedly the sun himself, who travels in a boat
across the sky, Nu. Ra proceeds from Nu, the father of the gods,
whilst Shu and Tefnut, air and moisture, are children of Ra. This
is substantially the mythologic conception of Devas, predominant
in the Hindoo-Germanic primordial religious thought, whence
came the Greek Theos and Latin Deus.

The myth of Osiris readily sprang from the foregoing. His
parents are Seb and Nut, earth and heaven. Osiris, the sun,
and Isis, the dawn, wedded before birth, producing Horus, the full-
grown sun, who is for ever pursued and assailed by Set, darkness.
The universal belief in a future life, recorded in the most
ancient monuments, attests the existence of the doctrine in re-
motest antiquity. It disproves the novel and ingenious hypothe-
sis of Herbert Spencer, who ascribes belief in immortality to the
worship of dead ancestors. In the oldest Egyptian inscriptions
prayers are offered for the departed to Anubis, Osiris, or some
other deities ; and those souls that are to be propitiated are de-
clared to have been faithful to God. The words of Renouf are
very decisive : " In no case can it be proved that the propitiation
of departed ancestors preceded a belief in a divinity of some
other kind " (p. 132). Reverence for the departed, and ritual ob-
servances in their memory, arose from a belief that they had en-
tered a new and never-ending life. A summary of the chief
points in the Egyptian religion is given in one sentence by the
author : " A sense of the Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good,
governing the world, and upon which we are dependent ; of right
and wrong, of holiness and virtue, of immortality and retribution
such are the elements of the Egyptian religion."

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 565

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ON THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. By His Eminence Cardinal New-
man. Nineteenth Century, February, \ 884.

POSTSCRIPT. In Answer to Prof. Healy. By the same. (A pamphlet.)
London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co.

It is a great pleasure to see again, after a long interval, the kindly light
of Cardinal Newman's wisdom casting its gleam on some of the obscure
parts of the way of truth. His article in the Nineteenth Century, the product
of a whole year's* careful deliberation, submitted also to the examination of
other competent theologians> is, so far as we are capable of judging, a clear
and correct statement of the whole authoritative and obligatory Catholic
doctrine respecting the divine inspiration of the canonical books of the
Bible. It is in conformity with what we have understood, by our own per-
sonal study, to be the teaching of Perrone, Murray, Franzelin, Hurter, De
Bonal, Ubaldi, and other theologians of similar repute. It is, nevertheless,
original in respect to its luminous method of presenting the old and com-
mon doctrine, and to its translation of technical phraseology into an idio-
matic English style of language more intelligible to readers of ordinary
education than the verbal usage in vogue among professional students of
theology. It has called forth, however, strictures and criticism from a
distinguished Irish professor writing in a periodical of high reputation, the
Irish Ecclesiastical Record. The Postscript is a reply to this criticism. Not
having at hand the number of the above-mentioned magazine containing
Prof. Healy 's article, we are obliged to rely entirely on the cardinal's
pamphlet for an account of the precise objections raised in this article
against his statements of doctrine and expressions of opinion.

The most important of these objections is one made against a supposed
exclusion by the cardinal of the historical part of Holy Scripture from the
domain of divine inspiration. This supposition is evidently a misunder-
standing of the case in hand, as is plain from the text of the cardinal's
article, and fully proved in the reply which h'e makes in the Postscript.

The one and only suggestion discordant from the common teaching of
" the authors and text-books most in vogue which we found in the article
published in the Nineteenth Century relates to so-called obiter dicta i.e.,
things said incidentally and aside from the scope of the writer.

The cardinal finds no difficulty in admitting the possibility that there
may be such obiter dicta, "phrases, clauses, or sentences in Scripture about
matters of mere fact, which, as not relating to faith and morals, may with-
out violence be referred to the human element in its composition." On
this controverted question we express no opinion except so far as this,
that it is a question open to discussion. Prof. Healy admits, and every
theologian knows, that it has not been closed by any decision of the
church, and that no one can be censured for holding and expressing the
view defended by the cardinal, with due reservation of submission to any

566 NEW PUBLICATIONS. ^ [July>

future decision of authority. In point of fact, although the authors of the
text-books in general use do maintain that positive inspiration extends
even to the least circumstances, they do not affirm that this is an obliga-
tory doctrine. De Bonal, in his treatise De Locis Theologicts, says of this
proposition : " Some deny it, others affirm it." There are some respect-
able authors who deny it. It is a question of no small import, and we re-
joice to see it discussed, since the discussion is unavoidable, by such a
learned and cautious and highly-placed author as the venerable Cardinal
Newman. His two brief but weighty treatises are worthy of their illus-
trious author in his best days. Their whole intent and scope is to defend
the majesty and authority of the Divine Scriptures, to corroborate the
faith of Christians in God's word, and to alleviate the difficulty, created for
some minds by certain tendencies of modern speculation, in regard to the
harmony between rational knowledge and faith in the divine revelation.
We would gladly see these two productions of the revered cardinal's ma-
tured wisdom published together in a form convenient for general circu-
lation. All who are interested in the subject they treat of, and who have
a just estimation of the value of everything which proceeds from the pen
of their author, will be grateful for the opportunity of reading, and pre-
serving them together with his other works. If published in a convenient
and permanent form they will do great good to the cause of religion, not
only at the present moment, but in the future time.

EXPOSE" DE LA DOCTRINE CATHOLIQUE. Par P. Girodon, pretre. Precede
d'une Introduction par Mgr. D'Hulst, Vicaire-General de Paris, Recteur
de 1'Institut Catholique-: 2 tomes. Paris : Libraire Plon. 1884.

The aim of M. Girodon has been to give a clear and methodical exposi-
tion of Catholic doctrine. Such an exposition is, in our author's judgment,
better adapted for the wants of our time than a controversial treatise.
What the church suffers from more than anything else is that her doc-
trines are not known by those outside who are no longer held by the
chains of their effete sects, the bonds of which the inroad of modern
"thought" has broken. The misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine
which have been current for years are still strong enough to prevent
many from seeking in the church that satisfaction for their mind which
her teaching alone can give. What has to be done is to remove these
misrepresentations ; and the 'less of the controversial spirit there is in
any work, the better will it be adapted for this end. There have been
numberless expositions of Catholic doctrine, but they have had in view
other wants than those which now exist. Mgr. D'Hulst, in his introduc-
tion to the work, admitting, as he does, the very great value and the proved
usefulness of these expositions, and especially of those of M. Nicolas, yet
would hesitate to recommend their perusal to any one whose mind was
disturbed by current difficulties. Our author has endeavored to meet the
difficulties of those thus placed. How far has he succeeded ? His work is
written for men who have been educated in the schools and colleges of
France, in the traditions and atmosphere of conflicting political and social
theories. Our judgment, from want of an intimate knowledge of those thus
placed, would be of little value. That, however, of the writer of the intro-
duction, who is at once vicar-general of Paris and rector of the Catholic Insti-

T 8 84.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 567

tute, cannot but be of great weight. He recommends a perusal of this work
in preference to the Exposition of Bossuet, to the Pensees of Pascal, to the
works of Nicolas and the Conferences of Lacordaire. This is high praise
higher, perhaps, than we ourselves should feel justified in giving.

The work is addressed to the educated reader; it indicates a familiarity
not only with the facts of modern science, but also with its spirit. It is en-
titled to, and will well repay, the attentive consideration of all interested in
these subjects. But that it will carry everything before it we should hesitate
to say. There seems to be a tendency to the laying down of propositions
in a broad, unqualified way which certainly stand in need of qualification.
To take two instances to be found in the first four pages : The author
holds that belief of every kind is always a free act, and instances the credit
we give to the conquests of Alexander. But is this true ? Am I free to
doubt, able to doubt, for example, that a battle was fought in the Soudan
last year in which Hicks Pasha was defeated ? Is not the evidence of such
a kind as to compel assent ? We, for our part, cannot see how a rational
being has it in his power to withhold his assent in this and numberless
similar cases. The reason for which the author maintains this, of course, is
that he wishes to lessen the difference between the act of divine faith,
which is free, and that of faith in general. The act of divine faith is free
that is, the evidences for revelation are not of such a character as to com-
pel assent, like mathematical or metaphysical evidence, but they are so
strong as to render it clear to any rational being who has examined them
that it is his duty to give his assent, that it would be wrong for him to with-
hold it. Still, the actual giving of the assent or the not giving it is left in
his power. Again, on page 2 the author says that when it is a question of
accepting statements on the authority of others historical statements, for
example our sole examination is as to the value of the testimony which
supports them, and not at all as to their intrinsic credibility. Is this true ?
Cannot statements be so evidently absurd that no examination of the
authorities is needed ? Cannot I dismiss Baron Munchausens Adventures
without inquiry ? Is it not certain that the moral bearing of a miracle is
one of the criteria of its being a true miracle ? The author himself
(p. 19) makes it the first question for one seeking religious truth to ask :.
Is there anything absurd or immoral in the doctrine presented tome for my
acceptance ? And only after that is he to enter upon the consideration of
the external testimony.

We hope we shall not be considered hypercritical in these remarks.
A work recommended so highly must expect to be closely examined.
Still less do we wish to detract from its many excellences. In a short
notice like this we cannot do full justice to these excellences. We can
only repeat what we have already said, that the work will well repay
the most careful and attentive perusal.

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE SCHOOL. By Thomas Harper, S.J. Vol. iii.
(part i.) London : Macmillan & Co. 1884. (For sale by the Catholic
Publication Society Co.)

It is with pleasure that we have received this evidence of Father Har-
per's restoration to health. We have been obliged to write our former
notices of the volumes preceding the present one before we had had time

568 N.EW PUBLICATIONS. [July*

to give them more than a cursory examination. Since then we have read
them carefully, and with a more mature judgment we repeat and confirm all
we have said in their favor. The new part just published treats entirely of
efficient cause. We have read enough of it to justify the expression of our
opinion that it is fully equal to its predecessors, and we think that the
author as he proceeds even improves continually in his style, which is an
admirable one for his purpose, and is besides pure and excellent English.
A large number of his theses are either demonstrated or sustained by the
best probable arguments adducible in proof of their truth. We cannot
profess assent to all the philosophical opinions of the author. Yet we
must concede to him that, even in the case of propositions which do not
appear to us satisfactorily proved, Father Harper makes the best defence
of his opinions and those of the rigid peripatetic school to which he be-
longs which we have ever met with. His great work is, thus far, without
a parallel in the English language, and we sincerely trust that he may have
granted to him the health and strength necessary for its perfect com-
pletion.

INDIRECT EVIDENCES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT FOR THE PERSONAL DIVI-
NITY OF JESUS CHRIST. With Appendices. By Frederic Rowland
Young, D.D., Minister of Augustine Congregational Church, Reading.
London : W. Stewart & Co. 8vo, 150 pp.

This book by a Protestant clergyman (who,*with excellent feeling, dedi-
cates it to his friend, a canon of a Catholic diocese) deserves to be widely
read. The author is evidently a shrewd and an acute observer. His vol-
ume is full of interest. Is there no Congregationalist publication society
in this country to republish this work of one of their own ministers and
have it circulated, especially in New England ? We have had not a few
books from eminent men among the evangelicals in Scotland and in this
country devoted to what may be called destructive criticism. Here is one
of the building-up sort.

THE ONLY RELIABLE EVIDENCE CONCERNING MARTIN LUTHER. Taken
exclusively from Luther's own German and Latin works. By Henry
O'Connor, S.J. London : Burns & Oates ; Dublin : Gill & Son. 1884.

For its size this is one of the most trenchant and telling brochures that
have been contributed to the Luther controversy. It is not a life of
Luther, but an inquiry into the question whether, in any sense of the word,
the father of Protestantism can be looked upon as " a reformer commis-
sioned by Almighty God," and it adopts the novel expedient of taking its
evidence almost exclusively from Luther's own works. Father O'Con-
nor's compilation is the result of exhaustive research and is made with
remarkable skill. Nearly two-thirds of the matter he publishes is taken
from the original editions of Luther's own works as published in Witten-
berg under the eyes of the " Reformer" himself; the remainder is mainly
taken from the collection of Luther's letters by De Wette, a professor of
Protestant Divinity at Basle and a stanch supporter of Luther. Father
O'Connor claims that he has not quoted one passage which he has not
seen with his own eyes in the book referred to ; that not one of his quota-
tions has been taken from a Catholic author ; that he has taken special care,
not to quote anything that would have a different meaning if read with the

1 884.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 569

full context, and that in every case the translation from the German or the
Latin is his own. Exact references are given for every passage quoted.
In short, no pains seem to have been spared in making this powerful little
book as nearly perfect as possible. Some of the things it proves conclu-
sively are indicated by the following headings from the table of contents :
" Luther rejects the Authority of the Pope " ; " Luther admits the Autho-
rity of the Devil"; "Luther proclaims his own Authority and Infallibil-
ity"; "Luther acts with Authority and Infallibility"; "Luther's Intole-
rance against those who refuse to submit to his Authority and Infal-
libility." There are as many facts compressed into this little pamphlet as
would furnish material for a bulky volume, and they are marshalled in
such a manner that their force is irresistible. This is a controversial pub-
lication that ought to have a wide circulation.

[No. i] CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. By Right Rev. Monsignor
Gapel, D.D. Philadelphia: Cunningham & Son; New York : Sadliers.

[No. 2] " CATHOLIC " AN ESSENTIAL AND EXCLUSIVE ATTRIBUTE OF
THE TRUE CHURCH. By the same author. New York : Wilcox &
O'Donnell Co., Publishers. 1884.

The first of these tracts is substantially the conference on the same
subject which made one of a series delivered in the cathedral of Phila-
delphia during last Lent. It contains a brief and clear exposition of its
topic, sustained by proofs from Scripture and tradition, and some testimo-
nies from eminent authors.

The second tract is longer and more copious in its treatment. The
author dedicates it to the Protestant Episcopalians of the United States, to
whom principally its arguments are addressed.

Both are well adapted for general circulation and reading. They are
instructive for Catholics, but especially useful for those who are not
Catholics, if they will only read them. We desire and hope that they may
do a great deal of good.

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF OUR LORD. Vol. VII. The Training of the Apostles.
(Part iii.) By H. J. Coleridge, S.J. London : Burns & Gates ; New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

This part of Father Coleridge's commentary on the Gospels embraces
a portion of the second year of our Lord's public life, beginning from the
open and violent hostility declared by the ecclesiastical rulers of the Jews.
It contains an exposition of the first series of parables. We rejoice to see
this admirable work going on steadily towards its completion, hoping that
the author may be enabled to achieve the entire and successful fulfilment
of the laborious and useful task he has undertaken.

LIBRARY OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. Works of this Doctor of the Church
translated into Englfsh. By the Rev. H. B. Mackey, O.S.B. Under the
direction and patronage of His Lordship the Right Rev. J. C. Hedley,
O.S.B., Bishop of Newport and Menevia. II. Treatise on the Love of
God. With introduction by the translator. London : Burns & Oates ;
New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

To praise any work of St. Francis de Sales would be superfluous. The
translation and introduction only require any notice or can be subject to
any criticism.

As for the translation, it is the third one which has been made into

5 70 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS.

English, but Father Mackey shows good reasons for its necessity, on ac-
count of defects in the two earlier versions, especially the later one, which
has been in more common use, but which is really an adaptation and not a
translation. We have not time to examine this new translation and com-
pare it with the original, but the well-known competence of the translator
and the sanction of the Bishop of Menevia afford a sufficient warrant for
accepting it as satisfactory.

The introduction is an extremely valuable and well-written analysis of
the book itself, with a vindication from the mistaken interpretation put
on parts of it by Fenelon and the partial disparagement of Bossuet. The
editing and publication have been done with care, in a manner worthy of a
work of such great importance as the issue of the Library of St. Francis de
Sales.

ARMINE. By Christian Reid, author of Hearts and Hands, Mabel Lee,
Morton House, Valerie Aylmer, Daughter of Bohemia, etc. I vol. 8vo,
359 pp. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London :
Burns & Gates. 1884.

The author of Morton House has made a name in American fiction which
is synonymous with purity of feeling, elegance of style, keenness without
satirical sharpness of observation, and the quality of interest. Morton House
had every quality that constitutes a good novel. Valerie Aylmer, A Daugh-
ter of Bohemia, and Bonnie Kate were novels which, if they formed a genre
for American writers, would raise American light literature from the slough
of despond in which it wallows. It is a great deal to have a pen like that
of Christian Reid wielded on the side of truth. She is skilful in all the re-
sources of an art so potent in a time when everybody that reads reads
novels, more or less. She possesses taste and knows how to be reticent in
the use of her resources. It is rarely that a work of fiction so pure, so
elevated in tone, and so worthy of the pen of an artist in words as Ar-
mine is issued, even from the Catholic press. The introduction of Armine,
with her bunch of lilac, although done with the admirable reticence charac-
teristic of the author, awakes interest at once. Armine is the daughter of
an ardent Socialist, for whom she translates and writes. It begins to dawn
upon her that in assisting her father she is helping to propagate the
evil doctrines of Socialism. She comes to D'Antignac who is a Christian
gentleman, a hero, and her friend with her doubt. "You do not know my
father as I know him," she says. " To you he is the most dangerous of
those who wish to tear down all the fabric of religion and social order ; but
to me he is not only my father, but also one whom I know to be a pas-
sionate and sincere enthusiast." In this interview the charming woman-
liness of Armine, who has scruples about assisting her father, and yet who
fears that her confessor might authoritatively coniirm her scruples, is one
of the finest touches in a book which abounds in fine touches. The dialogue
is quick, live, natural, and consequently interesting ; and, strange as it may
seem to the jaded novel-reader, it does not lose these qualities even where
it is instructive. D'Antignac is a noble creation. We are almost tempted
to analyze the plot, in order to show how careful has been the author's study
of her models; but that might destroy all interest in a novel which de-
serves reading and re-reading. The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD who
have followed Armine from month to month need not be told this. The

1 884.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 5 7 1

exquisite bit of pure sentiment which closes the book is in Christian Reid's
best vein. Sibyl, one of the personages of the novel, bids D'Antignac
" good-evening." " ' We have a better salutation than that,' he said. ' It is
the most exquisite of all forms of greeting. For brief or long parting, for
joy or sorrow, for life or death what better can we say than adieu ? It ex-
presses all blessings, and it places those whom we love where we would wish ever
to leave them. So, my dear friend ' he held out his other hand to Egerton
'a Dzeuf"

Armine shows that the author of Morton House has reached a higher and
firmer stage. It is a novel that can be enjoyed by thoughtful people in-
terested in social problems at present puzzling the world, as well as by
readers who care only for a well-told story.

MARY TUDOR. An Historical Drama in Two Parts. By the late Sir
Aubrey de Vere. New Edition. i2mo, 330 pp. London: George Bell
& Sons. 1884.

The late Sir Aubrey de Vere wrote the drama of " Mary Tudor " during
intervals of sickness two years before his death. It was published posthu-
mously in 1847, but failed to catch public attention. After twenty-eight
years of neglect it is now brought forward in a new edition by the author's
son, the present Aubrey de Vere, who prefaces it with an excellent memoir
of his father and an introduction which is a masterpiece of finished criticism.
The reprint, we understand, is prompted by the appreciation .of certain
select readers of the drama whose judgment Aubrey de Vere esteems.
These judges deserve gratitude for forcing from unaccountable obscurity
one of the most valuable contributions that English dramatic literature has
received in this century.

Mary Tudor's is a character which no dramatist had yet attempted to
elucidate and to which no single historian has been able to do justice. Yet
it is a character offering in its tragic complexity the most striking features
to the dramatist and to the student of human nature, and there are few
sovereigns about whom historians have written more than this unhappiest
and noblest of the children of Henry VIII. It was a bold, if fortunate, idea
of Sir Aubrey de Vere to make the life and times of Mary Tudor the theme
of a drama ; and we say the very highest that can be said of such a work
when we assert that this drama of " Mary Tudor " is a vivid and truthful
exposition of its theme.

Sir Aubrey de Vere's is a new and, to our view, perfectly consistent
conception of Mary Tudor. It is impossible to understand this queen with-
out a right understanding of her time. It was a time characterized by
violent passions and unusual vicissitudes, into the midst of which Mary
stepped with the power and the responsibility of a despotic monarch.
She was a queen who inherited piety, patriotism, a loving heart, and lofty
ambition from her mother, Katharine of Aragon, and who by her father,
Henry VIII., was endowed with some of the sanguinary and despotic traits
of the Tudors. Her life was a struggle between the two contradictories of
her nature : the better for the most part predominating, but the other
asserting itself in an age when shed ding blood on the scaffold had lost its
enormity by becoming commonplace, and when the sentiment of compas-
sion for enemy, or even kin, had been almost eliminated from men's minds

572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [July,

sufficiently to leaven and embitter her whole career. That she persecuted
cannot be denied ; but the persecutions of her reign are insignificant by
comparison with those of her predecessor's and her successor's ; and it must
be remembered that the worst things laid to her charge were done in her
name by those under her when she herself lay unconscious in illness.
Above all it must be remembered that the severities of her reign unlike
those of Elizabeth's and Henry's were more punishments for the sake of
political defence than persecutions for the sake of religion. The "reform-
ers," as Dr. Maitland has well shown, were insolent rebels who denied the
right of any woman to rule, who denounced the queen in sermons and
publicly prayed for her death, who strewed scurrilous and calumnious
papers on the floors of her palace.

Sir Aubrey de Vere depicts this queen, in the midst of the fierce pas-
sions of the time, as " disinterested, devout, and sternly sincere," " strong in
self-sacrifice," " brave and queenly," self-devoted to the last, conscience
being with her the great reality. She is faithful, though in sadness, to all
who have a legitimate claim on her. " She will not desert her tried friend
Pole to propitiate her angry husband ; she has not discarded reverence
even for her terrible father ; she loves the brother who deposed her and
the sister who is the one hope of all the conspirators ; she is loyal to her
race, loyal to her country, loyal to her faith. But that large heart has in
it room for much evil as well as for good. ... To Mary misery had made
life more than a burden. . . . When her perpetual misery deepened it
flamed up into wrath ; and with wrath the old temptation ever stirred with-
in her." This estimate of Mary Tudor, it will be seen, is un-apologetic, and
is at the same time the nearest to being just of any that has been yet of-
fered ; while this blending of great good and great evil in a character, and
the vicissitudes of a life in which the error is followed by the poetic justice
of retribution, are the cardinal elements of tragedy. For, undeserved af-
fliction, as is well said, is not tragedy, and neither is that punishment
which is punishment alone and has no purifying tendency.

Scarcely less important in historical and dramatic interest is the por-
trait of Cardinal Pole, also for the first time painted here. It is a grand
figure for a lofty drama " the princely churchman who had lashed the
vice of Europe's proudest king and refused the papal throne; the church's
bravest champion, yet, on his return to power, the meekest of her sons;
the voluntary exile ; the lonely student whose ' wisdom seemed incorpo-
rated with his substance'; mournful from habitual remembrance of 'those
great ancestral woes,' but alike in victory or failure serene ; statesman as
well as priest; the favorite of successive popes, but obsequious to none; in
faith devout, yet un-enthusiastic; a patriot zealous for his country, and
firmly believing that Religion is a great part of her greatness." It is thus
that Aubrey de Vere sums up his father's conception of Pole. Such was
the great cardinal in character; what was he in act? " Had he been at the
head of all he could have done all, but he could not work with others. He
hates the intriguer, the factious, the mercenary, the cruel ; and most of
those around him are such. He can no more understand their littleness
than they can understand his greatness. He can chastise the baseness of
Philip and reprove the pride that mingled with Queen Mary's highest as-
pirations. But he succeeds in nothing. Here again all is frustration.

1884.] NE w PUBLICA TIONS. 573

He is cramped^
Within the jealous precincts of a court

Large energies like his lack room to move (Mary Tudor, p. 296)."

We have, we think, indicated sufficiently that Sir Aubrey de Vere has
complete grasp of the two leading characters of his drama, and that these
characters, as he has conceived them, are unique and powerful presentations.
Space does not permit us to dwell as we would wish on the other merits of
the drama, as a historical and an artistic work. These merits are great. Sir
Aubrey de Vere seems to have steeped himself in the history of the times of
Mary Tudor, and to have thoroughly entered into their spirit. He has re-
produced their seared characteristics with life-like intensity. Nor has he
lost any of the opportunities for legitimate dramatic effect. Though the
work is not intended for the stage, its action is buoyant enough to enchain
an audience. Its contrasts between tender pathos and terrible tragedy are
managed with exquisite art. It goes without saying the work being Sir
Aubrey de Vere's that the whole drama is pitched in a tone of the lofti-
est poetic feeling, and that the diction is as pure as crystal. What needs
to be said, however, for those who do not understand the capabilities of
this pwet, is that passion and tragedy find in his verse an entirely potent
voice.

It is one of the inexplicable happenings of literary history that this
drama of "Mary Tudor" should have remained unrecognized for twenty-
eight years.

GEMS FOR THE YOUNG FROM FAVORITE POETS. Edited by Rosa Mulhol-
land. Illustrated by W. C. Mills. 8vo, 384 pp. Dublin : M. H. Gill &
Son ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

This is a collection of poems gathered for the special behoof of the
young from all quarters of English and American literature, by one who
has won a bright name as a maker of ennobling and delightful literature
for the young herself. Goethe said nothing truer than that the impressions
received in youth are the most powerful and most lasting, and Miss Mul-
holland in her preface pleads eloquently the importance to the youthful
mind of an early familiarity with good poetry, whose varied influences tell
upon it " like winds blowing one way upon a sapling." " Strong lines lay
hold of the memory, to echo long in the mind above the uproar of the
world's battles ; vivid pictures of right and ruth, of valor and virtue, arise
and line the walls of the fancy, and, lingering there for ever, give color to
the background of life."

On the whole, Miss Mulholland has done her work as well as we are en-
titled to expect from her, and that is saying much. In a range which
goes from Shakspere to Felicia Hemans she has left unsearched few of
the repositories of that clear and moving poetry of which young people
are fond and which it is good for them to know. It would be hypercriti-
cism to show how better selections might have been .made from the poets
quoted. But there is one thing we must allude to, because we cannot ac-
count for it : Clarence Mangan, whose works abound in quotable things for
Miss Mulholland's purpose, is represented in this collection by two of the
d'esprit he ever concocted. They are not included in the best

5 74' NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [July,

collected editions of his poe^ns rejected doubtless as unworthy of him by
the ecfitors. They must have been sought for in some scrap-book.

SHAW'S NEW HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Together with a His-
tory of English Literature in America. By Truman J. Backus, LL.D.
Revised Edition. New York : Sheldon & Co. 1884.

THE ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION : A Text-book for
Schools and Colleges. By David J. Hill, LL.D. Same publishers.
1884.

THE ELEMENTS OF LOGIC : A Text-book for Schools and Colleges. Being
the Elementary Lessons in Logic. By W. Stanley Jevons, LL.D.,
F.R.S. Recast by David J. Hill, LL.D. Same publishers. 1884.

The first-named of these books is a type of the sciolism that is the bane
of secular education in America. It reminds us, in its slap-dash flippancy,
of the equipment with which the public-school young man descends upon
the inferior world of un-cultured people. The book is an American " re-
cast " of a work that is popular in English schools of the Protestant
denomination that is, Shaw's History of English Literature, Shaw's is
an admirable hand-book for its purpose : to start English youngsters in the
correct respectable groove of narrow Protestantism and narrow Engljphism,
to impregnate them with the idea that "their [the English] novelists paint
the finest portraits of human character, . . . their poets sing the sweetest
songs, etc.," and at the same time to withhold much of what would enable
the student to form this idea (if he could) in the light of true intelligence.
The only thange effected in the original by the " recast " is that it is strip-
ped of the heavy respectability with which it was cumbered, and presented
in a smart American public-school dress which may or may not be an im-
provement. There is added, besides, "A History of English Literature in
America." The publishers somewhat eagerly call our attention to the per-
fections of this book, dwelling chiefly on the fact that " although edited by
a non-Catholic it contains nothing anti-Catholic," and asking us to " read
what a prominent Catholic educator says regarding it " from which it
would appear that the publishers are making an effort to have the work in-
troduced into Catholic schools in this country, and that there is a possibility
of that effort proving to some extent successful. The prominent Catholic
educator referred to has already introduced it into St. Joseph's College,
Buffalo, with the remark that he has " rarely seen a non-Catholic editor try
so kindly and so successfully to be impartial and gentle toward what Mr.
Backus himself, with graceful courtesy, calls the 'venerable Church of
Rome.'."

The Church of Rome will no doubt feel properly grateful to Mr. Backus
for letting it off so gently when he might have been very severe ; but what
is required of a historian of a literature is to produce a truthful and pro-
portionate history, and not to trouble himself bestowing compliments or
anathemas on any church. It is a very imperfect history of English and
American literature, for example (leaving out the question of religious
bias), which ignores both John Henry Newman and Orestes A. Brownson.
Newman, besides being the most powerful leaven in the religious thought
of England in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is the writer who has
done more than any other to form the character of the English style of the
same era. Brownson was the most trenchant and prolific critic that Aine-

1 884.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 575.

rica has yet produced, and his was one of the dominant figures in American
theological controversy of the post-Transcendental period. Though
Brownson or Broiunson's Review is not mentioned, not even alluded to, in
this history, a great deal of space is taken up with accounts of such writers
as Fitz-Greene Halleck, Timothy Dwight, John Barlow, Joseph R. Drake,
Christopher Pearse Cranch, John James Piatt, George William Curtis,
Charles Dudley Warner, Edward Payson Roe, Joaquin Miller, Mrs. William
S. Jackson, Mrs. Adeline T. D. Whitney, etc., etc. Another idea of the pro-
portion with which this book is made up may be gained from the fact that
exactly twice as much space is devoted to Fitz-Greene Halleck, author of
" Marco Bozzaris," as there is to George Bancroft, author of the History of
the United States. The great Catholic philosopher and author, Kenelm H.
Digby, has no mention whatsoever in this history of English literature, nor
has his great ancestor, Sir Kenelm Digby, the friend and fellow-worker of
Descartes; and, though there is a special department given to historians,
there is nothing to show that the author knew that such a historian as Lin-
gard ever existed. Sheridan and Moore and Burke are the only Irishmen
who contributed to English literature that are alluded to, though there are
hosts of Irish poets, novelists, orators, and historians more deserving of
recognition than, say, W. H. Ireland, whose sole claim to fame rests on
certain Shaksperean forgeries made when he was a boy. James Mont-
gomery, the Scotch poet, is not referred to. But we could exhaust our
space with instances of this kind.

It is enough to point out that a history of English and American litera-
ture which excludes, such writers as we have named, which teaches that
Wycliffe first translated the Bible into English, and which endorses the
dictum that the right way to train up a boy to be a poet is to set him
reading Walt Whitman, is not a suitable hand-book for Catholic schools,
any more than it is a well-considered digest of the subject it attempts
to treat.

The " Logic " is a reprint of Jevons' handbook and the " Rhetoric **is
good, as school rhetorics go.

LYRA CATHOLICA. Containing all the Breviary and Missal Hymns, with
others from various sources. Translated by Edward Caswall, M. A. Lon-
don : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

An elegant little edition, 32mo, of the well-known translations made by
the late Father Caswall, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, who,
while rendering these hymns into English, preserved with singular felicity
of expression not only the sense but also the peculiar unction of the
original Latin verse. His Eminence Cardinal Newman and a third eminent
English scholar, Dr. J. M. Neale, a clergyman of the Established Church,
divide with Father Caswall the honors of success in this difficult achieve-
ment of poetic art.

POPULAR LIFE OF ST. TERESA. Translated from the French of Father
Marie Joseph, O.M.C., by Annie Porter. New York : Benzigers. 1884.

Monsignor Preston, in his preface to this new and popular Life of St.
Teresa, says : " Among many lives of this wonderful saint, it excels in con-
ciseness and in the graphic view of her great virtues." It is neatly
printed and very tastefully and prettily bound.

576 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [ J u ly , 1884.

YEAR OF THE SACRED HEART. A Thought for Every Day in the Year.
Drawn from the works of Pere de la Colombiere, of Blessed Margaret
Mary, and of others. Translated from the French by Miss Anna T.
Sadlier. New York : Benzigers.

It suffices to give the title of this tiny volume to recommend it to the
devout and to warrant its excellence.

FROM THE CRIB TO THE CROSS. From the French of M. D'Hulst.
MONTH OF MARY. By F. Beckx, late General of the Society of Jesus.

From the German by Mrs. Hazeland. London : Burns & Gates; New

York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.
OUR BIRTHDAY BOUQUET. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. New York : Benzi-

ger Brothers.

These are three neat and pretty books of devotion.

1. An excellent collection of meditations for children between ten and
sixteen years of age.

2. A " Month of May," one of the best and most popular of its kind.

3. Flowers culled with taste and skill from the shrines of the saints and
the gardens of the poets viz., short notices of the lives of saints, and brief
extracts from about one hundred and thirty ancient and modern poets, so
arranged as to furnish a little separate nosegay for every day in the year.
A nice book for a present.

How MUCH I LOVED THEE ! A Drama. By Raymond Eshobel. Pub-
lished by the author.

This is a drama as silly as its title, in which Anderton, a captain of the
Union army ; Bryan, a lieutenant ; Ross, an American citizen, and a Wash-
ington policeman carry on conversations in the following vein :

Ross. Upon my soul

You have most wretchedly mistaken me :
I am a Union man.

BRYAN. You are a liar,

Whatever else. I know the terms you keep,
Your quips and quibbles and your reservations :
You should be spitted on a bayonet.
But I have marked your house. To-morrow night
You sleep at the Old Capitol.

Ross. Good sir !

BRYAN. Get in to bed ! I'll come for you to-morrow.

[Exit Ross.

Enter other Policemen, a rabble following.
THIRD POLICEMAN. What brawl is this ?

BRYAN. One that needs you not,

Since I have quelled it.

Enter ANDERTON.

ANDERTON. What, Lieutenant Bryan,

Is this a tumult of our soldiers' making ?

The other characters lovers, surgeons, adventurers, and Virginia plan-
terstalk a similar dialect of civil war period Americanese.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIX. AUGUST, 1884. No. 233.

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER I.
EXTREMES MEET.

AMONG the many beautiful islands in that wonderful cluster
at the source of the river St. Lawrence is one noticeable for its
petty size and peculiar conformation. It covers a quarter of an
acre, perhaps, and, lying at the foot of a sister island some seven
miles long, would never attract the^ attention of visitors but for
its shape and the excellent view it gives of the distant village
of Clayburgh. Smaller islands, mere rocky stars on the watery
blue, crowd about it on all sides, and larger ones close at hand
shut it but from the sight of approaching travellers ; but arching
its back from the water like a bow, and throwing into the air a
natural pyramid of moss-eaten graystone, it offers a summit as
high above its nobler sisters as one could desire. Nature has
provided a stairway to the platform above, and a stunted tree
clinging there welcomes the sight-seer with scanty but not unde-
sirable shade.

Here, on a day of early September, sat a man quietly and
meditatively looking upon the splendid view before him. The
sun was swinging close to the far Canadian horizon, and "Clay-
burgh was crimsoned with its cold autumn glory. The water
was on fire. With every ripple and wave red sparks and flames
seemed to shoot into the air, the smoky woods lending to the

578 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

illusion. It was neither chilly nor warm. A pleasant mean
prevailed in the air, and so softly did the colors of dying day
blend with those of the coming night that he who sat there was
clearly unmindful of the passing hours. His gaze wandered
from one feature of the scene to another, and its placidity was
reflected in the repose of his body, in his gentle breathing, and
in the pensive expression of his face. His general appearance
was not that of one gifted with many of the finer human instincts.
A blue shirt, gray breeches, undressed shoes, cap and leggings, all
of very coarse, well-used material, made up his costume ; his skin
was toughened and browned as by years of exposure, and a curly
red beard covered the lower part of the face. The rifle at his
side, and the fishing-tackle in his canoe below him, indicated the
professional sportsman. No one would cast upon the man a
second look, and yet there was much more about him, as there is
about every man, than even second glances would discover. His
light hair and red beard were of very fine texture, his hands
were shapely, his features delicately cut, and his' blue eyes, if a
little too keen in their glance, were sympathetic and expressive ;
but his skin cap hid hair and face, and tanned complexion and
rough costume hid much more from curious eyes. "As he looked
at the distant village bathed in sunset fire he muttered to him-
self, and not seldom the unheeded tears fell down his cheek ; but
his emotion was gentle, and his thoughts led to no more violent
expression of feeling.

" Ah ! friend Scott, dreaming, hey ? "

A rough voice came from below, where a corpulent, half-
naked man was just rising from the water.

Scott looked down quietly.

" You had quite a swim of it, PenTtqn," he said, without
moving. " Thought you couldn't hev got here for a good hour
yet."

" The devil ! " growled Pendleton, shaking himself like a dog
and swinging his naked arms to take off the chill. " You're a
nice man, to allow me to swim all the way, and your boat so
handy ! I'm chilled through. Why in thunder didn't you shout
when you saw me coming? "

" Didn't know you were cornin' till I saw you half-way over,
squire. Did you want to see me ? "

" Did I want to see you?" sneered the squire as he rum-
maged the canoe. " No ; I want to see your whiskey-bottle
haven't any, confound ye ! I'm a likely man to leave my clothes
on the island and swim this far, and do it all for nothing. Look

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 579

at me," bawled he, as he began to mount the natural steps, " and
ask that question again."

Scott rose from his reclining position as he arrived on the
platform.

"It's a strange fix for you, PenTton," said he, amused.
" You're not runnin' away from the law, may be? "

" Yes, I am running away from the law," answered the
squire, shaking his fist at Clayburgh. " Blame 'em ! they haven't
left me a place this side of France or South America to hide in.
They are after my head, man ; they've offered a reward both of
'em, Uncle Sam and Queen Victory to any man, woman, child,
or jackass that will present 'em with me, dead or alive, or with
my head."

" I heard somethin' " began the hunter.

u Of course you did. They're all talking about it about the
fool Pendleton, who sided with Mackenzie, another fool, and
helped him to get justice for Canadians, and now has two gov-
ernments after him. Well, I'm the man, and I've come to you
for help ; nobody else wants to give it. Blame 'em, the chickens !
They free citizens of this country bah ! "

" I'm glad you lit on me, squire," Scott began again.

"Oh! are you?" sneered the squire, nettled by the tone.
" Well, that's new, that's startling. Wait till you hear the whole
of it. ' Any man who harbors, assists, feeds, etc., Squire Pendle-
ton goes to jail along with him when he's caught.' How do you
like that, hey ? "

Scott was silent and turned his gaze in the direction of the
town, whose spires alone now caught the reflection of the sun's
last rays. Pendleton evidently did not expect this significant
action on the hunter's part, and he grew uneasy and angry. A
half-sigh escaped him, for his position was really one of peril, and
there were others interested in his fate whom his capture would
affect most bitterly.

"I don't wish to bring any one into trouble, Scott," he has-
tened to say, " and I'm not going to do it for you. But, know-
ing these islands as you do, I thought you could show me some
hiding-place that would give me refuge until I can leave the
country. For they'll not catch me no, not if I have to swim to
the Bay of Biscay."

There was no answer from Scott, and his thoughts seemed to
be miles away from the squire's affairs. Pendleton stood for a
moment irresolute, and then he hastily descended the steps and
jumped into the canoe.

580 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

" You're like the rest," he muttered. " There's not a man
among the whole crew. Well, you can meditate there for the
rest of the night or swim for it. I'm going to make this my
property." He attempted to cut the rope of the canoe, when by
a dexterous jerk Scott upset the boat and the squire went into
the water headlong. As he rose spluttering the hunter was
smilingly engaged in rescuing his floating tackle.

" Fooiin' with governments is dangerous," said he, " an' it's
natural to think I don't want to get mixed up in your evil doin's.
But then I'm not goin' back on ye, squire, not if I know it, even
though my head was concerned, which it isn't, for in this country
they don't go quite so much on the head-choppin' as I've heard
tell of in other countries. I kin find a place for ye, p'raps. It
mayn't be much to your likin', for beds are scarce, an' furniture
has to grow of itself thar. But you'll hev the sun to call ye at
six o'clock, an' the stars will see ye to bed and watch over ye all
night along with the singin' o' the water. Squire, them's my
comforts."

" They agree with you mightily," muttered Pendleton, who
was now rather subdued. Having put his boat in order, Scott
invited his companion to enter and was surprised to receive a
cold and emphatic refusal.

" I've got a new idea from that, ducking," he said gloomily,
" and I'm going to follow it out. Good-by ; thanks for your
offer." And he plunged into the water again, only to be pulled
out almost roughly by a strong, impatient hand.

" This," said the squire, purpling, " is 1

" Common sense nothin' less, Pen'l'ton," was the firm, severe
interruption. " Don't ye think I know more about this business
of yours than to let you walk right smack into the hands of the
officers ? What'r you thinkin' of ? What about Ruth ? "

" Yes, yes, you're right," the other answered hastily. " I'm a
fool. Poor Ruth ! Goon. I'll go to the devil, if you say so."

Scott smiled and pointed to the boat, in which the squire
penitently took his seat.

" Shall we go for your clothes ? "

" Let 'em stay there. If they think me drowned, so much the
better."

Scott pushed off and took his course eastward. The sun had
set and heavy clouds had closed like prison-gates on his retreat-
ing glories. A thin mist was pushing itself from the marshy
shores. The silence of coming night was scarcely disturbed by the
dip of the paddle and the cry of the wild duck in the distance.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 581

" They'll not see our course," Pendleton said, half to himself,
" and Ruth will be satisfied. Poor Ruth ! "

Scott did not hear him. His eyes were fixed, as usual, on the
scenes around him, and reflected more than ever the emotions of
his simple heart. These must have been very pleasant then, for
his face was lit up by a happy smile.

CHAPTER II.
THE WALLACES AT HOME.

CLOSE upon the same hour which witnessed the meeting of
the hunter and the squire on the island the bell in the dining-
room of Mistress Winifred Wallace's pleasant home announced
the evening tea. Mrs. Wallace herself had attended to the ar-
rangements of the tea-table, and was now standing at the win-
dow awaiting the coming of her family. Her smooth, dark hair
was combed over her long cheeks, and her smiling face looked
out from the encircling locks like a picture from its frame.
When five minutes passed without the appearance of a single
member of the family, she raised the window gently and in-
quired of a very small gentleman, lost among the grape-vines in
the garden, " if he thought the little bull would like supper that
evening."

" Why in the divil don't you ring the bell ? " said the small
gentleman sharply. " How do I know supper's ready ? How
do you know ? How does any one know ? Nobody knows,
confound you ! "

" Seemingly, dear, I know," replied madam, with perfect
modulation of her soft tones. " The little bull is losing his hear-
ing as well as his mind, when the bell at his very ear isn't no-
ticed."

And the lady laughed sweetly, while the gentleman fumed in
a fury of absurd passion and came rushing into the open space
like an aged bear. He was a dapper little fellow, with a face so
excessively wrinkled that his eyes were visible only when light
shot a ray from them. He jerked out a series of broken sen-
tences in a mumbling way, which made Mrs. Wallace laugh the
more.

" Seemingly you will spoil your appetite," said she.

" No," said he, putting on his coat, " but I'll spoil yours when
I get inside."

" If you see any of the children, Billy, call them "

582 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

What's the bell for? " roared Billy.

" You're all alike, seemingly," said madam. " They don't hear
any better than their father."

" Quarrelling again ! " said a thin, spiteful voice from the
depths of a garden arbor. " Is there any place in the town
where one can escape from the intolerable gabble between you
two?"

" Oh ! ho ! " roared Mr. Wallace, diverted from his passion by
this new voice. " So me Lady Gwindoline Far-an'-near is there,
is she ? You're a match for your mother, ye divil ! Come out
and give her a taste of your tongue, Sararann."

Mrs. Wallace hastily shut the window, but the owner of the
voice came out on the garden walk at her father's invitation.
She was a young lady of twenty-three, dressed carefully and
with some taste. Her light, curling hair was bound with ribbon,
and her complexion was a marvel of purity, but there was a dis-
agreeable sneer arouncl her mouth, and shallow vanity was ex-
pressed in every feature. " Too late," said Mr. Wallace, looking
after his wife ; " she's gone. Would your ladyship condescind to
sup with us this evening?"

" I condescend a good deal," muttered Sara, " but, thank
Heaven ! it won't last long. The first man that offers him-
self"

" That'll do, miss," was the stern interruption. " The first
man that dares to say a word to you before I give him leave will
know who's who in this house."

"Where are the others ?" asked Sara, as she preceded her
father into the dining-room.

" Tramping, of course," said Billy. " Where else ? We get
no good of them morning, noon, or night."

"They are your pets, papa ; what more can you expect of
them," remarked Sara ironically.

" Well, you're not a pet," Billy snarled, "and how much better
are you ? They have sense ; you haven't any, with your novels,
and stories, and silly songs. I'll tear every novel to pieces.
You have wan there in your pocket. Give it to me this instant ! "
And Billy jumped up in a second fit of rage more ridiculous
and alarming than the first. " Seemingly, dear, you will smash
the china," murmured Mrs. Wallace ; " and here are the children
coming."

Billy suddenly took his seat at these words and allowed his
rage to subside. A remarkable quiet fell on these three mem-
bers of this interesting family, and a stranger just entering would

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 583

not suspect that he followed close on a departing family storm.
The children's voices were now heard in the hall loud, cheery,
laughing voices that brought a smile to every corner of Billy's
many-cornered face and after some running about they burst in
with all the impetuosity of vigorous, hungry youth. The young
lady who preceded the tall young fellow with serious face might,
by a stretch of English, be termed a child, for she was little, deli-
cate, sweet-faced, and pert ; but her brother was a child of
twenty-five years, very manly and very handsome, as any boy of
fair figure, height, and muscle must be when health courses in his
blood and talent in his brain.

" Late, as usual/* exclaimed the girl as she took her seat ; " but
it's a novelty to find Sararann I beg your pardon ; I meant Pearl
ahead of us. Are you out of novels, or did the last chapter
and the tea-bell chime in with each other?"

" Mind your business," retorted Sara bitterly.

" I see we kept you waiting, mother," said the young man
Florian his father called him. " Belinda is lively enough in
leaving the house, but slow in returning. I fancy her appetite
is not very keen."

" Seemingly, dear, you are all falling into bad habits," said
Mrs. Wallace, " and I don't see the use of being regular myself
when the rest of you won't be so."

" Oh ! but I see the use," said the son, "for we must have one
steady person here, where all are so light-headed. If the clocks
run at all they must run on time."

" Good ! that's good ! " cried Billy, with aloud laugh. " She's
the clock of the family first-rate, Flory ! and she never stops
on time always can't help it why should she? "

" There it is again laughing over nothing and shaking the
table ! Such vulgarity ! " muttered Sara so that no one save
Belinda would hear.

" What a pity he is your father ! " replied Belinda in the same
tone. " If you could claim some elegant aristocrat as a parent
Mr. Buck, for instance ; but that would not do, since you expect
to have him for a husband, I hear."

Sara grew a little pale and bent low over her plate.

" Florian knows it," Belinda continued, " and perhaps you
won't enjoy yourself for a week or two oh ! no, to be sure not
with your window locked and Mr. Buck singing doleful hymns
under it."

"You don't hear mother," interrupted Florian; "she is talk-
ing to you, Linda."

584 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

" I beg your pardon, mamma ; I had a story for Pearl I mean
Sararann. What were you saying? "

" Frank Hanley was here this afternoon and left a message for
you ; his mother is planning a picnic for October, the last of the
season, and wishes you over to advise with her."

" That is good news," said Florian. " I like the idea myself,
for it will perhaps be the very last I shall enjoy here. Now,
don't begin to frown, Linda."

" Nonsense ! " said Billy. " Still talking of going away ? Tut,
tut! Clay burgh is big enough if you were twice as proud.
Stuff ! What are you boys thinking of nowadays ? "

Linda looked reproachfully at Florian, and a silence fell sud-
denly on them all. This threat of leaving the paternal roof was
the one cloud in the family sky. Mrs. Wallace was not so much
sorry as glad that for a moment the strife of the fafriily had
ended, while the tears trembled in Linda's eyes and Billy's face
worked curiously. The members of the family presented a very
strange appearance as they sat facing one another around the
table, for not one individual bore even the faintest resemblance
to the other. The father was a mite of a little man, with no
color in his hair, no expression in his face, and no outline to his
features. The mother was a model of smiling smoothness, dark-
skinned like a gipsy a promoter of disturbances, yet ever anx-
ious for peace. Sara was of a fair complexion and a second edi-
tion of the beautiful Miss McBride, whom Billy courted in the
halcyon long-ago ; while Linda and Florian were very pure
types of Roman beauty, the former marble-skinned and raven-
haired, the latter dark brown as to his hair, and with skin like
a sailor's. In temperament Billy was all fire and his wife the
purest oil ; Sara had as little heart as she had intellect ; while
her brother and sister enjoyed a liberal endowment of the gifts
which go to make man and woman charming. Linda was in-
clined to levity, yet capable of deep feeling, and her brother was
full of manly candor and had the disposition of a philosopher.

"I don't like to hear this talk of going away," said Billy,
breaking the silence first. " I won't have it. Going away,
indeed ! Let me hear no more of it. Pshaw ! nonsense ! What
does it amount to, hey, Winny ? "

Mrs. Wallace, thus appealed to, said she was sure there was
more in it than he thought, and

" Oh ! of course," interrupted he, blazing at once; "side al-
ways with the boys that's you with the boys always, wrong or
not. Go to the divil ! "

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 585

" Seemingly, dear, you don't give me time to say "

" Oh ! no, I never do," he roared ; " I needn't say anything
when the boys speak. No, of course not ; why should I ? Let
the boys go to the divil and you go with them always side with
them."

" Isn't that natural, father?" asked Florian, with a smile all-
powerful to subdue the old gentleman's anger. " Wasn't it
because of siding with a boy when she was young that she left
her family and went with you ? "

" Ha ! ha ! there it is again. Right, Flory always right. I'll
tell that to Pere Rougevin good, me boy ! that and the clock
she's a clock she never stops she sides with the clock."

They all laughed at this confusion of words, and in conse-
quence the table trembled in a very vulgar way, but Sara was
too much taken up with herself to pay any further attention.

" You are putting ideas into papa's head," said Linda, " that
confuse him. And they are sure to crop out in his arguments
with Mr. Buck " Sara started at the name and looked apprehen-
sively at her brother. " Fancy him bringing in a clock in sup-
port of the doctrine of baptism, or making mamma's preference
for the boys a prop to the sacrament of matrimony ! "

" There is nothing like confusing Mr. Buck," said Florian ;
"and he knows so little of anything that the confusion of an
opponent only adds to his own."

" I wonder he never thinks of marrying," said Mrs. Wallace.

" So very few think of marrying him," murmured Linda.

" And the idea of a wife who could beat him in an argument,"
Florian laughed, " would frighten him."

" If he takes the one report is giving him," Linda began

" He's an idiot ! " broke in Billy. " He's a fool ! No use argu-
ing with him. All talk no sense; can't understand a man-
never tries why should he? He's a fool."

" Is there talk of his getting married?" asked Mrs. Wallace.

" A little," Florian answered. " But how many times have
people talked of it, and he hasn't done it yet." He threw a
warning look at Linda, whoVas mischievous enough at that
moment to say anything.

" Who are they talking of now?" asked Billy, regardless of
grammar.

" You will excuse me," said Florian, rising. " I am in a hurry
this evening. Sara, I wish to speak with you for a moment."

They all rose at this remark, for the meal was ended. Flo-
rian's manner was no graver than usual, but Mrs. Wallace found

586 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

some connection between Billy's question and her son's desire
to talk with his sister, and, in her quiet way, was anxious and
concerned.

CHAPTER III.
CLOUDS.

LINDA went out on the veranda, while Sara was led by her
brother into the little room he called his study. It was filled
with books, papers, and optical instruments. One window only
admitted the light, and had painted on its narrow panes a
water-view, with pine-fringed islands and the northwest sky
for a background. Florian motioned his sister to a chair. She
was pale but calm and obstinate-looking. Her face had set itself
in a cold and hard expression, and, although it did not daunt the
youth, it rendered him uneasy.

" I was a little surprised to-day- " he began,

" You always are," she retorted tauntingly, but without look-
ing at him.

" To hear your name coupled freely, very freely, with Mr.
Buck's. It seemed to be understood that Mr. Buck was an ac-
cepted suitor of yours, and that before long matrimony would
make a convert to Protestantism where conviction could not."

"Well, what of it? Is Mr. Buck less a gentleman because
he is a minister "

" Excuse me if I do not argue that point," her brother inter-
rupted. " I admit he is not, otherwise I would have knocked
down the man who dared to mingle your names in my presence.
Mr. Buck is a gentleman, though a little shallow and sometimes
silly. What I desire to know is, have you given any reason to
others to talk of you in this way ? "

" And if I have am I bound to tell you of it? "

" You misunderstand me, Sara," he said gently. " I am not
your master but your brother, and I ask the question, not be-
cause you are bound to answer it, but because it will be better
for you to do so."

" Well, people will talk," she replied lightly, " and, unless Mr.
Buck has presumed to speak about me, I have never given him
the slightest encouragement."

" Why, then, should these things be said ? " Florian persisted.
" Are you sure that you have not even thought of encouraging

1 884.] SOLI TAR Y ISLAND. 587

him ? May not some of your actions which you thought light
and unmeaning have given him reason to think "

" 1 won't answer any more," she said, bridling. " Why, one
would think I was in a witness-box, sworn to tell my very
thoughts to you. It's worse than the Inquisition ! "

" Than the Inquisition ! " repeated Florian in astonishment.
" Perhaps it might be worse than that, if the matter comes to
father's ears."

Sara's lips quivered at this implied threat, and the tears filled
her eyes. They were tears of spite, not grief.

" You are mean enough to tell him." And her voice trembled
despite her pride. " I am persecuted everywhere. No one
seems to care for me."

" It is just because we care for you, all of us, that we trouble
you so much. Is it no pain to* us that you should marry a Pro-
testant minister and be lost to the faith? "

She broke into fitful sobbing. Florian walked to the win-
dow and looked out gloomily on the scene. A tall, clerical gen-
tleman walking down the street raised his hat politely as he
passed, and the young man could not repress a smile as he recog-
nized the evangelical minister on account of whom this domestic
storm had been raised. Mr. Buck was spotless in his personal
make-up, having always the appearance of wearing a new suit,
and of just having bathed and shaved and said his prayers.
Florian hurled a mock anathema after him. Sarah dried her
eyes at length, and from tears proceeded to frowns. She be-
came suddenly vindictive.

" I won't stand this persecution any longer," she said, rising.
" You may tell every one, you may tell the wrinkled old bore
yonder " she alluded to her father " you may tell the world ;
but I shall do as I please, and if you attempt any more of this I
have at least one refuge open to me."

" Then it is true," said her brother, with ominous quiet in his
voice.

" You can believe it, if you wish to." And she attempted to
leave the room, but he stood between her and the door, with so
stern a face that she grew frightened again.

" You must remember," he said, " that this is no child's play,
and that until you satisfy me one way or another as to what you
have done in this matter your life will be twice as unpleasant as
you say it has been. Your father shall know of it at once, the
priest shall hear it as soon as may be, and Mr. Buck shall receive
such a warning -from me as to make a union with you unde-

588 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

sirable. Now you can take your choice make a clean breast of
what you know or prepare to suffer/'

She walked over to the window for a moment and burst out
crying- again. Her brother, stern as he looked, felt a sudden
pang, and sighed.

" It is true," he thought, "and, worse than all, she cares for
him."

There was a long silence until Sara had dried her tears once
more and was calm enough to speak. Her first words showed
that she had become reasonable.

" You make me suffer for nothing," she said.

" I suffer myself much more," he replied, taking the olive-
branch and changing his stern mood to one of tender appeal.
" You are too dear to me, my sister, that I should look on you
throwing yourself into an abyss, and not feel troubled. Have
you no pity for us who love you ? Do you not know that our
grief would be less hopeless, less keen, to see you dead than to
see you the wife of this man ? Dead, you would be still ours ;
living and his wife, our separation would be eternal. Sara,
think for a moment and you will see your folly."

" I haven't been guilty of any folly. Mr. Buck was foolish
enough to pay his addresses to me, but I never encouraged him,
never responded even. And, since you don't wish it, I'll not look
at him again."

" Thank you," said Florian, but he was not at all satisfied.
Sara may have thought that her last speech was exceedingly
frank, and truthful enough in appearance to deceive her brother,
but her face was not reassuring. He saw no sincerity there, but
only the assumption of sincerity, and went away, sad, to join
Linda outside, while Sara, after making a face at him as he re-
tired, hurried away to her own room and a new novel.

Linda was standing where the sun could fall on her face
through a veil of green leaves, and peering down on the river.
Alone, her bright eyes showed no mischievous lights, and her
sweet face reposed in the shadow of tender, serious dreamings.
But the laugh was ready when her brother's step disturbed
her.

" Well, you got little satisfaction from Pearl, I see," were her
first words.

" How do you know ? " he replied tartly. " My face doesn't
show it."

" I didn't look at your face, but I know my sweet sister to a
dot. Now that I do look, your face is clearer than a map. Don't

1 884.] So LIT A R Y ISLAND. 5 89

flatter yourself that it can hide your thoughts so easily. It is
ridiculous to see how vain you are on that point."

He laughed good-naturedly.

" I am beginning to think we don't treat Sara fairly "

" Sararann," she interrupted.

" There it is," he said. " You call her names and tease her.
Her father scolds her, her mother quarrels with her, and I well,
I"

" Well, you would like to take her part, and can't. No one
can. Her name is Sara, and she actually cries sometimes to
think her name isn't Pearl or Gwendoline. She is as shallow as
a mud-puddle ; and as for her faith well, she'll marry Rev. Mr.
Buck and follow him through every shade of opinion from his
present Methodism to Mormonism."

" How you women can describe one another! "

" Then you see I speak the truth. I have no patience with
her. She hasn't one soft spot in her heart that responds to the
pressure of a gentle emotion. Heavens ! what a family is ours
for contrarieties."

" Wouldn't it benefit some of us," said he gently, " if we could
count our own faults as readily as we count hers? "

She laughed in scorn.

" I can count mine," she replied gaily, " and it doesn't make
me one bit better, as far as she is concerned. Yet won't we cry
our eyes out when she becomes Mrs. Buck ! O Florian ! it's
simply horrible."

And straightway the tears were in her eyes, and she turned
away as if indignant with herself. He watched her with affec-
tionate admiration, and then started suddenly and looked again.

" Come here, you witch," he said, and when she came, laugh-
ing, he pulled her cheeks and pinched her arms.

" What ! you have been losing flesh."

" And you never noticed it ! What a compliment ! "

" Oh ! but I was of the opinion that love fattens. What a
blunder ! And you noticed it and said nothing."

" No, but I did very much. I ate more, and studied and read
less. But tell me, what did Lady Gwendoline Vere-de-Vere "

" I would rather"

" Well, Sara, then what did she say ?"

" Nothing ; neither admitted nor denied, but fussed a good
deal, wept and defied me, and wound up by declaring that she
was innocent and would never do it again."
" I wish we could believe her."

590 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

"And don't you?" he said reproachfully.

" I am sorry to think I do not. But Pear Sara is not very
truthful. While you are here it may do very well ; when you
are gone "

" I am not gone yet," he said when she hesitated.

" This incident may hinder your going. I hope it will. I
would be tempted to favor Mr. Buck, if it would."

" Be reasonable, child. We must all part one day, and why
not now, when health and youth belong to us ? Separation is to
be expected, and has happened to so many families that we should
not wonder if it happens to ours."

" No one wonders ; one only grieves. I know just what
thoughts actuate you, Florian, and they astonish me. You are
too ambitious."

" It is ' the failing of great minds,' " he quoted, smiling.

She shook her head sadly and turned her eyes on the river,
now shrinking behind night's shadows.

" Look at it," she said, stretching out both arms towards the
scene. " What a majestic spot to live and die in ! I could not
describe it to a stranger, because I feel it only. All those tender
colors, that fresh outline of water and land and sky, those sweet
smells, seem to centre here" and she pressed both hands to her
heart " and move me to such thoughts and resolutions as all
the world's ambitions could never rouse. O Florian ! it would
be wisest for you, and what a happiness for me, if your one am-
bition was to serve God here in a humble, plain way, and reach
the world with your writings, than to throw yourself into its
dusty conflicts and find no peace but in death. That is the way
with politicians."

" Sometimes I have thought it, too," he replied musingly. " I
know every feature of the place so well, and the idea of living
sixty quiet years among the same scenes is pleasing. It speaks
of such a grand quiet for the soul, upon which every change of
that landscape would be painted until nature and it seemed one.
What a placid face, what an untroubled heart an old man would
have after six such decades ! He would naturally graduate into
eternity then. But pshaw ! what a dream. Impossible ! The
soul was made for action. I couldn't think of it."

He jumped up in his eagerness, and noticed then that his sis-
ter had burst into tears. The next moment she laughed.

" That is the end of it, Florian. You have pronounced the
doom of separation for our family : you to politics, Sara to Mr.
Buck, and myself to"

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 591

"The prince, of course; and you will find that such changes,
though bitter, leave a honey in their wound. Come, get your
cloak and hat, and we shall walk."

Linda was glad to hide her confusion at his last words, and
ran away to prepare herself, while he remained on the veranda
and allowed his thoughts to drift away into space until they were
dashing like shattered vessels on the shores of his distant ambi-
tion.

CHAPTER IV.
A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE.

BELINDA, in a gipsy hat and cloak, felt better able to withstand
the annoyances which brought the tell-tale colors to her cheek,
and looked unusually pretty and bewitching beside her tall
brother.

" I wonder," she said, as they went down the hill to the bay,
" that Sara did not think of throwing Ruth Pendleton at you in
reproaching her for encouraging Mr. Buck."

" It is a wonder," replied Florian ; . " she is so well, she
knows I would not marry Ruth if there was not a prospect of
her conversion."

" And wouldn't you ? "

" Why do you ask that question, Linda ? " he said, looking
down at her serious face.

" I thought, you know that is, I heard you extol the power
of love so often, and well, the thought doesn't come to me, but I
mean wouldn't it hurt you a little to give her up "

u If she didn't become a ^Catholic after all ? Yes, it ivoidd
hurt me. But I never realized it, since there isn't much doubt
about the matter."

They walked along in silence for a time.

" Ruth is so Quakerish, so thoughtful, and so determined,"
said Belinda. " If she couldn't feel convinced, she wouldn't be-
come a Catholic not for twenty Florians."

" Her highest praise that, my Linda. I would never have
given her my heart otherwise. If my wife is to be a Catholic
she shall be a good one."

" But just think, Florian, if she didn't believe ! "

" You are bound to think disagreeable things to-night," he
said, laughing ; " but let us work on the if. In that case we
should part and tune our harps to other ears."

592 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

" O Florian ! "

" Well, what now ? "

" Where is the power of love ? Is it so weak that you can
speak so calmly of putting it from you like a troublesome child ?
What do all your praises of the master- passion mean ? "

" Love is not the all of life," replied Florian contemptuously,
" if it be the master-passion. But then really, Linda, I can't
realize the if as you would wish. I can't rave, weep, sigh, like
the north wind or a furnace, on a supposition. Ruth is mine
yet, and will be for ever. If we are to part you shall see the mas-
ter-passion then in its strength. I suppose you want me to read
you a lecture on love. It is the lever of the good in this life, and
the"

" That will do," she said. " Your lectures are affected with
consumption, skin and bones dry, dry, dry."

"' Words, words,' as Hamlet says."

" But where are you going ? " she cried in surprise, as they
stood suddenly on the deep shores of the bay, across which the
shadows of night were sweeping.

" To take out the boat, of course. We must cross to Ruth's
and bring her back with us, for there is going to be a fog ; and
that is the lover's mantle, friend, etc."

" Thank you, I have no intention of sailing in that mist. I'll
go back to the house, and when you invite me to a walk again "

" You'll know," said he lightly, as he loosed the boat, " that
I mean a walk on the water."

And he began to sing a boat-song, while she stood pouting
and angry. A strong voice from the hill joined in Florian's song
very suddenly, and soon a stout, short gentleman appeared in
sight, swinging his right hand to the time of the music, and wav-
ing his left to Belinda.

" The pere," said she, " and he wants us. Come up here, for
he won't talk to you down there."

Florian joined her as Pere Rougevin, the parish priest, was
making his salutations.

" What an evening for a boat-ride ! " he said. " Fog is so
pleasant, and the stars look so well through it. Then the uncer-
tainty as to when you will get back and how many shoals you
will strike is delightful. Or is this another version of Leander
and the Hellespont ? "

" There will be no fog within the hour, pere," said Florian.
They always called him pere, although the French blood in the
priest's veins was exceedingly mixed, and his family for genera-

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 593

tions had been Americans. He stole a quiet look at the young
man from a pair of non-committal eyes eyes whose color no
one exactly knew, and whose expression seemed to be the one
mystery of the pere's plump face.

" I heard a good thing from Mr. Buck to-day," he said. " He
was talking of Charlie. ' I hear your nephew is not to return to
college/ said he. * No,' I answered, ' and never will. He has a
tumor under his arm a dangerous matter.' ' Is that an impedi-
ment to orders?' said Mr. Buck. 'Not exactly,' I replied, and
stopped. ' Ah ! I see, Pere Rougevin. It is probably, this swell-
ing, the appearance of Adam's spare rib.' '

Florian joined in the pere's soft but hearty laugh, while
Belinda reddened and mutely suffered the pere to pinch her hot
cheeks.

" You have destroyed a vocation," he said. f " But I did not
let the gentleman off so easily. ' A shrewd remark, Mr. Buck,'
said I, ' but wide of the point The rib has long been trans-
formed.' "

He laughed again, and, running down the bank as fast as his
short legs would permit, began looking for something in the boat
very earnestly.

" Can I help you ? " said Florian. " Is there anything you
wish to find ? "

" I have found it," replied the pere, struggling up the bank
and puffing. " I promised Scott to see how you liked the inside
of your boat rigged."

" Ah !" cried Florian, waked into sudden animation, " how can
I ever thank you for remembering me ? Your boat will be some-
thing more than a vision then." The pere grew suddenly re-
served, as if offended, and looked far out on the water and up the
shore again.

" Why should it be a vision ? " And, without waiting for an
answer, " I see Mr. Buck," said he ; " excuse me," and was go-
ing off when Florian called out :

" If I could see you to-morrow, pere, I have an important mat-
ter to discuss with you."

" That reminds me," replied the priest : " Ruth wished to
see you on important matters to night. It will be necessary for
you to go alone. Linda, you may return with me. Good-night."
" Good-night," said Fiorian, feeling that he had made a mis-
take, and anxious to punish himself for his blunder. A soft wind
was rising as he pushed his boat into the low mist that floated
on the waters, and presently the white folds of the fog shook
VOL. xxxix. 38

594 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

like a garment and the stars showed through like silver orna-
ments.

It was a kind of instinct that led the young man in the right
direction across the bay. The distance was nearly a mile, but
even for an experienced oarsman it was difficult to keep the
water-path on such a night. The wind, growing stronger, made
great rents in the mist, which remained open long enough to
show the dark mass of an island or the lights on shore ; and in
this way he managed to reach his destination without any de-
tours.

" I am so glad you have come ! " cried a soft voice from the
shore, almost before he touched it. He jumped out, drew up the
boat, and clasped the hand outstretched to him. " You are al-
ways so, Ruth," he said, with some reserve in his tones, " but I
know you are especially glad to-night. What's the trouble ? "

" Come inside and I'll tell you." And they went into the sit-
ting-room together. The light showed Ruth Pendleton to be a
demure, pale, handsome girl of twenty, almost Quakerish in the
simplicity of her dress and the quietness of her manner. Her
beauty was of a subdued kind, impressing never unless her soul
shone through it, but leading one to form great expectations of
her mental powers. She was entirely wanting in color, and,
standing beside Florian, with his manly heat and strong outline,
his boyish freedom of gesture and action, she suggested the com-
parison of an apple-blossom with a sunflower.

" I have heard from my father," she said when they were
seated.

" And his head is on his shoulders still, and no one has the
reward ? " murmured Florian regretfully.

" Oh ! what silliness." She rose and went to the window.
" Those spies infest the house from morning till night. I
wouldn't like to have them hear us."

" Spies ! " shouted Florian, rising, with a resolution in his face
as plain as if he had spoken it.

" Oh ! no, you mustn't," pleaded Ruth. " Wait till you hear
what is to be done, and then you may go after the spies, if you
want to."

" Spies! in this country ? " he repeated, with hot indignation.
" No, Ruth, I shall not wait an instant '

" But remember you imperil my father's life and liberty by
interfering now," said Ruth ; " and it was to have your help in
saving him that I sent for you to-night."

" Oh ! " said Florian. " I shall wait."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 595

" Scott, that queer hunter, came to me after sundown," Ruth
began, " and told me that my father was hiding in a cave among
the islands, and was anxious that I should send him some money.
Scott was to bring it, but I told him "

" That you would get me to do it instead," Florian inter-
rupted, " and bring him some news and help him to get out of
the country."

" Not at all," said Ruth, " but that I would go myself, for I
know how he wishes to see me ; but I will need help to rid my-
self of those spies."

" That is it," said Florian, with rising color and sparkling eyes.
" That is pleasant. You are a good general, Ruth ; you know
how to select your means and how to dispose of them. What
execution these will do ! "

He held out his stout wrists, and she smiled.

" I think we shall need head-work more than wrist-work."

" One shall supplement the other," said Florian. " When are
we to begin ? "

" At once, of course," she answered ; and immediately Ruth's
soul began to light its smouldering fires, for the first glow shot
from the depths of her gray eyes and transformed them.

" Oh ! it is to be a night adventure," murmured Florian, with
a sudden dash towards prudence, and he walked to the window,
which held the bay imprisoned on its broad panes. The fog was
gone and the wind was freshening rapidly. Dull clouds ob-
scured the sky, but the faint starlight, shining down in broken
beams, showed ugly white-caps playing across the black waters.

" It will be a rough night"

" Ah ! but we shall not be out all night," said Ruth ; " and for
an hour this wind will be no stronger. But we must not delay,
and I must get over to-night. "

" What a girl ! ' When she will she will, you may depend
on't.' If we can only give trouble to the spies ! Well, wrap up
and we are off."

He went out to get the boat ready, a common yacht of or-
dinary size, and presently Ruth, in a pretty costume, joined him.

"This is a stiff breeze," said Florian, " just right for a short
sail. If but Linda were with us ! "

" Excuse me," said a voice in the darkness, " but I am anxious
to cross to Grindstone. If you are going that way I would be
highly obliged if you would permit me to accompany you."

Ruth pressed Florian's arm as a man came out of the gloom.

" We are very sorry," answered Florian, with much rough-

596 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Aug.,

ness, " but it is impossible. We do not know you. He is a fool ! "
he added in an undertone. " Any one could understand that
dodge."

" I am very well known at the hotel," said the stranger. " Mr.
Johnston would consider it a personal compliment if you could
oblige me."

" Oh ! that's another thing," said Florian. "Jump in." And,
to Ruth's chagrin and astonishment, the stranger entered, the boat
was pushed off, and in an instant they were scudding like a bird
over the angry bay.

Florian, though not a humorist, had a keen appreciation of
the humorous side of events and men, and, after his very proper
refusal to admit the stranger into the boat, it occurred to him that
a joke would not be out of place in the midst of a serious ad-
venture. Therefore he changed his mind, and, though taken up
with the little vessel, could afford a silent laugh at his future
intentions.

The spy, if such was his character, could hardly be a keen
man or at all fitted for his office. Florian had a reputation for
keenness, and delighted to play off that quality against its coun-
terfeit, rejoicing, as youth and vanity ever does, in the display of
power. The boat flew very rapidly over the water in fact, the
wind was almost too much for the vessel, as some wild seas,
which partly drenched the stranger, plainly showed.

" Quite a rough night," said he, by way of destroying a very
awkward silence.

" One of those nights that bring no one out without a rea-
son," said Florian.

" Well said," replied the stranger, and relapsed into silence, as
if the cut had reached him. Ruth began dimly to perceive that
Florian had an object in his strange action towards the spy.

In half an hour they were at Round Island, and the boat shot
lightly into a sheltered cove.

" Here you are, sir. Come, Ruth/' said Florian, and he swung
the boat to the shore. " Make that rope fast at the bow, and
jump on again," he added in a whisper.

The stranger landed, the bow swung round, Ruth wa*s al-
ready aboard, and with a light shove the boat was far enough
out to catch the wind.

" Excuse me," called the stranger, " but I am not quite sure of
my way."

" Keep away from the water," said Florian, " and you're all
right. Good-night, sir. I am happy to have obliged Mr.
Johnston."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 597

" Thank you ! " came very dubiously from the deserted stran-
ger, and a light laugh from the amused young people floated
back to him.

"I am sorry," said Ruth, "to put him in so sad a plight."

" Faugh ! " cried Florian in disgust. " I could scarcely keep
from punching his head. Don't waste your sentiment, Ruth J
keep it all for me."

" You're but a desert"

" And you're a rose, and you shall bloom for me alone or not
bloom at all. I absorb all your sweetness "

" Pray be silent, Florian. You are not usually so silly, and
this is not the time for extravagance."

" Not the time ! When wind and wave, and cloud and sky
are full of it !" cried he with enthusiasm. " Is not a storm the ex-
travagance of nature ? Are not the thick-strewn stars the ex-
travagance of exhaustless wealth ? Is not our presence here at
this hour on such a night the extravagance of action "

" And was not your treatment of the spy the extravagance of
ridiculousness ? " added she, which drew from Florian a hearty
laugh in the midst of his rhapsody.

" Well, it is a glorious night and a glorious hour," said he,
and would have said more, but that, entering into a narrow chan-
nel which had the full sweep of the wind, he felt constrained to
turn all his attention to the vessel.

Not a small portion of the waves which broke in their path
found a lodging-place in the boat ; and as they emerged from the
channel into a broad bay where the shifting winds had full play,
the little craft began to heave with the " extravagance of action,"
and between altering their course and dodging seas they were a
long time in getting to their destination. It was with great sat-
isfaction Florian sailed under the lee of a pretty island not more
than a mile distant from the Canadian shore.

" This is the place," said Ruth ; " we are to look for a project-
ing rock, a house, and a light."

" That is, you want Scott's oratory, hermitage, ranch, or
whatever you please to call it," he replied.

" Cabin is a good word, for I fancy the hunter is not a man of
much prayer."

" He ought to be, in this solitude." And Florian fell silent,
overcome, perhaps, by the majesty of those scenes through
which he was gliding. All at once a light and a rock burst
upon their view, and the hunter himself stood on the shore to
welcome them in the darkness.

TO BE CONTINUED.

598 PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. [Aug.,

PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH.*

THE old yet ever new contest between religion and its as-
sailants is carried on, as age succeeds to age, with different wea-
pons, along different lines, and with different degrees of intensity.
In the early part of the eighteenth century there was a lull in the
attacks of the church's enemies, soon to be followed by an out-
burst of bitter, mocking hatred, ending in a widespread massacre,
when not a few of the mockers themselves fell victims to the
demons they had evoked. Revolted by the horrors of the
French Revolution and by the excesses of the vulgar, cynical
tyrant from Corsica, the church in the earlier years of the nine-
teenth century again enjoyed, for a time, a comparative immuni-
ty from attack. Since the epoch of Catholic Emancipation, how-
ever, there has taken place another outburst of irreligion which
has colored most modern literature, and the practical conse-
quences of which we have yet to see. There is, however, a con-
siderable difference between the manifestations of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries in opposition to Christianity in the field
of literature. Whilst so many writers of the former century re-
garded, or affected to regard, the founders of Christianity as so
many conscious impostors, modern infidelity professes to regard
them sympathetically and to " explain " by a natural process of
evolution the religion of the cross as well as every other reli-
gion. The task of the Christian apologist has thus become in
some respects easier and in others more difficult. With oppo-
nents, many of whom are really sympathetic and in good faith,
he is bound himself to show sympathy, and scrupulously to
avoid putting forward as necessarily to be believed opinions
which, however widely current amongst Catholics, are not de
fide and may later on be shown to be erroneous by the advance
of physical science. The case of Galileo ought to be ever before
our minds and make us very anxious not to be led to follow in
.the footsteps of those who brought about his condemnation.

* Creeds o/ 'the Day. By Henry Coke. Trubner. 1883.

The Creed of a Modern Agnostic. By Richard Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. George Routledge &
Sons. 1883.

Ancient Religion and Modern Thought. By William Samuel Lilly. Chapman & Hall.

1884.] PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. 599

The hand-to-hand fight with infidelity has to be carried on
mainly by our clergy, to whom our well-disposed youth have
recourse in their difficulties, and to whom inquirers from without
naturally often address themselves. Now, one first condition of
success in any fight is to know the weapons which are to be used
in the encounter. But the time which can be spared for clerical
education is so short that there is little opportunity for the ec-
clesiastical student, before he is sent on the mission, to make him-
self master of the objections now brought against Christianity.
It is, then, very convenient to know where to find a clear and
temperately-stated summary of the greater number of those ob-
jections. Such a summary is to be found in the first of the three
works the titles of which are given in the foot-note on the forego-
ing page. Of these three works, the first, Mr. Coke's, is that of an
apparently candid anpl well-disposed inquirer. The second, Dr.
Bithell's, is an excellent example of a very shallow, anti-Christian,
dogmatic school which, by means of intense self-conceit and re-
iterated, confident assertion, has imposed itself widely on the
young men of our day. The third work is by one whose name,
we should hope, is already known to all our readers as that of a
Catholic of whom we may well be proud for the zeal, ability, and
success with which he has worked in the church's cause. Amongst
all the widespread English-speaking races, from Canada and Scot-
land to New Zealand and the Cape, we know no name amongst
the Catholic laity more deservedly honored for the wonderful
literary ability with which the results of very wide reading and
an exceptionally retentive memory have been given to the cause
of religion than the name of Mr. W. S. Lilly.

Before, however, speaking of his " antidote " we will briefly
revert to the " bane," as exhibited in the two first works.

Mr. Coke's work is in the form of a series of letters, forming
two volumes. This is an unfortunate arrangement, especially as
there is neither index nor table of contents.

The first volume contains a statement of difficulties with re-
spect to the Old and New Testaments, and also treats of evo-
lution, primitive man, spontaneous generation, natural selection,
and the bearing of modern physical science on natural theology.
The second volume is largely occupied with a consideration of
Darwinism, the rest of its contents being devoted to an exposi-
tion of the philosophy of Kant.

Although Mr. Coke is an uncompromising exponent of the
views of modern anti-theological writers, he is no slavish follower
of them. Thus he opposes Herbert Spencer's theory that all

6oo PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. [Aug.,

pagan worship sprang- from a belief in ghosts, saying : * " The
heavens were neither personified nor worshipped because there
were ghosts abroad, but because the heavens appear to change
as living things do." Again, after quoting Huxley's avowal that
" Nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of
the fact is of no small importance in disposing of many minor
objections to the doctrine of transmutation," Mr. Coke acutely
remarks : f " Substitute ' natural selection ' for ' transmutation,'
and this avowal would dispose of the objections by nearly dis-
posing of the doctrine." Mr. Coke is indeed fully alive to many
of the difficulties which oppose the late Mr. Darwin's doctrine
of the origin of species by natural selection, and brings forward
himself not a few objections worthy of consideration, \ but which
it would be out of place here to notice in detail. As to evolu-
tion itself he remarks, " Till heredity is explained no expla-
nation of evolution is possible," and he effectually disposes of
the theory of an originally homogeneous universe by saying : J
" Had all the atoms in the universe been originally alike they
could have embodied but one single kind of energy. They
would, therefore, have produced but one single effect. Rather
they would have produced no effect at all ; for there would be
no sufficient reason why the energy should ever pass into force.
Perfect equilibrium would have existed from eternity, therefore
no change."

The " modern agnostic," Dr. Bithell, tells us *\ that he has
been a teacher of youth for upwards of forty years, and he " has
often been called upon to give some sort of answer to the inqui-
ries of intelligent young men who, unwilling to stop at the point
to which they were carried by the Sunday-school, sought to ac-
quire more extensive and accurate views of the principles of re-
ligion." This teacher is (like Huxley, Spencer, Bain, and Mill)
a disciple of Hume, and holds ** that " foremost among the
things we know are our sensations " a position which necessa-
rily leads to an irrational scepticism, as the present writer has
more than once done his best to point out. ff If it be not recog-
nized that the first object of consciousness is neither our "feel-
ings " nor our " self-existence " (both abstractions), but our actu-
ally feeling-self, no philosophy of any kind,. whether sensational
or intellectual, can sustain itself against the consistent sceptic.

* Vol. i. p. 90. t Vol. ii. p. 38.

% Vol. ii. at pp. 42, 43, 44, 45, 95, 98, and 104. L. c. p. 116.

j L. C; p. 119. H The Creed of a Modern Agnostic, p. 15. ** L. c. p. 36.

tt In his Lessons from Nature and in his Nature and Thought \ as well as in other publica-
tions.

1884.] PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. 601

With this original sin according to which it is impossible for
any man to know himself inherent in his system, a foregone
conclusion necessarily vitiates Dr. Bithell's reasonings about our
knowledge of Almighty God, and makes him misapprehend* the
arguments which justify our certainty as to divine attributes
which entirely surpass our powers of imagination. Dr. Bithell
has not even taken the trouble to inform himself f what is meant
by the terms " person " and " personality " in the philosophy which
has endured the longest and spread the widest of all those which
divide amongst them the assent of mankind ; neither has he made
so much as an attempt to ascertain what theologians signify by
the Divine Omnipotence.^: If he thus errs by defect with respect
to the representatives of orthodoxy, he no less errs by excess in
the pictures he draws of the representatives of heterodoxy, and
especially of his favorite form of it agnosticism. Men who
know intimately a considerable number of our leading agnostics
will hardly recognize the exactness of what he says of them in
the following passage : " Prayer, to these men, is a very serious
and solemn exercise ; it is rarely engaged in except after much
meditation and study of God's revealed will. But then this
meditation and study forms a large part of the business of their
lives, and ramifies all the thoughts and contemplations of their
waking hours. These are the men of whom it may be most truly
said, * They walk with God.' Troubles and afflictions drive them
only the more closely to him ; that is, lead them to contemplate
more assiduously the way in which he works, as shown in Scrip-
ture, in history, and in his mode of dealing with his creatures.
The prayers of such men are like the ' effectual, fervent prayer of
the righteous man, that availeth much.' "

It is refreshing indeed to turn from this pretentious and shal-
low effusion to the richly-filled volume of Mr. W. S. Lilly. It is
difficult to say whether it is the matter or the style of this work
which is the more worthy of commendation. Just as it is useless
to take into the stomach any substance, however rich in nutritive
material, unless it is in a form suited for digestion, so many writ-
ings full of the most valuable truths are devoid of practical value
because their truths are conveyed in a form which either repels
the taste or too greatly tries the understanding. Mr. Lilly's
book is at once admirable from the flowing, facile, and attractive
manner in which it is written, and also from the remarkable
lucidity with which very recondite thoughts are by it presented
in a form adapted to the comprehension of every ordinary reader

* Pp. 69-85 and 149, 150. t See p. 75- \ See p. 72. P. 122.

602 PHASES OF FAITH AND UN FAITH. [Aug.,

of such matters. It consists of five chapters, respectively en-
titled: (i) The Message of Modern Thought; (2) The Claims of
Ancient Religion ; (3) Religions and Religion ; (4) Naturalism
and Christianity ; and (5) Matter and Spirit.

These, as his preface tells us, have already, to some extent,
been previously given to the world as articles in the leading
reviews. But the book is far from being a mere reprint. It
contains a considerable amount of new matter, while the old has
been carefully revised, and more or less rewritten, to fit it for
its present purpose.

The " Message of Modern Thought " refers to Schopenhauer
and his school, that wonderful outcome of the spirit of evil the
spirit whose essence is negation and destruction, and the outcome
of which is pessimism in thought and nihilism in action. This
pessimism, which underlies so much of the poetry as well as the
philosophy of the nineteenth century, reposes, in great part, on
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which, as Mr. Lilly truly says,
" has given the tone to the speculative thought of the century,
and has infiltrated itself into the minds of millions who have never
read a line of it." Indeed, our author himself is to a slight ex-
tent an example of the wide extent of this influence, and he goes
farther than we can in sympathy with the sage of Konigsberg,
although he heartily repudiates the teaching of the Critique, taken
by itself. The outspokenness of Schopenhauer has, however, its
value. " He raises directly the question, with a vigor, a clear-
ness, a logical incisiveness peculiarly his own, whether life shorn
of its theistic basis is worth living. Nor is it easy to see what
answer can be given to the pessimistic argument, save that sup-
plied by religious faith. ' How can I hold myself up in this
miserable life, unless Thou strengthen me with thy mercy and thy
grace ? ' asks the mediasval author of The Imitation, and the nine-
teenth century echoes back the How ? ' Un monde sans Dieu
est horrible,' M. Renan confesses. To Schopenhauer belongs the
merit of having exhibited that horror in its fulness." But what
other merit was his ? What manner of man was the preacher of
' this new evangel ? He never married, and appears to have de-
clined, as far as possible, all the ordinary duties of life. Even his
professed admirers attributed to him "arrogance" and " vanity "
in the worst sense of the word. As Mr. Lilly tells us : " He pro-
fessed a great respect for the memory of his deceased father, but
to his living mother he exhibited ' a shocking want of filial piety.'
In politics he was a strenuous advocate of absolutism. Like
Voltaire, he held the people to be ' a collection of bears and

1884.] PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. 603

swine,' and he regarded all pleadings for their liberty, f/eedom,
and happiness as hollow twaddle. He appears in practice to
have approximated to the Byronic standard of the whole duty of
man, ' to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.'
1 The more I see of men,' says Schopenhauer, ' the less I like
them. If I could but say so of women, all would be well.' " Such
was one of the heroes of modern philosophy. " By their fruits
ye shall know them."

In his second chapter our author reviews the great Tractarian
movement with an eloquence in great part due to his tender and
loving reverence for that great man whose figure will assume
relatively larger and larger proportions as this century recedes
into the past we mean Cardinal Newman. The next chapter,
entitled " Religions and Religion," contains a concise and admi-
rable statement of religious views more or less prevalent in Asia
amongst Chinese, Parsees, Hindus, Buddhists, and Mohamme-
dans. Very noteworthy is the high degree of spirituality which
sometimes appears to be reached by Mohammedan ascetics.
Thus we may cite the following prayerful confession of sin ad-
dressed to the Almighty : " Thou doest only good. We have done
very wickedly. Every instant of our existence has been marked
by new faults. We have never once obeyed thy laws with a heart
entirely submissive and content. A fugitive slave I approach thy
gate. Shame hath covered my face. But thyself hast com-
manded thy servants not to give themselves up to despair.
Thou shalt purify me from my sins before thou turnest me again
to the dust." One much tried by the praise of men would
exclaim : " O God ! save me from this glory, the requital of which
may be confusion in another life " ; and again : " O my God ! when
shall I unite myself to thee ? O God most high ! how long wilt
thou leave me to consume away in this cruel separation ? " This
review of ancient religions leads on to the fourth chapter, in which
the modern system of " Naturalism " is contrasted with Christian-
ity. At first sight it might seem that since so great a religious ele-
vation may be attained in a non- Christian system such as Moham-
medanism, an elevation at least as great may accompany the so-
called " Natural Religion " of to-day. But so to conclude would be
a great mistake, since Mohammedanism, however erroneous, is at
least a real religion, whereas modern " Naturalism " is no religion
at all. As a type of this Natural Religion Mr. Lilly passes in
review the views of the author of Ecce Homo. According to that
author,* God is to be conceived of as physical " nature including

* L. c. p. 210.

604 PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. [Aug.,

humanity," or " the unity which all things compose in virtue of the
universal presence of the same laws." But the author of Natural
Religion quite recognizes that " to many, if not most, of those who
feel the need of religion " all that he has to offer will seem a
mockery. He frankly owns that " whether it deserves to be
called a faith at all ... may be doubted," and that it does not
seem to him " by any means satisfactory, or worthy to replace
the Christian view " ; and it must be hard not to agree with him.
But, as Mr. Lilly justly reminds us, the experiment of a mere
natural religion has been tried on a large scale under circum-
stances more favorable than are ever likely to recur, and yet
when so tried has proved a conspicuous and ever-memorable
failure. After the abolition of Christianity in France the " na-
tural religion" of the Theophilanthropists came forward to take its
place in 1797, aided by the support of a despotic government and
by the revulsion which had arisen against the filthy atheism of
Chaumette and Hebert. Nevertheless its failure was utter and
ignominious. Well may Cardinal Newman ask, as our author
tells us he did ask : " Which is the greater assumption that we
can do without religion, or that we can find a substitute for
Christianity?"

Mr. Lilly then, in the form of an animated and most readable
dialogue between two old college friends, proceeds to consider
some of the deepest problems of our own or of any past age
such as the opposition to the conception of a personal Will as
the cause of the universe ; what is the true conception of univer-
sal law and order; the moral proof of God's existence, viewed
in the light of evolution ; the mystery of sin and suffering ; di-
vine goodness and retributive punishment and he then proceeds
to a series of considerations touching certain historical difficulties.
We heartily commend the careful perusal of these considerations.
They are admirable from their breadth of view and the generous
sympathy they manifest for noble, well-meaning souls wander-
ing in the mazes of doubt, but seeking] truth, if haply they may
find it.

That religion, and the Christian religion, forms the one pana-
cea for the evils of the world is asserted in eloquent and forcible
words.* " Is not Pascal's saying abundantly verified, that * na-
ture offers nothing but matter of doubt and disquietude ' ? Can
physical science claiming to be the only science supply ethi-
cal sanctions ? . . . Shut off from man's mind the ideas of God,
eternity, free-will, of ' justice, chastity, and judgment to come,'

* P. 302.

1884.] PHASES OF FAITH AND UNFAITH. 605

and what remains of him is a mere animal. . . . At the touch of
materialism, as Luthardt has said with equal pungency and truth,
* morality ceases to exist ; ethics are converted into a bill of fare.'
Alas for the masses, born to toil and suffer, if they are to live
and die on this gospel, the last word of which in practice is
wealth, physical comforts, self a gospel sad enough in any age
of .the world, saddest in this when the most notable result of our
much-vaunted progress is to make life softer for the few, but
ever harder for the many ; to reduce the workman to a mere
machine there is a world of meaning in the term ' hand,' so
often applied to designate him wearing out his life to produce
luxuries which he may not share, in those grim temples of indus-
trialism

" ' Where is offered up

To Gain, the master-idol of this realm, "

Perpetual sacrifice.' "

In his fifth and last chapter, Mr. Lilly proceeds to treat of
(in a continuation of the former conversation) the great question
of personal immortality and a future state, incidentally touching
on the question of the nature of matter. As to the former question,
the argument appears to us to be somewhat weakened by the
absence of a clearly pointed out distinction between a rational
soul which thinks and the souls of " fleas," which, in spite of Sir
Joseph Banks, are (to our reason) happily as clearly incapable of
immortality as of " damnation." The way in which our author
speaks of matter he explains in his preface. By it he does not
mean matter in the abstract the materia prima of the scholastics
but matter informed ; and he truly and forcibly puts forward
the reasonable doctrine that the mere essential constituent of
every material object, however low in the scale, is itself the im-
material form.

It is a very long time since we have had to welcome so ad-
mirable and telling an addition to the store of Catholic contro-
versial writing as is the Ancient Religion and Modern Thought of Mr.
Lilly. We earnestly hope that our clerical as well as our lay
readers will not fail to make themselves masters of its contents.
In so doing they will assuredly enjoy no small amount of plea-
sure; but the really important point is that at the same time they
can hardly fail to become thereby informed and strengthened
.not only as to the main points of attack of modern infidelity, but
also as to the most telling and persuasive modes of meeting such
attack. In the name of all English-speaking Catholics we most
cordially thank this author for this addition to our too scanty
Catholic literature.

606 TA-WAN-DAH, THE LAST OF THE PECOS. [Aug.,

TA-WAN-DAH, THE LAST OF THE PECOS.

A LEGEND.

IT was the month of May. The month of the flowers was
on its decline ; a soft breeze, perfumed with the sweet odors
of the pino real, the green oak, and the flowers of the moun-
tain, swept over the solitude. The heavens were cloudless ;
only a light fog was unfolding itself as a white drapery over the
valley, and pointed to the course of the Rio Pecos. It was the
hour when the beautiful night opens to the evening breeze its
many-colored calyx. Silence extended afar by degrees, like the
shadows. You heard only, at intervals, in the deep of the forest,
the bark of a solitary wolf, the piercing song of the late whip-
poor-will, and the far murmurings of the waters of the Pecos as
they rushed against the boulders fallen from the mountain.

A young woman at the foot of a stately pine, on her knees,
with joined hands and eyes suffused with tears, prayed with fer-
vor. On her pale forehead reigned an inexpressible sadness ;
her long hair streamed on her shoulders as a mourning veil. A
beautiful child slept at her side. By turns she looked at the
starry heavens and at her son ; she was calling upon Heaven for
protection. In a low voice she was singing her prayer :

" Great Spirit, God of my husband,
Forget not poor Ta-wan-dah :
Have pity on her boy ! "

Then she placed her hand upon her heart, as if to hinder it
from breaking, and, rising, she threw back her long hair, and tak-
ing vines of clematis and hops, which are many in the valley of
the Pecos, she made a little bed and suspended it to the branches
of the pine, and softly she placed her little one on this graceful
couch swaying amid the perfumes of the forest.

"Sleep, my son, sleep ! Fear not the bite of the mosquito ; thy mother
watches over thee, the good spirits love thee, the Queen of heaven smiles
over thee ; sleep, my son, sleep.

" When thou wast born, my son, thou shed tears and I laughed ; now
thou smilest and I shed tears. Blood has been spilt the blood of thy fa-
ther. They have pitied neither my cries nor my tears. The barbarous
ones ! Should they have found thee oh ! I tremble with terror. Thy
smiles and thy innocence should not have saved thee from a terrible death.

1884.] TA- WAN-DA ff, THE LAST OF THE PECOS. 607

Blessed be God ! Mary has saved my child ; her love protects thee. Sleep,
O my son ! sleep ; fear not the bite of the mosquito ; thy mother watches
over thee, the good spirits love thee ; sleep, O my son ! sleep.

"When I left the hut I said : What will become of us ? Suddenly a ray
of hope shot into my heart, and, checking myself, I said : Have we not a
Father in heaven ? The dove is weak, and who can hinder her from build-
ing her nest ? The birds are without help, and who can hinder their sing-
ing? The storm troubles an instant the water of the river; the storm
over, all is calm, the waters are clear ! Sleep, O my son ! sleep ; fear not
the bite of the mosquito ; thy mother watches over thee, the good spirits
love thee ; sleep, O my son ! sleep." *

Thus in a low murmur sang the young mother.

About thirty miles to the southeast of the Villa Real de Santa
F6 the upper course of the Rio Pecos traverses a broad valley
extending in width, from east to west, about six or eight miles,
and in length, from northwest to southeast, from twenty to
twenty-five. The altitude of this valley is, on an average, not
less than six thousand three hundred feet, f The mesa, or table-
land, on the right bank of the river rises abruptly to nearly
two thousand feet higher, and the sierras which bound the
valley on the north rise to ten thousand feet, and even the
Santa Fe Baldez, seen at the extreme north, exceeds twelve
thousand feet. The Rio Pecos, a fine mountain-stream of lim-
pid water and filled with speckled trout, in the upper part of
the valley hugs closely the mountains of Tecolote, and then
runs almost directly south until it empties in the Rio Grande
five degrees more to the south, in the State of Texas. Nearly
in the centre of the valley, two miles west of the river, there
rises a narrow, semi-circular cliff, or mesilla, over the bed of a
stream known as the Arrojo of Pecos, which is not to be con-
founded with the river proper, but is a tributary to it. The
southern end of this tabular cliff is covered with very extensive
ruins. These ruins are known under the name of the Old Pueblo
of Pecos.

It was in the year 1840. Mexico had shaken off the yoke of
Spain some nineteen or twenty years before ; the holy Francis-
can fathers who had attended for centuries to the spiritual needs
of their Indian children had all been removed or put to death.
Desolation, spiritual as well as temporal, pervaded the land.
The war-whoop was heard over the sierras and mesas of New
Mexico. Indian tribes were in convulsion. The Pecos Indians

* This song is found in many Indian legends.

t According to Lieut.-Col. W. H. Emory. See Notes of a Military Reconnaissance from
Fort Leavenworth to San Diego, in California, 1848.

6o8 TA-WAN-DAH, THE LAST OF THE PECOS. [Aug.,

were living relatively in peace in their beautiful valley. Their
stately church, built of adobes and dedicated to San Antonio de
Padua, had lost much of its former glory ; the people assembled
there no more to hear the voice of their pastors. The cloisters
themselves, that had hidden so many virtues ; the cells of the
monks all were empty now. The poor pueblos had forgotten
much of their former fervor, and all the idolatrous devices of the
Aztecs had taken the ascendency. Medicine-men, or jugglers,
were at their work again. The estufa was reconstructed for the
Montezuma fire ; and another estufa had been dug out as a palace
for a horrid rattlesnake, the god of the place. As of old, this
serpent was satisfied only with the flesh of young infants. Lots
were drawn, and the innocent little victim was thrown alive into
that horrible estufa, and the serpent, coiling around him ; cov-
ered him with his slimy spittle and slowly devoured him, whilst
above, at the sound of the Indian drum, a lively dance was
executed, in which the desolate mother took part, hiding her
tears as best she could ; for it would have been a crime punish-
able by all Indian laws should it have been known that she shed
tears.*

Now the lot had fallen upon the first-born of Ta-wan-dah.
But the poor Indian mother was a true Christian. She had been
baptized by good Father Augustine, a saintly priest, who had
the special charge of the Pecos, while others attended to pueb-
los in Galisteo, San Marcos, and elsewhere. Her husband was a
Frenchman, the son of pious parents who had emigrated from
France and had settled in a beautiful spot on the Gila River
near the Casas Grandes, and while yet a young boy had been
carried away by a roving band of Comanches, and subse-
quently bought from them by the governor of Pecos and adopted
into the nation. The first lessons of his mother had remained
deeply printed in his mind, and ever after, in the midst of all the
lewdness and orgies of the Pecos, he kept himself unstained and
his hand was free from injustice and robbery. His name was
Antoine ; his family name he recollected not, but the Pecos called
him, in their language, the Frenchman. Raised in the family of

* The story of the Great Snake (la vivora grande) is not believed by some ; yet it is widely
circulated. It is positively asserted, and even Ruiz affirmed, that the tale, as far as the Pecos
were concerned, was certainly true ; he, however, could never see the reptile. It is even said
that now the Jemez and the Taos Indians adore the vivora, which they keep alive in some in-
accessible and hidden mountain recess. It is even dimly hinted at that human sacrifices might
be associated with this already sufficiently hideous worship. The prospects of securing know-
ledge of it are not very good. The Indians themselves appear to deny it, and are generally very
reticent about their aboriginal beliefs.

1884.] TA-WAN-DAH, THE LAST OF THE PECOS. 609

the governor, whose son had died in war, and whose place he
had taken, he grew up a man of much valor and counsel among
the Pecos. At the age of nineteen he married Ta-wan-dah, the
daughter of his benefactor, whom he had previously instructed
in her religion, since they were bereft of all spiritual comfort.
The marriage ceremony was performed by Father Matteo in a
missionary journey he made from Texas to the Navajo Indians.

Already the drum-drum was heard ; the Pecos had put on
the last touch of red ; the serpent was hissing in his estufa, licking
his sides with his tongue^ his fangs waiting for his usual meal.
But where was Ta-wan-dah ? No one had seen her : she had
fled to the woods with her babe. Vengeance was vowed by the
nation, and, to appease the evil spirit below, two infants were
thrown into the estufa. The dance was more noisy than ever ;
the serpent was rioting in good cheer

A cry is heard : " The Apaches ! " All is confusion at the
pueblo ; men rush for their bows and arrows ; women and chil-
dren scream. It is too late. The Apaches from the brush of the
Rio Pecos had watched their movements ; night had come, and
they were fatigued. Their plan succeeded well. From the
mouth of the Arroyo of Pecos they ascended the dry stream,
crouching like so many tigers ready to leap on their prey. The
Frenchman, on his flight to the brush, had perceived them, and,
leaving there his beloved wife and infant, was rushing back to
the pueblo to give the alarm ; but, alas ! he was perceived, and
seven arrows brought him to the ground. They did not molest
him, thinking him dead. During the carnage at the pueblo
Ta-wan-dah came to him, and, with her boy in her arms and her
husband leaning on her shoulder, she took to the woods along
the bank of the Rio Pecos. But it was too late : the wounded
man lay down and died.

Ta-wan-dah did not forsake her husband. She prayed with
him, she consoled him ; and when he had passed away she cover-
ed him with branches, and planted a cross made of brushwood
upon his tomb: Then, raising herself and holding her babe in
her arms, she bade farewell to the poor, pierced body of her love.

" Adieu, O my own, adieu ! But yesterday in our happiness
we expected sorrows ; to-day," she cried, " behold, here I am !
No murmur, O my heart, no murmur ! The God who united
us separated us, blessed be his holy name ! The absence will be
short ; soon we both will be in our happy camping-grounds.
Farewell, broken flower; light of my path, farewell ! "

And she started deeper into the woods of the Pecos River to
VOL. xxxix. 39

6io TA-WAN-DAH, THE LAST OF THE PECOS. [Aug.,

avoid the Apaches, and also, perhaps, to meet the few Pecos In-
dians who she knew had fled to the mountains on the other side
of the river during the slaughter at the pueblo, and now were
hid in the low woods and brush which cover the banks of the
river. On she walked with her precious treasure, now listen-
ing carefully for the least sound, frightened at the very rustling
of leaves under her feet, her heart beating at every shadow.
Finally, footsore, hungry, and almost fainting with anxiety and
want, she sat at the foot of the pino real under which we found
her at the commencement of this sketch.

The red sky of the west had long before been drowned in the
waters of the Pacific Ocean. Night became darker every mo-
ment. All was silence, only in the far distance was heard the
cry of a solitary coyote ; the katydid was chirping her evening
song, and the Peeps, breaking its waves against the rocky masses
which barred, its rushing course, resembled the voice of distant
thunder. Cooling sleep did not come to close the lids of Ta-
wan-dah, swollen with many tears. Her eyes became, as it were,
a fountain of tears, as her heart was a fountain of prayer.

Soon the little boy awoke from his slumbers in his elevated
cradle ; the mother rushed to him, and, taking him tenderly in her
arms, pressed him to her heart. But, O poor mother ! the cry
of the little one had been heard by the fiends lying in wait for
him and for thee. A rustling of leaves is heard ; a number of
Apaches rush upon her like a pack of tigers. The war-whoop
is sounded ; Ta-wan-dah is dying with terror. They say to one
another: " Here they are ! " They keep coming six, eight, ten !
Their blankets are covered with blood, wolfs' tails drag at their
heels, ferocity is depicted upon their savage faces. All frighten
Ta-wan-dah their costume, their language, their looks. They
are the same Apaches who spilt the blood of her husband.

The brigands, persuaded that the woman was not alone,
prepared the " post of the torture " to make her declare where
her companions were hid. They lit a large fire of resinous
branches, tied her hands behind her back* and, binding her to the
torture-post, commenced their bloody work under the very tree
which had protected her. Her boy was thrown violently to the
ground, crying for his mother, who was helpless to save him.

One of the monsters, applying a coal of fire to her body, cried
out in a ferocious tone of voice :

" Woman, where are thy companions?"

" I told you I have no companions ; you have killed my hus-
band, and I was flying away with my child when you found me."

1884.] TA-WAN-DAH, THE LAST OF THE PECOS. 611

Ribald pleasantries passed from mouth to mouth.

The one who seemed to be the leader of the infernal band
called them in council and proposed not to put her to death, but
bring her captive into their Apache country. The advice seem
ed to please those demons ; so the poor Indian woman was not
put to death that night, and all, wrapping themselves in their
blankets, composed themselves to sleep, leaving her, however,
tied to the post of torture, while her babe, after much crying, had
gone to sleep.

About midnight the chief arose, and, cutting her bonds with
his navaja, said to her in a whisper :

" Woman, courage ! Take thy child ; I will deliver thee.
Silence ! Follow me."

Filled with joy, she took her baby boy and followed the man.
All was silence ; even the beasts of the forest had retired to their
dens. Silently they ascended the right bank of the Rio Pecos
to the place where now stands \heplaza, or village, of Pecos, and,
crossing the river by wading through, they followed up the left
bank on the hillside to a place where the river makes a sharp
elbow, running to the northwest instead of southeast, its general
course. This strange freak of the Rio Pecos is caused by huge
rocks of volcanic matter thrown in its way by the convulsions of
primitive ages. At that place the brush along the river is not
thick, a few trees standing here and there in the crags of the
rocky bluff. There the Apache sat down, beckoning his prisoner
to do the same.

I seated myself on the same rock during the summer of 1873
while a guest at the house of my friend, Padre Breen, then pastor
of Pecos. It is an enchanting place. The mesa is arid, but the
Pecos far below rushes with impetuosity ; its waters are white
with foam. Here and there you see clusters of adobe houses
perched at the foot of the mountain, the river bathing their feet.
There dwell a few Mexican families, cultivating diminutive fields
around their dwellings. A distance up the mountain flocks of
sheep and goats are feeding on the blades of grama grass grow-
ing in the crevices of the rocks, while the whole is crowned by
the snowy summits of the Sierra Madre.

Ta-wan-dah, filled with apprehensions, having obeyed the
order of the Apache, he turned upon her his piercing eyes and
horrid face.

" Woman," said he, " thou art in my power ; thy life or thy
death is in my hands. Not a word, not a cry, or my navaja puts
an end to thy wicked life. Consent to become my wife, and I

6l2 TA-WAN-&4H,- THE LAST OF THE PECOS. [Aug.,

will adopt thy boy, I will take care of him, and I will bring thee,
my bride, to my mountain home, and thou shalt be the light of
my hut."

" Never will I marry the murderer of my husband."

" Consent at once or thou art dead."

"Never!"

Snatching her boy from her arnft, he took him by one foot,
and, dangling him head downward, prepared to dash his brains
out upon the rocks. The woman, terrified, besought him in vain.
The cries of the little one could not soften his heart.

" Thou seest, woman ; consent to become my wife or thy boy
is dead."

" Mother of mercy, have pity on him and me! Great Spirit,
save him and me ! "

Suddenly uttering a great cry, the cruel Apache falls, his
heart pierced with an arrow. A few muttered curses, a scream,
a nervous motion of the body, and all is over. There he lies life-
less ugly still in death.

Some fugitives from the pueblo of Pecos had found refuge in
the rocks a few feet below the place where sat Ta-wan-dah and
the wild Apache. They had heard all, and one of them, taking
his bow, had shot an arrow into the heart of the villain and sent
him to his reward.

The poor fugitives travelled much and were sore-footed. Ta-
wan-dah remained with them. They had forgiven her flight
from the pueblo on the terrible night of the massacre. Misfor-
tune had checked their superstition. They helped her to bring
up her baby boy. They finally found rest with the Indians of
Jemez, where the truly Christian Ta-wan-dah gave beautiful ex-
amples of virtue, converted her adopted nation from many of the
horrors of superstition, and brought them more and more to the
great light of the Gospel.

Her boy lives still, an old and honored member of the pueblo.

The old pueblo of Pecos soon fell in ruins ; relic-hunters took
the very beams of the edifice ; the graves of the poor Pecos have
been desecrated by vandals under the guise of curiosity-seekers.
Nothing could stop this work of destruction till, a few months
ago, the present pastor, Padre Leon Malluchet, wisely fenced the
venerable ruins to save them from utter destruction.*

* The learned A. F. Bandelier has published a very fine work entitled Ruins in the Valley
of the Rio Pecos. Much information upon the Pecos can be gathered from this important work.

1884.] Two MIRACULOUS CjmK)M JUDAISM. 613

TWO MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM.

SAUL OF TARSUS AND ALPHONSE RATISBONNE.

SOME years ago an ecclesiastical fine gentleman, in a lecture
before a select audience at Hartford, alluded in a tone of genteel
irony to the apparition of the Blessed Virgin in the grotto of
Lourdes and the miracles wrought there. The allusion was re-
ceived by his refined auditors with a burst of derisive laughter.
Little wonder, and perhaps we may add small blame, if any, that
a story of supernatural occurrences in which a poor barefooted
peasant-girl was the heroine should be received with incredulity
in a circle of the ttite of society, in their own opinion also the
elect of God, having " the promise of the life that now is, as well
as of that which is to come/' Is it not notorious that Joseph,
Mary, and our Lord were of royal birth ? Did they not always
show their preference for " high company " ? Whoever has the
slightest understanding of the hidden meaning of the Gospel
must perceive that our Lord always intended to teach that
" blessed are the rich, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The
best critics are agreed that in the interpretation of the Holy
Scriptures a sense must often be given to the words which is the
precise contrary of their literal and natural meaning, especially
when the latter is absurd. Translated into the language of
common sense, and interpreted by the common consciousness of
the most enlightened Christians, certain passages grossly mis-
understood by the ignorant and superstitious adherents of " the
letter which killeth," according to their true spirit really denote
that Christ came to found a social state in which culture and
elegance should reach their highest point and their most exten-
sive diffusion. " How hardly shall they that have (not) riches
enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle " than for the gross and rude to
pass through the narrow aperture fitted for the most delicate
silk thread.

Really when one sees a church filled up with common work-
ing people, who live in an unsightly suburb known in ordinary
parlance by some such dreadfully vulgar name as " Hog Hill,"
what can be thought of a lady or gentleman who will resort to
such a place by preference ? Must they not be considered by

614 Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. [Aug.,

truly sensible and refined people to have the same strange taste
for " low company " which Miss Blimber with the spectacles as-
cribed to poor Paul Dombey, because he liked to associate with
" old Glubb " ?

John Bunyan undoubtedly had genius, and must therefore be
allowed to deserve the admiration of the most aesthetic ; yet, after
all, he was a tinker* in his youth, and more familiar with Bedford
jail than with the mansions of the great. And he seems to have
indulged his spite against the more favored class of society
when he drew the caricature of Demas, a gentleman who loved
religion most when she walked in silver slippers. Silver slippers
are becoming the dignity of a goddess. It is bad taste to prefer
wooden shoes. A religion that is accommodated to the infe-
rior and rude mental condition of children and adults who are
childish, that appeals to their love of the marvellous, that con-
sults their predisposition to external objects which strike the
senses, that is founded on a belief which submits without ques-
tioning to an authority that overawes untutored minds, that is
fitted for half-civilized ages and nations, surely cannot claim the
homage of the educated, the refined, the superior classes of a
highly intelligent and cultivated society.

This is the latent meaning of the laugh of the polite audience,
the sneer of the fashionable drawing-room, the supercilious air
which is assumed by those who would pass for the most enlight-
ened, progressive, and advanced disciples or teachers of some-
thing higher than the religion " hidden from the wise and pru-
dent and revealed to babes and sucklings/' whether they call it
Christianity, philosophy, science, culture, or any other name.

Their common sentiment is derision for what they look down
upon as the religion of an inferior order of men. Certain ones
openly say that it is the religion of the apostles and proph-
ets, Christianity as a professed revelation, and the natural
theism which underlies it, which they reject and despise, ex-
pecting to go far towards effecting its complete disappearance
from the civilized world. The two closely allied claims to the
mental homage of belief, that of miracle and that of revelation,
are utterly abhorrent to them, as involving an enslavement and
degradation of the mind and of all nature. But there are pro-
fessed Christians, insisting on the reasonableness of believing in
a revelation and in certain miracles, who deride, not Christian-
ity in the abstract, but that concrete, actual Christianity whose
glorious surname has always been " Catholic." And their aver-
sion is just as distinctly against revelation in its authentic, genu-

1884.] Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. 615

ine character, as proposed and enforced by an authority of divine
origin and right, as it is against the miracles which are direct
attestations of this divine authority of the Catholic Church, and
the truth of specific dogmas which they reject. They divide be-
tween certain miracles recorded in the Scripture and essentially
connected with the truth, even purely historical, of its most im-
portant records, and all others. They are most anxious to show
a difference in the two classes of miracles of such a kind that the
acceptance of the former class is perfectly compatible with the
rejection of the latter.

It is well known that Gibbon, who was first a Protestant, then
a Catholic, and finally an apostate into infidelit}'', places all these
miracles on the same level in respect to their credibility. He
argues that any reason which suffices to discredit the latter class
is equally fatal against the former. Wherefore Protestants, such
as Guizot arid Milrnan, and other more recent writers, have ex-
erted themselves to make a complete separation between the
two causes.

We will not affirm that no difference whatever exists, for
there are certainly miracles on which Christianity rests which in
historical credibility far surpass most of the commonly admitted
facts of human history, which are attested to us immediately by
the divine veracity and are among the objects of divine faith.
On the other hand, there are no post-apostolic miracles which
can demand,./^ se t more than human faith or claim more than
a human credibility. And in single cases this varies with the
greater or less amount of moral evidence by which they are at-
tested or which is accessible, from slight probability up to the
highest degree of moral certainty.

Yet they are alike in this viz., that an a priori rejection of
the second class of miracles logically requires a rejection of the
first class. They are alike in respect to merely human, historical,
and rational credibility, inasmuch as they must be examined and
judged of, according to the same criterion and the same common
laws of testimony and physical or moral evidence.

We have not found that Protestants are any less superficial
and supercilious in dealing with ecclesiastical miracles than are
infidels and sceptics in dealing with all miracles alike. John
Bunyan, in his Holy War, describes Diabolus as placing one Mn
Prejudice with a company of fifty deaf men to guard the Ear-
Gate of the town of Mansoul. Cardinal Newman, in his admi-
rable Lectures on Catholicism in England, a perusal of which we
take occasion earnestly to recommend, proves that prejudice is

616 Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. [Aug.,

the life, ignorance the protection, assumed principles are the in-
tellectual ground of the Protestant view of Catholicism, making
special application of his general argument to this very matter of
miracles.* With this reference on the general subject we leave
it for the sake of one particular instance which will serve as an
example and illustration of the analogy between the two classes
of miracles above mentioned. The instance is that of the con-
version of the young Israelite, Alphonse Ratisbonne, considered
in its analogy to the conversion of St. Paul, and its real though
diminished likeness to that momentous event in the apostolic
history, in respect to its credibility and its significance.

A knowledge of the history of St. Paul's conversion may be
taken for granted. Dr. Farrar, who takes, as nearly as he can,
the line of those who look at the apostolic history merely as a
matter of critical and rational inquiry and examination, in his
Life and Work of St. Paul writes as follows in respect to his con-
version :

" It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of St. Paul's conversion
as one of the evidences of Christianity. That he should have passed, by
one flash of conviction, not only from darkness to light, but from one
direction of life to the very opposite, is not only characteristic of the man,
but evidential of the power and significance of Christianity. That the
same man who, just before, was persecuting "Christianity with the most
violent hatred, should come all at once to believe in Him whose followers
he was seeking to destroy, and that in this faith he should become a ' new
creature ' what is this but a victory which Christianity owed to nothing
but the spell of its own inherent power? " t

Dr. Farrar says more, which we have not quoted, because it
is not relevant to our purpose, proving, as it does, a kind and
degree of importance in St. Paul's testimony to the truth of
Christianity which is transcendent, placing his conversion far
above any similar and subsequent event. It is easy for any one
who wishes to do so to read the whole of Dr. Farrar's eloquent
chapter on the conversion of Saul. The conversion of M. Ratis-
bonne is parallel to it, in the same way that a short line may be
parallel, though it is unequal, to a long line. There is a similarity
in the persons in respect to their violent passion for Judaism and
antipathy to Christianity, their high position in the Jewish sect,
and their zeal for the conversion of other Jews after their becom-
ing ministers of the Christian religion. There is a similarity in

* Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England. Addressed to the Brothers of
the Oratory. By John Henry Newman. D.D., Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Third
edition. Dublin : James Duffy. 1857. Lectures vi., vii., viii. Pp. 274-288.

t Farrar's Life and Work of St. Paul, c. x., " Seaside Library " edition, p. 26.

1884.] Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. 617

the manner of their conversion, and the sudden, permanent
change which it produced in their whole course of life. There
is a similarity in respect to the trustworthiness of their testimony
to the proximate and supernatural cause of their conversion, as
accredited by their moral character and subsequent manner of
life. There is a similarity in respect to the renunciation of
worldly goods and advantages, together with a voluntary devo-
tion to a life of self-sacrifice and disinterested labor for the sake
of Jesus Christ and their fellow-men, which both these Jewish
converts embraced.

A short account of M. Ratisbonne, of his conversion, and of
his subsequent career, which is not yet finished,* will put the
truth of these statements in a clear light.

Alphonse Ratisbonne was a younger son of a wealthy Israel-
ite of Strassburg. In the year 1841 he was betrothed to a cousin,
w T hose extreme youth caused the parents of the young people to
delay their nuptials for a year or two. During the interval he
was sent away from home to travel, and came to Rome, rather by
accident than from any motive of curiosity or interest, and with
the intention of making a very short stay. It happened that a
visit which he paid to an old schoolmate, Baron Gustave de Bus-
siere, led to an acquaintance with his brother, Baron Theodore, a
convert to the Catholic Church, who immediately conceived an
ardent 'desire and hope for the conversion of the young Israelite,
and induced many pious persons to pray for it, besides making
an earnest and persistent effort to induce his new friend to give
his attention seriously to the subject. These efforts seemed
likely to prove a total failure, and were apparently wholly ineffec-
tual. Ratisbonne was not well instructed in his own religion ;
he was a young man of the world, with the opinions and senti-
ments of the free-thinking and not at all of the rabbinical set in
the synagogue. He was more like a Sadducee than a Pharisee.
In this respect he was very unlike Saul of Tarsus. Drach and
Liebermann, in regard of their thoroughly rabbinical education,
furnish a better parallel to St. Paul, as examples of the power of
truth and grace to convert proud and stubborn Pharisees imbued
with all the prejudices of Jewish tradition into humble believers
in Christ. His Jewish prejudice was one of race and family,
it was social and political, and gave his animosity against Chris-
tianity, of whose religious doctrines he was profoundly ignorant,
the quality of a patriotic hatred against the cause of the down-

* An announcement of his death has just appeared in the daily papers, but we are not yet
certain of its correctness.

618 Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. [Aug.,

fall and scattering- of his own nation. Yet he was as bitter and
violent and obstinate in this hatred as if he had been brought up
on the Mishna ; his visit to Rome only increased his antipathy,
and he received all the reasonings and entreaties of his Catholic
friends in a spirit of mocking levity. His elder brother, Theodore,
had for years been a Christian, and was in 1842 already a priest in
Paris. Alphonse had been completely alienated from him, and
had only so far receded from the position of entire estrange-
ment as to write him a letter of cold civility on the occasion of
his engagement to his cousin. He did submit, however, to the
importunity of the Bussiere family so far as to suffer a medal of
the Blessed Virgin to be hung around his neck, and to copy out
and keep the little prayer of St. Bernard called the " Memorare,"
and he could not prevent the words of that prayer and the image
of the cross from haunting his imagination while engaged in the
diversions with which he was whiling away his time. He was
anxious to rid himself of all these disagreeable importunities- and
to escape from Rome, where everything 'was distasteful to him
and harrowing to his feelings as a Jew ; and yet, as it were in
spite of himself, he was induced to prolong his stay for a few
days. One of those who had been most constant and fervent in
praying for his conversion was the Count de la Ferronays, a
former minister of Charles X. of France, the father of Mrs.
Craven, the author of A Sister's Story. This pious nobleman,
after having spent most of the day in a church occupied with
devotions and prayers, and particularly in interceding for M.
Ratisbonne, suddenly died on the evening of January 17, 1842.
During the next three days M. de Bussiere was chiefly engaged
in pious offices about the body of his friend, and on the 2oth
went to the church of S. Andrea delle Fratte to make arrange-
ments for his funeral obsequies. M. Ratisbonne passed the
morning with one of his fellow-boarders in frivolous conversa-
tion about the balls and other amusements which they had
frequented together, until noon. At one o'clock he accidentally
met and joined M. de Bussiere, who was on his way to the church.
They proposed to take a walk together after the business at the
convent had been discharged. M. de Bussiere asked his friend
to wait for him in the church for a few moments, and in about
twelve minutes returned there from the convent to seek him.
He had left him standing in an attitude of listless indifference at
the epistle side of the altar. He was no longer there, and was
not visible in the church when he returned. Looking for him on
the opposite side in the chapel of St. Michael, he found him

1884.] Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. 619

kneeling in an attitude of rapt devotion, so insensible to all
around him that he could succeed in arousing his attention only
with difficulty and after repeated efforts. At last, turning his
tearful countenance on his friend, he exclaimed : " Oh ! how M. de
'la Ferronays has prayed for me." More than this he would not
reveal until he had made his disclosure on his knees to a priest.
Taking the medal from his bosom, he kissed it devoutly, exclaim-
ing in accents broken with sobs : " How good is God ! What a
plenitude of gifts ! What joy unknown ! Ah ! how happy I am,
and how much to be pitied are they who do not believe ! " As
soon as he became somewhat composed and tranquil he was con-
ducted to the Rev. Father Villefort, to be received as a catechu-
men and instructed in the doctrines of the faith as a preparation
for baptism. In obedience to Father Villefort's direction M.
Ratisbonne made known what had occurred in the chapel of St.
Michael :

" I had been in the church but an instant when suddenly I was seized
with an inexplicable fear. I raised my eyes : the whole edifice had disap-
peared from my view ; one chapel alone had, as it were, concentrated all the
light, and in the midst of this effulgence there appeared standing upon the
altar the Virgin Mary, grand, brilliant, full of majesty and sweetness, such
as she is represented upon the medal. An irresistible force impelled me to
her. The Virgin made me a sign with her hand to kneel, and she seemed
to say : ' It is well.' She did not speak to me, but I understood all."

The priest who prepared M. Ratisbonne for baptism, and all
who conversed with him at this time, found that, in fact, although
he had never read a book explaining the doctrines of the Chris-
tian and Catholic religion, he was illuminated by an infused
knowledge and belief of all the principal mysteries of the faith,
and acquired in a few days without difficulty all the technical
and formal instruction which was only necessary in order to give
him a correct verbal expression of that which he had been sud-
denly taught without words. Ten days after his conversion he
was publicly baptized, confirmed, and admitted to communion by
the cardinal vicar, the Abbe Dupanloup, afterwards Bishop of
Orleans, preaching an eloquent sermon on the occasion. The
Sovereign Pontiff, Gregory XVI., ordered a careful canonical
examination of the miraculous conversion to be made. And on
the 3d of June, 1842, the cardinal vicar, Patrizzi, " pronounced
and declared that the instantaneous and perfect conversion of
Alphonse Marie Ratisbonne, from Judaism to Catholicity, was a
true and incontrovertible miracle, wrought by the most blessed

620 Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. [Aug.,

and powerful God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin
Mary."

Forty-two years have elapsed since this memorable conver-
sion. The manner in which M. Ratisbonne has lived and worked
since then is a continuous and incontrovertible proof of the
reality and power of the divine grace which effected the instan-
taneous transformation of his whole intellectual and moral being.
Dr. Farrar's argument from the life of St. Paul subsequent to
his conversion can be applied in his case also. He made a like
if not an equal sacrifice to his convictions. He said of himself at
the time :

" Every one of my acquaintances knew full well that, to all human ap-
pearances, it was impossible for me even to think of changing my religion.
My family was Jewish, my betrothed, my uncle were Jewish. In embracing
Christianity I know that I break away from all earthly hopes and interests.
And yet I do it willingly ; I renounce the passing happiness of a future
which was promised me ; I do so without hesitation. I act from convic-
tion. The most powerful interests enchained me to my religion, and con-
sequently all should be convinced that a man who sacrifices everything to a
profound conviction must sacrifice to a celestial light, which has revealed
itself by incontrovertible evidence. What I have affirmed is true. I know
it, I feel it ; and what could be my object in thus betraying the truth and
turning aside from religion by a sacrilegious lie'? "

One most remarkable trait in the religious state of mind of the
new convert was his deep appreciation of the mystery of the
cross, the great stumbling-block of the Jew. Adoration of the
divine Christ crucified for men, admiration of martyrdom en-
dured for his sake, the desire to make sacrifices, to labor, and to
suffer for the glory of the Redeemer and the salvation of men,
especially those of his own race, filled his soul and prompted him
to devote himself to the work of preaching Christ to his own
unbelieving people. In this he was strikingly like St. Paul ; but
he was called by the providence of God to a more special and
exclusive mission to Jews than his greater prototype, the Apostle
of the Gentiles. His extraordinary conversion was intended far
more in view of his future apostleship than for his own personal
benefit. It is one of a considerable number of remarkable con-
versions and other events by which the Lord has seemed to
manifest the intention of giving a new call to his own special
people to be converted to him, and repent of the great national
crime of the rejection of their true Messias, which has been so
terribly punished during eighteen centuries. The extent and im-
portance of this Christian movement in the bosom of Judaism are
not commonly known. We have not space to take notice, at

1 884.] Two MIR A CULO us CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. 62 1

present, of anything except the special and individual part in this
work undertaken by Father Ratisbonne. His elder brother,
Father Theodore, founded a religious society of women under
the name of Our Lady of Sion, and another society of priests
devoted to the same purposes, and it is under his direction that
Father Alphonse founded, and is now carrying on, his own mis-
sion in Jerusalem, aided by members of these two societies.*

He was sent to Jerusalem in 1855, but, after several months of
seemingly fruitless efforts to found the mission, the order recall-
ing him to France was sent to him by his superior. The fulfil-
ment of this command was frustrated by an accident of a very
painful nature, yet most happy in its results. On the Qth of
March, 1856, Father Ratisbonne supplied the place of a priest,
who had been taken suddenly ill, at the little village of Gifneh,
and on his return to Jerusalem was thrown from his horse in a
narrow gorge between two walls of rock, in such a way as to
break his right arm very badly. Lack of proper surgical treat-
ment, and the infliction of the worst kind of positive malpractice,
caused him to be laid up for weeks in a disabled and suffering
condition. A letter which he wrote with his left hand to a fa-
vorite sister, Ernestine, still a Jewess, but extremely fond of her
brother, explaining the reason of his detention at Jerusalem,
stirred her sympathy so powerfully that she sent him at once a
gift of six thousand francs. On receiving this generous gift Father
Alphonse wrote immediately to Father Theodore imploring him
to rescind the order for his recall, and with success. The sum of
money so unexpectedly placed in his hands, though small, was
the beginning of the considerable fund which he was finally able
to gather for the first necessary purchase of a site and the con-
struction of the house and chapel of the mission. The site was at
the spot where formerly stood the entrance to the palace of the
Roman governor. A colony from the community of Our Lady
of Sion arrived in Jerusalem in May. In ,due time priests and
other assistants were sent out to Father Ratisbonne. For nearly
thirty years since that time, with arduous labor, amid untold
difficulties and contradictions, he has been consolidating and ex-
tending his work of religion, education, and charity for the
benefit alike of native Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans. The
narrative of his life would need to be minute and complete in
order to be in any way satisfactory as a picture of the man and a
description of his work. A circumstantial history of his conver-

* See the last of the series of articles on "Christian Jerusalem" in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, vol. xxxii. p. 384, for some facts respecting the conversion of Jews.

622 Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. [Aug.,

sion has been published in a small volume by the Baron de Bus-
siere, and a record of the history of the mission at Jerusalem is
contained in the Annales de la Mission de N. D. de Sion, a magazine
published at Marseilles since 1877.

From the Annales of March, 1881, we learn that besides seve-
ral priests of the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, there were
in Jerusalem and its vicinity twenty-five religious ladies of the
same institute, besides a number of brothers, artisans, and other
persons employed in service. There were three distinct estab-
lishments belonging to the mission : the convent of the Ecce
Homo, the convent of St. John On The Mountain, and the school
of arts and trades called St. Peter's On Sion. There were about
forty 'boys in the industrial school, and two hundred and fifty
children in the orphanage, the boarding-school and day-school.
The number of persons receiving alms or medical assistance
for one year is given as fourteen thousand. Among numerous
instances and interesting anecdotes showing the effect of the
charitable efforts of the priests and nuns in gaining the good-
will of Jews and Mussulmans as well as of Christians, we will
mention only one. An infirm rabbi, eighty years of age, was
persuaded by some other Jews to apply at the dispensary for
treatment and medicine. When he left he expressed in accents
of emotion his grateful sense of the charity shown to himself and
his people, and said : " Daily I pray for you and all the Sisters
of Sion at the synagogue ; for you are the end, as we are the be-
ginning, and we shall all meet together on high " {Annales, Sep-
tember, 1879).

;? A very pleasing photograph of Father Ratisbonne, seated
amid a group of Arab children, shows him to be a man of vene-
rable and benevolent aspect, a true son of the patriarchs, worthy
to be taken as a type, as we trust he is one of the precursors, of
a new line of apostles from the bosom of Judaism. He is now
seventy years of age, and for nearly forty years has been a priest.
His life and works attest the reality of his conversion and the
credibility of his own testimony to these facts contained in its
history to which he is the only witness, with a like though not an
equal evidence to that which makes the miraculous conversion
of St. Paul credible and certain.

The fact of the sudden, complete, and lasting conversion of
Father Ratisbonne and of its perfect sincerity is certain beyond
all question. Its miraculous nature is obvious from the impos-
sibility -of assigning any merely natural cause adequate to the
effect. The essence of the miracle consists in the suddenness

1884.] Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. 623

and completeness of the change wrought in the mind, will, and
disposition of the subject a change which would naturally re-
quire a considerable time, much serious reflection, a voluntary
application to an inquiry into and an examination of the evidences
of the truth of the Catholic faith and the motives for embracing
it, and, furthermore, an earnest deliberation on the question of
sacrificing all worldly interests for the sake of becoming a minis-
ter of Christ. Nothing less than an immediate action of God
upon the mind and will of the subject, so extraordinary and effi-
cacious in itself as to set aside and transcend the ordinary laws by
which divine grace operates, and therefore deserving the name
of miraculous, could have produced the instantaneous conver-
sion of M. Ratisbonne. As to what we may call the preternat-
ural phenomena of the revelation which enlightened and sub-
dued him, his own testimony is credible for the same reason that
the testimony of St. Paul to the heavenly vision he received near
Damascus was worthy of credence. It is not in the least impor-
tant to determine the precise nature of these phenomena, or to
explain what was the proximate objective cause of the impres-
sion on the senses and imagination of the recipient. Dr. Farrar
treats the question about the objectivity or subjectivity of the
appearance of Christ to St. Paul as unimportant (c. x.) We
may dismiss the question about the apparition of the Blessed
Virgin to M. Ratisbonne in the same manner. He is a witness
to that which he experienced. The sudden irradiation and in-
flammation of his soul by divine grace gave evidence of an in-
tellectual vision whose effects were transforming and lasting. It
was accompanied by vivid impressions on the senses, or the im-
agination, which were manifestly preternatural, whether caused
by an objectively real apparition or merely subjective. The mi-
racle of the conversion remains intact on any hypothesis. That
the conversion was truly supernatural and the work of God is
manifest from its nature and its effects, if we admit the truth
of Christianity and the reality of the miraculous conversion of
Saul. The language which Dr. Farrar applies to this most
illustrious converted Pharisee we may apply to his modern dis-
ciple and imitator:

" He rose another man ; he had fallen in death, he rose in life ; he had
fallen in the midst of things temporal, he rose in awful consciousness of
things eternal ; he had fallen a proud, intolerant, persecuting Jew, he rose
a humble, broken-hearted, penitent Christian" (ibid.}

There is a similarity between these two instances in another

624 Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. [Aug.

respect. The Pharisees contemptuously asked : " Hath any one
of the rulers believed in him, or of the Pharisees ? But this mul-
titude, that know not the law, are accursed " (St. Luke vii. 48, 49).
It was a scandal in their eyes that Jesus chose simple, unlet-
tered men as his associates, preached the Gospel to the poor, and
was followed by the common people. Saul was a convert from
the Temple aristocracy, the learned school of the Sanhedrin.
In his case it was shown that although in the beginning, as he
himself says, it was true that among the brethren of the Chris-
tian communion "not many are wise according to the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble ; but the mean things of the world
and the things that are contemptible hath God chosen " (i Cor.
i. 18-31), yet that Christ could win and employ in his service,
when he chose, men who are noble in the worldly sense. Al-
mighty God, although he sanctions order in human society,
is no respecter of persons, and the Catholic Church, governed by
his Spirit, has always favored the poor and humble, and even
opened the way into her hierarchy to the sons of peasants and
laboring men as well as to the offspring of parents belonging to
the higher classes. She is emphatically, though not exclusively,
the church of the people. In certain times and countries her
condition and aspect give especial occasion of offence to worldly
pride and afford her adversaries a pretext for assuming towards
her that air of supercilious haughtiness which is a marked char-
acteristic of the heresy and infidelity of the modern age. The
supernatural and the miraculous is peculiarly obnoxious to this
high-flying and boastful spirit of worldliness and incredulity,
for the very same reason that made the Gospel of Christ
preached by St. Paul a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the
Greeks foolishness. These things are despised as belonging to
the credulous multitude. And since there is no denying or ig-
noring the intelligence and learning of a numerous class of those
who belong to the clergy and laity of the Catholic Church, and
it is impossible for the well-informed to shut their eyes to the
wisdom and ability with which it is governed by its hierarchy,
there is another rule applied for measuring the so-called enlight-
ened Catholicism of this superior class. It is supposed to be a
sort of refined and rationalized essence, an ethereal, disembodied
spirit, separated from the common mass of the great organic body
over which it hovers as a ruling genius. In respect to miracles
popular belief and devotion, or, as it is called, superstition, is
supposed, either honestly or as a convenient argumentative hy-
pothesis, to be encouraged and sanctioned on the principle of

1884.] Two MIRACULOUS CONVERSIONS FROM JUDAISM. 625

pious fraud, of expediency, or an unavoidable connivance at a
kind of popular credulity which nourishes the spirit of subjection
to the church.

The conversion of M. Ratisbonne is above the region of all
these and similar cavils. The persons concerned were all in the
higher social and intellectual class. The miracle was believed
and admired by all the Catholic residents and visitors in Rome.
There is not a shadow of reason for supposing that the decision
of the ecclesiastical authority was anything else than a judg-
ment given with full conviction and based on evidence. The
ordinary special pleading which relegates ecclesiastical miracles
summarily and in a mass to the categories of natural phenomena,
legend, popular credulity, and pious fraud, is at fault and wholly
breaks down in this instance. And although it is only this sin-
gle fact that is, strictly speaking, accredited by its own evidence,
yet it is, in respect to the general topic of the preternatural
and miraculous, a sample and an illustration. The existence
and perpetuity of the miraculous in the Catholic Church is
proved, in general and in particular instances, by the same kind
of argument. The allegations to the contrary are in like manner
shown to be either false, conjectural, or irrelevant. That natu-
ral effects are often fancied to be preternatural, that legends
have frequently been mistaken for histories, that there have been
impostors and illusions, that the disposition to an excess of ere
dulity is common among the illiterate, that a great many re-
puted miracles are not conclusively and certainly provable all
these are irrelevant allegations. That belief in the miraculous
belongs exclusively to the uneducated, that the ecclesiastical
authorities sanction pious frauds these are false allegations.
That the miracles related in ecclesiastical history and in the
lives of saints are mere legends is frequently, in particular in-
stances, only conjectural, and, as a general proposition, is false.

These are assertions which we do not profess to prove just
now, or expect to be accepted as anything more than a state-
ment of the position taken and defended by Catholic writers in
their polemics. They need proof, of course ; the question is one
of argument and the examination of evidence. Argument and
the production of evidence have not been wanting on the Ca-
tholic side. Laymen of distinction as well as ecclesiastics, scien-
tists, physicians, and literary men as well as theologians, have
written with the utmost care, and, in strict accordance with the
rules of logic and the laws of evidence, have presented the proofs
of a considerable number of miracles of various kinds, many of
VOL. xxxix. 40

626 CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Aug.,

them quite recent and attested by eye-witnesses, some of whom
are medical men. Protestant writers who defend Scriptural and
reject ecclesiastical miracles do not take up and examine the
evidence of these miraculous facts according- to the sound
method of inductive reasoning. They ignore them, and proceed
by the way of assertions and vague generalities, and are able to
count on the ignorance and prejudice of their readers, who hear
but one side.

The consistent and outspoken deniers of the reality and pos-
sibility of all miracles, though they make a loud boast of being
the only enlightened and rational thinkers in the world, really
proceed after a most unhistorical, uncritical, and unscientific
fashion. Their diatribes against Christianity would be beneath
contempt and unworthy of notice, were it not that so many per-
sons are duped by their shallow pretences.

CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

ON a very beautiful day in midsummer last year, just after
sunset, I found myself gazing on the garden in which Sir Walter
Raleigh first planted the potato in Ireland. The ancient town of
Youghal so called because, in the primitive description of the
inhabitants, it was " a wooded place " ; although there are no
woods there now, Sir Walter Raleigh having cut the timber
down, made it into barrels, and shipped it across to the wine-
makers on the Continent, so that for many years the wines drunk
in England were drawn out of Irish wood Youghal nestled
at the foot of its protecting hills. Westward was the rolling
ocean, stretching away towards America; and hither swept the
brpad ribbon of the Blackwater down through the hills, like a
silver fillet shining on the dark hair of Twilight.

Youghal is indeed an ancient burg. Its charter of incorpora-
tion was granted by King John in the first decade of the thir-
teenth century ; the first religious foundation of the Franciscans
in Ireland was made there soon after its incorporation, and before
the end of the century the town had attained some commercial
importance. What a stirring history it has had for such a little
place! In 1579 tne Earl of Desmond, under the ban, led his
forces into Youghal and plundered it. The Earl of Ormond,
then the English governor of the island, sent troops to catch the

1884.] CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 627

Earl of Desmond after he was safely out of the way. But the
troops fared as ill as they might have had he remained : most
of them were slain after entering the town, and the survivors
were glad to escape to the ships that had brought them down the
coast from Waterford. The traveller is shown the mayor's house,
whose historic value consists in a fact which was of great interest
in those days, and of little now : to wit, that the mayor, having
refused to receive an English garrison, and having suffered -the
rebels to enter the town, was summarily exterminated before his
own door on a gibbet. In 1649 a great stain fell on the town.
That splendid ruffian, Oliver Cromwell, made it his headquar-
ters ; and that it never has fulfilled its early commercial 'promise
may as well be attributed to the baseness of the inhabitants, who
became his partisans, as to any other cause. It was thence he
sailed for England, leaving behind him a track of horror, devasta-
tion, and death like that of Vesuvius down the scarred sides of
what were an hour before blooming villages and flowery valleys.

Mr. Crofton Croker mentions, among the curiosities he found
in the manuscript archives of the town, that during the mayor-
alty of some of his ancestors, who were of Cromwell's way of
thinking, any papist who should presume to go to the mayor's*
feast should be fined five shillings or be set in the stocks which
was lenient enough, considering that he must have gone uninvited
and should have had self-respect enough to decline an invitation
under the prevailing distempered circumstances ; that Gregory
Grimes was disfranchised for having a papist wife who, were
she an actively-minded woman, may have given him so much to
think of that he scarcely missed the precious boon of participat-
ing in the affairs of a corporation which, apparently without dis-
tinction of creed, class, or previous condition of servitude, enfran-
chised a cook and a barber on their solemn pledge thereafter to
dress the mayor's feast and shave the corporation gratis. The
next imposing event in the history of Youghal was the visit of
" his late majesty " William IV. when, as Prince William Henry,
commander of the Pegasus, he furled his wings at Youghal and
ambled up the one long street which is still the only street in the
town, and at the proper place at the table* ate his dinner, in the
most prosaic fashion, with the corporation. Whether the enfran-
chised cook and barber were in attendance or not on that great
occasion is not of record ; if they were it may be presumed that,
being unused to such company, the cook may have shaved the
corporation and the barber dressed the feast.

Only one more incident in the annals of the place aroused my

628 CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Aug.,

wonder. When the people, who had raised copious harvests in
the awful famine years '46-47, were dying of hunger, while the
harvests were being exported, the people of Youghal stopped the
sailing of two ships laden with corn. That is the highest trans-
action I have been able to discover to their credit. Alas ! their
virtue was short-lived : after a while they let the ships go with
Irish corn grown, by Irish hands, on Irish soil ; and as the sails
fluttered outside the bar and swelled with the ocean wind that
bore them away, the hands that had grown the corn withered
and the bodies of the dead were flung into famine-pits. The old
town had not been exorcised of Cromwell. A curse still hangs
upon its dilapidated quays ; the scarlet uniform of the foreign
legionary still dominates its dismal and shrunken streets. Every-
where red-coats ! It seemed as if the town were pinned down
with a bayonet, lest, were the opportunity given, it would slip out
to sea or run up the hills and hide itself. All through Ireland
the American traveller feels this. The island is pinned down on
its foundations with British bayonets as the sole means of keep-
ing it down. But one still is told the legends of the early com-
mercial greatness of these old ports. Youghal was so self-impor-
tant some two hundred years ago that when a French privateer
was descried out on the horizon a boat was manned and the prize
brought in. I was told,. with a sigh of remembrance and a smile
of mystical hope, of the great shipping offish and timber, of wool,
ale, pottery, glass, delf, bricks, porcelain, and clay-slate used as
building-stone, which once rendered Youghal promising. The
promise has been blighted. The exports are now, in the language
of the official directory, " chiefly grain, flour, and provisions."
The salmon fishery of the Blackwater, we are told, is " very ex-
tensive " ; that it is the private property of a landlord is not men-
tioned. In 1835 the number of vessels that entered the port was
four hundred and eighty -five. In 1879 ^ was three hundred and
seventy-two. In 1835 the clearances were four hundred and sixty-
six ; in 1879 they were three hundred and seventy-two. The de-
cline continued. In 1882 Youghal was dropped altogether from
the list of customs ports.

It was not remarkable that while gazing upon the house
where Sir Walter Raleigh smoked tobacco until then unknown
in Ireland and on the garden in which he first planted the
potato, the thoughts of the traveller should run away from pota-
toes to poetry. In yonder manor he tuned his lyre ; over those
hills he rode to visit Spenser when that carpet-bagger was also
enjoying a confiscated Irish estate and writing the Faerie Queene,

1884.] CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 629

of which George Eliot has said, when speaking of German
comedy, what we all have thought, but ne'er so well expressed :
" You see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to
an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Pro-
vidence rather than of the author." As a matter of fact, it was
not an arrangement of Providence but the Irish rebels that did
bring it to a close and interrupted the poet before he approached
the end he had set for himself. As a poet Raleigh belongs to
the class about whom an artificial fame is maintained. Spenser,
in a fulsome fit of admiration, doubtless mutual, described him as
the " summer's nightingale."

" He pip'd, I sang ; and when he sang, I pip'd ;

By change of turns, each making other merry ;
Neither envying other, nor envied ;

So pip'd we until we both were weary."

Weary indeed will he be who reads much of Sir Walter ; and he
must be of demure imagination and sombre fancy who can read
even his best without laughter. But makers of manuals on En-
glish literature continue the fashion having been firmly set
among those traditional styles in taste which do not change with
seasons to include him with Chaucer and Gower, Spenser and
Sidney, Lyly and Greene, Marlowe and Donne ; yet one may
read his every authenticated line without finding in it a true
melody, a spontaneous flower, an original metaphor, or what
George Eliot calls Heine, " a real voice, not an echo." Raleigh
wrote poetry because it was the genteel extravagance of the
court, and raised him, like the story of spreading his cloak for
the queen to tread upon, above the horde of hungry adventurers
who sought, with coarse greed and unconcealed knavery, the re-
wards of a reign rich in confiscations, prodigal in giving away
the riches of abbey and sept, of chief and churchman. His co-
quetry with the queen was witty, astute, and brilliant ; and out
of the spirit of airy hypocrisy thus bred he wrote most of his
verse. Some, penned, it is believed, in the Tower, might be held
tolerable as the stiff song of a caged bird, but it is only middling
poetry at best. Here is ample evidence from " His Pilgrim-
age":

" Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage,
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

630 CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Aug.,

" Blood must be my body's balmer ;

No other balm will there be given ;
Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
Travelleth toward the land of heaven ;
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains,
There will I kiss
The bowl of bliss,
And drink mine everlasting fill
Upon every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before ;
But after it will thirst no more.

" And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality," etc.

The world is still afflicted with an abundance of bad poetry ; but
that style of it has gone for ever, like Sir Walter's starched ruff,
plumed hat, and slashed doublet. As a poet he need trouble
critics not at all.

Even his claim to have introduced the potato into Ireland is
open to dispute. That momentous credit is assigned to Sir John
Hawkins, the slaver who, when Christianity had all but abol-
ished the traffic in human beings, secured Queen Elizabeth as a
partner and added the commodity Man to British commerce.

But I must not forget that I am gazing on the mediaeval
manor in which Sir Walter Raleigh tuned his lyre, smoked his
fragrant Virginia weed, and dreamed, perchance of sharing an
imperial crown, perchance of the El Dorado he was never to
behold. The house itself is said to be interiorly interesting. It
is now the property of the governor of Hong Kong, Sir John
Pope Hennessy.

The most suggestive description of the interior of Raleigh's
house is furnished by Sir John Pope Hennessy himself. He has
told us of its carved oak, its exquisite panelling, its parchments
and vellum, the original painting of the first governor of Vir-
ginia, and the contemporary engraving of Elizabeth, whose signet
is among the papers in the carved oaken chest. He has done
something still more valuable for Americans. He has told the
whole story of Raleigh's life in that country a story which it is
well should be known, if, as is proposed, the sacred soil of Vir-
ginia is to rear upon its bosom a monument commemorative of
Sir Walter Raleigh's colony.

There is no dearth of material from which a fair estimate of
the character of Sir Walter may be obtained. Besides Hen-

1884.] CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 631

nessy's Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland the name is spelled va-
riously there is a Life by James Augustus St. John ; a Life by
Patrick Fraser Tyler ; Lord Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh, by
Macvey Napier ; Raleigh 's Discovery of Guiana (Hakluyt So-
ciety) ; Kingsley's panegyric in his Miscellanies ; and a very im-
portant contribution of new evidence by Samuel R. Gardiner,
covering especially the expedition to South America, printed in
The Fortnightly, May, 1867. Sir J. Hennessy constructs what is
really a chapter omitted by all biographers and commentators,
and he gives his authorities explicitly. From all of these let us
try to see Sir Walter as a soldier, a courtier, a politician, an ad-
venturer, an intriguer, a pirate, and an Englishman willing to
abandon his country for France.

Raleigh was in his twenty-eighth year when he sailed for Ire-
land. Froudesays he accompanied Lord Grey : " Ireland had be
come to young Englishmen of spirit a land of hope and adven-
ture where they might win glory and perhaps fortune." For-
tune Raleigh won ; but as to glory, the legends of Dingle Bay
and Smerwick Castle will not award him that. This is Froude's
account of the deed :

" Don Bastian with the officers came out with ensigns trailing and gave
themselves up as prisoners. The men piled their arms outside the walls
and waited defenceless to learn the pleasure of their conquerors. . . . The
officers were reserved for their ransom. Common prisoners were incon-
venient and expensive, and it was thought desirable to read a severe lesson
to Catholic sympathizers in Ireland. ' The Lord of Hosts,' wrote Grey,
' had delivered the enemy to us, none of ours being hurt, Mr. Cheke alone
excepted. Then put I in certain bands, who fell straight to execution. . . .'
A few women, some of them pregnant, were hanged. A servant of Saun-
ders, an Irish gentleman, and a priest were hanged also. The bodies, six
hundred in all, were stripped and laid out upon the sands ' as gallant,
goodly personages,' said Grey, ' as ever were beheld.' "

The historian Hooker thus describes Raleigh's part :

" When the captain had yielded himself and the fort appointed to be
surrendered, 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."

Hooker was a personal friend of Raleigh. The infamy of the
massacre became so widely known that " Grey's Faith " grew
into a proverb, expressive of more than the shame and treachery
of Punica Fides in old Rome. The historian Haverty says the
execution of the butchery " was entrusted to the afterwards
famous (Sir) Walter Raleigh, who fleshed his maiden sword on

632 CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Aug.,

the occasion." The poet Spenser was secretary to the com-
mander, Lord Grey, and is authority for the confession that he
himself " was not far off." Camden says that the expedition
which thus ended in treachery and massacre had been sent to
Ireland by the king of Spain to divert the attention of Queen
Elizabeth from the affairs of Belgium.

Having thus chivalrously inaugurated his career as a soldier,
Raleigh prolonged it in an equally chivalrous manner. He ob-
tained shelter in the castle of JLord Roche, and, after sharing his
hospitality, coolly announced that host and hostess were his
prisoners and carried them off to jail. His biographer, Ed-
wards, declares that " deliberate assassination " of rebels or of
persons " vehemently suspected of an intention to rebel " were
among " practices against rebels " approved by Raleigh, Carew,
and Cecil ; but that Cecil avowed a rooted objection to the
killing 'of a rebel by poison. Hennessy says that Raleigh and
Carew " thought any means lawful by which the lands of the
Irish chiefs could be obtained." Raleigh himself wrote : " We
have always in Ireland given head-money for the killing of
rebels." He added in the same letter to Cecil : " I am more
sorry for being deceived than for being engaged in the practice."
When Sir Henry Sidney invited the chief of Ulster, John
O'Neill, to an interview, O'Neill replied that Sir John's prede-
cessor, " the Earl of Sussex, had twice attempted to assassinate
him ; that after such experience his timorous Irish would not
trust him any more in English hands." A letter from Sussex to
Queen Elizabeth, relating how he tried to bribe an Irishman,
having access to O'Neill, to assassinate that chief, is given light
by Mr. Froude. Sussex swore the wretch on the Bible ! The
plot failed ; and afterward, when a treaty of peace between
O'Neill and Elizabeth had been effected, lacking only the
queen's signature, a present of poisoned wine was sent to
O'Neill. " It brought him and half his household to the edge
of death," writes Hennessy. It was traced to an Englishman
named Smith, in Dublin. On trial he confessed his guilt and
was acquitted through the influence of the government. Eliza-
beth .was aware of the transactions of her deputy, and kept him
in office after acquiring that knowledge. Her feigned displea-
sure over the massacre of men, women, and children by Sir
Walter Raleigh at Smerwick Castle i's therefore open to the
doubt even Froude casts upon her sincerity in her. Irish cam-
paigns.

Raleigh did not think the Duke of Ormond was severe

i884-J CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 633

enough in Ireland, and wrote that " what was wanted was the
fire and sword of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (Raleigh's half-brother),
who boasted of ' putting man, woman, and child to death.' '
That vulgar cupidity was the motive which inspired Raleigh's
savage cruelty is fully shown in a letter to Sir Francis Walsing-
ham, in which he urges that the queen appoint his own relative
to the office of the Duke of Ormond and give him the estate on
which Barre Court stood, which included one side of Cork har-
bor. His land-hunger, writes Hennessy, included not only a
castle or two, "but the idea of a residence near the sea, where
he could have easy access to his ships, and where he could in-
dulge his passion for mercantile speculation." Elizabeth did not
comply with his request ; but she subsequently allotted to him
twelve thousand acres around Youghal. Hennessy endorses
Lecky, who, he says, describes the real spirit of Raleigh when
he characterizes the desire to find out new and rapid paths to
wealth, " a desire showing itself in the form of discovery, of
piracy, of a passion for Irish land." That it was greed for for-
tune, and not innate cruelty, which inspired Raleigh's cowardly
and infamous career as a soldier in Ireland is shown not only by
his land-hunger but by his personal prowess and fortitude, seve-
ral fine illustrations of which are mentioned by Hennessy. The
project which he long had in mind, of acquiring land in America
and amassing wealth through colonization schemes, there began
to absorb his imagination. He bartered most of his Irish land
for money, retaining only an old castle. Of his temporary resi-
dence at Cork nothing remains. The island he hungered for was
Queenstown. Kilcolman Castle, where he visited Spenser and
where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene, is a roofless, ivy-clad ruin.
Into the circumstances of Raleigh's condemnation and more
than thirteen years' imprisonment in the Tower it is not neces-
sary to enter. By bribing influential courtiers he obtained his
liberty, without, however, procuring a pardon. The death-sen-
tence hung over his head, and the Damoclean sword might fall
at any moment. The king, the covetous and sinister James,
would not pardon him, but he was quite willing to let Raleigh
replenish the empty treasury of the kingdom. The letter Ra-
leigh had written James, begging for his life a letter described
by one of /his biographers as couched in terms of " blasphemous
extravagance," and by even his partisans confessed unworthy of
him had so lowered him in the estimation of a man naturally
low-minded that Raleigh's lot was rendered uniquely miserable,
exceptionally desperate. He insisted that there was a gold-mine

634 CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Aug.,

in Guiana, the wealth of which would more than supply the
kingdom's needs ; and, if the king would authorize him to lead
an expedition to it, the needs of the kingdom would be supplied.
But the mine was on territory owned by Spain, and Spain and
England were at peace.

Opinions differ concerning the facts and the principles of
the subsequent proceedings. Raleigh's partisans maintain that
James had all but taken his life. A man of striking beauty, ro-
bust, eager, when cast into the Tower, he emerged from it pre-
maturely old, emaciated, the victim of apoplexy and paralysis.
He owed James nothing, they contend, and was free to effect
any arrangement for his own interest. Doubtless most men in
Raleigh's position would have been of Raleigh's mind. The
facts are that, entering into a solemn compact with his own king
and the sovereign of his own country, he also entered into nego-
tiations with the king*of France upon terms and with an object
constituting treason.

Mr. Gardiner, who has had access to documents not explored
by the biographers, sums up the Guiana business in a brief en-
titled The Case against Sir Walter Raleigh. The spirit of the
composition is not that of the mere prosecutor. The language
is moderate, the conclusions arrived at far from extreme. But
the facts do not leave Sir Walter in the position of a chevalier,
even of a man of common veracity. They do leave him in the
position of a man who, having piteously solicited the permission
of his sovereign to do a specific thing for the benefit of his country,
is secretly bargaining to turn the profits of the adventure over
to the enemy of his country.

No amount of condemnation of Raleigh palliates the ignoble-
ness and meanness of James. Gardiner makes his conduct clear
enough, but fails to make it defensible :

"The details of the expedition might safely be left to the commander.
The principle of its action was for James to consider. From this James
shrank. He did not like trouble and he did not like responsibility. On
the one hand, the Spanish ambassador declared stoutly that if Raleigh
were allowed to sail war with Spain would be inevitable. The friends of
Raleigh at court and they were neither few nor without influence de-
clared no less stoutly that it would be folly to let slip, in deference to the
arrogant pretensions of the Spaniard, such an opportunity of filling his
exchequer. Instead of examining the question seriously, the king thought
that he had done all that was needed when he threw the whole responsi-
bility upon Raleigh. Such a resolution would, as Raleigh knew, expose
him to a thousand accidents. He was plainly told that with his head he
would pay the penalty for any injury which he might do the subjects of the

1884.] CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 635

king of Spain ; and that circumstances might easily bring about a colli-
sion no man knew better than Raleigh himself."

So it is clear that Raleigh understood perfectly the terms
upon which he was to take the risk of going to Guiana.

But another project was also in his mind at the time a pro-
ject of which a Bayard would have been incapable. He actually
proposed to lead against Genoa the fleet prepared and announced
for Guiana the purpose being to aid the Duke of Savoy in his
contest with Spain on condition that he and his horde of ruf-
fians might pillage Milan ! It is also certain that another project,
equally indefensible, was in contemplation. This is Gardiner's
version of the proposal to attack the Italian fleet on the high seas,
as broached to Bacon by Raleigh :

'''If lean lig*ht right on the Plate fleet you will think I were mad if I
should refuse it.' ' Why, then,' said the astonished lord-keeper, ' you will be
a pirate.' ' Tush, my lord !' was Raleigh's answer ; ' did you ever hear of any
that was counted a pirate for taking millions? They are poor mychers
that are called in question for piracy, that are not able to make their peace
with what they get.' "

The details of Raleigh's intrigues with France are too nume-
rous for a fair condensation. The reader will find them full of in-
terest, however, in Mr. Gardiner's pages. This is indisputable
that he effected an arrangement with the French king to bring
into France the booty he expected to win by force, if need be,
in Guiana. It is also probable that he had secured the promise
of French ships to reinforce him, either for attack upon the sea-
coast towns or for the capture of the Mexican fleet. But disas-
ter crushed all his hopes, ruined all his plans, whether honorable
and loyal or piratical and treasonable. He returned to England,
found his intrigue with France suspected, tried to escape on a
French vessel, and was deceived and betrayed by an English spy
and traitor. When the king ordered that the death-sentence be
carried out Raleigh confessed his arrangement with France and
threw himself upon the king's mercy. Under promise of par-
don the king had set a wretch to worm confessions from Raleigh
in the Tower, even as Stukely, the creature who by treachery
had prevented his escape to France, had carried on his knavery
by the king's orders. Ah ! the methods by which men in du-
rance are tortured and betrayed for the crown of England have
not changed much since Sir Walter Raleigh mounted the stairs
and laid his head on the block. And like a brave man he walked
to his death, anxious only that the executioner should do his

636 CONCERNING SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Aug.,

work quickly, lest an ague chill might come upon his shattered
frame and make him seem a poltroon.

There is a proposal now in the United States to erect a mon-
ument to Sir Walter Raleigh. I have not undertaken to cover
the whole of his career. Many episodes, daring, brave, and gene-
rous, may be recalled. On the other hand, much that is lower
than aught here touched upon lies in silence. But I think what
has been said goes far to show that such a man, such principles,
such a career, ought not to be given to the youth of the American
republic 'as ideally correct and aesthetically beautiful. Raleigh
was a man of versatile talents, possessing in a high degree the
gifts of courtiership ; fond of power, of land, of money, of luxury,
of adventure ; unscrupulous, of low standard of morality, and in
many respects more like our Aaron Burr than like the Bayard of
France, without fear and without reproach. That 'the great em-
pire of America is under the least obligation to him is not suscep-
tible of proof. His motive in sending an expedition out here was
purely commercial and selfish, so far as the proofs go. He was
actuated by the same motives in going to Ireland. He was no
worse a man than his time and the standards of the age in which
he lived made it inevitable that he should be. Much of rom-ance
has been thrown around his career, and his dreary but by no
means idle years in the Tower have secured for him sympathy
and pity from all gentle hearts.

Ferocious and relentless as he was to my people, who owe
his memory nothing but execration, and to whom he was as
merciful as a wild beast to children, there is a paragraph' in the
pages of Sir John Pope Hennessy with which I cannot quite
agree. "There is," it runs, "an old and much-prized engraving
by Vanderwerff, of Amsterdam, that seems to combine all his
characteristic features the extraordinarily high forehead, the in-
telligent eyes, the same large but well-shaped nose, the mous-
tache and peaked beard, ill concealing a too determined mouth.
The likeness is most striking. But there are accessories in this
famous engraving that seem to identify it, even more than the
mere resemblance of the features, with Raleigh's career in Ire-
land. The knightly personage in armor is shrouded in the skin
of the wolf, the wolf's head shows its sharp fangs at the top of the
picture ; two human skulls are beneath, the eyeless sockets of
one being directed upwards to the portrait, with an expression,
as far as a poor skull can have expression, of reproach and woe.
Both skulls rest on the torch and sword, the dagger of the assas-
sin and the halter. Surely that must be Raleigh ? " No ; it was
the more hideous monster, the Duke of Alva.

1884.] CATTLE-RANCH LIFE IN COLORADO. 637

CATTLE-RANCH LIFE IN COLORADO.

EACH cattle State possesses peculiar or general advantages, on
which the native is wont to hold forth. In addition to its other
merits location, grass, and water Colorado boasts of a delight-
ful climate in its elevated portions. Between the prairie and the
mountain ranch there is a vast difference. The former may be
so insufferable as to effectually dishearten the new-comer. Inex-
pressibly bleak and dismal, with nothing but the cottonwoods
fringing the river to break the gloomy monotony of the yellow
plains, much of the bottom-land is infested, especially in rainy
seasons, with swarms of flies, fleas, and mosquitoes that drain
alike the blood of man and beast. What a relief to flee from
these pest-ridden, dreary solitudes to the foot-hills of the Rockies,
where the mosquito's song is frozen in his throat bill, if you
like by the ever-cool nights ; where atmosphere and scenery
both so strikingly attest the necessity of pointing out to the
"tender-foot" the miseries of the plains, the felicities of the
mountains.

English capital has largely contributed to the building-up of
this State ; miles of irrigating ditches, wire fences around which
it takes a week to drive, the towns, the cattle that blacken the
hills all confirm it. Owing to the nature of the soil farming is
little followed, so that Colorado still retains much of the aspect
of the frontier ; the " sandy wastes," known but a decade since as
part of the " Great American Desert," are one vast cattle pasture.

Ten or more years ago it was not unusual for mere cowboys
to attain in a few years the wealth they now enjoy, and this by
honest means. As for those who made fortunes by unscrupulous
methods, unbranded cattle still bear the name of Maverick, the
thrifty gentleman whom these wanderers enriched. But the
forces have been at work, and to-day I would hesitate before en-
couraging an Easterner to embark in the Western cattle business
with less than five thousand dollars capital not, at least, unless
he is resigned to spending the better part of his life in exile.
Phenomenal cases are, of course, always cropping up ; but, even
with the amount specified, hard work, frugality, and a good loca-
tion are all essential to success. It is unnecessary, if not out of
the question, for the small capitalist to own much land ; a claim
of one hundred and sixty acres, commanding a water-front and

638 CATTLE-RANCH LIFE IN COLORADO. [Aug.,

public grazing land, being sufficient. But he must run the risk
of this outside territory being purchased by the cattle kings or
of its being overrun by their herds. Otherwise the risks are
slight ; dangerous winters are few, and heavy loss unusual. The
beginner may find it most profitable especially when, as in
Colorado, the available grazing land has been largely taken up
to " pool his issues " with a well-established and reliable ranch-
man.

The profits of cattle-raising ca-nnot be very accurately stated.
Those gentlemen whose experience has been confined to pencil,
paper, and talks with the natives will insist proving it by the
most delicious figures that cattle, by natural increase, will double
their number every three years. They will demonstrate that,
all expenses paid, ten thousand dollars will, in fifteen years, have
swollen to something over three hundred thousand an annual
profit of twenty thousand dollars, or two hundred per cent. I
learn, through the general manager of a large company, that
thirty-three and a third per cent, may be taken as a happy ave-
rage ; from a well-known Live-Stock Journal that forty cents on
the dollar is undoubtedly the correct figure ; while a conserva-
tive but enthusiastic friend of much experience assures me that
the actual gain may variously range between fifteen and fifty per
cent.

Though convinced of the uselessness of arithmetical display,
were the figures never so neat and cleverly added, we may be
morally certain that the profit is at least very large, the risk
comparatively small, the life independent and healthy. For the
benefit of the timid let me hasten to relate the experience of a
Wyoming acquaintance, who, after losing during an unusual
winter one-half of his herd, realized on his original capital, the
following spring, a very fair profit from the survivors. And to
those who declaim in glowing terms that dwarf the " financial
opportunities " in the Herald I can mention the largest ranch of
a wealthy corporation, whose books lately showed but a paltry
seven-per-cent. dividend ; another that has only just begun to
pay expenses.

Stock-raising on the plains is a very different thing from
stock-farming. Save during severe winters preceded by unusual
drought, the cattle are never fed. The grass preserves its nutri-
ment through all seasons, offering the herds the subsistence it
has always granted the mighty droves of buffalo and horses.
The latter have left their wiry, agile, hardy progeny to the part
it plays so well. No matter how hard-ridden, these ponies are

1884.] CATTLE-RANCH LIFE IN COLORADO. 639

fed and sheltered by nature alone ; only during the snowy months
are those in actual service treated to either grain or stable.

The owners of countless acres enclose with wire fences as
many cattle as the grass will feed, thereby saving much time and
labor. But many thousands roam at will, their wanderings ar-
rested only by natural barriers ; and these at certain seasons are
" rounded-up," the adults and calves to be variously branded,
tallied, gelded, or shipped. Stampeding has few of the vague
but terrible results with which the Eastern mind has from boy-
hood invested it. The only time when this foolish conduct af-
fects any but the fools is when the herd is being collected or
driven ; and even then the very worst fright will send the brutes
scampering but a dozen miles.

If the embryo ranchman would learn his business he must
turn practical cowboy, especially if his capital be limited. There
is little or nothing to do during the winter months, and at this
time he may seek the city, leaving the cattle to graze where they
best find food. Some contend that they even grow fatter in win-
ter than in summer. It is in the latter season that the tyro must
labor as he never did before as in no other but a wine-like atmos-
phere it is possible to labor. It depends entirely upon circum-
stances as to whether he must cook or wash ; but he must be
ready and willing for anything : riding, butchering, horse-shoe-
ing, branding, colt-breaking, and just possibly fighting. He
may be told that it is contrary to all precedent to eat his own
beef ; and it is here that he first learns of the " mavericks " al-
ready alluded to. He after whom they are christened was not
fastidious with regard to anything he might brand as his own ;
but there are still to be found truly ownerless beeves that have
escaped the " round-up " and branding-iron. These are nomi-
nally relegated to the funds of a State society, but I fear they
oftener fall a prey to those who have a surfeit of bacon.

A general " round-up " takes place in the spring, when each
ranch is represented by its quota of cowboys. Accompanied by
-a mess-wagon, the entire outfit scours the surrounding country in
quest of cattle. During all the summer, more or less, " rounding-
up " is constantly being done on the big ranches, for tallying,
branding, gelding, and shipping purposes. When no corral or
chute is at hand it requires a small army of experienced vaque-
ros to select, lasso, and trip the cattle on the open prairie. All
strangers are driven out of and away from the bunched herd, and
those wanted are cut out from the others, one by one, when they
are roped, thrown, and branded as quickly as possible. This is

640 CATTLE-RANCH LIFE IN COLORADO. [Aug.,

very hard work, calling for agility and training on the part of
man and horse. The easiest and simplest method of tallying
consists in running the cattle through the chute, where the hair
hanging below the gristle of the tail is cut off square. Those
that have attained their beef-hood can thus be readily distin-
guished from the uncounted, while the calves are tallied when
branded.

But perhaps everything considered life on the trail affords
the best combination of hard work, variety, and unceasing watch-
fulness. The trail consists of numerous foot-paths, running side
by side, long since worn by the mighty herds conducted from
State to State. What, for example, is known in Colorado as the
Texas trail is the route that, selected with respect to shortness
and watering facilities, leads from Texas up northwards through
the Indian Nation. Six men, besides the cook, can drive in this
way a thousand cattle at the average rate of ten miles a day.

Tents are often entirely dispensed with, blankets and canvas
sheets answering for both bed and roof. In truth, there would
be little use for such a luxury, since the cattle invariably stampede
in the night on the slightest provocation. After riding hard all
day it is nothing unusual to be awakened by the splashing of
rain in the face, or even by a warning wind ; to jump astride
your ready-saddled broncho and circle all night the frightened
cattle. If they prove too much for their weak captors, and madly
break the human ring, each rider must follo.w a fragment in its
headlong flight till daylight enables him to resume the mastery.
Every night sentinels must mount guard, gently turning back
into the sleeping herd the hungry and the restive. The fare is
of the rudest and is despatched with most alarming celerity. The
four horses always allotted to each vaquero are sometimes in-
creased to six wet blankets and hard riding telling sadly on
these grass-fed slaves, so that I have often been unable to urge
them out of a walk.

And the cowboy that terrible creature held responsible for
such a large portion of Western wickedness ! It is impossible to
do him justice in a few words ; to know him you must live with
him. When thrown upon his hospitality he has stolen from me
what I most needed, and nervously fingered his six-shooter at the
first sign of my displeasure. It is also true that, when filled with
bad whiskey, he has a penchant for making things unpleasant for
those who attach a par value to their lives ; and that his language
often rivals that heard in a college smoking-room. But, on the
other hand, he frequently puts to the blush those who have had

1884.] CATTLE-RANCH LIFE IN COLORADO. 641

far better opportunities ; shows a charming toleration of things
Eastern ; is so manly, dashing, high-principled, and hospitable as
to expel any pangs you may entertain with regard to your latest
horse-trade.

Cowboys are paid from twenty-five to forty dollars per month,
and the foreman from fifty to one hundred perhaps more.
Ranch managers are well remunerated, according to responsi-
bility and duties. I know one gentleman, of about ten years' ex-
perience, who draws the unusual salary oi ten thousand a year.
Board and the use of the ponies are matters of cuurse and inde-
pendent of these figures. The fare on a ranch of any size is good
and abundant, sleep unbroken and of moderate length. It is
when camping out on "round-up" or trail that the food is sim-
ple and repose brief.

Sickness is unusual, though rheumatism is frequently con-
tracted chiefly through carelessness. Clad in American som-
brero, California chaperajas, boots, and the water-proof " slick-
er," the ranchero may ride with a dry skin in the teeth of wind
and rain ; while a little care exercised when camping out will
grant him immunity from watery beds. Life among the cow-
boys may savor more of the prosaic than romantic ; yet a gallop
and pursuit with a circling lariat is ever exhilarating ; the snowy
peaks almost atone for the ocean ; while the midnight watch and
the bellow and tread of rushing herds long retain the novelty
and excitement that even the consequent loss of sleep fails to al-
together dissipate.

VOL. xxxix.* 41

642 RUSK IN AS A TEACHER. [Aug.,

RUSKIN AS A TEACHER.

As it is the highest and noblest function of the critic, not to
correct, but to teach, so it is the most essential quality of the
scholar to accept with docility and a temperate humility the
lessons so imparted. And though the number of self-appointed
teachers in this world are many, yet those duly authorized and
equipped for their task form a lamentably small body of earnest
thinking, men, each of whom sways in a measure the thoughts
and consequently the actions and history of his day. So when
Mallock, in an outburst of saddened enthusiasm, says of Ruskin
that he is the only one of our teachers who seems to speak with
the least breath of inspiration, he turns wilfully away from more
resonant voices calling him to higher ground, and thinks rather
of the beauty evidenced in his master's life and thoughts and
efforts than of the positive lessons given by him to the world.

For the voice of inspiration is strong and clear and steady,
not broken or fitful or saddened by the shadow of all things
evil. Ruskin's purity of motive, his earnest sincerity, and the
grasp of his powerful yet versatile mind fall far short of inspi-
ration, which, drawing its light from a higher source, and with
fewer natural advantages, strikes home like an arrow to the heart.
He has been an ardent worker all his life, not shrinking in prac-
tice from what he advocates in principle, and impelled by an un-
selfish desire to benefit his fellow-men ; yet, after so many years
of sincere labor, how much has been accomplished ? It is not,
indeed, within the scope of the present article to consider him
either as an artistic or literary critic, in both of which characters
he has won just renown, but to look at him rather from his highest
standpoint " the helper of those who live in the spirit." This is
what he has tried with all his heart to be, and this is the truest
test by which to measure his attainments.

Ruskin's start in life was singularly felicitous. ' An only son
and the heir to a large fortune, flushed with collegiate honors
and the author of a successful book, full of a happy confidence
in his own powers and trained in that peculiar school of stolid
British Protestantism which spreads a mantle of religious com-
placency over its fortunate possessor, the fields of Italy became
the natural theatre of his labors. Bayne informs us that " his
father and mother were fervently devout persons of the Evangeli-

1884.] RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 643

cal school," and amiably adds that to such " the Bible was the
voice of God, infallible, and alone infallible ; the Church of
Rome was the great and subtle apostasy." Indeed, the elder
Ruskin's views are set forth plainly in an article published by
him in one of the prominent journals of the day, and quoted
with emphatic approval by his son in the appendix to the first
volume of Stones of Venice. In this prolonged wail over the
Catholic Emancipation Bill the author moderately says :,

'' It is admitted by all (?) that by the very act of abandoning the Catho-
lic religion we became a free and enlightened people. It was only by
throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that we attained to that free-
dom of thought which has so advanced us in the scale of society. We are
now so much advanced by adopting and adhering to a reformed religion
that, to prove our liberal and unprejudiced views, we throw down the bar-
riers between the two religions, of which the one is the acknowledged
cause of light and knowledge, the other of darkness and ignorance."

This the writer considers to be " miserable reasoning," " in-
fatuated presumption," and fears not without reason that
" when the Romish religion rolled her clouds of darkness over
the earlier ages she quenched as much light and knowledge
and judgment as our modern liberals have ever displayed."

With such an influence still strong upon him, and with the
natural reverence of a young man for a kind and indulgent pa-
rent, it is not surprising that in his earlier books we find Ruskin
speaking of Catholic rites as " idolatrous ceremonies " in the
round old English style, cavilting at the Blessed Virgin, and
considering it the plain duty of every English tourist to " dissi-
pate the Romanist errors, and to communicate to others the
better knowledge which he himself possesses ; " being all this
while in a state of perfect satisfaction with the "better know-
ledge " so possessed.

But for an eager, sensitive soul, with its natural turning to
beauty and truth, to remain long in this complacent darkness
was impossible. The holiness of Catholic art, and, above all, the
influence of those two exclusively Catholic painters, Giotto and
Fra Angelico, sank into his heart ; while, on the other hand, the
warring of the infidel writers of the day tore from his shoulders
the cloak of Protestantism in which he fancied himself securely
wrapped. In all his books we trace the change as it comes
slowly and surely ; but, alas ! it is only a change from a narrow
to a wider ignorance a palingenesis, saddening because incom-
plete. What the cant of the day calls " honest doubt " might
satisfy the cravings of some.; but it brought scant comfort to

644 RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. [Aug.,

the man who preached all his life the supreme virtue of obedience.
" The infinite folly of modern thought," writes Ruskin coldly,
" is centred in the notion that liberty is good for a man, irre-
spective of the use he is likely to make of it." * And the key-
note of his doctrine is sharply struck when he protests that " all
freedom is error. Every line you lay down is either right or
wrong." f It is true that he has turned in " sorrowing con-
tempt," as Bayne says, from the narrow harshness of his earlier
creed ; but the liberty of thought offered in exchange for his
youthful beliefs is still more hateful to him a stone when he
asks for bread. In his exaggerated admiration of Greek pan-
theism we have, not the natural and involuntary paganism of
Keats, but the restless cravings of an unsatisfied Christian soul
seeking light in the paths of darkness. When he asks if we can
suppose " that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews and
to punish them, but no angels, or only mocking spectres of angels,
or even devils in the shape of angels, to ,lead Lycurgus and
Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave," ^ he is pro-
posing a spiritual problem about which neither Lycurgus nor
Leonidas were wont to trouble their minds. As the last shreds
of his faith are scattered to the winds life grows darker and
darker before him, until the climax is reached in the bitter cry
which Mallock, in the New Republic, puts into the mouth of his
" inspired teacher " pleading for a God.

'' Once I could pray every morrgng, and go forth to my day's labor
stayed and comforted. But now I can pray no longer. You have taken
my God away from me, and I know not where you have laid him. My
only consolation in my misery is that at least I am inconsolable for his
loss."

This the voice of inspiration ! this hopeless cry of real pain
from a man to whom the question of religion is the one vital in-
terest in life. Over and over again, in his lectures to young
girls and world-worn men, in his appeals to artisans and sol-
diers and scholars, he comes back with unerring certainty to
the absolute need of a spiritual life, to the happiness of serving
God. Yet, with no firm .ground to tread on, how can he hold
out his hand to save his sinking brother ? This great want nulli-
fies his utmost efforts, and he stands powerless before the moun-
tains of cupidity, self-interest, and stolid ignorance, striving in
vain to lift them by his own unaided strength. He has thrown
himself heart and soul into the cause of labor, upholding its true
^dignity without the aid of those would-be lofty sentiments

* Queen of the Air. \CrownofWildOlives. \EthicsofthtDust.

1884.] RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 645

which political wire-pullers are wont to lavish on the working-
classes, and which, as Sancho Panza sadly complains, " butter no
parsnips." The voice of poverty never appeals to him in vain ;
and the spirit of gain and worship of prosperity, which in En-
gland leaves no room for the poor outside the workhouse doors,
is hateful in his eyes. The poverty which is synonymous with
idleness and beggary, and the poverty which struggles vainly
against the crushing burdens of life, are the two blots upon the
world's fair face ; and the hopeless beggar in the Italian streets
and the hopeless toiler in the English mills are objects that mar,
for him, all the beauty and harmony of existence.

All must work: such is Ruskin's great doctrine. But every
man should reap the profit of his toil, and all work must pro-
ceed from a pure motive or result in inevitable failure. In the
opening chapter of Sesame and Lilies every stroke directed
against the spirit of low ambition and dubious gain tells with
crushing force. No sophistry can blind him in this matter. He
has no part in that " modern Christianity which consists in
knocking a man into a ditch, and then telling him to remain con-
tent in that position in which Providence has placed him." The
oft-repeated phrase, " station in life," irritates him beyond endu-
rance, serving, as it generally does, for a cloak to cover every
sort of self-indulgence. He complains with pointed irony that
in the countless letters he receives from parents their one ex-
pressed desire for their children is an education befitting such
and such a. station in life, never an education good in itself ; and
that when it becomes a question of some useful work to be done
in the world the great objection urged is always the same :
" We cannot leave our station in life."

'' Those of us who really cannot," he answers" that is to say, who can-
only maintain themselves by continuing in some business or salaried of-
fice have already something to do ; and all they have to see to is that
they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people who
use that apology, ' remaining in the station of life to which Providence has
called them ' means keeping all the carriages and all the footmen and
large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I say that if ever
Providence did put them into stations of that sort which is not at all a
matter of certainty Providence is just now very distinctly calling them
out again. Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom ; and Peter's
the shore of Galilee ; and Paul's the antechambers of the high-priest
which ' station in life ' each had to leave with brief notice." *

Perhaps the only man in England who could have clasped
hands with Ruskin on the broad ground of Christian charity

* Sesame and Lilies.

646 RUSK IN AS A TEACHER. [Aug.,

was Father Faber. With little else in common, they have on
this point only one mind between them. Faber says that the
poor are the eagles of God, and as such we must let them de-
spoil us. Ruskin declares that we are wanting even in justice
when we take our children to church in their pretty hats and
feathers, and leave behind us the little barefooted beggar to
sweep the frozen gutters in our path.

Yet there is always something despairing in the very courage
with which he fights his battle. No optimist like Emerson, no
selfish brooder like Carlyle, no calm and temperate critic like
Arnold, his scorn burns like caustic where he touches the open
sores of a great nation. And much that he says of England fits
our shoulders as well. We, too, worship the Goddess of Getting-
On, the base-born modern Athene. We, too, are niggardly where
art and science are concerned, only to fling the money thus saved
under the feet of thieves. We, too, struggle every man to out-
wit his brother, cajoling the ignorant with empty words to use
them as party tools. The rotting roofs of our clumsy buildings,
the rotting piers of our sinking bridges, the rotting hulks of our
worthless ships, bear witness in so many voices to the truth of
Ruskin's oft-repeated words that the work which is done for
gain alone can never be done well. Not so the ancient Romans
built, having for their purpose always the greater pride and ag-
grandizement of Rome ; not so mediaeval Florence reared her
churches, having for her purpose the honor and the glory of
God.

'' Six thousand years of building ! ". cries Ruskin bitterly; "and what
have we done ? . . . The ant and the moth have cells for each of their
young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes that consume
them like graves ; and night by night from the corners of our streets rises
up the cry of the homeless, ' I was a stranger, and ye took me not in.' " *

But if our social wounds lie bare before this fierce apostle
of labor and charity, he at least dares to do what few reformers
have attempted follow rigorously himself the counsel given to
others. Preaching contempt of wealth for wealth's sake, he has
scattered his ample fortune to the winds. Preaching charity, he
has denied himself the pleasures he most covets, for the sake of
the poor he loves. Preaching order and cleanliness, he has, with
bucket and broom, washed down the flight of stone stairs in the
dirty little Savoy inn, declaring plaintively that they had never
before been cleaned since they were erected. Yet it is often hard

* Sesame and Lilies.

1884.] RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 647

to draw from his books the practical lessons they are meant to
convey. How many pages of the Fors Clavigera are helpful, or
even intelligible, to the workmen in whose behalf they are pub
lished ? Granted that they are agreeable reading for those! who,
not being obliged to work, have plenty of time to study their
meaning and take their charms to heart ; this is not the avowed
purpose of their creation.

So, too, in his lectures to women, so full 'of satire without
harshness, and chivalry without mawkishness. All that he says
is delightful, and much of it true. The earnestness with which he
appeals to them to use their great influence for better things ; to
be the sought and not the seekers ; to give with justice only that
crown of praise which it is their prerogative to bestow; to
mingle charity with their religion, and not "think to recommend
themselves to their Master by scrambling up the steps of his
judgment throne to divide it with him"* all this advice, given
with a tender toleration, is directly applicable to the women to
whom it is addressed: the daughters of wealth and breeding,
whose surroundings are in harmony with their lives, and who, in
the writer's own words, " have pretty rooms to live in and pretty
clothes to wear."

But there is another class of women and, alas ! their number
increases yearly who, without belonging strictly to the working-
classes, yet work their fingers to the bone. Gentlewomen these
the term that Ruskin loves but there is no gentleness in their
lives. They are no " queens " to be loved and cherished, but
tired women who must harden their hearts and their faces, and
push their feeble way through an elbowing world. Surely these
are the souls most in need of a little help ; yet where do they
receive it ? Ruskin, it is true, keenly appreciates the type of
Catholic holiness, humble as a wild flower and as full of tender
beauty, which has been given to the world in The Story of Ida.
But the simple and contented poverty of the Italian girl is a
different thing from the wearied strain which is the heritage of
so many women in England and America. Ida's humble means
sufficed her humble wants. There was no anxious, sordid strug-
gle to mar her life. She had a great temptation and a great
sorrow, but both might have come to a duchess as well as to a
peasant ; and her purity and piety made her as one who stands
waiting in the courts of the Lord. But for those who live much
further off from heaven, and who feel themselves growing more
earthy day by day, recognizing with a dull pain the gradual

* Sesame and Lilies.

648 RUSK IN AS A TEACHER. [Aug.,

blunting of their finer aspirations under the petty cares of each
succeeding hour to these what word has Ruskin said ? There
is more real help for such in that one noble sonnet of Matthew
Arnold's to Marcus Aurelian than in anything that Ruskin has
written. The poet, with firmer perceptions though with no
wider sympathies, has touched the key-note of such existence,
and points with quiet finger to the only cure :

" The aid to noble life is all within."

He, too, is essentially a teacher, and, if his audience is neces-
sarily more esoteric than Ruskin's, the sincerity of both is proved
by their patience under adverse criticism. Those who work
with a distinct and simple purpose, and not merely to reflect
their own image to the world, are spared that haunting sensitive-
ness/ or self-consciousness rather, which made Macaulay wince
under a word of blame, and Byron writhe beneath the censure
he affected to scorn. To be misunderstood, and, what is worse,
misrepresented, must naturally be painful to an earnest writer
conscious of the integrity of his motives ; but when he has no
small vanity to wound he is ready to accept it as one of the
inevitable crosses of his lot. And on the subject of bearing such
Ruskin gives a word of pithy explanation and advice directly
applicable to all :

" Taking up one's cross does not mean having ovations at dinner-par-
ties and being put over everybody else's head. It means simply that you
are to go the road which you see to be the straight one ; carrying what-
ever you find is given you to carry, as well and as stoutly as you can, with-
out making faces or calling people to come and look at you. Above all,
you are neither to load nor unload yourself, nor cut your cross to your
own liking." *

Sentences like these scattered throughout his books linger in
the mind after much else has been forgotten, and bear their fruits
in silence. Where has a profound truth been more simply and
vigorously told than in the seven short words which say to
an unbelieving world, " Wise work is, briefly, work with God " ?
How sharp the arrows flung either at the contented sceptic
or the exclusive religionist who will draw his own inspiration
from the holy text, after his own self-approved method ! " Make
either your beliefs or your difficulties definite," says Ruskin,
with visible impatience, to this latter class ; " but do not go
through life believing nothing intelligently, and yet supposing

* Ethics oftlte Dust.

1884.] RUSKIN AS A TEACHER:' 649

that your having read the words of a divine book must give you
the right to despise every religion but your own."

He acknowledges in the weariness of middle age that he, too,
has been fascinated with the dream of a monastic life; he, too,
has " pensively shivered with Augustines at St. Bernard, and
happily made hay with Franciscans at Fiesole, and sat silent
with Carthusians in their little gardens south of Florence, and
mourned through many a day-dream at Melrose and Bolton." *
Yet, curiously enough, he rejects the sanctity of such lives, as
not working hard enough for the world's good. His veins pulse
with the fretful activity of the nineteenth century, which seems
to be always saying : " God's work has fallen upon my shoul-
ders. I must give my help to the Almighty." The singular
sophistry of the day which tells you that to save your own soul
is an act of supreme selfishness finds in him an able exponent.
Even sorrow for sin is more of self-indulgence than he is willing
to allow. It would be better not to think about your sins at all,
but go right on and try to do some work well. Yet out of his
own mouth is he condemned when, in all humility, he acknow-
ledges that sin unfits for labor.

" There is no fault or folly of my life," he cries " and both have been
many and great that does not rise up against me, and take away my joy,
and shorten my povtfer of possession, of sight, of understanding."

And in all Ruskin's later books there is ever present a sense
of failure which saddens without angering him. He grows, not
bitter, but hopeless, and is " startled by the fading of the sunshine
out of his life." Now and then his old prejudices come back again,
but feebly and without a sting. He gropes who would fain lead
others, and is driven hither and thither, anchorless on an ocean
of speculation. He can lie neither to himself nor to the world ;
but fear has taken the placa of hope, and his words no longer
stir the heart as of old. What has he done for the brothers he
has loved ? How much has this brave, tender, and versatile soul
gained in its years of unstinted labor ? What has been the secret
of his failure ?

" We have toiled,

Yet all our fruit hangs dwarfed upon the tree,
And half our grain lies rotting in the ground,
And the lambs wander and the night has come."

* Ethics of the Dust.

650 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS.

THERE will be no occasion to apologize to the modern reader
for any attention that may be paid to subjects of Celtic literature
after the eloquent and sympathetic exposition by M. Renan of its
spiritual and emotional power, and the admission by Matthew
Arnold that the Celtic element has given sensibility and grace
to English poetry and lent its chief charm to the product of
the genius of Shakspere. There is coming to be an apprecia-
tion in minds of the higher critical order that the book which
was so repugnant to the Philistine sensibilities of Johnson and
Macaulay the poems of Ossian, as known in the paraphrase of
Macpherson marred as they are by imperfect comprehension
and overlaid with false and tawdry ornamentation, reflect the
shadowy figure of one of the great poets of the world, and a lite-
rature rich, original, and powerful, superior in elevation of spirit
and eloquence to that of any European inheritance, except the
Greek alone. The instinct of Goethe was more sound than that
of the prosaic and prejudiced English critics in recognizing the
genius of Ossian, and it undoubtedly exercised a great and vitaliz-
ing influence not only upon German literature of the succeeding
period, but upon those less willing to acknowledge it in English
literature Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others. There are
those upon whom the spirit of Celtic literature exercises a most
powerful fascination through its emotional sensibility, its keen
instinct for the soul of natural scenery, and even its melancholy
acquired through misfortune; and even those who are without
the consolations of revealed religion are melted and chastened
by the purity and strength of its devotional spirit. All that la-
bor and study have done to preserve the sadly mangled and im-
perfect treasures of Celtic literature under the influence of na-
tional enthusiasm and patriotic spirit, and against every discour-
agement and indifference on the part of British learning and cri-
ticism, has been of most valuable service to the world's treasure
of literature, and is coming to attract a recognition and a praise
which it was long without. Much has been done of late years to
elucidate and make known the treasures of Celtic literature ;
but the work has been hardly more than begun or passed beyond
provincial limits, and a rich field lies open to scholars and critics,
which, there are indications, will soon be eagerly occupied.

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 651

It is unfortunate that in Ireland, where Celtic literature was
in its greatest original force, it has suffered most from the de-
struction brought about by a continued state of warfare, scatter-
ing and obliterating its written records, and, in its later influence,
by the consequences of a state of political and social subjection
upon its representatives. But a small fragment remains of the
great bulk of Irish devotion, poetry, history, and legislation, as
recorded in its literature, after the continued destruction by war
and plunder, and its magnitude and value are signified as much
by the vicissitudes which its remains escaped as by their in-
herent quality. When the living representatives of the ancient
Irish bards were known otherwise than as objects of enmity to
the English colonists, and attracted some little attention from
curiosity, they were no longer the proud and high-spirited ppets
of victorious or powerful princes whose very defeats and mis-
fortunes had a tinge of greatness, but the humbler attendants of
decayed families who had preserved but fragments of their an-
cient wealth and magnificence, and who no longer hoped to con-
tinue the national struggle, but sought solace in an indulgence
which was not always elevated, and kept alive by their predomi-
nant virtues, chiefly the spirit of hospitality and generosity.
The spirit of the bard of this period, deprived of the inspiration
of the national conflict between the two races, and even of that
of the great and overwhelming misfortunes of his patrons and
his people, naturally degenerated to the lower themes of the
praise of hospitality or the tribute to family pride, and to a cer-
tain degree descended to what must be termed sycophancy and
the praise as well as the practice of unworthy self-indulgence ;
although in both instances a candid comparison with his English
contemporaries, the poets who wrote fulsome prefaces to noble
lords for guineas, and were the virtual outcasts of society for
drunkenness and licentiousness, might not leave the balance
against him. But, at any rate, the spectacle presented to the alien
and prejudiced observers of the English colony by Carolan and
his contemporaries, who are classed as the last of Irish bards
before the line" definitely descended to the hedge-poets, was that
of drunken " sorners," above the rank of beggars, to be sure, but
living upon charity and ready to celebrate the praises of any-
body who would give them a place at their tables and fill them
with good cheer. This is apparent even in the observation of so
sympathetic and unprejudiced a nature as that of Goldsmith, who
has recorded his remembrance of Carolan in an unsympathetic
spirit and misunderstanding of his personal character and imper-

652 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

feet acknowledgment, if wonder, at his genius. A part of this
estimate was unfortunately true. The bards were too ready to
praise those who treated them kindly and hospitably, and the
temptations of their profession, which was associated with occa-
sions of feasting and merriment, and the misfortunes and depen-
dence of their lives, led them to an indulgence which was also
universal with every class at the time. But they were far from
being so degraded as they seemed to prejudiced English observ-
ers, who had no knowledge of their genius or sympathy with
their higher thoughts. Carolan, at least, always preserved a cer-
tain dignity even among his English entertainers, while the spirit
with which he celebrated the- hospitality of the ancient Celtic
families was in a much loftier tone and style than his praises of
the good cheer of the Saxon squires and squireens. With the
McDermotts Roe and others of the ancient families he was the
high-spirited bard, whose praise was the grateful tribute of affec-
tion to merit, if, on the other hand, he sometimes condescended
to be the laureate of the boisterous bodagh and the entertain-
ing performer at a tavern carouse. Even his habits of personal
indulgence will seem to the sympathetic spirit less as the gross
craving of appetite than as the heightener of gayety and the
source of inspiration, and as also the refuge from grief and de-
spair, as they were to Burns. There is oftentimes a deeper
pathos in the Irishman's praise of whiskey than in the most piti-
ful lamentation of a set purpose, and it signifies the sole and de-
spairing recourse of misery far more than a riotous self-indul-
gence. Says poor Murrogh O'Monaghan in the street-ballad:

" May whiskey, by sea or by land, in all weather,
Be never denied to the children of care,"

and the same spirit is often apparent in Carolan's bacchana-
lian verse, in spite of its real enthusiasm and merriment, as thus
in " Whiskey the Potion " :

" Drink nine times a draught of whiskey in the day ;
It will clear your eyes ; you shall be courageous, fresh-hearted,
Cheerful, active, and cold will not come upon you ;
You shall have sleep and rest ;

You shall not incline to distemper, sickness, or trouble,
Till you be ten times as old as the mist''

This is in a very different spirit from the mere praises of glut-
tony and indulgence which make the staple of English drinking-
songs, and is the plea of sorrow and misfortune for shelter, rest,

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 653

and warmth, such as, we believe, is really the predominant spirit
of what has been charged as the Celtic habit of intoxication.

The title which has been given to Carolan of " The Last of
the Irish Bards " indicated not less the condition of the Celtic
inhabitants of Ireland at the time than his own superiority in
genius and social consideration to his successors who sang in the
same language. It indicated the turning-point in the struggle^
and the final abandonment of the effort to maintain the national
contest with the English invaders, and the submission to the new
condition of things, which was to develop into later efforts at
independence, but which, for the time being, was despondent and
hopeless. The old customs had not entirely vanished, but they
were the survival of habit rather than a vital maintenance of
spirit, and despondency, no less than the poverty produced by
confiscation and industrial oppression, affected the methods of
life in the great families. It was the beginning of the darkest
period of Ireland's history, when the iron of defeat entered into
the soul and the nation lay prostrate under the yoke, before the
birth of the undying struggle for liberty under new conditions.
The personal history of Carolan thoroughly illustrates the condi-
tion of the people. He was born in 1670 at the small village of
Nobber, in the County Westmeath, and on the lands of Caro-
lanstown, which had been wrested from his ancestors by the
family of Nugent during the wars of Henry II. His father,
John O'Carolan, the descendant of an ancient sept of East
Briefney, was a small farmer at the time of the birth of his son,
oecupying but a few acres of his ancestral domain, and living in a
small cabin, the remains of which were still standing in 1786.
Whether the father took part in the last uprising of the native
people under James II. is unknown, but he was dispossessed in
the confiscations that followed it, and compelled to seek the shel-
ter and protection of one of the ancient families of Connaught.
This was the family of McDermott Roe, whose estate was at
Alderford, in the County Roscommon. Tradition preserves no
recollection of the death of the father, but at an early age Tur-
logh was a resident, or a " cosherer," at the house at Alderford,
and the companion of the children of Mrs. McDermott Roe. His
pleasant ways and engaging manners made him a favorite, and he
received the fragments of an education with the children of his
patroness, having been taught to read in his native language and
received some rudimentary instruction in English, although his
knowledge of the latter was always imperfect. Accounts differ
as to the period of his life when he became blind, the sketch of

654 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

his life in Walker's Memoirs of the Irish Bards stating that it
was at an age when he was too young to remember colors, while
that in Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy fixes it in his eighteenth
year and as the result of an attack of small-pox. At all events,
it definitely decided his career as poet and musician, there being
no other resource left him except helpless dependence on his
patroness or the staff and bag upon the roads. He received in-
struction upon the harp from the numerous wandering professors
of the time, and was soon prepared for his lifetime of wandering
minstrelsy, although it is said that he never acquired accom-
plished skill as a musical performer, and his harp was but the
instrument of his composition and the accompaniment of his
poetry and song. The record says that he was furnished by
Mrs. McDermott Roe with a horse and attendant which may,
perhaps, be translated into a pony with a barefooted gossoon to
guide him and in his twenty-second year he commenced the
pilgrimage which ended only with his life.

The circumstances of the Celtic families of the time were such
that not only was it impossible for a single one to maintain its
private bard in the ancient state, but their condition or the
change in habits extended the bardic circuit beyond their limits.
They were the heartiest, most hospitable, and most congenial of
the hosts and entertainers of Carolan ; but he was obliged to also
accept the hospitalities of the English settlers in some degree,
and even to be the attraction at tavern feasts. That this circum-
stance had an injurious effect upon the subject and quality of his
verse, as well as his character and habits, is evident, and the
spectacle of this side of his life is as lamentable as that of Burns
sharing the cups and praising the virtues of the petty lairds
and shopkeepers of Ayr. He was, however, first received, his
genius appreciated, and his fame established among the old Cel-
tic families whom he celebrated in his verses ; and among the
O'Rourkes, the Maguires of Tempo, the O'Haras, the Burkes,
the O'Malleys, and others, who preserved the traditions and feel-
ings of a nobler time, he was the honored guest rather than the
mendicant minstrel. He at first confined himself to compositions
in music, which, we may believe, were the natural bent of his
genius ; and it was only upon the challenge of a gentleman named
Reynolds, at whose house he was staying, that he attempted his
first poem, the description of a legendary battle of fairies on a
neighboring rath. From the time of this discovery of his faculty
his songs and music were composed together, although it is evi-
dent that the verse was subordinate to the composition. His

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 655

fame was soon established, and the circuit of his visits widened to
include the territory of Middle Connaught, beyond which he
seldom ventured. He had his love-romance, the lady, Bridget
Cruise, prudently refusing to become the spouse of a wandering
and improvident minstrel, and the bitter-sweet of love and dis-
appointment inspired some of the most genuine and pathetic of
his verse and music. An affecting anecdote remains of his recog-
nition of the touch of his love's hand after long separation, and
without knowledge or expectation of her presence, when landing
from a boat on the shores of the pilgrim isle of Lough Dearg ;
and we need not be told of the keenness of his sensibility and
his warmth of feeling. He afterwards married a Miss Maguire,
of good family in the County Fermanagh, but described as a
" proud and haughty dame." He set up a household at a small
farm in' Mosshill, County Leitrim, which he maintained during
the lifetime of his wife, although it was to be presumed that he
was only an occasional visitor and that his wife experienced a
full share of the penalties of marrying a genius. It is recorded
that he loved her affectionately, was deeply affected at her death,
and composed a feeling monody to her memory. He had a family
of seven children, and it is quite possible that his lineal descend-
ants are now in existence. His domestic life, however, was but a
small feature in his career, and, to all intents and purposes, he
was always the wandering bard. The results of this method of
life were an indulgence in liquor which has given him the name
of an inveterate drunkard, although such was never the case,
even in his old age. Universal drinking and intoxication were
habits of the time, and Carolan shared them ; but he maintained
periods of complete sobriety under vows, and it may be imagined
from his temperament that a slight indulgence gave him the in-
spiration he required, as in the case of Addison, JLamb, and other
men of genius. In fact, this impression would be confirmed by
an anecdote to the effect that, while dull and impotent under a
vow of sobriety, he received a vivifying inspiration by a full sniff
of the exhilarating fumes of a bottle of right usquebaugh with the
scent of the heather upon it. In fact, all the anecdotes that are
current of Carolan's life would indicate a delicate temperament
and sensitiveness far removed from the character of a gross
roisterer in whom the appetite for indulgence was predominant.
It is said that while at the house of a Mr. Brett, in Sligo, where
he was a frequent and honored guest, he tuned his harp in order
to compose a " planxty," or sprightly tune and song, in honor of
the daughter of the house, a beautiful and engaging young girl,

656 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

but found that his inspiration had entirely deserted him. Putting
aside his instrument in grief and despair, he told the mother that
he had often tried the theme, but some evil genius always seemed
to interfere, and the strings of his harp would only vibrate to
melancholy tones. He was convinced that it was a foreboding of
evil, and that her daughter would not survive the twelve months.
The event justified his prescience ; and, if the anecdote is true, as
there is no reason to doubt, it indicated a delicate sensitiveness
to some accent in the girl's voice, or some emanation from her
presence of the near companionship of death, invisible to ordinary
perception. Even if it was not true it would indicate the char-
acter of the man of whom it was told. His favorite place of in-
spiration at the house of one of his friends was the sunny nook of
a garden near the hives of bees, whose musical murmur gratified
his inner sense of melody, and where he would sit for hours, until
the inspiration of music had taken shape in distinct melody, when
he would ask to be led within and give it voice upon his harp.
The genius that found its favorite food in this was not that of the
merely bacchanalian minstrel. His portrait confirms the impres-
sion of his innate delicacy and refinement. It was painted at the
request of Dean Massey, of Limerick, during a visit in the later
years of life, by some artist of more than the ordinary skill of
itinerant painters, and it is believed by Dr. Petrie to have been
the work of Vander Hagen, a Dutch artist of some repute, at that
time in Ireland. It represents him with his harp, and with his
face slightly elevated in the attitude of inspiration. The features
are of remarkable refinement and regularity, the flowing locks
and partially bald brow giving it some resemblance to the por-
traits of Shakspere. It is interesting to note, in comparison
with his contemporary and fellow-countryman, Goldsmith, that,
while there is the same expression of benignity and sweetness of
temper, the features are cast in a finer and more delicate mould,
and that, as between the two, it would be said that Carolan was
the descendant of a purer and higher race than Goldsmith, as,
indeed, without any sort of reproach upon the latter, was proba-
bly the case. His portrait would show unmistakably that Caro-
lan was not only a man of genius, but a gentleman in the ances-
tral sense of the term.

His life, after the manner which has been indicated the bard
of a crushed and decadent race, sometimes the honored guest of
ancient families, and sometimes the curiosity of the alien invader
and the amusement of the tavern feast lasted for sixty -five years.
The death of his wife, however little he may have seen of her,

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 657

was a severe blow. His family was broken up, and it may be
presumed that the burdens of old age, to one of his temperament,
were heavy upon him, and the task of amusement without the
inspiration more repugnant and harder with years. Among his
later compositions were several devotional pieces, one in particu-
lar, now lost, a Gloria in Excelsis, which was spoken of as of un-
common devotional tenderness and power. As his infirmities in-
creased and the hand of death was visibly laid upon him he bent
his steps to the house of his earliest friend and benefactress, the
widow of McDermott Roe, then more than eighty years of age, to
die. Having recovered somewhat from the fatigue of his jour-
ney, he composed his last piece in a final adieu to life and inspira-
tion, " The Farewell to Music," and then took to his bed, from
which he never rose. The tradition is that he preserved his
gentle kindliness and genial humor towards his attendants to the
last, nourishing exhausted nature upon his favorite beverage,
and that his death was devout and decorous. The account of his
funeral gives a singular illustration of the customs of the time, as
well as of the extent of his fame and the esteem in which he was
held. The wake lasted four days, and the throng was so great
that all the houses in the neighboring village of Ballyfarnon
were occupied by strangers, and the people erected tents and
huts in the fields about Alderford. There was a gathering of all
his contemporary bards, who vied with each other in musical
and poetical elegies, some of which are still preserved. Besides
the neighboring gentry and populace it is recorded that over
sixty clergymen of various denominations attended the wake,
and that the funeral, on the fifth day, extended for miles and was
one of the largest ever known in Connaught. The remains were
interred in the tomb of the McDermott Roe family in Kilronan
church. In 1750 the grave was opened to receive the remains of
a Catholic clergyman whose admiration for the genius of the
bard was so enthusiastic that he desired to be buried with him,
and the skull was taken out and placed in a niche above the
tomb. It was destroyed in a manner affording another singular
instance of the temper of the time. In 1796, says the account,
" a person in the garb of a gentleman, but supposed to be a
northern Orangeman," rode up to the church on horseback and
asked to see the skull. It was brought to him, when he fired a
pistol at it, shattering it to pieces, and put spurs to his horse
with an oath at " all Irish papists." The alarm was given, and
he was pursued by some of the neighboring gentry into the
next county ; but, unfortunately for the proper execution of im-
VOL. xxxix. 42

658 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

promptu justice, he escaped. Outrageous as was this sacrilege,
it was not more than an extraordinary exhibition of the ferocious
party spirit of the time. To this day the grave of Carolan has
no monument, although a musical celebration of his works was
held in Dublin during the early part of the present century, as it
was understood, for that purpose. Finally, there may be given in
testimony to the character of Carolan the words of his friend,
the venerable Charles O'Conor, of Balenagare, notable in the
annals of Irish scholarship and patriotism : *' Constitutionally
pious, he never omitted daily prayer, and fondly imagined him-
self inspired when he composed some pieces of church music.
Gay by nature and cheerful by habit, he was a pleasing member
of society, and his talents and his morality procured him friends
and esteem everywhere." These were not idle words from a
person of Mr. O'Conor's character and sincerity.

In the literary estimate of Carolan's genius and production
omission will necessarily be made of his abilities and achieve-
ments as a composer, which, as has been said, were at least an
equal factor in his product. It is enough to say in this regard
that, while not originating anything beyond the forms and char-
acter of the Irish music whose traditions and spirit he inherited,
he holds a high rank among the native composers, and that, with
a few exceptions in favor of the single pieces of unknown musi-
cians, his airs and compositions are of the highest order and most
genuine spirit of the graceful and charming, if not the pathetic,
development of Irish music. In considering him as a poet it is
also necessary to take into account the nature and limitations of
his profession. As a bard the subjects of his verse were almost
always strictly personal the immediate praise of his entertainers
and hosts or their families, or the contribution to the amusement
or provocation of a bacchanalian carouse. However genuinely
he may have been inspired by friendship or reverence for a
family of ancient lineage whose representatives treated him with
the dignity and regard due to the ancient* honor of the bardic
profession, or by the beauty and gracious kindness of the mis-
tress or the daughter of the household whose charms he cele-
brated or whose epithalamium he sang, the element of personal
flattery must always have been intermingled with his verse and
injured its independent genuineness and spontaneous feeling.
This element is perceptible in the poetry of the bards, whose
position was more noble and dignified as the honored retainers
of princely families, and whose themes were higher in the warlike
achievements of great chiefs or the misfortunes of a noble line,

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 659

which also involved the fate of the tribe or the nation ; and was, of
course, still more predominant in the degenerate circumstances
of Carolan. As has been said, many of his themes and subjects
of praise were as unworthy as those of Burns in compliment to
the small gentry of a Scotch parish, and it is a wonder that he
was able to manifest any sort of genuine feeling and inspiration
in these productions of a flattering if not a mercenary muse.
He had not the advantage of the contemporary English poets,
who could put all the flattery of a patron into a dedication while
they preserved the independence of the theme and faithfulness
to genius in the literary product itself, but was bound to make
the subject of his verse the immediate praise of his entertainer.
Among the upwards of two hundred pieces of Carolan's verse
which were preserved beyond their immediate occasion, there
are many which are merely the hackneyed phrases of compli-
ment and the familiar invitations to carousal ; and that so many
are spirited, original, and hearty is a proof not only of his ge-
nial and grateful disposition, but of the fertility of his genius. It
may be readily supposed -that the inspiration of his muse was
often more genuine than that of his verse, as that, at least, was
not degraded by the necessity of personal flattery. It would be
wrong to suppose that Carolan was at the beck and call of any
squireen who chose to entertain him like a hired musician. His
position and his pride placed him above that, and it may be be-
lieved that he always preserved a certain degree of dignity and
independence. But he readily accepted the invitations of En-
glish squires whom his predecessors would have scorned, and
took part in entertainments which were merely boisterous and
drunken, if profuse and hospitable. It is deeply to be lamented
that, with his genius, he had not the themes of great events, the
victories and misfortunes of princely lines, like his predecessors,
or had an audience and a public that would have rewarded him
for singing the loves and the sorrows, and depicting the charac-
ters, of the people around him, or interpreting his own genuine
emotions ; but he had not, and accordingly, although his verse is
not without a trace of the dignity and the feeling of both themes,
its greater part was diverted to less worthy subjects, and was
injured and degraded by the exigencies of his profession. It is
a wonder that he produced so much that is genuine and worthy
under the circumstances, but none the less it must be admitted
that his genius was sadly marred by his condition. Finally, as a
barrier to his appreciation by the world, his poetry was confined
to a language which, so far from being one of the commanding

660 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,;

dialects, was confined to an oppressed people and subject to the
prejudice and enmity of the victorious nation which had the
most command of the ear of the world in regard to it. Dliring
his lifetime he was absolutely unknown to the learned English
world, and the critics of his day would have been as much sur-
prised and as contemptuously incredulous that a poet and com-
poser of original power and genius, worthy to be compared with
their best, existed among the Celtic people of Ireland as they
would now be to hear of such a phenomenon among the Maoris of
New Zealand. Even now his merits are by no means recognized,
and, except among the few students and lovers of Celtic literature,
he is but the shadow of a name, hardly more substantial in its
proportions than that of Ossian. It may be hoped that the time is
approaching when this ignorance will be dispelled, and that not
among Irishmen alone, but among all who are sensitive to the
grace and charm of lyric song, there will be appreciation and af-
fection for the last of the Irish bards.

In endeavoring to give some view of the characteristics of
Carolan's verse it will be honest to include that which is worst
as well as that which is best, and to represent him by his own
product, exactly as he is. So much of his verse, as has been
said, was devoted to absolute, if genuine, personal praise that
it could not be omitted without losing a predominant character-
istic, The lowest form of this was, of course, the flattery of a
roistering squire of the alien race who had him to cheer his cups,
with, perhaps, a natural appreciation of his festive genius, but
very little sense of its higher qualities. A host of this kind was
George Brabazon, a squire of Fermanagh, and the " planxty " in
his praise is an evidence of the hearty spirit and happy faculty
of Carolan in his lowest themes. It seems better to present it
in a literal version rather than as versified in English, although
in this, of course, it is robbed of all the form of poetry and has
only the spirit to preserve it, while, as with all the verse of
Carolan, there is also the vital want of the accompanying melo-
dy, which gave it half its life, and in this case was the spright-
liest and gayest of movements. Nevertheless, with every disad-
vantage, the reader will hardly avoid catching something of the
spirit and felicity of the gay compliment and conviviality.

GEORGE BRABAZON.

" O George Brabazon, that you may live long and well !

The love of every man, O son of happiest repute.
, O hand of generosity ! from whom it were easy for us to obtain wine,

Jovial is the company in the place where your friends may be.

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 66 1

Heigh-ho ! there he is, the hearty fellow !

Ho'm-bo' ! the flower of brave fellows ;

Our sport, our mirth, supplying our necessities ;

Our meat, our ale, our music, and our bread and butter,

Our harp, our fiddle !

He is the mirth of Kin'ratty in the middle of his own county.
The top branch of Gallen the love of my heart is with him.
He is noble, free, graceful, friendly, and true.

" I'd rather than the 'cattle' or the gold of the king of Spain,
Than the horses and coaches of Rome and the Pope together,
And than MacYoris's Dunmore and MacRannall's Norrall,
Be looking at George scattering gold in handfuls from him.

Heigh-ho ! there he is, the gay fellow !

Ho'm-bo'! with his black farewell to every one.

Him-ham ! planxty merriment !

Sing, dance, drink his health about !

He is gentle, he is calm, he is courteous,

He is the flower of his name ; we will all go with him to his estate.
A world of prosperity on him ! luck and liberality on him !
And may a good increase of every noble quality fall on him !"

. It was in a different spirit from the praises of this prodigal
and roistering squire at the head of the table in the tap-room
of an inn, dressed in tawdry lace and shouting- " drink about ! "
vulgar and coarse even in his hospitality that the bard raised
the great white cup of the O'Haras, brimming with precious
claret, to his lips under the oaken roof of the ancestral fyall, and
set it down to tune his harp in a not unworthy tribute to a more
dignified hospitality. There were grades even in the baccha-
nalian verse of Carolan, and the praise of the cup of O'Hara
might have come from the lips of Sanchan Torpest or any of the
nobler race of bards. It is given in the version of Sir Samuel
Ferguson, which preserves all the spirit of the original while
being nearly literal :

THE CUP OF O'HARA.
" Were I west in green Arran,

Or south in Glanmore,
Where long ships come laden

With claret in store,
Yet I'd rather than shiploads

Of claret and ships
Have your white cup, O'Hara,
Up full at my lips.

" But why seek in numbers

Its virtues to tell,
When O'Hara's own chaplain
Has said, saying well,

662 THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

' Torlogh, bold son of Brian,

Sit ye down, boy, again,
Till we drain the great cupaun

In another health to Keane ' ? "

A more elevated and grateful subject for Carolan's praise and
tribute was the beauty, grace, and kindliness of the wives and
daughters of his hosts the noble chatelaines, who preserved the
flower of gracious hospitality in the midst of decayed fortunes,
and the lovely girls, the " branches of bloom " in beauty and
lineage, who were the ornaments and hopes of the household.
His strain was always elevated and his language of rare felicity
in dealing with these subjects, which make the greater bulk of
his verses, and the sense of personal flattery was in a great
measure lost in the genuine sentiment, warmth of feeling, and
glowing inspiration with which reverence and admiration affect-
ed him. Many of them are as genuine as the amatory songs
of Burns, and the incidental testimony which they give of the
character and spirit of the Irish ladies of the time is grateful,
although perhaps hardly needed. It is needless to say that they
are thoroughly pure in language and expression. Purity has
been the characteristic of Irish poetry from the earliest period ;
and it is not only manifested in the highest degree in the verse
of Carolan, but there is a delicacy of expression that might not
have been looked for, and it is only very rarely indeed that there
is a frankness of language unsuited to modern taste, and which
in any case is neither immoral n'or gross. Carolan was, of
course, the inheritor of much of the phraseology of his prede-
cessors, the familiar epithets in praise of beauty, which are to be
found in all Irish poetry, as in the verses of the ballad-singers of
every nation, and signify its prevailing or peculiar charms. Such
felicities of description and expression as " the hair of branches
and tendrils," " the cheeks like the hawthorn berries in the snow,"
" the walk like the sailing swan," and the whole presence like
" branch of apple-bloom," are common to all the Celtic poets of
Ireland, and are the natural emanations of the peculiar charms
of Irishwomen and the fine taste and eloquence of their admi-
rers. They are interwoven gracefully in the songs of Carolan,
and, as might be supposed with a blind man, the charms of voice
appeal strongly to his sensibilities ; and the " bird-voiced lady
gay," and the sweet tone of the maiden that sets the cranes to
sleep on the strand, are but examples of the felicities of his de-
scription. Predominant and characteristic above all is his en-
thusiasm and gayety, which is the outcome of his Celtic na-

1884] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 663

ture, and which, if at times it seems extravagant to soberer feel-
ings, is thoroughly genuine and natural, like the imagery of the
Oriental poets, which it sometimes resembles. The very abrupt-
ness which characterizes his verse is a proof of its warmth and
enthusiasm, and, whatever effect it may have in a bald prose
translation, it is natural and effective in its native garb. When
he says of the effect of the beauty of Mable Ni Kelly, that men
who see it spring like wild men to the tops of the trees, and that
if in a room the candle swims before their eyes as though they
were drunk, it is merely the warmth of eloquence and not the
cold extravagance of conceit, like that of the euphuistic En-
glish poets, and is certainly less exaggerated than the imagery of
Oriental bards, which is accepted as the natural expression of
their feeling. This enthusiasm of eloquence is characteristic of
all genuine Celtic poetry, and, like its redundancies of expression
and epithet, indicates a kinship with the Oriental nature. A
specimen of this class of Carolan's poetry may first be given in
the naked baldness of a literal version to which all the form and
grace of poetry have to be supplied by the imagination :

PEGGY O'CORCORAN.

"Is it not happy for the youth that will be caressing her,

The flower of a child, of the smooth, white hands ?

She is the love and delight of sage nobles, the sweet girl of the fair hair.

This is what I say and is it not of it I was to treat ?

Were the habits of us the Irish as they were wont to be,

We could not sleep by night or day.

O bright eye, modest, of great beauty, sweet mouth, teacher of all learning,

Beautiful Peggy, of the pearl's felicity and fortune on you !

"O companion of Spanish princes, fold of the curling thick locks-
Let now drink be filled, and let us be always drinking her health.
Is he not happy for whom was assigned the ornament of a child
That obtained superiority over the world ? Is she not of the amiablest

qualities ?
The branch of happiness, and it all under blossom ; a face without gloom

she is the fairest and best.
O fold of happiness and flower of the Gael in nobleness, discretion, and

memory. *

Are there not princes from every region encamped near one another
For the fair damsel, gentle O'Corcoran ?"

Next we may show the grace and felicity of expression in the
tribute to the " bird-voiced " Grace Nugent, as rendered in the
reproduction as well as translation by Sir Samuel Ferguson,
nothing being added to the original, and only some of the Celtic
redundancies omitted :

664 TH R LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. [Aug.,

GRACE NUGENT.

" Brightest blossom of the spring,
Grace, the charming girl I sing
Grace, who bore the palm of mind
From the rest of womankind :
Whomsoe'er the fates decree
Happy fate ! for life to be
Day and night my cooleen near,
Ache or pain need never fear.

" Her neck outdoes the sailing swan,
Her radiant face the summer dawn ;
Ah ! happy thrice the youth for whom
The fates design that branch of bloom ;
Pleasant are your words benign,
Rich those azure eyes of thine
Ye who see my queen, beware

Those twisted links of golden hair.

" This is what I fain would say
To the bird-vqjced lady gay
Never yet conceived the heart
Joy which Grace cannot impart :
Fold of jewels, case of pearls,
Cooleen * of the circling curls !
More I say not but no less
Drink you health and happiness."

There are many other tributes equally graceful and charming,
and certainly many more than those that have been preserved
must have been totally lost. Not exactly a troubadour, as his
verses were less of amatory passion than of respectful, of enthu-
siastic admiration, Carolan is entitled to a high place as the
laureate of beauty and grace, and his poetry of this class will
compare favorably with that of any of the mediaeval minstrels
and minnesingers. But, interesting and grateful as it is, it is to
be regretted that his circumstances and the nature of his profes-
sion prevented him from being more a poet of the people, dealing
with their loves and misfortunes, depicting their ways and modes
of life, and interpreting their feelings frgm the mere inspiration
of the themes and as the natural emanation of genius. He was
well qualified to do it from sympathy and ability, and it would
have strengthened the honesty and sincerity of his verse, as well
as have been most valuable as giving a picture of the time.
It may be believed without extravagance that he was capable
of being the poet of the Irish people in the same manner that
Burns was of the Scotch, and his adulatory verse should have

* Head of thick tresses.

1884.] THE LAST OF THE IRISH BARDS. 665

been the least rather than the greatest part of his production.
The circumstances and the necessities of his trade prevented
it, and it was a serious misfortune to the Irish people and to
literature. There are but few poems of this kind remaining in
Carolan's verse, genuine pictures of the peasant life around him,
but the graphic sketch of Shane Glas (Green Jack) and his sweet-
heart may show what he might have been capable of doing :

GREEN JACK.

" If you had seen Green Jack, and he going to the fair,
And a favor from every damsel in the breast of his shirt
Ah ! girls of the mountain, there is Green Jack for you.
This is what says every one of the prettiest girls that see him :
' May I get my spoiling, but he is the boy for me.'

Ah ! girls of the mountain, there is Green Jack for you.

"There is no poet without verses, no harp without strings,
There is no rib in his bones without a smashing for lies.
He is but a vagrant vagabond that has been left without a penny ;
If his bones have been broken he need not deny it.
Ah ! girls of the mountain, there is Green Jack for you.

" Had you seen Sally, and she going to the fair,
Colored shoes on her and a white apron

Ah ! girls of the mountain, there is Green Jack's sweetheart for you.
She is the picture of Venus, the branch of azure eyes,
And her face on the blush and her cheeks like the berries.
Ah ! girls of the mountain, there is Green Jack's sweetheart for you."

Although slight, this is vivid and natural, and emphasizes the
regret that out of the rich material around him he used so little.
Of the other subject of his genuine verse, the praise of whiskey,
which was the bane of his life and the only serious blot upon his
fame, the spirit, as has been said, was not so much the gross or
even hearty indulgence of appetite as the reckless gayety
which has the sting of despair beneath it, and the self-condemna-
tion which seeks relief in artificial merriment. This is predomi-
nant in the whole tone of Carolan's bacchanalian verse, as may be
seen in this characteristic specimen from " Why, Liquor of Life,
do I Love you so ? " translated by Mr. John Dalton :

" Many's the quarrel and fight we've had,
And many a time you made me mad,
But while I've a heart it can never be sad
When you smile at me full on the table.
Surely you are my wife and brother,
My only child, my father and mother,
My outside coat I have no other !
Oh ! I'll stand by you while I am able.' 1

666 KA THARINE. [Aug.,

In the estimate which the world will place upon the genius of
Carolan little allowance may be made for the unfortunate condi-
tion of himself and his people, the limitations and degradations of
his profession, and the many influences that marred its product.
Much may also depend on the attention that is paid to Celtic
literature and the accidents of skill in translating his verse into a
living and dominant language. At best he can be but imperfectly
known, but in any candid and intelligent estimate it must be
admitted that he was possessed of true genius, eloquence, and
lyric enthusiasm, and that the wide fame and honor which he
received from his native people, as one of the greatest as the last
of the Irish bards, were thoroughly deserved.

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER VH.

KATHARINE'S father had, in fact, received Miss Falconer's
communication, and the advice accompanying it, with a mixture
of feelings of which it would be hard to say whether the pre-
dominant one was that very common manifestation of self-love
which makes parents instinctively resent either express or im-
plied blame imputed to their children, or a paternal jealousy
wounded by the suspicion that this new friend had penetrated
farther than he into his daughter's secret thoughts. He felt con-
scious of having been not merely a generous but an appreciative
and sympathetic father, who, recognizing his child's aptitude and
thoughtfulness, had resolved to give her every educational ad-
vantage within his power, and acted on his resolution in spite of
sundry warnings, more frequent of late years, which had been
addressed him by his spiritual advisers. More than one preacher,
displeased and perplexed by the questions she asked in private
as well as in the quasi-publicity of Bible-classes, had said to Mr.
Danforth that there was danger in the direction of over-training
an intelligence so slow to accept, so ready to propose objections
to, the religious truths presented to it. But all these warnings
had indi9ated absolute unbelief as the peril to be feared, and Mr.
Danforth, who knew the nature of his daughter's studies and
took an innocent pride in her school triumphs, paid small atten-
tion. " Science falsely so-called," at least in the sense in which

1 884.] KA THARINE. 667

his advisers applied that phrase, though there was plenty of
ground for it in another, was a rather top-heavy description of
the curriculum of the most ambitious schools for girls which
flourished in that region at that date. A little profane history,
furnished by Peter Parley and that fount of doubtful information,
ungrammatical English, and vast entertainment, Oliver Gold-
smith as edited by Pinnock ; a still smaller amount of sacred his-
tory and geography ; an excursion into astronomy which in-
cluded sundry peeps at the stars through the observatory tele-
scope and provided a choice of names for the Dipper ; some
physiological instruction, illustrated occasionally, in the midst of
shrieks and titters, by the opening of a green-baize-shrouded
cupboard, within which hung a grinning skeleton on wires ; a
little chemistry, which did not meddle to any great extent with
reactions and formulas, but sometimes impressed itself forcibly
on the memory in connection with certain malodorous experi-
ments on sulphuretted hydrogen in the laboratory ; a little
botany ; a little geology ; mental science, as taught by Dr. Aber-
crombie; Paley's Evidences and Bishop Butler's Analogy, ex-
hausted its most ambitious efforts.

Such as it was, however, Mr. Danforth stood almost alone
among his usual associates in venturing to risk its dangers for his
child. Some of them were doubtless deterred by the prudential
considerations suggested by the equation between the size of
their families and the size of their incomes ; others still by the
belief that there was some direct connection between Katharine's
hypothetical possession of so much unnecessary worldly know-
ledge and her unconverted state. As one after another of the
young folks professed to " get religion " at revival or camp-meet-
ing, and stood up on communion Sundays at the altar-railing to
be received on their six months' probation, while she still sat,
apparently unmoved, on what had once been not obscurely signi-
fied, by a side-glance in her direction from the pulpit, as " the
seat of the scornful," it seemed to them increasingly plain that
some adequate explanation of her case was called for.

In reality there had been nothing very revolutionary in Kath-
arine's questions, which had now and then demanded reasons
why certain conclusions which to her seemed necessary should
not be drawn from the premises given, and again had turned
upon the -nature of the authority and evidence for what was
claimed to be divinely-revealed truth. " The -heart of man," says
Tertullian, " is naturally Christian," and Katharine's, at all events,
justified the saying by its instinctive inclination toward the fimda-

668 KA THARINE. [ Aug ,

mental Christian verities. Beyond these she had found the road
impassable ; her heart, although all her life it ran before her mind,
stopping invariably to demand support and corroboration from
it, failing which, in a most absolute and definite form, it was sure
to refuse further progress. Hers was one of the natures to
which Christianity, presented in its perfect and unmutilated
form, would at once have substantiated its claim to be the true
food of the reason and the supreme satisfaction of the soul. But
it is only when one has eaten the pure " butter and honey " of
the Gospel from infancy that in youth he is skilful " to refuse
the evil and to choose the good."

In the special direction in which she had been urged, to move
both heart and mind had failed her. Her tastes and her instincts
had alike revolted from the noisy emotionalism which character-
ized Methodism, perhaps more forcibly in that day than at pre-
sent; while, on the other hand, she had found it impossible to
accept as final, on serious matters which she knew had torn Chris-
tendom into a multitude of mutually repelling fragments, the
mere affirmation of teachers who sometimes went ludicrously
wide of the mark on undisputed matters of fact within easy reach.
A lesson on humility may, it is true, be given effectively by the
most illiterate soul on earth, but it must be admitted that to a
very young student of astronomy such a lesson, enforced by a
reference to man's comparatively low place in the creative scale,
and illustrated by the remark, " We are but a planet, and a very
inferior planet at that the moon is many times larger than our
globe," is more than apt, as its first result, to generate pride and
provoke laughter. But such had been one of Katharine's rebuffs
in a very early quest for information.

Of late years she had ceased to propound her inquiries at
home, or to amuse herself there with the replies given her else-
where, seeing that to do so caused her parents pain, and finding
with them other points of interest and mutual sympathy. Such
points of contact, especially with her father, were so numerous
that he had taken it for granted they covered all the ground,
and looked forward to her conversion as an affair of time and per-
sistent prayer which required no other aid. To him she was the
dearest thing on earth, and her quick intelligence, her love of
books, her readiness to seize and to enjoy the more amusing side
of life and literature, as well as the caressing fondness with which
she returned his love for her, had given additional strength to the
tie, ordinarily strong, which unites a father to an only daughter.
He felt wounded by Miss Falconer's story, but not in the way she

1884.] KATHARINE. 669

had anticipated, for he received it with a rather incredulous sur-
prise. Katharine's greatest virtue in his eyes, as in that of sundry
other people it had been one of her most disagreeable faults, was
a straightforward candor which seemed to make concealment not
merely difficult but well-nigh impossible to her. Could he believe
that on such a matter her real thoughts and feelings were abso-
lutely unknown to him ?

What he had failed to perceive, and what his daughter was,
as yet, perhaps too young to have suggested to any one, was that
her candor was an affair of her intellect only. What lay within
the range of her mental vision she saw with great clearness, and
had, for her own part, an utter fearlessness with regard to her
conclusions. Her soul was at once blinder and more timid,
and even if at any future time it should find that what now
seemed hopeless chasms between it and her reason were solid
roads from which advancing knowledge dispelled the fogs, yet
even then it would remain mute, unless it believed itself to meet
full comprehension and perfect sympathy. At present on all
matters of fact, of taste, or of opinion, especially with people
indifferent to her, her words were sure to be an accurate reflex
of her thoughts. But whereas her mind mirrored itself in her
speech, her heart, which held profounder deeps and knew them
empty, often turned to those who loved her another sort of mir-
ror, in which they beheld the image of their own emotion and
sometimes mistook it for its counterpart.

As to any danger of the sort Miss Falconer seemed to dread,
her father had no real fear whatever. A thousand prejudices,
planted in his mind in childjiood, and nourished by his later read-
ing and associations, made it seem to him absurd to suppose that
his clear-headed little girl should take a direction so opposite to
his own. He resented the advice to use an authority on which
he had never yet needed to lay any serious stress, and, even in
the midst of his displeasure, found something comical in the
thought that Miss Falconer, in trying to enlighten her pupil on
the weaknesses of popery, had herself fallen into a trap where
she was still evidently struggling. She had not been able to con-
ceal the nature of her motive in taking Katharine to her own
church, and he easily divined that had his daughter conceived an
equally strong attraction for what her teacher called " the sim-
plicity and elevation of our service " she would have found it un-
necessary to give him any warning. We have heard Mr. Dan-
forth expressing, at an earKer period, a wish that there had been
no later secessions from the Church of England, but his opinion

670 KATHARINE. [Aug.,

on that point had since been modified by a sufficiently unpleasant
personal experience. When the building was entirely completed
to which he had contributed so heavily in time and funds and
labor that one of Grandmother Danforth's standing grievances,
until the day of her death, was that common gratitude should not
have named it St. James', in delicate appreciation of his services,
he had called on the ministers of all the various Protestant de-
nominations with a notice which he desired to have read from
their pulpits, to the effect that upon a forthcoming Sunday it
would be dedicated, one of the Methodist bishops performing the
ceremony and preaching the sermon. All received him and his
request with gordiality and acquiescence excepting the rector of
St. Paul's, who informed him, with a cold dignity which chafed
him at the time but made him merry afterwards, that " the
church " could not in any way recognize a schismatical body,
much less acknowledge the official existence of such a person as
a Methodist bishop. He smited now as he thought of it while
loosening the horse's halter from the hitching-post, and was say-
ing to himself that this was a clear case of the pot calling the
kettle black, as Kitty, with her hat awry and her school satchel
on her arm, came running down the steps to greet him.

They rode on for a while in silence, the father humming a
hymn-tune behind his teeth, as his habit was when musing on
thoughts ndt specially serious or perplexing. The secondary
effect of his recent conversation had, in fact, been salutary, by
rousing him for a time from the painful preoccupations just then
caused him by his business affairs. He was considering now
whether it were worth while to mention the matter at all, if Kitty
did not do so ; while she, who had concluded from the length of
the interview in the library that the promised explanation had
been made, but was far from surmising the actual direction it had
taken, was mute, as she had been the night before, under the
influence of a reluctance that resembled fear more than any other
feeling she had ever known. Left to herself, she would not at
this time have spoken ; but her father, on whom the humorous
side of the case was gaining ground, and who always liked to
share his amusement with his usually sympathetic companion, at
last turned to her with a smile.

" Well, Kitty ! " he began, " what bee is this that Miss Fal-
coner has in her bonnet ? "

" Has she a bee?" returned Kitty, consciously fencing a little.
" I haven't heard it buzzing."

" A whole hive of them. The fact is, the good woman was so

1 884 .] KA THARINE. 67 1

hard hit by what she saw up at the cathedral last Sunday after-
noon that she takes it for granted you were damaged too. I
hardly know what sort of treatment she thinks would suit your
case best a month on bread and water or a week in the coal-
hole. Which shall it be ?"

Katharine knew her father well enough to require no further
enlightenment, while he, on his part, read plainly the cause of
the mingled pain and annoyance which flushed and contracted
her expressive face.

" Ah ! " he replied to it, " new friends are neither so wise nor
so kind as the old ones, little girl. It would never have oc-
curred to me to think of you as a likely dupe for the papists, and,
if it had, I should not have jumped to her remedy for it."

He spoke with the easy confidence of a security which be-
lieves itself unassailable. Katharine, imposed on by it, suddenly
took her courage in both hands, and told him, as fully as his sur-
prise and pain and finally his anger would permit, the nature of
her thoughts in the past and her desires in the present. Such a
limitation is very great so great that where it exists between
two who love each other and yet occupy the relative positions
of parent and- child, full confidence is probably impossible.
Katharine at least succeeded in making fully intelligible neither
the demands of her reason on one side nor those of her soul on
the other. The latter were not really intelligible to herself.
All that stood to her in the place of knowledge about the Catho-
lic Church was to its discredit. To oppose it she had nothing
but what she heard called a child's fantastic, idle whim, with a
suspicion that it deserved no better name. She had half re-
coiled from the thought of putting it to the test, even when she
most fully resolved to do so should she find it possible, with an
inward dread lest that might be the result. If, on the other
hand, her reason spoke with unambiguous clearness and told her
that whatever purported to be a divine revelation must, before
all things, prove its claim to respectful hearing by being inva-
riable, and attested by a witness incapable of corruption, how
insist on such a condition as that with a father who seemed ob-
livious of this fundamental necessity? What she did succeed
in, when her reluctance to yield her ground became plainly evi-
dent, was putting her father into a cold rage of which neither
of them had supposed him capable. The passionate and impe-
rious " Danforth temper," as his wife called it, remembering it
in his father and seeing it in others of his kindred, had been so
singularly free from domestic provocations in his own case that

672 KATHARINE. [Aug.,

he was hardly aware of its existence. It flamed up now in his
eyes with the cold lustre of steel, his ruddy cheeks grew pale,
and his voice hardened into a tone which both of them remem-
bered afterwards with a chilling of the heart, as he forbade in-
quiries which seemed to< him at once perilous and unprofitable,
and enforced his command with a needless threat of banishment
from home in case of disobedience. Even to himself this seemed
so worse than useless that it calmed him as he uttered it, while
on his daughter it had only the effect of taking away the grace
of her submission. Before they reached home he. had not only
repented of it, but made such an apology as does not often come
from a parent to a child. But to him she had of late been grow-
ing to be friend as well as daughter ; not to add that the con-
sciousness of having been right on the whole, as well as trium-
phant, easily lends itself to the trifling humiliation of acknow-
ledging the folly of a move which after all turns out not to have
endangered the game.

As to Katharine, it was characteristic of her that, after once
distinctly deciding not to follow her attraction, she made no at-
tempt to disguise from herself the nature and the cause of that
decision. To her own consciousness she had been imperatively
summoned in a given direction, and knew that, left to her own
discretion, she would have obeyed without hesitation. She did
not, indeed, say to herself that it wag the voice of God, or even
that of her conscience, that she had heard. But she 'assumed
that it came from some power beyond herself, as simply as does
a wanderer by night who becomes aware of lights and sounds in
the distance that make his heart beat with the hope of shelter
and .safety. But as such a traveller, held back by a crippled,
wounded, terrified companion, refuses to leave him helpless and
alone to follow an uncertainty, so she, closing neither eyes nor
ears, simply said: "Just now I cannot. It is plain to me that
here I shall inflict grievous pain ; and as to the light yonder, it
may be only a will-o'-the-wisp glimmering over a morass. If I
were absolutely certain, it would be different. Then I would
run all risks in the hope of coming back with succor."

How far did ignorance really excuse her ? How clearly had
sounded in her soul the unmistakable voice of Him of whom it is
indeed recorded that he was subject to his parents, but not until
after it has first been told that he left them sorrowing to attend
to the business of his Father ? But those are questions which
Katharine's biographer cannot undertake to answer. In after-
years she herself found many a bitter occasion for repenting her

1884.] KATHARINE. 673

present decision. At the time one phase of the matter caused
her many serious thoughts. She had been always an obedient
daughter, but now, for the first time, the abnegation of her own
desires and will afforded her no satisfaction. She found, too,
that a little breach had opened between her and her father,
which her submission and his contentment with it by no means
bridged, and of which both were sensible, though perhaps not
equally so. She began also to be vaguely aware that the dis-
tinction between right and wrong had, to her apprehension, lost
something of its hitherto clearly-defined outlines. She had
made no attempt to persuade herself that duty lay on the side
of her decision in this crisis of her experience, but had simply
avowed, without pretence, that she had not the heart to grieve
her parents. Probably, if the argument that now went on si-
lently within herself had taken place between her and another,
she might, at some point of it, have sought momentary shelter
behind the plea of filial duty. Perhaps she did so even now, for
the voice within her asked where that road would end along
which the only guide was the pleasure of those who loved her.
For that distinction was also plainly in her mind. She did not
say, " I love my father so much that I cannot grieve him," but
" He loves me so much that I will not."

A final, and to her most painful, change was caused by the
abrupt loss of all her interest in Miss Falconer. After the first
moment s*he had felt no resentment toward her, and did full jus-
tice to the motive which had prompted her interference. She
would have been glad to be able to go on worshipping, for she
was beginning to dread those revulsions of feeling which brought
all her attachments, one after another, to a more or less sudden
close ; but when she revisited the shrine she found it empty.
Miss Falconer was a general favorite with the more thoughtful
and studious of her pupils, and the desk nearest hers was a prize
coveted and eagerly competed for at the beginning of every year.
Katharine, on whom her beauty of outline and expression had
made a strong impression for a year or two before the time for
entering her class, had succeeded, after many efforts, in obtaining
it, and had worked harder than ever at home for the sake of the
idle moments in school hours when she would be at liberty to do
nothing but regard her undisturbed from behind the shelter of
her wraps hanging from a peg on the wall. Miss Falconer had
often smiled inwardly at the shy yet undisguised devotion which
she met in Katharine's dark eyes whenever she lifted her glance
from her own tasks, and was rather proud of the report she was
VOL. xxxix. 43

674 KATHARINE. [Aug.,

able to make in the monthly conference of teachers concerning
her improvement in docility and diligence.

" There is no real change in the girl," one of them had replied
to her little boast not long before ; " she deifies you that is all
there is about it. She is quite as capable as ever of taking the
bit between her teeth ; and as to work, it would take a good
deal to persuade me that she likes it for its own sake."

Entering the class-room some minutes before school-time a
few days afterward, Miss Falconer saw with some misgivings,
not untinged with personal regret, one of the girls occupied in
transferring her own belongings from a desk in the embrasure of
a window at the other end of the apartment to that hitherto
occupied by Katharine.

" What does this mean, Helen ? " she stopped to ask.

" Oh ! " replied Helen, looking up with a smile, " I have suc-
ceeded at last in persuading Kitty Danforth to exchange seats
with me. I have been tempting her these six months, and had
given it up as hopeless, but she told me yesterday that the light
by my window suited her eyes better. It does really the
screen here makes it rather dark, especially on rainy days."

Nothing but the most ordinary intercourse took place there-
after between teacher and pupil. But the latter gave no ground
for active disapproval, burying herself in her work, in fact, with
an absorption and success beyond any she had yet shown. She
was trying to fill up the void caused by a lost friendship ; the
friend she had already ceased to think of.

CHAPTER VIII.

" I SAY, Kitty ! "

The young girl looked up from the garden-walk where she
was on her knees, busy with trowel and strings in repairing the
damage wrought among her flowers by the severe thunder-
storms that had raged during the afternoon and night before.
The blonde, curly head of little Johnny Boyd, her next-door
neighbor, was peeping over the fence.

" Couldn't we have a walk this morning, Kitty ? I know a
splendid place to go to after a rain."

" I don't see why not. Where is it ? "

" Over by the falls in Denison's hollow. Father took me
there last Fourth of July, but it was 'most dried up then. He
said it was full in spring or after a heavy rain, and it poured

1884.] KATHARINE. 675

hard enough last night. They won't let me go alone mother
thinks I'm a baby ! But she said I might go if you would."

" Well, I'll see when I go in to breakfast. I think we might
as well."

" I've had my breakfast. I'll go and feed my rabbit and then
I'll come for you. Say, Kitty ! my father saw a man hanged
there once when he was about as big as me."

The blonde head retired ; then it popped into sight again.

" Hold on, Kitty ! Have you got any good twine or strong
thread in your house ? I can't find my ball oi string, and there
isn't a spool in mother's basket that she'll let me have. I think
there's fish up there this morning."

" I'll look. Have you got a hook ? "

" I've got some pins," confessed Johnny, with a rather sudden
drop in his animated voice. " I haven't ever been a-fishing yet."

" Then I think we would better go around by Mrs. Taylor's
first. There's a five-cent piece somewhere in my pocket."

Whereupon Johnny's head set finally behind the fence, as ra-
diant and rosy as the sun out of a cloudless sky.

August had been hot and sultry. The dusty streets, the dry
roads running between parched fields, along which she took the
frequent drives with her father which had been almost her sole
out-door pleasures this vacation, were growing wearisome to
town-bred Kitty, whose only experience of country life was
drawn from a week once spent in the confusion of a camp-meet-
ing grove. The succession of dazzling, scorching days in which
the very ground panted and gasped with heat, opening in hard,
yawning mouths that seemed begging the unrelenting sky for
moisture, had at last been ended by a fierce and prolonged storm,
or succession of storms, that had deluged the streets, turned the
hillside gutters into turbid rivers, and inundated cellars in the
lower part of the town. It had been heartily welcomed, never-
theless, and had left behind it a refreshing coolness in the morn-
ing air which made altogether pheasant this prospect of a stroll
beyond the city limits. Kitty's father laughed when she recited
the story of the little fellow's desires and preparations.

" A bent pin and a piece of thread will answer for all the fish
he will find there now," he said. " When I was a boy, before
the trees were cut away above the falls and the dumping began
into the Lydius Street hollow, it was a first-rate trout-stream. I
doubt if he finds a tadpole or a minnow now."

" He can enjoy the pleasures of hope, at all events," said Mrs.
Danforth, to whom Kitty had of late been dutifully reading the

6;6 KATHARINE. [Aug.,

volume of Campbell's poetry which had rewarded her own ef-
forts at verse-making on commencement day. " Dear me ! how
well I remember that hollow and the old red mill that used to
stand down below the falls ! "

" Why haven't I ever been there ? I have always heard of it,
but nobody ever proposed going."

" That was where Jesse Strang was hung. I went there to
see it."

" O mother ! how could you? "

" That is just it," returned Mrs. Danforth. " I am answering
your question. I could go easy enough, for all the town went,
but I could not stay. I caught one glimpse of him dangling in
the sunlight, and then I turned sick and ran away. I never could
bear the sight of the place afterward."

" Hurry, Kitty ! " Johnny's straw hat pushed in just here be-
tween the muslin curtains of the low dining-room window, and
his heels beat an impatient tattoo on the flags of the front yard.
" The sun is getting so hot that all the water will be dried up be-
fore we get there, if you don't make haste."

" Wait a minute," called Mr. Danforth, as his daughter whisk-
ed behind his chair on her way to the door. " You will find a
book on the upper hall table beside my hat. I bought it in
Gray's yesterday and forgot to give it to you. As you have
taken to stringing rhymes yourself, I thought perhaps you would
like it."

He drew his arm about her as he spoke, and Katharine, with
a brightening face, stooped to give him one of the caresses that
had grown less frequent lately, and for which he had perhaps
been angling with his gift.

It wanted yet some hours of noon when, after having crossed
one or two suburban fields and descended the slope of a gentle
hill, Katharine and her young escort came out at the head of a
little cascade that foamed and gurgled down its bed of shale to
the level some thirty feet below them. The rain had swollen it
to a feeble imitation of its volume in the old days when, sheltered
by primeval elms and beeches, it had worn this deep gully through
the rocks. Farther down it glittered in a narrow, shallow stream
across a tiny valley and beside an old mill-wheel, half sunken in
weeds and grass, in bright unconsciousness of its impending des-
tiny as a city sewer. To the east and south the Hudson sparkled
in the sunshine ; the Catskills stretched, blue and faint, beyond ;
the flat tin roofs shone in the low grounds between them and the
river; behind them the slope they had just descended hid their.

1 8 84.] KA THA RINE. 67 7

own quarter of the town from view. A few old elms, sole rem-
nants of the forest which had waved on either side of the stream
fifty years before, spread their wide branches above the grassy
space at the head of the cascade, and here Katharine, throwing
aside her brown straw hat, sat down to enjoy the prospect for a
while before tearing- off the wrappers from the little book she had
slipped into her pocket. Each of the oddly-assorted twain felt in
differing- degrees that pleasure, born of residence in cities, which
is neither critical nor grasping in its first demands upon external
nature.

" Isn't it nice ?" sighed Johnny after a long glance round him.
" Don't you wish your folks lived in the country ? I do."

" That doesn't sound like a very polite wish," said Kitty, with
a laugh.

" Why?" asked Johnny, opening wider a pair of big blue eyes.
" Say, Kitty, do you think the fish would stay up here, above the
falls, or would they be more likely to go down yonder ?"

" I'm afraid I don't know much about the ways of fishes before
they are cooked. You might try both places. I am going to stay
here under this tree. But I should think you would be more
likely to catch something down in the valley. See ! there is a
quiet little pool a little beyond the fall."

11 So should I," reflected Johnny aloud. " I don't see how fish
could help rolling down- this slide." And off he scrambled down
the rocky path.

" I don't suppose I shall read much it is too pleasant to-day,"
mused Kitty when at last she sat about untying the knot of red
bookseller's twine ; " at least unless this is better poetry than
Campbell's."

The little blue-and-gold volume bore a name unknown to her.
Opening it at random, the spell of the magician who was then
moving all susceptible young hearts fell on her, shutting out
the actual world, and bearing her at once into that enchanting
vale where sad QEnone wandered, " forlorn of Paris, once her
playmate on the hills." Deaf from that moment to Johnny's fre-
quent calls for sympathy, she was equally so to the steps that
half an hour later descended the slope behind her. The new-comer
was a tall young fellow in his early twenties, with a moody but
far from unpleasing- face, whose first surprise at finding the place
thus tenanted had changed, after a prolonged scrutiny of the
brown head drooping over the open book, into a smile of pleased
recognition. His near approach finally aroused Katharine from
her absorption, and she sprang quickly to her feet ,

678 KATHARINE. [Aug.,

" I might have known," said the young man, with a smile and
an outstretched hand, " that no one in this town but Kitty Dan-
forth would be sitting here alone on a hot August day, so wrapped
up in a bgok that she wouldn't hear a clap of thunder, not to men-
tion an old friend's nearly spraining his ankle in a tumble down
this hill. You have surely not forgotten me?"

" No," answered Katharine, whose look of surprise had also
quickly turned to pleasure. " I did not remember you at first,
and no wonder. How many years is it since we played our game
of dominoes together ?"

" A century, isn't it ? And what have you been doing all this
time besides growing tall and stately ?"

" Me ? Oh ! nothing. Going to school and reading books.
And you ?"

" Pretty much the same things. What have you there this
morning ?"

" I never read a line of it before," said Kitty, handing him the
volume.

" Tennyson ? This town must be further back in the woods
than I had supposed, if you have really waited all this time for
" The Princess " and " In Memoriam." Curious ! I had been
looking at you for ten minutes before I was certain who you were,
and a line of his was running in my mind just as a turn of your
head made me quite sure. If you had not looked up when you
did I should have saluted you with ' Shine out little head, running
over with curls.' '

" I wonder where Johnny is?" said Kitty, turning away toward
the edge of the cliff with an evanescent blush and a light laugh.
Richard followed her. The straw hat, and the sturdy legs in their
striped stockings pushed out in front of it, were still in close
proximity to each other, their owner sitting motionless on the
bank with the patience of a born angler, in the vain hope of a
nibble. " It is Johnny Boyd, my next-door neighbor. I hardly
know whether he takes me out walking or whether I take him,
but we generally go together."

" He seems to have more perseverance than I had at his age,
but if he has no more success we may as well sit down in the
shade and wait till he scrambles up again. I came home yesterday
and could not resist the temptation to visit these falls this morning
after the rain. I used to spend most of my Saturdays here when
we first came to the city."

" It is months," said Kitty, " since I have met your father. He
told me you were away at school, but I never knew where."

1884.] KATHARINE. 679

" Poor old man ! It makes me sad to come back and find him
so bent and feeble. This is the first time I have been here in
nearly six years. Yes, I have been at school. I ran away you
knew it to my Uncle Dick the next day after that famous game
of dominoes. He was going to send me back again, but I threat-
ened him with the sea, and then my father wrote that he thought
it better I should stay. They had intended in any case to send
me a little later on. I wanted to go to Harvard, and Uncle Dick
was willing enough, but my father and mother both took fright
over the idea of possible Unitarianism, or what-not, and prevailed
on him to give me my choice between a diploma from a lit-
tle one-horse denominational concern over in Connecticut and
none."

"Well?"

" Oh ! that was not even Hobson's choice, to my mind. I
went into Boston to the high-schools, and for the last two years
I have been attending medical lectures and riding round with my
uncle among his patients. As Giddings says, a man gets along
just as well in this country in medicine or law without a colle-
giate training as with it."

" Giddings ? "

" The greatest friend I have. I wanted to bring him with me
for a visit, but the memory of the old days was strong in me, and
I preferred to come first and see how the land lay. It isn't a
case of sour grapes with him, however. He has had his sheep-
skin these five years. I should have been glad of one, if I could
have got the right sort ; but it was the same old story these
idiotic squabbles over petty religious questions, splitting up the
work of education and creating almost as many half-supported
'.colleges' of different dyes as there are churches ot different
creeds."

Katharine gave a faint sigh which did not escape her obser-
vant companion, though he mistook its import

" Fortunately," he went on, " there is a very fair school for
girls here as schools go and your father has been wise enough
to keep you in it. That reminds me : our folks sent me a copy
of the daily paper which had the account of this year's closing
exercises. I saw your prize poem in it."

This time Katharine reddened in good earnest.

" Don't mention the word poetry in connection with the
stuff," she said with energy. " They gave me the Pleasures of
Hope for it." She began again after a pause : " Last year I was
presented with Lalla Rookh and Paradise and the Peri. When I

680 KATHARINE. [Aug.,

read those I felt somewhat reassured about my verses. But this
morning has cured me. I shall make no more rhymes."

Richard laughed.

" That is criticism with a vengeance! I hardly know which
to admire most, your humility or your "

" Conceit ? " suggested Kitty.

" Well, I noticed that you took a motto from one of Shak-
spere's sonnets. He didn't abash you ? And Tennyson does?"

" Shakspere is like the sun he lights and warms you, and
you never think of measuring yourself with him. But this other !
It is like turning on a blaze of gas in a hall where there is a
tallow candle burning."

" Oh ! stick to poetry. Call it a glow-worm ! "

" Don't let us talk about it at all," said Kitty. " How pleased
your father and mother must have been to see you ! "

" Yes," said Richard, with a sigh. " They killed the fatted
calf for me. My poor father quite broke down."

" How good he is ! It always gives me pleasure to have
a talk with him."

" Good ? Yes a fruitless goodness. Good-for-nothingness
I should call it in any one but him. My mother had so much
strength in many ways that, if he had only mastered her in the
first place, they could have worked together and made some-
thing else out of their life than the miserable muddle it has
always been. If ever I marry I shall take care that the gray
mare is not the best horse in my stable."

" Ah ! " said Kitty, " you are a more audacious critic than I
am. I confine myself to books. What good is there beyond
just goodness itself ? And what is there to make of life except
eating and drinking and sleeping, and having more or less of
your own way ? The less you have of it the better you are,
according to all accounts. I suppose," she finished, with a laugh,
" the others, who get theirs, console themselves for the lack of
excellence by the good time they have."

There was a slight bitterness in her tone which struck her
companion. He looked at her curiously.

" You remind me of Giddings," he said. " I wonder how
you would like each other?"

" I wonder how Johnny would like his dinner?" she returned
with some irrelevance, rising as she spoke. " Ah ! here he comes,
with wet feet and empty hands."

" Hadn't we better go home?" asked the little fellow, with a
sheepish glance at the stranger and a rueful one at Katharine.

1884.] KATHARINE. 68 1

" It's awful hot down there, and I'm tired, and I haven't caught
a thing ! There's plenty of black, shiny little fishes with big
heads and wiggly tails in the water, but they won't bite."

" I'm afraid your mother will think you have caught some-
thing serious, young man," said Richard, " when she sees those
wet shoes and stockings. Sit down here and hold your feet out
in the sun. Your wigglers will be croakers one of these fine
days."

CHAPTER IX.

RICHARD NORTON and Katharine walked up the long, gentle
rise after leaving the falls, at a pace which the increasing heat of
the day naturally made dilatory, but which doubtless owed some
part of the slowness that finally disgusted their companion to the
pleasure each found in prolonging a talk insensibly fallen back
into the candor distinguishing their childish intercourse. Com-
ing mainly from the young man, and being confined to a brief
account of certain scientific researches in which he had been
interested and the train of revolutionary conclusions suggested
by them, these confidences ill rewarded the attention which
Johnny's very juvenile intelligence had been inclined to pay
them. And when at last, on reaching the crest, his elders
paused under the shadow of a great elm to look just across the
grassy hollow, where houses were as yet new and few, to the
still gentler slope of the Capitol Hill, and then down at the
broad river sparkling far below them, with the horse-boat
ploughing its way across, and the white Greendale villas on the
farther shore softening their glare under the hazy blue, Katha-
rine's remarks on the beauty of her native place suddenly ap-
peared to him altogether idle, and, pleading hunger and his
mother.'s displeasure when the " men-folks " kept the table wait-
ing, he ran ahead without further ceremony.

"Dutiful youth!" said Richard, laughing.. "Or is he only
imaginative and puffed up with pride by those new knicker-
bockers ? I wore a blue pinafore half-way to my heels until I
was a head taller than he is, and, though I sometimes lost my
dinner by being late for it, my inventive genius would not have
been equal to that last excuse for haste. What curious piece of
good-fortune brought us together this morning? I should not,
of course, have passed two days in town without looking you up,
but, as it happens, I have only this one at my disposal. I thought
I had a week before me, but Uncle Dick telegraphed me this

632 KA THARINE. [Aug.,

morning that he had been summoned professionally to Montreal
and wanted me with him. He will be here to-night, and we take
the early train to-morrow."

" He is a famous surgeon, then?"

" Hardly that perfectly safe and cool-headed, and good to
be with ; but no one except an old patient and personal friend
would have sent for him from such a distance."

" I wonder you had the heart to leave home at all to-day. I
wouldn't, in your case. But, considering that I saw Buttermilk
Falls for the first time this morning, though the name has been
as familiar all my life as that of the land of Canaan, it is rather
odd we should have met there."

" Your comparison is painfully characteristic."

"How so?"

" It sounds so natural, perhaps so like a thing I might have
said and hated myself for saying. What do you think about it
all, or haven't you begun jour serious thinking yet?"

" About "

"Oh! about the way we were brought up, and the crowd of
baseless beliefs and idle superstitions planted in us that it will
take the best part of our lives to root out again? Are your ears
as keen as ever to detect truth by the sound of it?"

" I am afraid I have been growing deaf lately. All things
sound pretty much alike now with a note of interrogation after
every one. At the same time I don't quite understand why you
should hate yourself for making a Biblical allusion, ii it came in
naturally."

" I see you don't, and it puzzles me a little. How happens it
that what you have been taught so incessantly all your life has
taken no deeper hold on you ? I seem hardly to have surprised
you by what I have been saying, and I certainly have not shocked
you. For my part, the more clearly I have seen the absurdity and
folly of such a training as I got at home, its want of bearing on the
real questions of life, and the certainty with which all we really
know and are on the eve of knowing gives it the lie, the more I
have felt hampered by the associations I formed and the notions
that were branded into my mind when it was young and tender
and assimilated everything. To this day there are things I can-
not say, and a whole code of absurd and arbitrary minor morals
that I cannot transgress, without something in me cringing as if
it expected the lash. I am like a half-converted Jew gloating
over a scrap of roast pork and yet secretly inclined to believe he
will be found dead with it sticking in his throat. And when I

1884.] KA THARINE. 683

see how the ignorant bigotry that has stamped me in this fashion
has also cut off opportunities from mankind and stood in the way
of knowledge, I feel a bitterness that " he paused, and then
went on in a lighter tone, his face clearing- into the sudden smile
that used of old to dispel its clouds "that makes me laugh
when I reflect on it in saner moments and see how ready I am to
repeat in another fashion the very bigotry that I resent."

" I don't quite understand that feeling. I have none like it.
I soon began to doubt some things that I was taught, but I held
fast until lately to the belief that the bottom things were true ;
that God had made a revelation and that it was embodied in the
Bible. But from the day when I first clearly understood that
the Bible itself was unvouched for, that every one interpreted it
as he pleased, and that the particular set of notions about Chris-
tianity put before me was only one of many among which I
should some day be free to choose, it began to dawn on me that
this was the same as denying revelation altogether. It seems to
me absurd to suppose that God became man for the express pur-
pose of teaching us what to believe and what to do, and yet left
things in as great an uncertainty as ever."

" Still on the old track, Kitty ! I remember leaving you with
that serious little face turned Romeward, but I hardly thought I
should find it that way still."

" No," said Katharine, with a smile that did not reach her
eyes, " it is not turned that way now. I meant for a long time to
make inquiries about that church, but when I proposed doing so
last spring I found my father so bitterly opposed to it that I gave
it up. I thought then that I had simply postponed the search,
but I find since that in some unaccountable way the inclination
itself has left me, and in its place the conviction has fastened
itself in my mind that it would be useless. I hardly know yet
whether to be glad or sorry."

Her companion looked a mute interrogation, and the girl
went on with that easy, unembarrassed confidence which comes
more naturally between young people of different sexes who are
on the same intellectual level but have no sentimental ties, than
under other conditions.

" It was the gain of a loss, you know. It took away a great
hope from me I did not know how great until it was gone. I
begin to find in its place a sort of sympathy for, and understand-
ing of, others that I had not before, and which goes far toward
filling up the void. It is one thing to be amused by people who
seem to you to be making more or less excusable blunders in

684 KA THARINE. [Aug.,

working out a problem that has a definite and attainable solution,
and quite another to be convinced that the problem has no answer,
and that any guess they may make which gives them satisfaction
is just as good as any other. 1 feel ashamed when I think of the
resentment I felt at first against my father, and how slow it has
been in wearing off. I began at one time to believe that the only
result of obeying him in that one instance would be that I should
presently cease to obey him in every other."

" Does he know where you are now ? "

" Why should he ? It cost me a great deal to yield to him
last spring, when I still thought there was something at stake
which it would be worth while to buy even at the cost of his dis-
pleasure. But now how worse than absurd it would be to take
him into my confidence! If I found myself capable of such a
piece of cruelty it would go far toward proving to me that both
natural affection and the sense of duty really rest on a religious
foundation, which is what I have been fearing lately. I begin
now to be persuaded that they are instincts and may be trusted
to look out for themselves. I find, at all events, that the com-
mandment to love one's neighbor to a certain extent is written
so plainly on my conscience that it ceases to seem of so much im-
portance whether or not it was written on tables of stone by the
finger of God on Mount Sinai. But, all the same, I have a cer-
tain pleasure in thinking of such people as your parents and
mine, whose illusions have not vanished, and in hoping that they
never may."

" Let me see," said Richard, smiling down at the girl's
thoughtful but very young face, " was it a hundred you were on
your last birthday ? For my part, I feel no such tenderness for
what you call illusions when I remember my own dismal child-
hood and what made it what it was. My mother was tyrannical
and selfish, but she had a natural wit and keenness of perception
that were only half-blinded by her religious views. She kept one
eye wide open on the main chance always, and, though she would
have been quite ready to burn a heretic or a slaveholder, she
would have kept well out of the way of scorching herself. My
father, on the other hand, is the most unselfish, the simplest, the
sincerest man in the world. He would not wrong his neighbor
of a pin ; he would not misrepresent friend or enemy by so much
as an equivocal inflection of his voice ; he simply never thinks of
his own comfort where that of others is concerned. All that
would be admirable, if there were not another side to it. He lives
in the idea that hell yawns on either side of every path in life.

1884.] KATHARINE. 685

He thinks all light reading pernicious and all amusements sinful.
He believes that every word and act not deliberately aimed at
one's own salvation tends directly toward damnation. Those
notions, confined to one half-educated man, embittered even my
babyhood and have crippled my youth. Think of them with
their force multiplied by whole generations and backed by the
power of physical compulsion, and you have what Christianity, in
that primitive form after which you have been hankering, has
done for the world at large. Your father did a good work when
he turned you away from it. Protestantism is, at all events, an
advance on what went before it. Three centuries ago men who
held views like mine would have been burned for them."

" Nobody is burned on either side now," said Katharine. " But
if one is effectually thwarted in taking his own road because other
people are afraid he will come out at a different place from them,
what difference does it make what the actual hindrance is? What
I like, for myself and every one else, is freedom to think one's
own thoughts and act on one's own judgment, no matter where
they lead. But you are just like your own father and mine. You
go in another direction, but you are as sure as they are that the
end of all other ways is death."

" That is not fair at all. It is because I believe in freedom,
and want to secure it for those who will come after us. But
to insure that it may be necessary to do some rough work in
uprooting the weeds planted by those who went before us. For
that reason one would like to safeguard education, so that sin-
cerity and steadfastness shall be aids to the general advance of
the race, instead of being, as they have been, its worse draw-
backs."

" Poor race ! "

" Don't be satirical. It is becoming, but not convincing. The
plain fact is that the only thing which makes a belief in dogmatic
Christianity innocuous, or even tolerable, in any given case, is that
it shall be held in a Pickwickian sense and not become a spring of
action. The real virtues that hold society together are what you
called them just now instincts. But when they have been
twisted in the vice of dogma and then fasten themselves on a
really upright heart, the better the man is by nature the worse
he becomes by what he calls grace. The very tenderness that
make's his bowels yearn toward his fellow-men incites him to
crush out, at all risks, all that he believes likely to imperil their
salvation. And then to think that he actually knows nothing at
all about the matter, and shares that ignorance with every other

686 KA THARINE. [Aug.,

soul of man ! Why should one have any tenderness for illusions
such as those? "

" Your father/' said Katharine, going back, as was her wont,
from generals to particulars, " has always struck me as a happy
man just by reason of the intensity of his belief and his fidelity to
what he thinks it enjoins. What would console him for losing it,
his life remaining what it is ? If it were to be had by wishing
for it, there is nothing I can think of that I would not exchange
for one like it. But the stones in the road are too many."

" Take my word for it, they will not always be so if that re-
mains your attitude of mind. You may not end where he has,
but some fetich or other you will set up and try to bend the uni-
verse before it. For me, I shall come along with a hammer and
break your idols for you."

" And welcome. It is because an idol with a crack in it is a
trifle worse than none that my altar is empty at present. But I
think you may spare yourself the trouble, all the same. I never
set up Dagon over-night but what I find him on his nose in the
morning."

" Do you know, Kitty/' said Richard, after a somewhat pro-
longed silence, " that you surprise me greatly? When I began
talking to you awhile ago it was with the expectation of shock-
ing you a bit and drawing down on myself a little good-natured
scolding for my own aberrations. How do you happen to have
wandered so far from the regular path ? I have had access to all
sorts of books, besides making some friends among older men of
liberal views. Then there is my profession into the bargain : Ubi
tres medici, duo atkei, says the old proverb. But where did you
get your notions? With all your father's indulgence in the mat-
ter of books, I cannot imagine his not taking every care to keep
anti-Christian literature out of your way. Where did you get
hold of it?"

"Nowhere. I. never saw an infidel book in my life. I knew,
as a matter of ancient history, that there had been infidel writers :
Voltaire, you know, and Paine, and but I don't think I ever
heard any others mentioned, and I took it for granted they had
all been routed and put to flight centuries ago. Perhaps they
were. I hardly know when it began to be plain to me that the
incessant throwing of missiles which goes on in sermons and the
religious publications that come to the house must mean that there
is a pretty lively foe somewhere close at hand. It was like build-
ing a snow fort : you haven't much to do but dig a trench in a
snowbank and unload your shovel on the other side the wall will

1 884-] KATHARINE. 687

pile up of itself. It was since last spring, at all events. Then I
am to take up Paley and Butler next year, and I have been read-
ing both of them this vacation. Why do people put such elabo-
rate explanations, apologies, excuses before school-girls who have
been taught that Christianity is as certain as the multiplication-
table ? Who can help seeing that all is not plain sailing ? Pope
or Pagan one or other of those giants is sure to swallow up
people like me whose only speech is yea or nay."

" I see. You travel fast because you travel on straight lines.
You must find listening to sermons a delightful occupation in that
frame of mind."

" Oh ! but I seldom listen. You have always your own thoughts,
and then, thanks to two sessions of Sunday-school and three ser-
mons, Sunday is always a drowsy day. It isn't always safe, though,
to drop asleep in a pew situated like ours," she said, stopping to
laugh at a sudden recollection. " You remember it, of course, at
the right of the pulpit and facing the body of the church. Three
years ago we had a very eccentric ministera doctor, by the way :
the one of the three who is not an atheist. He has dropped
theology since and gone back to medicine. He took his text one
morning from St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy, Give attention to
reading, and made it a peg on which to hang a string of rather
foolish comments on all sorts of authors, from Chaucer to Fanny
Fern. Some severely stupid criticism on Shakspere moved my
father to turn his head and smile at me. Unfortunately, the doc-
tor's wife happened to be looking our way and reported the mis-
demeanor. Father stayed at home with a headache that afternoon
and mother kept him company, so that I went alone first to Sun-
day-school and then to church, where I fell asleep with my head
on a book-rest. Fancy suddenly starting bolt upright just in time
to catch the full force of this remark: l In the day of judgment,
instead of sitting, as some did this morning, in a very prominent
position, facing the whole congregation, and laughing at myself,
there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth !'"

"No?"

" But yes. The worst of it was that after blushing scarlet, and
wishing I could sink through the floor to escape people's eyes, the
fun of the thing flashed on me and I laughed again. But father
was very angry when I told him. He left the church for a while
and took me with him. He threatened to apply for his letter and
join elsewhere/but mother was very stanch about sticking to the
old place, and he finally went back. But not until we changed
ministers."

638 THE COST OF MONARCHY AND ARISTOCRACY [Aug.,

They were nearing her own door as she spoke, and Mrs. Dan-
forth's grave, rather anxious face was looking out from the entry.

" There is mother," Katharine began again. " It would be
pleasant to have you, and she is sure to beg you, to come in to
dinner, but I don't believe you ought."

Richard laughed. "You are quite right about your con
science," said he: "it is evidently ample enough for two. How
do you do, Mrs. Danforth ? This young lady's escort basely for-
sook her, and I am so unfamiliar to the town that it took an end-
less time to find her way home."

"Johnny Boyd came in to tell me Kitty had a gentleman with
her," said Mrs. Danforth, with a kindly but rather stiff greeting.
" I should hardly have known you you have grown almost be-
yond remembrance. And you really will not come in ?"

" I would, but dare not. This little dragon of filial respect
has just been ordering me back to my own mother. If truth-tell-
ing were not my foible I should say I came this way merely to
catch the Kenwood stage, which I see coming. Good-by, Mrs.
Danforth ; good-by, kitty."

" And so that is Richard Norton a full-grown man," said her
mother, looking meditatively at Kitty. " I shall have to put up
your hair and let down your frocks next. Dear me ! how time
flies. It seems the other day that you were a baby."

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE COST OF MONARCHY AND ARISTOCRACY IN
GREAT BRITAIN.

IT is not our intention in the following pages to advocate any
particular form of government in preference to any other, nor
are we desirous of deducing any argument in favor of any favor-
ite political theory from the facts which we shall enumerate ;
for we are quite ready to admit that the actual money cost of a
method of national government is not a correct test of its suit-
ability or its value one way or the other. Governments, like
humanity in general, are to be judged by their fruits. There-
fore if a government is a good one its expensiveness is no ob-
jection, while if a bad one its cheapness is no recommendation.
In dwelling upon the cost of the present system of government
in England we have no intention of expressing any opinion as

1884.] IN GREAT BRITAIN. 689

to its suitability to that land. Were we considering the case of
Ireland we should have something different to say, and we must
now, at the outset, express our conviction that so far as Ireland
bears the burden of the present system of English government,
so far is that burden unjust and improper.

Her majesty the queen of Great Britain and Ireland receives
for her own expenditure in hard cash annually no less than
453,541, or about $2,260,000, while there is expended upon her
various palaces a sum of 36,354 about $181,700 and upon her
royal yachts, naval escorts, and other matters of a naval char-
acter connected with her household and its removals, 40,775,
or upwards of $203,800. Military expenditure in immediate
connection with the royal establishment consumes 68,793, equal
to $343,900. The total annual payments on behalf of the sove-
reign, including, of course, several which we have not detailed,
amount to 619,379, or close on $3,096,800. If we multiply this
amount by the forty-seven years during which Queen Victoria
has worn the crowns of England, Ireland, and Scotland, we find
an actual expenditure personal to the sovereign of fully $145,-
000,000 surely a sum sufficient to make future generations of
more enlightened beings than the English of the present day
ask what the rather dull, though undoubtedly very good, old
lady who sits upon the throne of England did to earn it all. It
is to be borne in mind that the queen's late consort had received
during his life 630,000, or about $3,100,000, while the queen
received a bequest in 1852 of upwards of $2,500,000 in cash,
besides real estate, from an old gentleman named Nield, who
could find no better use for his money than to bequeath it to
a monarch already over-burdened with wealth. The Prince of
Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Connaught, the
Duke of Albany, the Princess Royal, the Princess Christian, the
Princess Louise, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Prin-
cess Augusta, the Princess Mary, Prince Edward of Saxe-Wei-
mar, Prince Leiningen, Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg,
and the Princess Frederica, being her majesty's surviving chil-
dren, cousins, and nephews, receive between them about 260,-
ooo, equal to $1,300,000, annually ; the entire pa}^ments in one
twelve months on account of the royal family being 886,973,
close on $4,430,000.

The amount of money annually paid by the English people
towards the support of the aristocracy is something astounding.
We are not now referring to the amounts drawn by the nobil-
ity from their vast territorial possessions, but solely to the
VOL. xxxix. -44

690 THE COST OF MONARCHY AND ARISTOCRACY [Aug.,

moneys which the chiefs of th great noble families and their
relatives obtain annually from the public revenue for the dis-
charge of the duties of various offices offices many of which
could easily be dispensed with, and any of which could be filled
as well by a commoner as by a peer. The Duke of Athole, for
example, has obtained various public situations for fifty-seven of
his relatives, the Duke of Beaufort for seventy-seven, the Duke
of Bedford for fifty-four, the Duke of Devonshire for fifty-five,
the Duke of Manchester for a similar number, the Duke of Wel-
lington for sixty-one, the Marquess of Bute for forty-two, the Mar-
quess of Anglesea for ninety-seven, the Marquess of Clanricarde
for thirty-eight, the Marquess of Ely for ninety-two, the Marquess
of Lothian for ninety-six, and so on and on until one shrinks in
very weariness from the dry recapitulation of names and num-
bers. It may, to be sure, be said that many of the people in-
cluded in the figures we have quoted are the best servants the
nation could obtain, and worthy, through their abilities, of the
pay they receive. This may be true in some instances, but, to
take an example of our own choosing, let us ask if it will be
seriously contended that one of those whom we have counted
the Marquess of Hartington,-to wit owes his present high posi-
tion in the Liberal cabinet to anything but his aristocratic pa-
rentage and influence. The marquess, in any other land save En-
gland, would not have had the ghost of a chance of being leader
or semi-leader of a great political party. In a Continental or an
American assemblage he would be voted dull and slow, while as
a public or popular orator anywhere he would be the most in-
capable of men.

By the various employments which the dukes of England have
obtained for their relatives and connections it is estimated that
they have supplemented their incomes from their landed and
other possessions by no less a sum than ^9,760,090, or about
,$48,800,450.* Five hundred and nineteen relatives of ducal

* This estimate is that given in the annual almanac of the Financial Reform Association,
a publication of admitted reliability. Its compilers say :

" The estimate, commencing with the year 1850, includes all members of noble families who
.at that time or up to the year 1883 had entered the public service in any of its departments or
become recipients of national bounty. In the case of each person it includes all moneys drawn
in that person's lifetime, and therefore necessarily includes some large amounts drawn before
1850, but in every such case the recipient is either now living or has died since 1850.

'* Accuracy in all cases has, of course, been impossible, but in the great majority of the
amounts it is sufficiently certain. A few overestimates that may have occurred would be
swamped a hundred-fold were the marriages of the female line in every family brought under
contribution, as they have been in but very few instances. Beyond this we have, to our know-
ledge, much under-assessed hundreds of individuals in the list, and a further margin remains to

1884.] IN GREAT BRITAIN-. 691

families divide between them the emoluments of one thousand
and thirteen offices. The marquisate comes in for its full share
of what can only be styled the national plunder. Thirty-three
families of marquesses have written the names of six hundred
and twenty-six members upon the national pay-roll to the tune
of 8,305,950, or $41,529,750. The earls surpass in this respect
all the other branches of the nobility. Two hundred earls have
secured for three thousand three hundred and ninety-one rela-
tives the perquisites of five thousand nine hundred and sixty-
three offices to the amount of 48,181,202, or $240,906,010. The
Earl of Guiiford alone secured place for fifteen relatives, who
held thirty offices and received pay to the amount of 462,000, or
$2,310,000. The editor of the publication to which we are in-
debted for our figures says of his lordship of Guiiford :

11 This is the venerable party who for forty-five years robbed the rich
charity of St. Cross' Hospital, and was exposed in the law-courts by a
Dissenting minister of Southampton, being made to disgorge four years'
accumulations. Lord Romilly, the Master of the Rolls, said his ' shameless
perversion of one of our noblest charities had been done under a system
which not even the most unscrupulous cupidity could have carried out
until hardened into a contempt for common decency.' The Times news-
paper of the period wrote : ' He will go down to the grave with a dishon-
ored name and an evil fame too well deserved, should he leave to his own
offspring the property accumulated by depriving the needy of their inheri-
tance.' The property was so left. The motto of the family is, ''Virtue is
the only nobility.' "

There never, perhaps, was a more glaring example of the evil
effects of the undue influence allowed the aristocratic element in
England than the case here referred to, and which was adjudi-
cated upon in August, 1853. A brief summary of the chief facts,
will show this.

The Hospital of St. Cross, at Winchester, was founded in the
twelfth century, and the Almshouse of Noble Poverty, at the
same place, in A.D. 1446, the first-named through the Catholic
charity of Henry de Biois, the latter through that of Cardinal
Beaufort. These originally separate institutions had in the course
of time come to form one charity. In the aimshouses were sup-
ported thirteen poor men, while dinner was daily given to one

draw upon in those numerous cases of aristocratic pensioners and functionaries whom no pub-
lished document refers us to, but whose name is legion."

The president of the Financial Reform Association is Mr. Muspratt, son of the world-
famous chemist, and amongst its vice-presidents are numbered Sir Charles W. Dilke ; Mr. Tre-
velyan, now Chief Secretary for Ireland ; Mr. Jacob Bright, Mr. John Morley, Mr. F. H. O'Don-
nell. For the purposes of ready calculation we have, as will be seen, taken the United States
dollar as worth four shillings of British money.

692 THE COST OF MONARCHY AND ARISTOCRACY [Aug.,

hundred more, and various benefits were conferred upon all who
were indigent or in need of help. An attempt had been made, so
far back as the very century wherein the charity was established,
by one William de Stowell and afterwards by Sir Roger de
Cloud, successive masters of the hospital, to pervert its funds to
their own purposes. These attempts were defeated by the cou-
rageous steadfastness of William of Wykeham, who had the con-
tention referred to Rome for papal decision. This decision was,
as it was certain to be, just and impartial, and by it the fraudu-
lent-minded master was condemned in all the costs of the pro-
ceedings which his felonious designs against God's poor had
made necessary. The Reformation having come, it seems to have
occurred to the then master that opportunity offered for easy
enrichment. But the times were not yet ripe for such rascality ;
enough of the old leaven of Catholic respect for the rights of the
poor still existed to defeat his efforts, and in the reign of Elizabeth
a special act of Parliament was passed confirming the original
grants and foundation, and expressly forbidding any alienation
of the property or income of the institution from its original des-
tination. In 1696, however, things had altered somewhat, and
the rogues triumphed. In that year the brethren and two chap-
lains of the hospital agreed to a document called a Consuetudi-
narium,. or settlement of the custom of administering the funds
of the charity, and making over same entirely to the master.
In this precious document, which was sanctioned by the then
Protestant bishop of Winchester, and which Sir John Romilly
described as " one of the most extraordinary and nefarious deeds
which the court had ever perused," a deliberate falsehood Was
set out in order to give some color to the act of piratical fraud
which it was intended to perpetrate. It commenced by stating
that after diligent search no documents had been discovered pro-
viding for the government of the chanty, although at the very
time the master and the so-called brethren were in possession of
the original deed, the pope's bull, the statutes of Henry and
Elizabeth, and the records and archives of the House of Noble
Poverty. Under this disgraceful and dishonest document the
" noble " house of Guilford purloined the revenues of the old
Catholic charity for more than a century and a half, until at last
the courageous determination of an humble clergyman let in the
light of day upon the iniquitous and fraudulent transaction.
Now, however, stepped in aristocratic influence to screen the
Guilfords from the necessity of restitution, for when the able and
upright judge who had heard the case came to utter his decision

1884.] IN GREAT BRITAIN. 693

he found that her Britannic majesty's attorney-general had so
astutely framed the legal pleadings and informations that it
was impossible for the court to make the earl accountable for any
moneys received previous to the commencement of the legal pro-
ceedings. Thus was one flagrant aristocratic fraud upon the
English people condoned through aristocratic influence. It is
true the robber was discovered, but good care was taken to
secure him the proceeds of his knavery that he should get clear
off with " the swag."

Another fruitful source of profit to the aristocratic classes in
England lies in the ancient pensions granted by various monarchs
who, besides subsidizing, at the expense of their people, most ini-
quitous wretches, likewise, by the exercise of their own " divine
right," lifted up to the regions of " blue blood " scoundrels
whose vital fluid must have been black as ink, if debauchery and
vice could taint the stream of life. Charles II. was a liberal be-
stower of these pensions. To one of his sons, whom he had
created Duke of Richmond, he granted a duty of one shilling
per chaldron on coals exported from the Tyne and consumed in
England. This pension was eventually commuted by the pay-
ment of no less a sum than 490,833, or $2,454,165. Charles gave
to another son, the Duke of Grafton, a perpetual grant of the
prisage and butterage dues on wines, to abolish which the people
of England had to pay .200,000, or $1,000,000. To recapitulate
the entire list would, however, weary our readers ; it is a tedious
piece of evidence of royal chicanery and of popular subservi-
ency which is little creditable to any one concerned. Is there
loyalty or honor or equity in the hard-working people of En-
gland still patiently paying five hundred pounds annually to the
descendant of a man whose sole title to pension was the fact that
he scorned not to purvey to the debauchery of the second
Charles? Think of a man pensioned from the Woods, and
Works Office in 1842, on the score of "ill-health," after three
years' service, who is still alive, and who has received in all for
doing nothing 13,860, or $69,300 ; of another, retired in the same
year, who received before his death 103,645, or $518,225 ; and of
still another, retired in 1847, wno 7 e t lives, and who has received
from the nation so far 114,700, or $573,500.

The Duke of St. Albans now holds the title and draws the
salary of Great Falconer, although the royal pastime of hawk-
ing is completely extinct. There is still the office of Lord High
Almoner, with a large salary attached, which must be filled
by one of the spiritual peers, and the duties of which consist

694 THE COST OF MONARCHY AND ARISTOCRACY. [Aug.,

solely in dispensing twice a year the queen's bounty to the
individuals appointed to receive it ; if the bounty he distributes
were anything near being equal to the salary he draws there
might be a redeeming feature in this office of Lord High
Almoner, but the extent of the royal gift is as many silver coins
as the years of the sovereign's life, distributed, one coin apiece,
to an equal number of favored recipients ! Not many years
ago a clergyman had a salary of 1,200 ($6,000) a year as the
Searcher of Old Customs ; a gentleman was Comptroller of
Forest Fruits ; another was Clerk of the Pipe ; a lady (!) was
Chief Usher of the Court of Exchequer; and a dowager duchess
was a Receiver of Foreign Customs, for which office she drew
300 ($1,500) a year. A very curious annuity is still paid to the
descendants of a sergeant of halberdiers who, after the battle of
Malplaquet, was placed by the Duke of Marlborough in charge of
some ammunition left on the battle-field ; the descendants are
supposed to be still guarding this ammunition, in virtue of which
service they continue to receive the annuity granted in 1709.
Talking of the Duke of Marlborough, the present holder of that
title one of the most profligate members that ever disgraced
the British peerage only the other day compounded with the
government his hereditary pension of 4,000 fora sum of 17,000.
The descendants of William Penn, too, have just compounded the
annuity they have been receiving since the War of Independence
for the handsome figure of 60,000. We should mention that
one of the rights hereditary of the Duke of Norfolk is the office
of Great Almoner to the sovereign, the duties of which, singular
to say, consist solely in distributing the medals struck at coro-
nations.

These are but instances ; they by no means exhaust the list of
absurdities, of travesties of charity, of masquerades of patriotic
services, which the British public whose " practical common
sense " is so loudly advertised to the disparagement of less wise
peoples are lavishing so much treasure to perpetuate.

Aristocracy is sometimes a good thing ; but whether the form
of it which has grown up in England is an unmixed blessing or
not, it is certain that their whistle is costing the English people
mighty dear.

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 695

WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT?

AN EXPERIENCE OF ACTUAL LIFE.

LONDON, March, 1884.

SOME short time ago I read a case in the newspapers of a
woman who having forged a character for herself, obtained by
its means a situation in a gentleman's family. On conviction she
was sentenced by the worthy magistrate to a month's imprison-
ment with hard labor; moreover, she was given to understand
that she was being leniently dealt with because she had con-
ducted herself honestly during the few weeks she was in her
situation, for otherwise, as her crime' was akin to felony, she
would have been committed for trial.

Reading these facts, a certain queer affair that happened in
my cousin's household a few years ago of a somewhat analogous
nature recurred vividly to my mind. As I was much mixed up
in it, I could not help contrasting the circumstances and feeling
how strangely justice is meted out in this country.

My cousin's husband was suddenly called away on foreign
service which obliged him to take his men-servants with him,
thus considerably reducing his establishment. His wife and
children remaining behind in London, he said he felt rather un-
easy leaving a tribe of women in a big house without any one to
look after them, especially as his wife, who was very young and
had been born and brought up abroad, was hardly yet familiar
with English ways and customs.

I suggested he should leave one of his men behind in the
house, as it was only for a few weeks. To this he objected, say-
ing their names had been entered as part of his retinue, and go
they must. My next idea was, why not engage a steady man-
servant for my cousin and as a sort of protection to the house ?

" I'd willingly offer to come myself, Howard," said I, " and
take care of the whole establishment, babies and all ; but your
wife is young and handsome it wouldn't do. All the lady
friends would raise no end of an uproar."

" No," rejoined Howard " no, certainly not, my dear fellow.
I have thought already of this idea of a man-servant, but Mary
is so averse to them, and she seems to imagine I can find one at
any moment, if it is absolutely necessary, and time is growing
short. Numbers of people have such a reckless way of giving

696 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

characters that it becomes quite dangerous to take a stranger
into your house ; and others, on the contrary, refuse to give a
character at all to some honest, hard-working individual, simply
from a mere personal dislike. And the whole thing becomes a
puzzle. One thing is, the maids are steady and trustworthy ;
there would be no danger of flirtation. Besides," he added,
laughing, " five women would surely suffice to keep one man in
order, if necessary ; and there is safety in numbers."

At this moment my cousin entered the room, and Howard
began immediately :

" Well, Mary, Stephen proposes that you should have a re-
spectable man-servant to look after you during my absence."

" What ! " she exclaimed, " a strange man ? No, thank you.
English men-servants are so uncertain. You remember that
dreadful affair in Palace Gardens. And then suppose he refuses
to carry the coals farther than the drawing-room door, as William
did (but I believe it's a trick of the whole caste), or if he leaves
the gas burning all night in the servants' hall, or, what is worse,
comes in drunk in the middle of the night and sets fire to his bed,
as Brown did, and when the policeman called you up at one
o'clock you had to hold his head under the tap in the scullery to
bring him to his senses? Stephen, please don't put such ideas
into Howard's head ; you are not a family man, and only laugh
at these difficulties, but wait till your own turn comes. I can do
very well with my five women ; and even Howard admits that
they never give any trouble, and he also allows that they are
sensible and have some gumption."

" Nonsense, Mary ! " I said. " Do be reasonable. You must
have a man, if only to answer the door and accompany the car-
riage, and make himself generally useful. It looks well, and by
the time he refuses to carry the coals or requires a shower-bath
to clear out the cobwebs Howard will be back again."

She held out resolutely for some time, and at last, after a hard-
fought battle, she gave up, saying :

" Well, I suppose if you and Howard are quite determined I
must give in; at the same time I'd much rather not. However,
settle it between you ; only remember you are answerable for all
consequences."

Now, the next query was how best to secure a really trust-
worthy man. Howard first spoke to his own steward, who had
been many years in his service and was thoroughly in his confi-
dence, thinking he might know of some one ; but Redman did
not, and suggested applying to the tradesmen as the safest and

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 697

most expeditious method. This we did accordingly, and found
the fishmonger knew of some one he thought would just answer.
He had not seen the person, but knew his brother, a highly re-
spectable young man, who was butler to a family he served in
Eaton Square. He had asked him to look out for a place for his
brother, saying he had an excellent character from Lady Diana
Barrington, with whom he had lived for six months.

The fishmonger was deputed to secure the treasure, and
Howard made me go home to dine with him,- in order to inspect
the individual if he turned up. After dinner, as we were sitting
over our wine, Redman came in and announced that a young man
who gave the name of John Read had called and would be glad
to speak to Sir Howard, if convenient. He was ushered in a
quiet, self-possessed young fellow about thirty, in plain clothes,
with remarkably good address. He said he had taken the liberty
to call on Sir Howard Trevor, as he understood from Mr. James,
the fishmonger, that a lady's footman was required, and he could
highly recommend his brother, who had an excellent character.

After the usual inquiries as to age, health, why he left his
last place, and how long he had been without a situation, all of
which were answered satisfactorily, Howard settled that the bro-
ther should call the following evening, and if, after a personal
interview, Lady Trevor was satisfied, Howard would either see
Lady Diana Barrington or write for his character.

Meeting my cousin the next evening, I heard that Howard
had seen the treasure, was satisfied, and had engaged him, pro-
vided his character answered all expectations.

" Do you like him, Mary ? " I said.

" Well, I don't know exactly, Stephen. I don't think I do ;
there is something disagreeable about him."

" Disagreeable?"

" Well, not disagreeable in the exact sense of the word,
Stephen ; perhaps ' queer ' would answer better to express what
I mean."

" How so ? " I rejoined. " His brother seemed a decidedly
superior young man, and of a better style than the class of ser-
vants one ordinarily meets with nowadays."

"Yes," said Mary, "a very superior man, who would per-
petually make you feel that he was quite above his position.
Part of the queerness is that this same brother seems to be the
moving power in the whole matter. He came this evening, and
to all Howard's questions to James the brother replied, James
winding up at the end of each sentence with 'Yes, sir, just as

698 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

my brother says, sir.' How I do dislike a man who can't speak
for himself ! "

" What is he like ? " I said, very much amused by my cousin's
description.

" Carroty hair, with the usual complexion accompanying that
style of chevelure ; rather tall, thin, and I should say gawky, but
Howard declares he is well made and only lank from illness, and
wants filling out. He has a very anxious, nervous, and rather
hesitating manner.- By the bye, he has one peculiarity: he
screws his eyes up dreadfully when he looks at anybody or any-
thing. I asked if he was short-sighted, and his brother imme-
diately replied for him : ' Oh ! no ; it was from a cold he once had
in his eyes, and they had been weak ever since.' To which re-
mark James added his usual refrain, ' Yes, my lady, just as my
brother says. I never recovered from the effects of that cold.'
Now, as far as I am concerned I don't believe in the cold, and,
what is more, I don't believe they are brothers ; they are differ-
ent as day and night."

" Now, Mary, you don't mean to say that you have never
seen brothers who were the exact opposite of each other, both
morally and physically ? "

" Well, I suppose I have, but you imply by that that I'm
prejudiced."

" A little, perhaps ; but all this may turn out better than you
expect. Wait till Howard gets his character."

" He hopes to get it without delay ; and you know, Stephen,
Lady Diana Harrington has the reputation of being a very pious
person. I conclude if she gives a good recommendation we can
depend upon it, though I do sincerely hope he is not by way of
being sanctimonious I have such a horror of cant. My servants
have hitherto got on very satisfactorily, and, in spite of different
creeds, they pull very well together ; even Kitty, my fiery little
Irish nurse, gets on with Rebecca, who rather distrusts papists, as
she calls them ; but Kitty is so earnest and so edifying she will
end by converting us all by her good example."

" Well, I hope Howard is satisfied so far."

" Yes, quite so ; but I must confess, Stephen, I feel distrustful
about this new importation. I do not like his expression or his
manner. Perhaps my fears are foolish ; at any rate, I will give
him fair play, as Howard wishes to take him."

The next I heard was that the character had been satisfactory
in every respect. Howard said Lady Diana Barrington had
declined a personal interview, owing to ill-health, and answered

1 884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 699

all inquiries by letter. James Read was established in Grosve-
nor Place, and I promised to keep an eye on things and see how
all went on.

About three weeks later I dined with Mary, who had been out
of town on a visit. I had not seen James, and this proved a good
opportunity for inspecting him. I had heard from my cousin
that he gave satisfaction, and seemed so nervously anxious to
please that it was positively painful. Mary had strained a point
in calling him carroty. Whilst dinner was going on I glanced
at him occasionally, and each time I felt that my eyes met his,
though I could not say I saw them, for only two thick rows of
white eyelashes were visible. It was the most peculiar thing I
ever beheld. I could hardly call it a deformity, but it gave him
the oddest expression in the world just like a pussy-cat, as
Mary said, sitting on the watch to pounce on the first unlucky
mouse who might take the closed eyes as a guarantee of sleep.
I never saw so observant a fellow ; he seemed to forestall your
every wish, and everything was done so quietly, so silently. I
confess I did not quite like it ; there was something too feline to
please me. I mentally agreed with my cousin in her general
view of the whole affair. I felt all the more uncomfortable
because in the first instance I had treated her judgment lightly.
Having nothing tangible whereon to ground my dislike, I
thought it better to keep my misgivings to myself, resolving to
be on the lookout for breakers ahead.

After dinner I rushed up to the nursery to look at the chil-
dren and say a word to Rebecca, who was a prime favorite of
mine. Finding the children all flourishing, I said good-night and
turned to leave the room, when it suddenly occurred to me to
ask Rebecca how she liked her new guardian. Now, Rebecca
was a handsome, quiet, pleasant-faced young woman about
thirty, prudent and self-possessed beyond her years, with very
strong views regarding babies, Independent ministers, the
weather, and her luncheon beer. Kitty was sitting by the fire,
with her great blue eyes fixed on Rebecca, while she occupied
herself in slowly rubbing the baby's pink toes.

"Guardian, sir! I believe it is us as will have to be on our
guard with him."

" What on earth do you mean, Rebecca ? "

"Why, sir, just this : that I don't like him, and, if I'm not a
good bit mistaken, he'll show his claws yet."

" His claws? " I repeated, laughing.

" Yes, Mr. Stephen ; he's no good, for all his mincing, smooth

700 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

ways, and screwing up his white eyes as if he was afraid of the
light. Mark my words, sir, for they'll turn out true, and I think
her ladyship is about as wide-awake as I am. He'll have to be
up before daybreak, if he expects to find us napping ; and Kitty
isn't to be blinded, either."

" But, Rebecca, what is the meaning of all this ? Have you
really any grounds for these gloomy suspicions beyond his
appearance?"

" Well, some few of my reasons are, sir : first, he's too smooth,
and no good ever yet came of those hushed, gentle-voiced kind of
men ; then he's always of everybody's way of thinking and wants
to know everybody's business. To think of his impudence when
he comes up with the coals, daring to say to me how I was a real
good nurse, and my babies did me credit, and he liked dissenters !
' Well,' says I, ' and pray what are you ? ' So he screwed up those
ferret eyes of his and says : ' Well, I was born in the Church of
England, but I'm not particular.' * No,' says I, * I shouldn't think
you are. You don't know what you are, I expect.' Now, Mr.
Stephen, I do like folks to have solid views on religious matters.
I just bundled him off and told him to mind his own business.
Then when I'm out of the way he comes up and tries it on with
Kitty, telling her how uncommon pleasant she is, and he offers to
take the dear baby and give it a dance there's impudence for
you, for the likes of which I told Kitty she ought to have boxed
his ears and then he finishes up with he likes the Catholics, they
are so earnest, and he knows a good deal about their religion."

Here Kitty burst into a merry laugh, showing the prettiest
row of white teeth possible, as she said to Rebecca :

" And it's little he knows of our holy faith. Why, he could
hardly tell the difference between Mass and benediction."

" Well, sir," continued Rebecca, " I came up just at that mo-
ment and asked him pretty sharply what he was doing in my
nursery, and with that he answered, quite savage-like, ' Only try-
ing to make myself agreeable, Mrs. Wilson.'

" 'Agreeable ! ' says I. ' Now look here, young man : you try
this on a second time, and as sure as you stand there I'll let Sir
Howard know of it. I'll send you to the right-about with your
nonsense about agreeables.' '

" Well, Rebecca, I'm sorry you don't like him. If anything
does go wrong you know where to find me, and you could either
come or send for me."

" Indeed I will, sir. And Kitty could go ; she'd find you easy
enough."

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 701

" Sure enough I would, sir," broke in Kitty. " I know the
length of Piccadilly well."

From what I had just heard it was evident the new man was
not in favor, though when I came to analyze his shortcomings
they did not appear on the whole very serious.

About a month or six weeks later Howard was summoned to
London on diplomatic business. He was to pass one night only
in town, dine out, and leave early the next morning. Redman
being unable to accompany him, he wrote word that everything
must be ready, for he should arrive so late as to have hardly time
to dress and be off. James was very efficient on this occasion, as
I found out from Mary afterwards. Howard arrived, dressed, and,
after a few hasty words with his wife, he rushed off to his appoint-
ment. I did not see him, of course. The following evening I
was dining out and called at my club, before starting, to see if there
were any letters. The porter met me with a curious expression
on his face, saying :

" Please, sir, there's been a young woman four times this after-
noon looking after you."

"After me ! " I exclaimed. " What sort of person ? "

" Well, sir, a very nice-looking young woman very pretty
indeed."

" What was she like ? "

" Rather small, sir ; beautiful blue eyes, sir, and the nicest teeth
I ever saw. She said her business was very pressing, but she'd
leave no message."

It never occurred to me till that moment, when it all flashed
across my mind.

n Good heavens ! " I said aloud, " it must have been Kitty. What
can have happened ? " At my outspoken thought the porter's face
relaxed into an unmistakable grin ; this recalled me to my senses,
so I said as quietly as I could :

" It must have been one of Lady Trevor's servants. Was her
accent Irish ? "

" Oh ! yes, sir, certainly. She did seem in an awful way the
last time, when I told her you were not in, and that no one could
tell where you might be found. I asked if she had a note, but
she said she had a message, and she'd give it to no one but his
honor."

" Get me a hansom without delay, and I'll write a note which
you must take to the Athenaeum ; if the young woman calls again
tell her to get into a cab and follow me to Lady Trevor's." This
hasty action dispersed the castles in the air which Kitty's persist-

702 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

ent visits had evidently created in our worthy porter's brain. To
write a line telling- my friend that urgent business prevented me
from dining with him, jump into the cab, and be off was the affair
of five minutes, and I found myself bowling on rapidly to Gros-
venor Place, wondering all the while what could be up. On ring-
ing at No. 25 the door was opened by the housemaid, a quiet, de-
mure sort of girl. I could trace no signs of flurry or expectation
in her face. She said Lady Trevor was at home ; would I walk
into the library, and her ladyship would be down in a minute. In
a few seconds down came Mary ; she looked pale and perplexed.

" Well," I said, "what's up? I missed Kitty. I heard she
had been to my club, so I came down at once, concluding
you wanted me."

" I do want you, Stephen, very much. I'll tell you what has
happened. You know Howard came up last night for that diplo-
matic dinner. Well, he only had just time to dress and be off. Al-
most directly after I went to bed, being very tired. I did not go
into his dressing-room after he left, but told Rebecca to see that
the gas was turned off. I must have been asleep when he returned,
for I did not hear him. He got up very early, before I was awake,
as he meant to return to Paris by the mail. After he was dressed
he came up again, and I was considerably startled by his waking
me up with these words :

" ' Mary, did you take some money out of my dressing-case last
night ? I am afraid I shall require some of it.'

" For a moment I could not make out what he meant, but I al-
most immediately assured him that I had not returned to his room
after he left. He then told me he had brought fifty pounds with
him in his dressing-case, and that he was twenty pounds short.
Knowing that I had a duplicate key, he thought perhaps I had
taken it, as he could find no traces of it. I felt very uncomfortable,
and of course, Stephen, my suspicions fell on James. Howard,
however, told me, in his usual calm way, not to jump at hasty
feminine conclusions, and above all not to mention it to any one,
and that he would have another look through his things ; and with
that he rushed off to his breakfast, as the time was getting short.
He soon returned saying it was most perplexing ; that the money
was certainly gone, and that it was in gold. He told me to send
for you at once, and he thought we had better speak to Inspector
Sanderson. He said he would write by the next post, if anything
occurred to him to throw any light on the affair. So now, Stephen,
put on your most serious considering-cap and try to unravel this
mystery."

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 703

11 1 wonder if Rebecca could help us ? Suppose you send for
her, Mary, and we'll ask her a few questions."

Rebecca soon appeared, looking rather mystified.

" Do you know who put the gas out in Sir Howard's dress-
ing-room last night ? " said Mary.

" I did, my lady," answered Rebecca. " I was in the room
with Packer jus^ after Sir Howard left, arranging some linen in
the drawers, and while we were there James came in with a can
of water and began brushing the clothes."

" Did he leave before or after you ? "

" We all left nearly together, Mr. Stephen ; but after Kitty
had brought up the nursery supper, somewhere abput ten o'clock,
I went down again to turn out the gas and see that all was safe,
and I found that James, with his usual forwardness, had been
beforehand and done it for me ; he was poking about on the
stairs, so I just turned it on again for a few minutes and then put
it out to show him he'd no business to meddle. He was very
savage and told me he'd pay me out in a way I shouldn't like ;
but I don't care a bit for his threats ; besides, he is too cowardly
to do anything that would get himself into trouble, though he'd
be up to anything mean or sly."

" Did any one wait up for Sir Howard ? "

" No, sir; he let himself in with his latch-key." This was the
extent of the information we gained from Rebecca, and it threw
no light on the difficulty. We next ordered the carriage and
drove to Inspector Sanderson's. He was most civil and obliging.
He asked all sorts of questions about the servants how long
they had been in the family ; their general character, age, and
appearance ; if we knew anything about their friends ; if they went
out, and what hours they kept. In fact, he asked no end of ques-
tions, and the most alarming thing in it all was that he seemed
obstinately inquisitive about poor little Kitty. He wanted to
know if she went home, how often, and if her own baby was
alive ; if her husband came to see her, and if he had been lately ;
he took down his name and address and that of his employer.
Mary, bursting over with indignation, declared her to be the
most faithful, true-hearted little soul he could find, and devoted
to Mike, who was a most respectable man.

" Exactly so, Lady Trevor," he said, putting his pocket-book
away in his capacious pocket. " I presume she's a Roman
Catholic."

" Yes, of course she is," answered Mary.

" And you let her go to Mass ? "

704 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

" Certainly I do on Sundays and feasts ; but I can't see what
that has to do with the question." \

The inspector evidently saw he was getting on dangerous
ground, and wound up by saying he would wait upon us in
Grosvenor Place the same evening. He would come in plain
clothes, and did not wish, if possible, to be seen by any of the
servants.

This was rather difficult to manage. Mary's suspicions were
still firmly fixed upon James, and she determined to dispose of
him by sending him to Windsor on a commission to her sister-in-
law, and telling her to detain him with the answer till the late
train ; the kitchen people would be busy with the dinner, and
Packer was to have an evening out. As we were sitting over
dessert Susan announced, " A gentleman from Sir Howard's
agent wishes to see your ladyship on business."

" Show him into the library, Susan, and I'll be there directly."

At Mary's request I went in first ; he rose as I entered the
room, saying :

" Well, sir, have you been able to gain any information as to
who may have taken this money ? "

" Absolutely nothing ; and I am beginning to think we never
shall find out."

" Well, sir, I should like to ask you a few questions while we
are alone, for it's delicate work cross-questioning Lady Trevor ;
besides, I could not get much out of her. Now, sir, do you sus-
pect any one ?"

" Well, to tell you the truth, I do a little, but I haven't even
the shadow of a proof ; as there have been some queer circum-
stances which rather prejudiced me against the individual, I
really don't think it would be fair to mention names."

" Very well, sir ; I understand your objection and respect you
for it. How many servants are there ? "

"Six five women and one man."

" How long have they been here ? "

" The man about two months ; Sir Howard engaged him just
before going to Paris. The women have been some time with
my cousin, some as much as six or seven years."

At this juncture Susan came in with a tray with wine and
biscuits, and a message to say Lady Trevor would be down
almost directly. Inspector Sanderson evidently took the girl in
from head to foot ; when she had shut the door I poured out
some wine, while he remarked :

"The housemaid, I conclude, sir? "

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 705

" Yes, the upper housemaid."

" A nice-looking young woman, but I should say slow."

" Yes," I replied, " certainly heavy, but very steady and re-
spectable."

" Exactly what I should think. How long has she been
here? "

" Six or seven years, I imagine ; she had an excellent character
from Mr. Stirling."

" Ah ! that is just what I wanted to know. Mr. Stirling lives
in London, does he not ? "

" Yes ; I speak of the gentleman who has that very beautiful
house in Kensington. He is a great connoisseur in pictures and
antiquities."

" Yes, sir, exactly so; I know him well. The girl is all safe."

" How so? " I asked, rather surprised.

" Because he's a man who would never say anything but the
truth, so you need never mistrust a recommendation from him."

" But, gracious me ! all my cousin's servants have equally
good characters."

" No doubt, sir ; but, for all that, you do not know what we do
of the ins and outs and ways in which characters are given "
Inspector Sanderson spoke eloquently and used choice terms
" and the unscrupulous way in which many ladies evade the truth
in order to avoid disagreeable results, fearing the consequence.
No-principle I call it, and no sense of what is due to the public ;
and it's always a certain prim set that practise this style of fraud."

After this exordium he proceeded to take notes till he came
to the last new-comer, James. I carefully avoided any remark
that would betray on my part the faintest suspicion that he was
the black sheep. I gave the details of his engagement ; when I
came to his character I said he also had an excellent one from
that exceedingly straitlaced individual, Lady Diana Barring-
ton, who holds such extreme religious opinions.

" Lady Diana Barrington ? "

The inspector took me up so sharply, and the tone of his
voice was so peculiar, that I was quite startled. When 1 looked
at him the expression of his face was still more remarkable. It
had quite changed : the thoughtful look had given place to one
of keen concentration.

" Yes," I said, " Lady Diana Barrington ; do you know her ? "
" Yes, I have had occasion to see her ladyship on business."
" Do you think," I said, a sudden thought flashing across me,
" that she would give a false character ? "
VOL. xxxix. 45

;o6 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

" No, sir, I should hardly think she would give a false one ;
but I should like to see the character she did give this James
Read."

" It is a very good one ; I'll send for it." Just at this moment
my cousin came in, and at my request she went and fetched the
character, which she handed to the inspector. While he was ex-
amining it I watched him narrowly, for his sudden reserve had
excited my curiosity. He read the letter over twice ; then, turn-
ing to me, he began with his usual phrase :

" Exactly so : he lived in his last place six months, and nothing
about where he lived before. I think, sir, it will be necessary to
take one of the servants into our confidence. Have you any one
you can trust ? "

Mary immediately proposed Rebecca. The inspector re-
mained deep in thought till she made her appearance. She drop-
ped a strange, nervous kind of curtsey to me, and then stood, as
we say in the army, " in position," her hands spread out stiffly
before her and her eyes fixed on Inspector Sanderson with a
half injured, half-inquiring gaze, he looking all the time very in-
tently at her. I wished I could have photographed the pair.

" Now, young woman, don't look at me as though you were
on your oath in the witness-box ; you are going to be my friend
and help me."

Not a muscle of her features showed any kind of pleasure at
the prospect of this sudden friendship, till at last I exclaimed :

" Now, Rebecca, do sit down, and don't look as though you
had swallowed all the starch for the use of the children's
frills."

Her features relaxed a little and she seemed as though she
felt safer at the sound of my voice. I poured out a glass of wine
and made her drink it, saying:

" My cousin has great confidence in you, Rebecca, and has
selected you, as the most trustworthy of her servants, to act con-
jointly with Inspector Sanderson."

" Her ladyship has told me all about it, sir, and I'm ready to
-do my duty.''

She seemed rather upset, and the inspector interposed, saying:

" Come, come ! we shall be good friends in five minutes. I
know it's a disagreeable business, but just think of the satisfaction
if the matter is cleared up ; think of your kind mistress and your
duties to society." He then entered into a string of inquiries
far too minute to be noted down here, to all of which Rebec-
ca answered quietly and satisfactorily, firmly maintaining all the

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 707

while that James was the thief, much to the worthy inspector's
amusement.

" Now, my good woman," he said, " have you any more solid
reasons for fixing on this new man as the culprit ? Does he seem
to be free with his mon^y or to have plenty at his disposal?"

" Well, I can't say he has, sir ; but he's always poking about
into everything and asking ail manner of questions that don't
concern him," said Rebecca, with an injured sniff.

" Yes, my good friend ; but all this does not tend in any way
to point him out as a thief."

" Well, I suppose it don't, sir ; but then, as I remarked to my-
self the other evening, that young man must have a pretty good
lookout on everything the master does in his dressing-room."

" Oh ! how is that ? The windows are opposite each other, no
doubt? I should like to see Sir Howard's room."

We found, as Rebecca had said, that Howard's room was
quite exposed to the observation of any person in the pantry ; we
tried it with the blinds down, and even then the movements of
any one walking about the room could be pretty accurately fol-
lowed by an interested observer. All these details were taken
down in the note-book. Inspector Sanderson counselled me to
keep-a strict lookout and let him know anything hew, saying :

" In the meantime I'll take the first opportunity to have a look
at the young man. That may give me a clue ; his character is
evidently genuine, and we have no kind of evidence that he has
touched this money, which he couldn't have got at in the ordi-
nary way, for he hadn't the keys, and the locks have not been
tampered with. If he did take it, why then he must be an old
hand, and if we showed our cards we should lose the game. He
may be a quiet, enterprising young man, and if so it won't end
here. Keep a good lookout and let me know everything."

The next morning I went early to see my cousin, as I had an
engagement for that evening. After luncheon we retired to the
library, Mary to write her letters, while I settled myself in an
easy-chair with the paper. The weather was unbearably hot,
and I fell into a light doze. I was sitting in the far end of the
room, facing the door. Mary was seated at the writing-table
near the window. Suddenly I was partially awakened by what
appeared to be the door opening very slowly, as though it had
not been properly shut. I was quite under the influence of a
dreamy half-sleep, and so faint was the noise it failed to rouse
me completely. I had a drowsy impression that the form of a
man had protruded itself in the aperture, and I could define the

7 o8 WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

dim outline of the lower part of the body ; a strange feeling of
being literally fascinated, like a man in a nightmare, roused me,
and with a violent effort I started up from the chair, wide-awake,
just in time to catch the ill-expressioned eyes of James fixed
fully upon me. It was the only time I ever saw his eyes, and I
hope never to see them again. In less than an instant the white-
fringed eyelids fell into their accustomed place, and in a low
voice, with perfect self-possession, he addressed himself to Mary,
who, roused by my violent start, turned quickly around.

" Am I to lay the table for two, my lady? "

" No ; Mr. Stephen will not be here ; he dines in the country
to-night."

He withdrew, closing the door with all his habitual care and
attention. Mary, turning to me with a strange, surprised look
still on her face, remarked :

" Did you fall out of your chair, Stephen, or had you a bad
dream?"

" Yes, a very bad dream ; and nothing will induce me to
leave you alone here with that man. I believe I have caught
your strange dislike to him. You must get rid of him, and that
without delay. I shall write by to-day's post to Howard and
beg him as a personal favor to do anything he likes with the' man
except leaving him here."

" Really, Stephen," said Mary, laughing, " I believe you're
more inconsiderate than I am. You know he was engaged for
six months, and we have nothing against him but an uncomfort-
able feeling about that wretched money."

On this point, however, my mind was made up, and I wrote
my letter. I am not a man given to fancies nor an idle believer
in dreams, but the expression I had caught in that man's eyes
haunted me for weeks. That he had taken in my ill-concealed
horror at a glance was certain, and equally certain was it that
he would be on his guard against any action on my part. How
long he stood at the door, and what his motive was for standing
there, must remain a mystery.

Mary undertook to keep a watchful eye on everything till I
returned the next morning. After I left all went on as usual,
and Mary settled down for a quiet evening as soon as she came
out from dinner. What happened after I give in her own words :

" It must have been some time after dinner, for I had spent
at least three-quarters of an hour walking up and down the
room with the window open. I felt heavy and thought this was
the best way to work it off. After I sat down I must have dozed a

1884.] WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? 709

little, when I became aware that James was in the room. I won-
dered what he was doing. I remained quite still and watched him
moving about. He put out all the candles and moved my read-
ing-lamp from the table at my side and placed it well on the mid-
dle of the writing-table; he then went out of the room, only half-
closing the door after him. The next moment I had drawn off
my shoes and followed quietly to the door. He was mounting
the stairs with the same self-satisfied, deliberate tread. To my
horror I saw him turn the gas out on nearly every landing as he
passed. What could he be doing ? Had I been asleep ? Was
it very late ? I looked at the clock in the hall fifteen minutes
to ten o'clock; the lateness of the hour was evidently not his
motive. In another moment I was following noiselessly up the
stairs. By this time he had reached the nursery, which he entered
without remonstrance or greeting of any kind from the inmates.
I was beginning to feel very much alarmed, and, with my heart
thumping very audibly, I glided into the hot-water closet, from
which I had a full view of the nursery. Rebecca, to my astonish-
ment, was fast asleep in an arm-chair. Kitty was invisible from
where I stood. James looked round with a low chuckle at Re-
becca, sa} 7 ing : ' You're all comfortable enough for to-night, Mrs.
Nurse ; I told you I'd be even with you some day.' He next
proceeded to put out all the lights except a small lamp which
generally burned all night ; this he placed in safety, and then left
the room and went down-stairs, I following as closely as was
prudent. On the top of the kitchen flight I came to a stand-still.
As he passed the kitchen he looked in, closed the door, and turned
the key. He then entered the pantry. As he opened the door a
blaze of light revealed to me in my dark corner an extraordinary
scene of confusion and disorder : the floor was strewn over with
paper, bags, and boxes ; two strange men, who were moving ac-
tively about, turned to James, saying :

" * Well, how did you find them all ? Have the drops done their
duty well? They're a fine improvement to supper beer.'

" * Oh ! yes,' answered James. ' They are all safe and comfort-
able, for to-night at least, so now let us pack and be merry ; by
the time they all wake from their refreshing slumbers we shall be
miles away. It's a lucky chance that Mr. Paul Pry has to dine
at some of his eternal clubs or places to-night, or he'd have been
poking round. I don't approve of cousins who are always '

" Here the door closed with a bang and I heard no more. I
felt there was not a moment to lose. The men, I knew, were
safe for some time. I returned to the nursery and shook Rebec-

WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN IT? [Aug.,

ca, but made no impression. The children were perfectly quiet
and sleeping peacefully. I caught up a hat and cloak, and went
quietly down-stairs and out the front-door, which I closed behind
me with a latch-key, so as to make no noise. I knew that some-
thing serious was going on, and that not a moment must be lost.
I got into the first cab I met and drove to the club. There did not
seem a shadow of a chance of finding Stephen there, as his night
was, I knew, pretty well filled up ; but it was close by and on my
way to Scotland Yard. The porter stared when I asked him if
my cousin ' was there/ Yes, he had arrived about five minutes
before. My heart gave a great bound. I felt I was safe. The
porter shuffled and hesitated when I asked to see my cousin.
Every moment seemed like an eternity, till, fairly desperate, I
placed my hand on the electric bell and said : ' Take my mes-
sage directly or I'll rouse the house.' The man saw it was
serious.

"'What name, ma'am?' 'Say Lady Trevor is here.' In
two minutes Stephen was standing before me, and the next saw
us seated in the cab on our way to Scotland Yard. Inspector
Sanderson was there. After a few hasty directions he returned
with us to Grosvenor Place, closely followed by another cab
containing four policemen. The inspector advised us to alight
at some distance from the house, in case there might be any one
watching, though he considered it still much too early for the re-
moval of stolen property. All appeared quiet as we came near
No. 25, so little time had been lost. I went up to the nursery
at once ; the children were quite safe and the nurses still fast
asleep in the same position. There could be no doubt a sleeping-
potion had been cleverly administered, the effects of which I had
escaped by my activity after dinner.

" Meanwhile Inspector Sanderson proceeded with his little
band to the scene of action. They were in all six against three,
and all armed, so that the burglars' pistols could soon be si-
lenced if they made themselves disagreeable. A good deal of
noise and talking was going on inside the pantry ; it was evident
they were resting after their work, and refreshing themselves
for the approaching journey. They freely discussed their plans
where they were going and what they intended to do with the
plate, which was all ready packed for removal. The conver-
sation had become very animated, when, at a sign from the in-
spector, the door was opened, and each of the inmates of the
pantry found himself confronted by a policeman and a pair of
handcuffs. They were literally caught in a trap from which

1 884.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 7 1 1

there was no escape. Much to Stephen's surprise, he found
himself face to face with no less a personage than John Read,
who was, as it transpired afterwards, the moving- power in a
good many plate-robberies. He was an old hand and well
known to the police. James, who was no relation to Read, had
already been convicted. His good conduct obtained him a
ticket-of-leave, and he had succeeded, by some lucky chance, in
getting afloat again, though in the evidence it appeared almost
certain that some suspicions of him had prevailed on his late em-
ployer to part with him.

" There was no defence at the trial in fact, none was possi-
ble and John Read and James Read alias James Smith are still
working out the sentence allotted to their last offence.

" I learned from Inspector Sanderson that the remarkable
peculiarity about James Read's eyes which had helped to preju-
dice us against him was a very common result of close applica-
tion to oakum-picking."

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

GREY OF GREYBURY. A Novel. By the Marquis Biddle-Cope, of Rome.
2 vols. I2mo, 294 pp. and 283 pp. London: Burns & Gates; New
York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

The Marquis Biddle-Cope's Anglo-American novel ought to make
somewhat of an international sensation. It is thoroughly original, and it is
also thoroughly clever. No author yet, we believe, has conceived the bold
idea of transforming an American citizen into an English Tory squire and
member of Parliament !

First, to speak of Grey of Greybury as a novel pure and simple. It is
written with great vivacity and skill. The plot, if not deep, is sufficiently
complicated, and the interest is sustained with such magnetism that it
positively does not flag once from beginning to end. The characters are
mostly what might be described as brilliant off-hand portraits ; and the
sketches of life and society, both in England and America, are done with
singular keenness. As the incidents are laid alternately in Philadelphia
Quaker homes, in English country-houses, in Milan cafes, on Venetian
canals, in the University of Oxford, and in Paris during the siege and the
Commune, and as they are described with striking vividness, it will be
seen that the story does not lack motion or variety. It only remains to
add that the " color " is as warm and plentiful as the heart of novel-reader
ought legitimately desire. The author's style, too, is crisp, easy, and pic-
turesque.

But what shall we say of this foreigner's handling of Americans and

NEW PUB LIC A TIONS. [Aug.,

Americanism ? We call him foreigner, for, though not an Englishman,
he says he has been brought " to forget at last " that he is not an English-
man ; and though he speaks of his "American kindred," he gives us no
other right to claim him, and he writes of America altogether from the
foreigner's point of view. Without being quite so harsh a critic as the re-
doubtable Sir Lepel Griffin, this Marquis Biddle-Cope is quite as violent an
English Tory and quite as sweeping in his denunciation of democracy of
what he calls " the preposterous assertion that ' all men are born free and
equal.' '' He is tolerant of Americans with " blue blood swelling in their
veins," and by these he means Americans who have a long colonial pedi-
gree, and who have behind that again an English lineage stretching back
indefinitely towards William the Conqueror ; for all other Americans he
has a wholesome contempt. Yet even an American of this thoroughly
qualified type he cannot bring himself to marry to the daughter of an En-
glish baronet without first causing him to be discovered heir to an English
house quite as ancient as the baronet's. Previous to that, being only then
Grey of Greybury, near Philadelphia, he is thoroughly objectionable
" the fellow's a Yankee " ; once become Grey of Grey's-Ashby, England, he
is received with open arms. This way of looking at a proposed son-in-law
from the United States is probably natural enough with an English Tory
baronet; the worst of it is that the author shares the baronet's senti-
ments.

The only American characters with whom the Marquis Biddle-Cope
takes much pains (for none of the Grey family, charmingly as they are
portrayed, can be rated Americans from the author's standpoint) are
Bessie Brown and her brother, " Friend Thomas." Bessie is a demure
Quaker young woman, who carries on a liaison with the hero, Raymond
Grey, ten years her junior, in the hope that when he comes of age she can
inveigle him into marrying her. Friend Thomas is a sanctimonious scoun-
drel, who plots to levy blackmail off Raymond Grey, when the latter is
engaged to be married in England, by threatening that he can prove Grey
had been secretly married to his sister Bessie, and who threatens his sister
with a publication of her shame if she does not aid him, by forged letters
and false evidence, in his plots. The Marquis Biddle-Cope, with apologies
to the Society of Friends, says that these portraits represent only indi-
vidual cases, but that they are artistically true. Certainly no more repul-
sive a pair was ever introduced into the pages of a novel.

Although this book is written by a Catholic, and although the hero is
made to find his way into the church eventually, yet there is nothing in its
pages to mark a due abhorrence of the sin committed by the hero and this
woman, Bessie Brown. True, a shade is cast over Bessie socially when the
thing becomes known, but this has entirely to do with the social aspect of
the case, and the shadlness would seem not to become really serious until
the brother's dabbling in forgery and perjury is also spoken of. Nobody
seems to be affected by the moral view of the transaction. Raymond Grey
receives a " light from Heaven " and joins the Catholic Church ; yet he
does not utter a single sentiment which would show that he felt remorse for
the crime he had committed. He puts the girl from him lightly when he
has tired of her, without the least apparent sense that he has done her any
wrong. The matter does not trouble him at all. He resolves to break

1 884.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 7 1 3

with Bessie Brown, but does not want a scene. " He shrank from saying
hard things, because he liked to slip through difficulties smoothly, without
knocks and jarring. Even as a school-boy he hated quarrels, and if he
ever flinched beneath a blow it was only because he remembered a
doughty old Roundhead trooper whose name he bore, and certain De
Greyes who bore the banner of the cross to Palestine with English
Richard." This modern pink and flower of Catholic chivalry only thinks
of the Bessie Brown affair when Bessie's brother begins to annoy, and then
it is only to posture as the wronged and suffering one !

The truth is, the Marquis Biddle-Cope's Catholicism seems to be model-
led largely after that of the old French parvenu who remained a Catholic
because it was the only religion for gentlemen. The following ridiculous
sentence gives a key to this author's philosophy :

" The preposterous assertion that ' all men are born free and equal,' false historically, false
scientifically, false morally, false from the standpoint of natural religion, of revelation, of phi-
losophy, is fit companion to the delusions and mental perversions upon which repose the multi-
farious sects of Protestantism."

No one, to our knowledge, ever asserted that all men are born free and
equal ; the Declaration of American Independence at which the marquis
is hinting says "all men are created free and equal," and this is also ac-
cording to St. Thomas. So much do our views differ from this author's
that we believe the Catholic Church is the medium which is to inter-
pret for the world the immortal principles of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence ; and that on the soil of this America the church will reach
her mightiest achievement, her grandest development the glorious syn-
thesis between the Old World and the New, between infallible authority
and absolute freedom.

The Marquis Biddle-Cope's Anglo-American hero, scion of a Philadel-
phia Quaker family, when he goes to Oxford, replies thus to a query of a
fellow-undergraduate as to his political creed :;

" ' I am a Monarchist, a Legitimist, a Carlist, a Jacobite, everything " unenlightened " and
" obsolete.'"

" ' Tell me, then,' says the other, ' how was such a creature ever evolved in Pennsylvania ?
But give us an idea of your Utopia. What is your model state ? '

' ' ' I should like Russia better than any country under heaven, if the climate was not so
despicable.' "

Truly a'very much evolved American this ! Is it possible the author
himself he informs us many of his personages are drawn from life, and
imagination alone would hardly suffice to produce so unique a creature
has sat for part of the portrait of Raymond Grey, who hates his native
country and abandons it, becomes a fox-hunting English squire and an Ox-
ford graduate, enters Parliament in the Conservative interest, and joins
the Catholic Church apparently as much for the sake of family prestige as
through any other motive ? This hybrid gentleman is certainly quite a
new type which will surely be relished in the international book market.

Apart from what we have pointed out, Grey of Greybury has a high old
Tory flavor all through which is Very piquant, whether the author is de-
scribing a mob of Communist petroleurs in Paris as typical "republicans,"
or alluding to the family of a wealthy Welsh ironmaster at an English
hunt-meet as "very worthy people from the principality." The descrip-

714 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [Aug.,

tions of fox-hunting and of society in the English shires are almost as good
as Trollope could do them ; and some of the bits of Oxford life are real
cabinet pictures.

A ROMAN SINGER. By F. Marion Crawford. i6mo, 378 pp. Boston :
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884.

This novel is in many respects a marked improvement on its author's
previous works. That eloquent narrative style of which he is the happy
possessor here moves with a freer, evener grace. Here, too, perhaps for
the first time since he began to write, Mr. Crawford has created some
genuine human character people of flesh and blood. Above all, in A
Roman Singer a note of pure and lofty sentiment is struck that alone lifts
the book not only above what the author has previously written, but
above the average of the fiction that both English and American authors
are giving us to-day. It is, in short name of strange sound ! even a whole-
some novel.

And this is true in spite of many serious blemishes which mar the
book. Some of these are blemishes of false taste, others of false art, and a
majority would seem to be referable to the haste with which it is evident
the novel was written. Such blemishes as are due to haste will serve but
as a warning to Mr. Crawford that what art demands is not abundance of
works but excellence of work. Even in the other mistakes which we shall
refer to there is that which gives reason to hope that they are but the
slips of an author whose way to better things is clear.

The plot of A Roman Singer is exceedingly slight. It is merely the
story of a pair of lovers who, with very few of the usual complications,
reach a happy consummation of their attachment. It is the accessories
and the setting of this story that make the interest of the book. Count
Cornelio Grandi is an old professor of philosophy in Rome, who was once
a nobleman of good fortune. Nino Cardegna is the orphan son of one of
the former peasants on his estates, whom the old professor has adopted.
Count Grandi grows as fond as a father of his adopted son, and wishes to
make a philosopher of him. But Nino possesses an extraordinary voice
and develops a passion for music, which De Pretis, a ''maestro and old
friend of the count's, does his best to foster; so, with the count's regretful
consent, Nino adopts the profession of operatic singer. Nino sees one day
the Countess Hedwig von Lira, daughter of the Graf von Lira," a Prussian
military colonel staying for his health's sake in Rome, and straightway
falls in love with her. De Pretis, who is also Hedwig's music-teacher,
being convinced that Nino would sing better if he were in love, does all he
can to favor Nino's suit. From these roots springs a tale of true love in
which Nino, Hedwig, Hedwig's father, a baroness, a baron who seems at
first intended for the Wandering Jew, and the Count Cornelio Grandi prin-
cipally figure.

The story is supposed to be told by the old professor-count ; and this
character, as he unconsciously reveals himself in his delightfully garrulous
narration, is the one really great thing in Mr. Crawford's book. This Sor
Cornelio, with his extraordinary attachment for his adopted boy, with his
droll frugality, and his gay self-sacrifice, and his quaint philosophizing, and
his timorous old housekeeper, Mariuccia, whose extravagance he is always

1 8 84.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 7 1 5

denouncing, is quite a new type, with a rich, new-old flavor all his own.
One of his little disquisitions on love strikes the keynote of the spirit in
which the book is written very truly ; so we will give an extract :

" I am old to say sweet things of loving. But I cannot help it. Like our own dear Leo-
pardi, I loved not the woman, but the angel which is the type of all women, and whom not
finding, I perished miserably as to my heart. But in my breast there is still the temple where
the angel dwelt, and the shrine is very fragrant still with the divine scent of the heavenly roses
that were about her. . . . Now, therefore, I say, Love, and love truly and long even for ever ;
and if you can do other things well, do them ; but if not, at least learn to do that, for it is a very
gentle thing, and sweet in the learning. Some of you laugh at me and say : Behold this
old-fashioned driveller, who does not even know that love is no longer in the fashion ! By St.
Peter, heaven will soon be out of the fashion, too, and Messer Satanas will rake in the just and
the unjust alike, so that he need no longer fast on Fridays, having a more savory larder 1 And
no doubt some of you will say that hell is really so antiquated that it should be put in the mu-
seum at the University of Rome for a curious old piece of theological furniture. Truth ! it is
a wonder it is not worn out with digesting the tough morsels it gets when people like you are
finally gotten rid of from this world. But it is made of good material and will last, never fear !
This is not the gospel of peace, but it is the gospel of truth."

The ugliest blemish in the book is the introduction of a certain baron-
ess who is made to display an unlawful passion for Nino. She seems to be
introduced solely with the view of complicating the plot and thus adding
to its interest. But she could only be an element of disgust from first to
last. Mr. Crawford's part would be more reprehensible in having recourse
to this baroness, only that his own conscience seems to have quickly
shown him the sinfulness, both against art and morals, of the character;
for, with much confusion and recklessness of dramatic fitness, he kills her
off before the ninth chapter.

Next to the introduction of the baroness the faultiest feature is the
management of the marriage of Nino and Hedwig. Mr. Crawford is said
to be a Catholic. At any rate, his book gives evidence of a strong religious
feeling for a novelist and that even of a Catholic kind. He takes the
trouble to make his heroine become a Catholic, and to have the marriage
finally solemnized in a Catholic church. This passage occurs :

" I do not know how it was managed, for Hedwig was certainly a heretic when she left her
father, though she was an angel, as Nino said. But before they left Rome for Vienna there
was a little wedding, early in the morning, in our parish church, for I was there ; and De Pretis,
who was really responsible for the whole thing, got some of his best singers from St. Peter and
St. John on the Lateran to come and sing a Mass over the two. I think that our good mother
church found room for the dear child very quickly, and that is how it happened."

Having gone so far, it is a pity Mr. Crawford did not arrange the whole
episode so as to have kept the example of the lovers, if not edifying, at
least orthodox. This could have been done without difficulty, and the exi-
gencies of his plot would have been fulfilled quite as well as at present.

Among the failures in the book for which hasty construction is plainly
responsible are the characters of the Graf von Lira and the Baron Benoni,
both of which, especially the latter, promised well but ended lamely.

THE POOR MILLIONAIRE : A Tale of New York Life.

THE SHAMROCK GONE WEST, and MOIDA : Tales. By William Seton, author
of Romance of the Charter-Oak, etc. New York : P. O'Shea. 1884.

These two novelettes present a brilliant appearance, and we think Mr.
Seton's severest critics will at least admit that they, and all the other

7 1 6 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [Aug.,

stories he has written, are very readable. New England children read and
re-read the three principal works of fiction which Mr. Seton has produced
viz., the two parts of the Romance of the Charter-Oak and The Pride of Lex-
ington with avidity, and this is, in our opinion, a good test of their merit.
The comical episodes in these stories are sometimes too near the grotesque
to be in good form. The same criticism will apply to other stories in which
the author indulges his strong inclination to the humorous. Yet they are
dashed off with a great deal of graphic power, and are very amusing. In
other scenes, descriptive or pathetic, the author succeeds admirably. He is
a versatile writer, and different stories from his pen vary from each other
very decidedly, so as to call forth very opposite criticisms. Some of his
shorter sketches are perfect of their kind, while others have faults which
call forth some severe censures, as it seems to us, rather exaggerated.

The Poor Millionaire is not one of the best of Mr. Seton's stories in re-
spect to artistic form. It is very realistic in its minute details, but lacks
tone, harmony, and conformity to real life and probability in its structure.
The moral is a very good one, the characters are vividly sketched, and we
could wish that those millionaires who have lately committed suicide, and
others who are haunted by a temptation to do likewise, might have met
with such a sudden and happy conversion as that of Mr. Grey. We re-
commend the story as a useful tract /or circulation among millionaires and
that class of our youth which is too much devoted to mint-juleps.

\:--The Shamrock Gone West and Moida are, each in its own way, speci-
mens of Mr. Seton's most pleasing and successful manner. The first story,
which appeared originally in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, tells of the way an
Irish girl captivated a Yankee boy out West, with a real and natural pathos,
and also a genuine and not exaggerated humor, which are simply charm-
ing. The second is a romantic tale of the Tyrol, full of poesy.

THE WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON. Collected and arranged by
Henry F. Brownson. Vol. ix., containing " The Spirit-Rapper " and
" Criticisms of Some Recent Theories in the Sciences." Detroit : Thorn-
dyke Nourse, publisher. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society
Co.

As much contained in this volume concerns the relation between reli-
gion and science, it will be particularly welcome to the best class of readers.
Few men have been so well able to treat of such subjects as Dr. Brownson.
He was by nature and by training a philosopher, a metaphysician ; and it is
for such men that the investigations of science furnish the raw material.
The scientist must consult the metaphysician to learn the cause of his
phenomena. If his researches are going to start with a reasonable basis he
must be introduced to them by the philosopher, and if they are going to be
suggestive of fundamental truth they must be ended in the philosopher's
company. However great a man's learning may be, if it is simply in the
region of physical facts it is not philosophical. Dr. Brownson, in various
essays contained in this volume, has well proved this, and has done it at
the expense of Spencer, Darwin, and the school of which they are the
leaders. Hence, before reading the works of the agnostics, or while strug-
gling with their difficulties, let the studious inquirer read some of these
essays. No fairer summary of the agnostic doctrines, no better statement
of their relation to fundamental principles, can, we are convinced, be found

1 884.] NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 7 1 7

in the English language. His refutation of their errors is simply unanswer-
able is, indeed, the only short and decisive one possible. To allege facts
against facts with such specialists as agnostics is like trying to howl down
the east wind. Facts are only mastered by principles ; the moral bearings
of events are only understood after a study of their causes. We commend
this volume.

THE CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH IN ITS OUTLINES. An Exposition
of Modern Socialism. By Lawrence Gronlund. Boston : Lee & Shep-
ard, publishers ; New York : Charles T. Dillingham. 1834.

This book of 278 pages contains several just and severe criticisms on
the actual evils of the present political society, particularly those of our
own country. This, indeed, is its real value. As such we recommend it to
our politicians, legislators, and spread-eagle orators. Its author advocates
an ideal socialism with an enthusiasm that reminds us of Brisbane, George
Ripley, and other social reformers of half a century ago. But the evils
which afflict mankind are not so much political or social as they are per-
sonal, and our author makes the mistake of stopping half-way, as if the
social adjustments were the radical cure for personal evils. Notwithstand-
ing he possesses but a smattering of theological science, he talks on reli-
gious matters with a dogmatic spirit. This is to be regretted, for it dis-
credits whatever truth he may have to say in the remainder of the volume.
From this point of view the book indicates a man whose clothes are too
big for him. We have read the entire volume attentively, and we advise
those who are interested and students of political economy and social ques-
tions to do the same.

SUMMER. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by H. G. O.
Blake. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884.

Summer is the ninth volume of Thoreau's works, and is one of the rich-
est in thought and expression of the series.

The contents of Summer have been selected by Mr. Blake from the note-
books of Thoreau, the Concord naturalist and philosopher, who was much
given to jotting down during his frequent rambles, at all hours of the day
and night, his thoughts and criticisms on books, men, and the natural ob-
jects which surrounded him. Thoreau was a true son of Nature. He loved
the inanimate as well as the animated subjects of his studies. It pained
him to see life destroyed, if it were only a growing tree or the hawk preying
upon the farmers' poultry. In obeying this principle he denied himself
the advantages of an ornithological collection, so valuable an aid to the
naturalist in the study of birds.

This volume, appropriately entitled Summer, is the result of summer
investigations in the field and forest, which will well repay a careful perusal.
The reader can follow the author in his rambles with the aid of an excellent
map which has been prepared for the work.

While dealing with the principles of nature, Thoreau exhibits an entire
lack of orthodoxy, as far as revealed religion is concerned. In fact, while
looking upward " through Nature to Nature's God " he ignores much that
is usually accepted by Christians. His friends say of him that he once had
intentions of fitting himself for the ministry, but this idea was abandoned

7 1 8 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [Aug.,

by the time he graduated from college. He then followed the " bent of his
inclination," and fairly revelled in the studies of the field and forest for the
remainder of his life.

His ignoring revealed truth is a problem we could never satisfactorily
solve. Why should not a man accept all that Thoreau accepted, and yet
delight to live in the light of revealed truth ?

In his natural and simple life, in his honesty of purpose, in his love of
all created things, in his bold and outspoken detestation of human wrongs,
in his act of going willingly to prison rather than offend his conscience
there is much to be admired in Thoreau's life. Though an extremist in
some of his views, he held up to his more extravagant countrymen a mirror
in which he contrasted the simplest and purest forms of living with the
most nerve-wearing and wasteful. A reformer must be by nature an
extremist as compared with the average man. Thoreau shows by his
methods how much time for study and self-improvement may be rescued
from the whirl of life. Many thoughtful persons now read his works and
realize how much time, physical labor, and mental wear is wasted in trying
to live as others do and in bowing to the dictates of fashion. To all this
the simple, studious, and natural life of the Concord naturalist is in great
contrast.

While the peculiar positions of many of Thoreau's readers will not
allow them to adopt the simple habits of his daily life, yet all can learn
through his books how wonderful, how beautiful, and how beneficent to
the overworked man of to-day is the untrammelled contemplation of the
works of our kind Creator, who is, let us add, also our Mediator and Re-
deemer.

WHIRLWINDS, CYCLONES, AND TORNADOES. By William Morris Davis,
Instructor in Harvard College. Boston : Lee & Shepard ; New York :
Charles T. Dillingham.

The matter discussed in this little .volume is certainly, jusf at the pre-
sent time, of the deepest interest. The tornado particularly, and especially
in the great Northwest, is growing both in frequency and rapacity. The
awful phenomenon has awakened such a dread in the hearts of people
dwelling on the great plateaus above the Missouri valley that any appear-
ance in the heavens only remotely resembling a funnel spreads immediate
and breathless panic. Many of its most familiar tracks are beginning to be
recognized and mapped out, houses are being built on the northeast slopes
of hills, cellars are designed with storm-proof corners, and children are
early warned, the moment they catch sight of the ominous spiral, to direct
their flight to the southward. Once the creature appears, however, neither
flight nor barrier is of any avail.

Mr. Davis first considers small dust-whirlwinds, next the great hurri-
canes and typhoons of the tropical seas, and lastly tornadoes and water-
spouts. Normally the air tends to maintain a condition of stable equili-
brium, owing to its gravity. But when the beams of the sun heat too
rapidly the lower strata of the atmosphere this equilibrium is overthrown
and the whirlwind produced. Still air on a low, flat surface devoid of water
becomes very highly heated before the equilibrium is disturbed. If the air
were in motion no part of it would remain long enough close to the ground

1884.] NEW FUBLTCATIONS. 719

to be greatly warmed ; if the surface were not flat the lower air would flow
up the slopes as soon as it was a little heated, and not wait to acquire a high
temperature ; if the surface were moist much of the sun's heat would be
employed in the process of evaporation, and would so be lost to the lower
air. The longer the delay before the disturbance begins the more violent
the motion when it does begin. The lower air rises at some point against
the downward pressure of the upper layers. The surrounding heated air
then rushes in from all sides, creating the gyration and producing an up-
ward current. The author adduces some happy illustrations to show that
heat alone is capable of producing the rotary motion in wind. The part
taken by condensing vapor as a sustaining agent in the great cyclones is
presented in a very happy manner. Due force is also given to the earth's
rotary motion in the production of the inward spiral motion of the storm.
The effect, too, of rainfalls on the course and force of the storm is pointed
out.

The author goes very thoroughly into the consideration of the great
cyclones of the ocean. It is true that the behavior of these great storms
has been long and carefully studied, and has been almost established on a
scientific basis by the labors of Dove, Redfield, Reid, and their successors.
Still, the author treats the matter freshly and brightly. His description of
an ocean hurricane is very graphic, and where he tells the tragic fate of the
luckless vessel caught in " the eye of the storm " he furnishes a model in-
stance of word-painting.

Following Ferrel, he considers that the great havoc of the tornado is
due to the partial vacuum produced in its centre by the centrifugal motion
of the whirl, and the consequent rushing in of surface air-currents. He
eliminates, and very probably correctly (although it is ably disputed), elec-
tricity as an essential ingredient in the tornado's composition. Certainly
the wind alone would be capable of effecting all the destruction recorded
of tornadoes. All that is needed is velocity. Sufficient velocity being
given, the most direful effects follow. There is a fixed relationship between
the velocity and pressure of the wind. The pressure is proportioned to the
square of the velocity. A velocity, for instance, of twenty miles an hour
exerts a pressure of two pounds on the square foot, and of forty miles a
pressure of eight pounds, and so on. The greatest pressure ever recorded
was that of ninety-three pounds, produced by the East St. Louis tornado of
1871. This force lifted a mogul engine from the Ohio and Mississippi Rail-
road track and threw it to a distance of fifty feet. That wind was moving
at the rate of one hundred and forty miles an hour. Yet it is well known
that air flows into a vacuum at a marvellously more rapid rate a rate of
twelve hundred and eighty feet a second, or eight hundred and seventy-
two miles an hour.

Professor Davis' little treatise is written in true scientific spirit, and is a
valuable addition to our storm literature.

TANCRED, PRINCE OF TIBERIAS : A Tale of the Eleventh Century. From
the French. I2mo, 224 pp. Baltimore and New York : John Murphy
& Co. 1884.

This is a truly inspiring tale, in which exciting adventure, noble senti-
ment, and a pageant of historic deeds appeal to the imagination of the

720 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Aug., 1884.

reader. He must be indeed a dull or demoralized boy who would begin to
read this book without growing absorbed in its fascinating pages ; and no
boy can read it through and not be made the better for it. It is a tale of
the order of Ben-Hur, which has vindicated the good taste of our youth by
proving such a success. The hero, Tancred, is a Crusader, and he is taken
through the stirring vicissitudes of the Crusader's life from Sicily to the
Holy Land. It is one of the best boys' books that have been issued recently.

A MARVELLOUS HISTORY; or, The Life of Jeanne de la Noue. By the au-
thor of Eastern Hospitals, Religious Orders, Ty borne, etc. i6mo, 146 pp.
London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication So-
ciety Co. 1884.

A " marvellous history" indeed is that of Jeanne de la Noue, the linen-
draper's daughter, who, two hundred years ago, founded the Sisters of St.
Anne of the Providence of Saumur; and the book above named presents
that history in a singularly attractive form. It is written less like a history
of marvellous works of piety than like a novel intended as much to interest
as to edify. Its descriptions are vivid, and its dialogue of which plenty is
skilfully made use of contains real vigor and truthfulness to life. It is a
book which will be read as easily by the worldly-minded as by the pious ;
and all who buy it will find that gratification which comes of doing a good
deed in which no sacrifice is demanded, when they are told that the profits
of the work are devoted to a very commendable charity the support of
the Holy Cross General Hospital, St. Helen's, Lancashire.

LOST, and other Tales for Children. Adapted from the French by the au-
thor of Tyborne, Holiday Tales, etc. London : Burns & Gates ; New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

A collection of three admirable tales for children, the titles of which
are " Lost," " Lottie," and " Miss Tea," has just come from the pen of the
author of Tyborne. The author assures us that while the idea of these
stories has been taken from the French, yet they are in no sense transla-
tions ; they have been much altered and in part rewritten. Be this as it
may, the stories are above the average of their class. They are the work
of people who evidently understand children and sympathize with them,
who know what amuses and what impresses the little folk. They thus dif-
fer from a class of stories which seem to be written in the belief that the
way to catch an intelligent child's fancy is to address it in a mixture of
preachiness and baby-talk.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXXIX. SEPTEMBER, 1884. No. 234.

CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA.

THE Franco-Chinese conflict, now being waged with renewed
force, has evoked much curiosity about contemporaneous China.
Judging from the amount of books that have been written on
that immense empire, so jealously kept apart from the civilized
world, it seems that it ought to be pretty well known nowadays.
Yet such is not the case. As soon as a new work comes to
light through a new traveller we lay it down in despair. Why ?
The field of observation is so large that we cannot reasonably
expect to have it thoroughly explored by men who boast of
going round the world in eighty days, a la Jules Verne. How
many writers never saw China but from the piers of Shang-Hai
or Canton, or the bottom of a boat or a palanquin ! Countless
are the Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards
who saw New York from the elevated railroads, and then jump-
ed in a hurry on a home-bound steamer to notify their con-
temporaries, through high-sounding books of travels, that they
had discovered " America " from Maine to San Francisco and
New Orleans. And America is not a closely-walled country,
but a wide-open, large-hearted, good-natured republic, whose
customs, qualities, and failings may be studied, without any
jeopardizing of liberty or life, from the President in the White
House to the unsuspecting bootblack in the crowded thorough-
fares of the Empire City.

On the other hand, even among serious travellers there are
as many ways of observing as there are observers. Minds, like

722 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

noses, are shaped in a thousand forms. A soldier does not see
like a diplomatist, a physician like a clergyman, a botanist like
a geographer, a man of leisure like a business man. If the
aphorism, Quot capita, tot sententice, has been written for anybody,
it has been for travellers. The true observer has always been and
still is a rare bird, and especially so when looked for among ex-
plorers of China. Very few are those whose luck it was to
penetrate into the private life of a real Chinaman not of one of
those folding-screen or fan Mongolians who pose before foreign-
ers in the conventional mise en serene of official receptions, nor of
one of those degenerate Chinese who crowd the few ports open
to our trade, but of the simple, natural Celestial in his own home.
And this is why we consider it a good fortune to find at last in a
Russian traveller, Dr. Piassetsky, a man endowed with what we
might call the gift of making himself familiar with foreign,
strange surroundings a man who did not shrink from a daily
intercourse with workmen, fishermen, poor people of every avoca-
tion and description, to talk with them, eat with them, laugh, and
if necessary cry, with them. Thanks to his talent as a draughts-
man, all kinds of doors were thrown open before him. His fine,
clever, artistic sketches fascinated lords and country-people
alike. Every one wanted to look at his wonderful album, and
when he went out of a hut or a palace, of a den or a pagod, a
mob was sure to crowd around him and to indulge in a spirited
row to catch a glimpse of the new croquis of " the great artist
from behind the sea." Far from being angry at such an outburst
of inquisitiveness the good doctor was too glad to provoke it, as
it gave him ah opportunity to satisfy his own curiosity, and to
see more and more of the peculiarities of his eager and some-
what troublesome admirers.

It is in this original fashion that Dr. Piassetsky went twice
through China : first, starting from Lake Baikal, and penetrating
in Mongolia, north of Pekin, to go from that grand city to
Shang-Hai ; second, going up the Blue River, to follow afterwards
its affluent, the Han, then crossing the Yellow River at Lan-
Tcheou, to travel along the Great Wall up to the Gobi wilderness,
and finally re-entering Siberia by Sou-Tcheou, Ansi, and Kami.
This may be called a fine trip. And he made it all along as a
tourist, noting here and there, without a particle of pedantry,
his every-day impressions, thus piling up portraits, landscapes,

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 723

indoor and outdoor descriptions, with pen, and pencil as well,
constantly struck by the external relief of men and things, and
copying in simple but masterly style whatever fell under his
candid, impartial, unpretentious observation. Let us first hear
him relating his interview with a much-talked-of personage
General Li-Hung-Chang. Let us see what were the preoccupa-
tion's of that illustrious warrior and commander-in-chief of a great
army, whom everybody rightly considers as the head of the party
favorable to foreigners :

" I was just taking my lunch when a cannon-shot from the Hermine
notified me of the arrival, on board of the frigate, of the governor-general
of the province, Li-Hung-Chang. I went in haste to the pier. I had seen
in Pekin a picture of Li, and recognized him at once among the mandarins
forming his escort, although, while he was taller than the others, there was
nothing extraordinary in his features. Yet Father Palladius had assured
me that Li was a remarkable man, not by reason of his origin, which was a
humble one, but on account of his qualities as an administrator and a states-
man. He had on a blue satin gown, a cloth vest with a velvet collar, and
black satin boots. On his hat a tuft of peacock's double-eyed feathers dis-
tinguished him from other mandarins, whose feathers were favored with one
eye only; moreover, his grade was made conspicuous by a red coral button.
When I arrived on deck the captain of the frigate, in full uniform, was ex-
plaining to him very minutely the firing of cannon. I remarked how intent
he was upon some details, which were probably the only ones he cared for,
as he paid very little attention outside of them. Then the captain explained
what torpedoes were, and sailors began illustrating the theory by actual
experiments, which threw Li-Hung-Chang and his staff into a sea of amaze-
ment, and even of terror, when he felt the frigate shaking under the force
of the explosion, and saw the water jump and spout up about forty-five
feet high. Sosnowski and I were introduced by the captain, who stated
our mission, and we all went down to the cabin, where fruit, bonbons, and
champagrie were in order.

"During the conversation that followed Li expressed his astonishment
at what he was kind enough to call our courage for science's sake, and,
when shown our rifles, admired them very much and instantly ordered a
thousand of them from Sosnowski. Then he asked us to send him a map
of western China, expressing his regret that the other members of the
Chinese government were opposed to railroads, telegraphs, and other inno-
vations which, had he been the master, would have been, he said, long ago
introduced into the Celestial Empire."

A'l this is only a confirmation of what Francis Garnier says
in his book, De Paris an Tibet, that China is opposed to every-
thing which comes from modern industry but its destructive
appliances. It becomes still more evident when we read what
Dr. Piassetsky has to say of the great rival of Li-Hung-Chang
General Tso-Tsong-Tang, the head of the party which represents

724 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

the old Chinese spirit, the stubborn enemy of all foreign element
and advocate of a well-corked-up China.

Tso, in order to show his disaffection to the Russian doctor,
made him and Sosnowsky purposely wait for a long while before
he condescended to appear :

" Of small stature and rather stout, he looked about sixty years of age,
and by his features reminded me somewhat of Prince Bismarck, but instead
of being fair-complexioned and blue-eyed he was brown and black-eyed.
His 'goatee ' consisted of three hairs; the mustache was a little richer.
Every motion was affected, calculated, perhaps, to produce a stronger im-
pression. It seems to me that his aim was not reached. On entering the
room he outlined a general salute nearly imperceptible, stopped as if as-
tonished at something unexpected, and, without saying a word, advanced
one step more and stopped again, looking at us. One of the mandarins
presented him the list of visitors, which he took quite slowly, holding it, to
read it, at the full length of his arms, after the fashion of old people, then
pronounced every name with great circumspection, as a man who is always
on his/'j and g's, looking sharp at every person mentioned, as if he had a
choice to make among us ; then he began, on the spot, to learn our names by
heart, which was not an easy task, and became quite mixed up with So, Pia,
An, etc. Meanwhile we remained standing. When he ceased to examine
me I said to my colleagues, ' Well, gentlemen, let us take seats; I think
he does not propose to invite us to do so.' Tso did not understand what I
said, but guessed the import of my words and seemed very much puzzled
by the determination he read on my face. He was evidently comparing us
one with the other, and undecided as to whether he would invite us all to
be seated or Sosnowski alone. Finally, to put an end to such a ridiculous
situation, I sat down first and invited my colleagues to do the same, in
order to impress him with the fact that we were no servants, but commis-
sioned officers of the great empire of Russia. That bold action set loose
the general's tongue. Tso invited us to take a seat, sat down last, and or-
dered tea to be served."

The remainder of the interview was of the same pattern. Tso
appears to be the prototype of the legendary Chinese with three
hairs, the slave of etiquette, so starched that he looks idiotic.
In fact, that Chinese general of the nineteenth century knew
nothing of the strangers he hated so thoroughly, and asked
Dr. Piassetsky if there were still cannibals in Russia. Of sci-
ences, of which he knew as much, he did not want to hear
anything. " We do not need," he said, " telegraphs, railroads,
etc." But, to make amends, he believed firmly in all the Chinese
superstitions to wit, the flight of winged dragons. " I have seen
some," he chimes in; " do you have any in your country? '
And yet Tso is a learned man, at least one of the Chinese literati
But the letter kills in him the spirit that maketh alive. And this

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 725

is the man who is appointed to-day to organize against France a
Celestial Armada and an efficient artillery.

Piassetsky, in his capacity of a military surgeon, was favored
with a display of the "regiments d'61ite" of the Field-Marshal
Tso. First he visited a cannon foundry, the chief of which
showed him several rifled cannons, home-made too, which he
contemplated w r ith an unmistakable love as long as they were
not loaded, but as soon as the charge was in the enthusiastic
fellow took to his heels. " One day," says the doctor, " artillery
practice being in order and the target in its place, soldiers began
loading the heaviest of the guns, while its father, the chief of the
foundry, looked from afar under a tent. As I stood near the
gunners, who worked very skilfully and without any appreciable
terror, a mandarin rushed to me, seized me by the arm, and tried
to force me to follow him under the tent, insisting that the best
way to see the exercises was to be as much as possible undis-
turbed by the roar of the cannon. I thanked him and tried to
remain where I was ; but he did not allow me to do so, unwilling
as he was, he said, to permit me to endanger my life should the
gun explode; and, stopping his ears with wadding, he dragged
me forcibly towards a rampart, fortunately stopping there just
when I was afraid he would oblige me to hide behind it." Such
artillery officers, professing that you see a gun better when you
do not hear it, are quite the reverse of Panurge, who wanted to
put spectacles on his ears, in the hope that they would hear better
if they could see. At any rate, they give a lofty idea of the
commanding of troops in China.

Another day Tso had ordered a review. Soldiers stood in
a long line, two abreast. Preceded by a group of horsemen and
two executioners comes the general, riding a superb palfrey and
draped in his yellow robes. His head was dressed like that of
a woman. He stops in front of a pavilion from which he is to
muster his army. Four officers take him off his charger ; others,
standing in line, wait for him respectfully. He takes place, with
three generals, on the middle terrace. " As soon as Tso was
seated," writes the doctor, " mandarins with red, blue, or no
buttons came on, one after another, and bowed before him.
Then began infantry and cavalry manoeuvres which lasted three
hours, with intervals of rest. After the army came fifteen or
twenty boys, from ten to twelve years of age, whom Tso pre-
tended to instruct in military tactics. That little corps of cadets
is called Youi-Bine. They also went through some gymnastic ex-
ercises and used bows and small guns, meanwhile gambolling like

726 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

clowns and making all kinds of faces like Chinese actors. Tso
appeared to take great interest in their antics, placed here and
there a criticism, distributing praises, blames, and jokes alike. I
understand that those miniature soldiers receive a regular, or
rather irregular, pay from the treasury."

Then began target-shooting, with old guns without stocks,
which the soldiers held with both hands, drew close to their
body, and fired, without balls of course, oh a large ring half a
yard in diameter, and from which waved a round piece of leather.
The sharp-shooter places himself five or six feet from that very
elementary target, fires, and is considered a remarkable marks-
man if the piece of leather swings a little quicker than usual.
Quite an appropriate exhibition for a country celebrated for its
painted cannons in the embrasures of its forts ! I do not wonder
if Sosnowski answered " Russia " when General Tso, very much
pleased with the skill of his men, asked him proudly : " Which
do you think would be victorious should your country and mine
come to fight ? " And the candid old man put the same question
to all the foreign bystanders, and when answered by all, " Rus-
sia" which, it seems, was quite unexpected by him became
thoughtful and a little despondent, but retorted at last, in a
most convinced fashion : " Oh ! no ; not by a long shot."

All this would seem incredible had we not the testimony of
many other travellers of mark, like Lord Elgin and Sir Lawrence
Oliphant, who witnessed live battles between the Chinese im-
perialists and the Taiping rebels in the vicinity of Nan-Kin.
" It is impossible to imagine anything more picturesque," writes
Sir Lawrence Oliphant fifteen years before the Russian doctor
that is to say, in 1860.

" Mountains were crowned with the dazzling flags of the rebels, who
rushed bravely down the green, grassy slopes to attack the imperialists
posted in a large plain not far from the river, where they had erected straw
screens and temporary earthworks, behind which stood several small can-
nons, looking as inoffensive as big ink-bottles. Now and then a few men
would come out from behind the screens and from the ranks of the rebels,
who had prudently stopped at the foot of the mountains, and, advancing
within two or three hundred yards from each other, would discharge their
muskets and then retreat precipitately with deafening hurrahs and a great
displaying and shaking of banners. Of course we did not await the event,
as the battle could have, on such principles, lasted world without end. One
day those famous rebels, grand terrorizers of the country and slaughterers'
of unarmed peasants, dared to make a demonstration against the English
flotilla engaged in the Yang-Tse-Kiang. We were examining them through
our telescopes, when, to our great surprise, they rushed up to the bank of

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 727

the river, clad as usual in garments of the oddest but brightest colors and
brandishing yellow and crimson flags, under the lead of a man on horse-
back, with a crimson coat and white trousers, who was quite interesting to
behold while caracoling and parading at the head of his multi-colored regi-
ment. Suddenly the fellow, with a defiant air, fired at us his old, rusty
musket at a distance of five hundred yards ; and his men, emboldened by
such a fine feat, opened a decidedly absurd fire on our vessels, which they
repeated three times, then hurried on to one of their circular redoubts and
began pointing toward us a very large gun. It seemed to us that this was
the time to turn their dull jesting into a practical joke, and the Retribution
sent a skilfully-directed bomb right in the middle of the fort. It was a
treat to see the magnificent, crimsoned chief dismount as by magic, run
and tumble in a state of inexprimable agony of terror, while his resplen-
dent acolytes fled like so many panic-stricken rabbits. Our sailors were
seized with such a wild fit of laughing at such a ludicrous spectacle that
they could hardly stand erect by the side of their guns."

One must admit that military tactics have improved among
Chinese troops since Sir L. Oliphant wrote ; but if we are to
believe Dr. Piassetsky, who saw them in 1875, they are still
very far from being thunderbolts of war. No matter how
prompt a country may be in its transformations, even in Europe,
it is impossible for it to create, in seven or eight years, a truly
powerful army with skilled officers, well-drilled soldiers, baggage,
ammunition, artillery, a system for the maintenance, discipline,
and control of troops, and, what is still more necessary, gallantry
and science in the chiefs. The doctor could not in 1875 foresee
that trouble would arise between France and China in 1883-4.
Therefore his Voyage through Mongolia and China was not written
to please or displease the one or the other of the now hostile
parties, and we are inclined to believe his statements entirely
free from partisanship, especially when we see them wonderfully
corroborated by those of L Echo du Japan, one of the leading
daily newspapers of Yokohama, which, in a number brought by a
recent mail, speaking of a possible renewal of the Liou-Kiou
Islands question and of the consequent reinforcing of the Japan-
ese army, says :

'China's military forces never inspired Tokio with a hundredth part
of the anxiety which seems to pervade many French deputies, who would
be seriously embarrassed if asked abruptly to point with their fingers the
province of Tonquin on a map of Asia. Japan knows China by heart,
while France knows the latter from the raconteurs and the bombastic affirma-
tions of the London Times and other English papers generously paid by
Mr. Hart, head of the Chinese customs department, who sends to them
their fat salaries through his agent in London, Mr. Campbell. [This is a
very precise statement, is it not ?] So Paris thinks that China is able to put

728 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

into line considerable forces. But as we have never ceased to repeat the
best troops of the Celestial Empire have been already for several months
in Tonquin fighting by the side of the Black Flags. Besides, Li-Hung-
Chang has three thousand men of his own who are said to be equal to the
best European soldiers, but from whom he will part under no circumstances
nor at any price. The rest about two hundred thousand men scattered
all over the immense empire are worth absohttely nothing. Armed with
pikes, spears, arbalets, bats, slings, and other such odd implements of anti-
quated warfare, they are without instruction and discipline. Their military
exercises consist in contortions worthy of an army of clowns, and of a
variety of most ugly grimaces, with which they candidly believe themselves
able to put any enemy to instant flight. Most of them are inveterate
opium-smokers ; many are infected with a persistent itch, and, when
off duty, pass the day lying on the ground, scratching their legs like
mangy dogs. They are badly fed, receiving very rarely any meat, and pro-
fess no respect for their chiefs, in whom they have no confidence, as was
proved a few weeks ago when fifteen thousand of them, being ordered
to the Tonquin frontier, and knowing they were to join the Black Flags
to fight against Frenchmen, stopped suddenly on their way, many desert-
ing, others, and the larger number, simply returning home to see, they
said, a sick father or a dying mother, so that not more than fifteen hun-
dred men out'of fifteen thousand ever reached the frontier at all."

This, we repeat, is carefully translated from a very recent
number of a well-informed Japanese daily, and is in complete
accord, though written about the bulk of the Chinese army of
1884, with what Dr. Piassetsky saw of it in 1875. "China," says
the Yokohama paper in conclusion, " dares to threaten war
against France, and is not even in a situation to sustain an en-
counter with Japan."

II.

Every traveller, as he rambles over China, is more or less
puzzled by this perplexing question : " What is to be the future
of the Chinese people ? " Will they be blessed with a second
youth, or are they condemned to an irredeemable decrepitude ?
Are they still called to high destinies, or vowed to constant de-
cay by the same supernatural power which seems to keep down
Asiatic agglomerations of men once so alert, so fond of war,
domination, and conquest? Where are the Gengis Khans, the
powerful rajahs of India, the Assyrian and Persian warriors of
old ? Shall we ever see their like again ? Viatores certant, et
adJuic sub judice Us est, as would say our friend Horace.

Yes, travellers are very much mixed up when they try to put
in black and white their judgments about the yellow race.
Some say with emphasis that a day shall come when Asiatics

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 729

will shell our ports and colonize our depopulated fields, or at
least replace on our globe Latin, Celtic, or Saxon activity
through their bankers, working-men, emigrants, all remarkable
for wonderful mercantile aptitude, an inexhaustible patience, a
matchless endurance, and prolific virtue. Others profess that
Chinese are steadily declining and shall so continue up to self-
extermination. Still others believe them to be congealed in their
antique civilization, hieroglyphs, prejudices, which have been
stationary for centuries and so shall remain for centuries to come.
Thus so-called observers jump from one extreme to the other:
here a towering flight, there immobility, there again decay.
Which of them shall we trust, especially when we see such con-
tradictory verdicts fall sometimes from the very same pen, ac-
cording to the mood of the writer and what strikes him most in
his every-day wanderings?

Decay ! this is the exclamation of all travellers as soon as
they find John Chinaman kicking at our modern inventions
and stupidly condemning himself, through opium-smoking, to
the existence of a perambulating skeleton. China is a lost coun-
try when they see its inhabitants bowing to and trembling under
the stick of a mandarin ; lost again when they are confronted
with the venality of officers, or introduced to a Tso declaring
from the top of his sandals that China does not need telegraphs,
telephones, or railroads ; lost when appears the wild rebel, mur-
dering without remorse, plundering with too evident a delight,
and transforming into deserts the richest portions of the coun-
try. " Here is a nation which is going to pieces and to death ! "
exclaims Robert Fortune, simply because he found in some bric-
a brae bazaar Chinamen entering into competition with his tastes
as an antiquarian. Imagine China going into hysterics about
her own old rubbish, especially if it consists of broken articles
rusted and out of fashion ! " One feels," shouts Robert, " that
this people, once great and unique, is now enamored of its past
because the hour of its decline has come, irretrievably come ! "
But, dear Robert, what of us, then, so fond nowadays of notched
china, old medals, pipes, slippers, stones, teapots? What of poor
Di Cesnola, Feuardent, and their like ?

Great future, second youth, astounding vitality ! this is,
on the other hand, the opinion of Father David, and sometimes
of Francis Gamier. " Beware ! " says Father David ; " the Can-
tonese are little by little monopolizing the commerce originated
by Europeans. Englishmen are at a loss to compete with them ;
Jews themselves give up the job, The coolie is hated by blacks

730 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

and whites; he works like four of them and lives on nothing."
" Two centuries hence," writes Francis Gamier (De Paris an
Tibet, p. 172), "our nephews will not treat the yellow race
with such contempt. Will they be even strong enough to resist
its four hundred millions of representatives ?" Much has been
said of the enormous population of China, but we have good
authority for believing that during the last twenty years it has
singularly decreased. Dr. Happer, who studied conscientiously
this important item, thinks it does not exceed two hundred
and eighty millions, which is already quite enough. He begs
us to remark that fifty millions perished at the time of the Ta'i-
pings' rebellion a serious one, we must reckon. Then twenty
other millions disappeared in consequence of horrible famines
which desolated the northern part of the empire two years ago,
leaving aside the ravages caused by the Mohammedan insurrec-
tion. Emigration had also its share in the great depopulation of
China. It is increasing every year, taking away the best young
men and scattering them over Cuba, Central America, Brazil,
Australia, and we know something about it even California,
and other parts of our United States. To corroborate our state-
ment and that of Dr. Happer we have also the testimony of Mr.
Hippisley, a gentleman closely connected with the Imperial De-
partment of Customs, who carefully compiled documents on this
subject, and comes to the conclusion that the Chinese Empire
does not possess more than two hundred and fifty millions of
actual native and foreign-born inhabitants. As an argument on
behalf of his assertion he states that the last census of the pro-
vince of Chekiang, in 1880, showed a decrease of sixty per cent,
in its population. This is enormous. It is still certain that if
the largest part of the eighteen provinces which constitute the
empire are densely populated, especially on the banks of large
rivers and lakes, and in several cities, like Canton, Pekin, Shang-
Ha'i, and Han-Keou, it is not less out of question that immense
solitudes are to be found in the northern and southern portions
of the country, far from rivers, lakes, and canals, as well as in
mountainous regions.

We are again put into a vexatious quandary when we listen
to what our favorite traveller, Dr. Piassetsky, has to say about
the great cities of China ; we are at a loss to form an opinion.
Everywhere he finds the most marvellous qualities in crying
contrast with the most miserable defects. The same man who
bravely risked his life rowing on a tremendous rapid shakes
with fear like a coward at the bare thought of advancing rebels.

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 731

Cities of five hundred thousand inhabitants surrender, without
any semblance of fight, to a mob of five hundred banditti. Su-
perstition nails down those otherwise bright intelligences ; men-
dicity spreads itself everywhere, horrible, repulsive, hideous. An
unlimited national infatuation, but no patriotism, and everything
for sale. " By the side of gold, mud ! " says the doctor, wander-
ing through Pekin ; " and Pekin is China in miniature ! " He
visits the Shang-Hai arsenal, which, although constructed eleven
years ago by Europeans, employs to-day fourteen hundred work-
men, exclusively Chinese, and for the most part born in Canton
or its surroundings. " These men," writes our observer, " are
very skilful and capable of attaining the highest perfection in the
most delicate pieces of workmanship, but [the sempiternal but /]
they are so thin, so attenuated, their eyes are so deeply sunk in
their sombre sockets, that I was filled with pity at the sight of
such a decrepitude, due to unwholesome, scanty food, and, above
all, to a constant abuse of opium." And he gives a lengthy de-
scription of the night-asylums and vapor-baths which are nume-
rous at Shang-Hai " civilization ! " but a more lengthy one
of the vastly more numerous opium-dens " brutishness and de-
cay ! " : " As long as an opium-smoker is rich enough to devote
one or two dollars per day to the satisfaction of his taste, which
becomes very soon an imperious want, he does not suffer much ;
but the more he uses the dreadful drug the more he must in-
crease the primitive dose, and to do it the Chinaman will give
his last penny, his clothes, then steal and murder, if necessary,
as to commit suicide would be easier for him than to live with-
out his seven, and sometimes ten, daily pipes. Do not speak to
him of his impending ruin, of that of his family, of the awful
death awaiting him soon ; his will is gone, his mind shattered as
his very body. He is lost lost for ever ! "

Is this exaggerated? Recently medical reports, issued simul-
taneously by officials in charge of British hospitals at Hong-
Kong and Singapore, treated the subject of opium consumption
and its effects. One of these officials, Dr. Ayres, colonial sur-
geon at Hong-Kong, says of Chinese patients :

" I cannot find that opium-smoking causes emaciation in any way. . . .
It appears to me that the opium-smoker suffers much less from the en-
forced deprivation of the accustomed luxury at once than the tobacco-
smoker. There is certainly no loss of sleep to any extent, for I have had
many of them specially watched. ... I can also speak from parsonal ex-
perience. I have eaten opium till I could consume half an ounce daily,
and I can understand the fascination of that habit and fully appreciate the

732 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

difficulty of leaving it off. I have myself smoked three mace (thirty grains)
of the farmer's prepared opium within an hour, without the slightest effect.
I have watched other Europeans do the same, as they admitted to their
astonishment, with no effect either. I counted their pulses and took their
temperature, neither of which were altered by smoking in the slightest
degree. No opium-smoker among the Chinese smokes with the idea of
procuring sleep ; being naturally tired, he may take a pipe or two before
going to sleep, but with no intention of helping him to sleep. An opium-
smoker visits a friend, who offers him a pipe, and they lie smoking and
chatting between the pipes for hours, just as a European offers wine to a
friend. The Chinaman does not expect his visitor to go off to sleep and
snore like a hog, any more than the European expects his friend to get
drunk and make a beast of himself. That it is costly and expensive as a
habit there is no denial, and in order to procure this luxury, unless a well-
to-do man, the Chinaman must deprive himself and his family of many
comforts and necessaries."

Alas! against that benevolent report on opium-smoking,
Consul Charles Seymour quotes that of the eminent American
physician, Dr. John G. Kerr, for the past twenty- nine years in
charge of the Medical Missionary Society's Hospital in Canton,
at which over six hundred thousand patients, with all kind of
diseases and ailments, have received treatment.

" Scientifically,'' says Dr. Kerr in reviewing Dr. Ayres' report, "are the
facts given by Dr. Ayres all that are needed on which to base so sweeping
a conclusion? Thousands of men have tried opium-smoking in Hong-
Kong, tens of thousands are trying it in China every day. Is all the evi-
dence obtained from these men to be ignored ? Will they pronounce the
smoking of opium absolutely 'without effect' and 'a most harmless prac-
tice ' ? I have had hundreds of opium-smokers under my observation in
Canton. Other medical missionaries have had as many or more. All of
these agree as to the evil effects, physical, moral, and pecuniary, of opium-
smoking; but medical missionaries are easily 'bamboozled,' so we will
throw out their testimony as worthless. Still, there are innumerable facts at
hand bearing directly on this point, and until a sufficient number are col-
lected, sifted, and weighed by competent and unprejudiced persons, any
conclusions as to the harmlessness of opium-smoking, founded on the
experience of a few foreigners, is the essence of scientific nonsense"

It is more than probable that Dr. Kerr will, as above inti-
mated, prepare an array of facts on this subject that will corro-
borate the statements of Dr. Piassetsky and command world-
wide attention. But, after all, have we any right to conclude as
to the absolute decay of the Celestials because they are silly
enough to crave after self-poisoning.? We do not smoke
opium as least most of us do notbut have we not tobacco
under all its forms, whiskey and alcoholism ? Chinamen never
get drunk, at any rate !

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 733

But the same contrasts which have been observed by most
travellers in the Chinese, between their bravery in certain circum-
stances and cowardice in others, their habitual meekness and
temporary ferocity, their taste for schools and their general igno-
rance, their respect for maxims and their dissolute habits, their ap-
parent scepticism and gross superstition these same contrasts,
which have elicited such contradictory judgments concerning
their future as a nation, are to be found not less striking in the
material condition of their country. Here prosperous cities
strike the traveller with admiration ; there the same traveller is
shocked at the sight of devastated towns ;. magnificent marble
bridges are to be seen at the same time as sunken roads, and
triumphal arches near stinking huts. So the European wanderer
feels more and more puzzled by the problem of Chinese desti-
nies : vitality or decomposition ? For him commercial markets
springing up as by magic, skilful industries, rivers covered with
brisk, lively junks, and well-cultivated fields are so many pro-
mises of life ; but dirty, unpaved streets, innumerable quagmires,
uncared-for canals, china towers in ruins, mean death in a far-off
but includable future. So says Dr. Piassetsky, who evidently
never saw New York in her regular winter glory, and who,
being a Russian, ought to be, anyhow, more lenient for bad pave-
ments, abominable streets, filth, and Oriental quagmires. If those
very ingredients of civilization mean death to nations, how many
commonwealths in the world are assured of a morrow?

It seems to me that in China, as well as in Russia and in
America, there is some discrimination to be made between the
people at large and their administrators. If China is to perish
it will be through her administration ; if she is to be regenerated
the cure will not come from the high spheres, but from the peo-
ple proper. What is the work of the Chinese functionaries?
Dr. Piassetsky is no sooner in China which he enters through a
worn-out, wrecked door of the Great Wall and the filthy city of
Kalgan than he writes in his note-book : " Loads of dirt every-
where. ... In some places the air is unfit for respiration, from
pestilential efHuvia and emanations. To go to Pekin nothing
but a horrible, rugged, muddy pathway, looking as if the coun-
try had just experienced a general earthquake." Perhaps Pekin
is somewhat better ? No ; all travellers are unanimous on the
subject : the imperial city betrays itself to the pilgrim's nostrils
by a nauseous atmosphere. Is Pekin a truly original Empire
City in this respect ?

Dr. E. Martin, who was for years the physician of the French

734 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

Legation in Pekin, and Dr. Morache, who succeeded him in his
office, wrote, the former in 1872, the latter in 1879, * n tne Gazette
hebdomcidiire de Medecine and the Dictionnaire encyclope'dique des
sciences medicates, several very interesting articles on Chinese
peculiarities and customs. They give us the reason of the un-
deniable stench of Pekin surroundings. There was formerly a
river, the Yuko, which passed through Pekin, and formerly, too,
Pekin had sewers. Since 1850 the river is no more, through
mere neglect from the authorities. No more shore, artificial or
natural : no more dams nor sluices. So the ditches which the
Yuko is reputed to supply with fresh water encompass the city
with putrid marshes and miasmas. As to the sewers, they have
fallen into a horrible state of dereliction and ruin : " Within one
hundred and fifty yards from the imperial city," writes Dr. Mar-
tin, " I observed a long line of sewers in which agglomerations
of decomposed animal matter were on a level with the ground,
there to be diluted and spread out when summer rains pour like
torrents." And all this in a city in which dwells the " Brother
of the Sun and Moon," the " Lord of a Myriad Years." What
an anti-climax !

Are you anxious to know how they refresh in summer-time
the atmosphere, loaded with burning clouds of dust, in that great,
populous capital where water is not now to be found ? Listen,
then, to Dr. Piassetsky, and, for that purpose, gather up your
strength not to faint in the undertaking : " The watering of the
streets of Pekin is done with water taken from innumerous pools
or puddles which line every street, and, in addition to rain-water,
are the recipients of every household refuse. This filthy, muddy,
thick liquid is covered up with a mouldy crust, under which are
heaped up organic detritus and deleterious gases. In the even-
ing, when the dust in the streets becomes hot enough to stifle a
hog, Chinese go to work, break up the above-mentioned crust,
and throw the water lying beneath through the streets. Then
gases and miasmas fill the air and the stench grows unbearable.
Never in my life have my nostrils been submitted to such a tor-
ment. I thought I was going to die, while around me Chinamen
seemed to enjoy the unique perfumes of what they considered as
a highly hygienic measure. Poor, miserable wretches ! their
health, their lives are thus destroyed ; epidemics of small-pox and
typhus kill them by thousands."

This is exactly what Dr. Durand-Fardel says of other cities,
especially of Canton, in his Etude sur le climat des cotes de la Chine :
" Formerly the streets had been carefully drained up. But since

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 735

the decay which followed the establishing of the Mandchoo dy-
nasty at the end of the seventeenth century everything is wear-
ing out, deteriorating, going to ruin, and the sewers of old are
turned into lethiferous quagmires. There is not among those
multitudinous agglomerations a shadow of sanitary regulations,
and a board of health is less than a myth all over the Celestial
Empire."

And in the midst of such an appalling misery and lack of ad-
ministration the slothful, selfish mandarin, clad in beautiful silk,
lives leisurely in the rear part of his garden, which five or six
large courtyards separate from the streets ; or, if he goes out,
passes through them en palanquin, with a retinue of valets who
plash through the mires in his stead.

Moreover, the streets are not lighted at night. Once Dr.
Piassetsky was caught in the rain in the midst of Pekin, and, as
misfortunes never come single, the night overtook him and his
companion, Sosnowski. " We were wet to the skin," he writes.
*' The intermittent gleam of awful flashes of lightning was our
only light, and in the meantime we were buried in a distressing
darkness. Here and there some lanterns could be perceived in
stores where men were playing checks, chatting, or sipping their
evening tea ; but those lanterns had no effect on the streets.
We had to be exceedingly careful not to fall into some large
mire, for it is a frequent occurrence for people, and even mules
and horses, to lose their lives in some of those horrid receptacles
of filth."

Outside the imperial city the sight is still more lamentable ;
the whole of the suburbs look like one vast swamp, one con-
tinued bog, where appear by intervals ruined habitations,
bridges with tumbling parapets, roads full of large ruts in which
vehicles plunge up to their axle-trees. " Nothing," says Francis
Gamier, who saw the same things in 1872, " proclaims more
eloquently the actual degradation of China than the unseemly
indifference with which, a few miles from the capital, magnificent
roadways have been left to themselves and given up to the great
destroyer of everything which is beautiful time. And yet this
country is so rich in resources that a few years of honest admin-
istration would suffice to make it one of the most prosperous
and powerful among the greatest in the world."

So much for the rulers ; let us now look at the people.
On his arrival on the pier of the Pei-Ho, Piassetsky is amazed
at the animation which is to be seen on that river. "What
a medley of small and large boats ! " he exclaims. " Really, it

736 CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. [Sept.,

is a forest of masts all over the width of the river. Of those
boats some were taking passengers, others received or unloaded
goods. What struck me most in that mass of craft was the
wonderful order in which one set were coming down the river
while the others went on by series to their respective places
without the help of any officials entrusted with the discipline of
the port. As to the rowers, they were admirable for their skill,
strength, and never-failing activity." And when rivers are run-
ning through mountainous defiles, when they are encumbered
with rocks or suddenly lacking in depth, do you suppose the
navigation to be stopped by such trifles? Not at all. These
men seem then to defy nature itself, and haul their boats, jump-
ing, like wild goats, along all the escarpments of the mountain,
now on the top, now in the ravines, pulling all the time upon
their bamboo ropes and winding through the rocks as Indians
through the level plains of the West. " I was often frightened
to death seeing the poor fellows climbing, jumping, running
down at their life's peril. Look at that one ; his foot slips from
under him. Bless me! he darts like an arrow through the air.
. . . Don't be afraid: he will always find something to hang
upon, and there he is again on his feet and pulling like a brave
man ! ' What a sad fate ! ' do you say ? No ; Chinamen I
speak of laborers never complain of their fate." (See Voyage a
tr avers la Mongolie et la Chine , p. 238.)

In Han-Keou is another lively picture. There commercial
life is so active that business is transacted on land and water
alike. At the foot of stores and houses, on a line more than one
league in extent, is an astounding mass of boats at their moor-
ings. " I do not think," says the doctor, " that the like of it is to
be seen in any other port in the world. There were more than
ten thousand boats of every dimension. As to junks and smaller
barks, they were innumerable ; and if you bear in mind that every
one of them is inhabitated by at least five persons, which is a cal-
culation far under the true average, you may form an idea of the
population living on the water." Now, at that point where the
Blue River joins the Han, Han-Keou is not the only city : two
others face it, each of them on an opposite shore, something like
Brooklyn and Jersey City facing New York at the Battery;
and this trinity of cities forms an agglomeration of over three
millions of inhabitants, spread on three necks of land extending
farther than your eye can reach. Well, the Taipings, about
1857, passed there, putting everything to fire and sword, not
leaving stone upon stone in Han-Keou not a shop, store, house,

1884.] CONTEMPORANEOUS CHINA. 737

or edifice pillaging, ransacking, destroying the whole unfortu-
nate city. But the barbarous rebels had hardly left what had
been Han-Keou than the down-trodden population was back
and the admirable swarm reconstructed its hive. Two years
after Han-Keou was up again and as large, populous, animated
as ever. And this is not the only instance of the wonderful re-
cuperative power of the Chinese race. Hundreds of plagues,
rebellions, inundations, famines, have desolated the Chinese land
a land of surprises and life always succeeded death with a mar-
vellous rapidity, thanks to that indomitable energy which seems
to be a natural gift of the yellow race, as well as of the Caucasian
portion of mankind to which is due the stupendous creation of
the modern United States of America.

A people capable of such resurrections is decidedly not an
ordinary people. China is far from being dead, and when the
Prime Minister of France, M. Jules Ferry, spoke of her lately in
the Chamber of Deputies as une quantite ne'gligeable a quantity
which may be slighted at leisure M. Ferry did not speak as a
far-sighted statesman. In the next century China will be quite
able to defy Europe in a defensive war. In spite of the stub-
born Tso and his adepts, telegraphs, steamers, railroads, all our
engines, ideas, and appliances of extermination, will be adopted
by the Celestials. Nothing proves that our grandchildren will
thank us for having forced that kind of civilization on such an
enterprising and still barbarous people, and will not regret the
premature destruction of the legendary Great Wall.

VOL. xxxix. -47

738 MY STAFF OF AGE. [Sept.

MY STAFF OF AGE.

FROM THE CELTIC OF LLYWARCH HEN.

MY staff of age !

I lean upon you, and, sighing, see the fern-leaves red and sere,
And the yellow water-flags wave on the edge of the gray, cold

mere ;
The blood of my heart is chilled with the breath of the waning

year.

My staff of age !

I lean upon you when winter lights the ruddy tavern pane.
While gallant roisterers quaff their ale and raise the joyous strain,
I creep to my lonely bed with no mirth in my heart or brain.

My staff of age !

I lean upon you when the cuckoo darts singing through the air,
When the white foam sparkles on the wave and the hills are

green and fair,
And summer brings a deeper pain with love I cannot share.

My staff of age !

I am saddest of all this May of the long, brown furrow's line,
When the early corn is green and the tendrils curl on the vine,
And I have to lean on a crutch where once I could sing and
shine.

My staff of age !

The woes of eld are upon me, and my locks are thin and gray ;
My eyes, that a woman loved, are sad and dull to the light of day,
And my lips, so often kissed, can but mutter and groan and pray.

My staff of age !

It is sad to be bent and old, to be cold in limb and heart,
To be without mirth or love, and to lose the breath of my art,
But saddest to remember of my life how great was their part.

1884.] PHILISTA. 739

PHILISTA.

IT was Sunday in Philista. Philista is a town in one of the
Middle States. It contains several flourishing pottery-works, a
canal, and numerous first families of intense respectability. The
first families are very aristocratic and exclusive. They know
who their grandfathers were ; and in Philista, given a grand-
father, a genealogy of radiance is easily constructed. Of late a
genealogy has become so necessary a part of every well-regu-
lated household in America that the family-trees of the Philis-
tans are much regarded by visitors ; and the old graveyard,
which dates much beyond the time when Washington crossed
the Delaware, has lost one or two of its tombstones, so great is
the rage of our generation for memorials of its ancestors. The
Stokes, of Beverly, Del., for instance whose family congress is
held in September of every year have in their parlor, between
the spinning-wheel of their alleged great-grandmother and a
suit of armor bought in New York, one of the tombstones of
Philista neatly framed in gold. What can be more convincing of
the antiquity of a family than this ? Gossip may maliciously say
that the Stokes had no grandfather. But even Gossip ought to
be silent in the presence of a tombstone.

It was Sunday in Philista, and it was Sunday at the Gather-
woods', which is the concentrated essence of all the Sabbatarian
characteristics of the Philistan Sunday. The street was very
quiet. The sunshine fell hot on the well-swept pavements ; the
leaves of the paper-mulberry trees rustled lazily, stirred by the
ghost of a breeze. It was at that hour on Sunday when the
smell of roast beef taken from the oven has been dissipated,
when the baked potatoes are cold and mangled, and the " help "
in the Philistan kitchens softly clatters the dishes and mur-
murs, " I know a happy land," only rising to high C when she
breaks an} 7 thing.

It was a drowsy and wretched hour. Dinner was done ; the
younger Philistans had, on August Sundays, nothing to look
forward to. There was not even the mild diversion of the cold-
weather Sunday-school or Bible-class. All the books permitted
to be read were of the kind that the young Philistan despised

740 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

" memoirs " of holy Methodists and pious Baptists, the doctrine
of predestination arranged in an attractive primer for the use of
the young, and story-books about consumptive little boys who
would not play on Sunday, and who died young. To add to the
horrors of this time, when the sweet hope of dinner that had
buoyed up the young soul through the long sermon of the morn-
ing had been lost in fruition, the parlor organs and melodeons in
Jackson Street were let loose. To whistle would have been pro-
fanation ; to draw a violin-bow across the strings sacrilege ; to
touch a piano, except to bring forth some sanctimonious tune,
would have made the Sunday sunshine assume a rakish and
week-day look in the eyes of the Philistans. But to manipulate the
melodeon or parlor organ, of which instruments of torture each
house in Jackson Street possessed one, was considered the proper
thing for Sunday. And now, to such an accompaniment, voices,
young, old, and middle-aged, were humming the various vocal
arrangements of Moody and Sankey. Heard through the hot
air, " in the hush of the sunshine," there was something inde-
scribably dreary in the sounds. It seemed as if all Jackson
Street had taken to. this dismal form of amusement because there
was nothing else to do.

The elder Miss Catherwood sat at her melodeon in the little
parlor murmuring " Beulah Land." The door was slightly ajar,
kept so by a brick, in an embroidered cover, which was wedged
between it and its frame. On week-days the d6or was open ; on
Sundays it was thought proper to keep it ajar. The window-
shutters were " bowed," and the room was in semi-gloom. The
chromo of " Washington Crossing the Delaware," and the oil-
painting of old Mr. Catherwood in the suit he wore in the great
Federal procession in Philadelphia, were carefully covered with
pink gauze to keep off the flies. On the marble-topped table
near the window was a big Bible, and upon it a glass case con-
taining a pyramid of wax fruit, supposed, out of respect for tradi-
tion, to be very natural. The wall-paper was covered with large
green roses with gilt leaves, and the carpet was red and green.
Tidies of worsted-work were arranged in a mathematical man-
ner on the backs of the hair-cloth sofa and the chairs. On Satur-
day every atom of dust had been ruthlessly traced to its lair by
the Misses Catherwood and exterminated. While Miss Cather-
wood sang, Miss Tamar Ann, her sister, sat in her rocking-chair
and moved noiselessly to and fro.

The elder Miss Catherwood had a placid expression not un-
like that of a sheep. Her face was white and wrinkled, but of a

1884.] PHILISTA. 741

different kind of whiteness from that of the two tight, white
curls which were visible on either side of her forehead. She
wore a gray gown of stiff texture, and a lace collar fastened by a
brooch in the form of a cross made of hair. Miss Tamar Ann
resembled her sister in appearance, but her hair was only
sprinkled with gray ; she wore no cap ; she was shorter and
more alert ; her eyes, black and small, were always in motion ;
and, to mark her juvenility, she had her gray gown distended by
a hoop of the fashion that came in when the Empress Eugenie
ruled the world.

Miss Catherwood's slim, long hands and low voice glided
from " Beulah Land " into " Almost Persuaded." It was doleful
enough. An unusually big fly perched on Miss Tamar Ann's
palm-leaf fan, and, being disturbed, hummed drowsily among the
green slats of the blind at the window. Miss Tamar Ann
dropped her fan, ceased to rock herself, and quietly content
plated the hot brick wall across the street. There was no other
occupation left for her on Sunday, except to read the Bible, as
she did not "play the parlor organ."

Miss Catherwood's voice broke on one of those particularly
strained notes which the adepts in Protestant devotional singing
so often use.

" I was thinking," said Miss Tamar Ann, in monotone suit-
able for the time, " that it was a day like this when poor little
Jimmie Reed was drowned. It was an awful warning to Sab-
bath-breakers. He would %p to fish in the canal, and he fell in,
you remember? It was on the I5th, the Sunday after I turned
my black silk, and I remember thinking, ' I hope Jimmy put on
his clean underclothing, for if he didn't his mother will be so
mortified.' Dear, dear ! And to think of the poor child going
to perdition that way ! "

Miss Catherwood had not attended to this reminiscence. Her
eyes were full of tears. The dismal hymns she had been singing
were very pathetic and solemn to her. They brought into her
heart a yearning that almost broke it a memory of the dead
which was nothing but a memory.

" ' Almost Persuaded ' brings back Rosalia to me, Tamar. I
have heard the Romanists pray for their dead. It would be a
great relief to pray for Rosalia now, or to pray to her, if she is in
the ' Beulah Land.' "

If Miss Tamar Ann had been a Catholic she would have made
the sign of the cross ; but she detested the sign of the cross,
except as an ornament for the collar or in a patch-work quilt.

742 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

" I am surprised at you, Jane ! " she said, shaking- her head.
" Poor Rosalia married a papist and died young ; and if John
O'Brien hadn't sent for a priest at the last, she'd have died a
Baptist and the Catherwoods would have been spared the dis-
grace of seeing her buried among the Irish Catholics. / don't
understand how she could have done it. I saw some of their
crucifixions in the Belgian exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition.
The} 7 were really distressing. But we've always done our duty
by Alice, and sent her over among that low crowd at St. Brid-
get's, as we promised her father when he died. There's no deny-
ing it goes against the grain, and it's a disgrace. If Alice sticks
to her religion who's going to marry her, I'd like to know ?
Not that I think she'll stick to it when she sees how very low
everybody considers it."

"I don't know," answered Miss Catherwood. " I can't tell.
I wish/' she added with some fierceness, "that John O'Brien
had never met our Rosalia. If she was right, Tamar, we're
wrong;. And if she's in heaven, we'll but I want to see her
again! I want to see her again! It wouldn't be heaven, if she
wasn't there ! "
" Sister ! "

Miss Tamar Ann's eyes actually snapped. If!
11 For my part," she said, in a voice raised above the appro-
priate monotone, " I'd rather go to a place where the Good
Man isn't than find there's nothing in all the Bible curses against
idolaters. I declare I would !/'

A faint knock sounded at the door, and it was pushed open
after Miss Catherwood had said "Come in."

The gentlewomen were very much fluttered when a young
man entered. He was rather tall, with brown hair close-crop-
ped, a wide brow, full, bright blue eyes ; a thick, reddish mustache
covered his lips, but the chin it left visible was too finely mould-
ed for a man's. He smiled good-humoredly at the Misses
Catherwood, and fumbled with the red rose in the buttonhole
of his light tweed coat. He gave Miss Catherwood his tall
white hat, which she placed on the cover of the melodeon, and
then he asked if he might see Miss Alice.

Miss Catherwood said, " Certainly." And then, with a little
flush on her cheeks, " Shall I tell her your name ? "

" Mine ? Oh ! I beg pardon," the young man answered, with
a crispness of accent and a slight trill of the " r " that contrast-
ed pleasantly with Miss Catherwood's rather flat enunciation.
" Cornelius Blake."

1884.] PHILISTA. 743

Miss Catherwood and Miss Tamar Ann smiled. " You are
the young gentleman Alice met at her cousin's in Philadel-
phia?"

" Yes," he said. " She was kind enough to ask me to come to
see her, and, as I was obliged to but here she is."

A girl not much over twenty had entered from the back
room. She paused for an instant on the threshold, and glanced
quickly at the visitor, as if she had heard his voice but was not
quite sure who he was. She was a slight young girl, having
dark-brown hair and large, gray-blue eyes too densely fringed
with lashes not to give her face what the people in Philista
called a " peculiar " expression. Her face was a pure oval, and
her nose a feature which nature seems to find the most dif-
ficult to mould correctly just escaped being Grecian by being
a trifle too much " tip-tilted." It was an Irish type of face, in
which a certain vigor of outline was corrected, or rather con-
tradicted, by a delicacy of color and meagreness of flesh which
are often observable in an Irish type grafted here. Her face was
quiet and pleasant in expression ; her complexion had a singular
opaque whiteness, which, as it intensified the color of her eyes
was considered by some an additional beauty, by the Misses
Catherwood a sign of the heart-disease of which her mother
died. She moved with the gentle air that characterized both
her aunts. She smiled as she entered the room, and shook hands
with the visitor. Miss Catherwood and Miss Tamar Ann at
once arose to leave the room. It was one of the rules of eti-
quette in Philista that old people should always disappear when
the young folk had visitors.

" I hope you'll invite your friend to tea, Alice," Miss Tamar
Ann said.

" This is Mr. Blake"

" Oh ! yes," said Miss Tamar Ann, " we know."

" I don't want to interrupt your music," said Mr. Blake,
showing a very good row of teeth to both aunts, and appealing
to Miss Catherwood. " Do go on with your music. I am very
fond of it."

There was an oppressive silence.

Music! The mention of the term in connection with the
singing of hymns on the " Sabbath " seemed most incongruous
to the sisters. Music, as music, was not for the Lord's day.

" I declare, Miss Catherwood," continued the visitor, with his
brightest smile, thinking he had not said enough, " if I have an
idol in this world if I have an idol in this world," he repeated,

744 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

fancying from something in Miss Tamar Ann's look that she was
deaf, "it is "

" We don't speak of idols," murmured Miss Tamar Ann, ner-
vously drawing closer to the young man. " It might hurt
Alice's feelings. She's a Romanist.''

The young man lost his smile for a moment, and then laugh-
ed a little.

" So am I ! " he said.

Miss Tamar Ann gazed at his fashionable suit of clothes in
amazement. The Catholics in Philista were, she said afterwards,
" such a very different class of people."

" Well," spoke Miss Catherwood, " sister and I have some
reading to do. I hope we'll see you at tea."

But in order to be polite, and perhaps to charm the Romanist
with some sacred song, she played " Almost Persuaded," with a
slight variation caused by the E-major key in the treble part of
the melodeon having met with an accident.

" To think," complained Miss Tamar Ann, when the sisters had
settled down in their bed-room to read an appropriately gloomy
book, " that a nice young man like that should be obliged by the
pope to end all his prayers with an invocation to the Virgin ! "

" It's a good thing for young men nowadays if they pray at
all," Miss Catherwood answered. " Most of them don't."

II.

Cornelius Blake was " a promising young man." His father
and mother had come over from Ireland, with a little money
earned by shop-keeping in Cork, before the famine. They had
settled among the Philadelphians and done well. They were
frugal, careful people, and their six children found themselves
with a snug sum to begin life with when the old folk had passed
away. Cornelius was the second of these children.

He had been called " bright." He had gone through the
various grades of the public-school without much study or
thought. He was looked on by his teachers as "a promising
boy," and when he went into business, first as an entry clerk in a
dry-goods establishment and afterwards as a commercial travel-
ler for a silk house, the adjective had clung to him. Having,
like his father, been frugal, he saved a little money, to which,
when his father died, he added the comfortable amount be-
queathed to him. Then he threw up business and studied law in
one of the multitudinous law-offices which abound in his native

1884.] PHILISTA. 745

city. He mastered Blackstone and the other text-books put
into his hands with a fatal facility that had been made second
nature by the superficial training of the public-schools. He had
never thought about anything in his life for more than three
minutes. If he did not reach a conclusion then he " gave it up."
He had a very good opinion of himself, particularly of his men-
tal abilities ; but a great respect for the newspapers, although
he made sprightly gibes at them. He considered material pro-
gress as the test of greatness, and poverty as a punishment fol-
lowing upon grievous sins against the spirit of American civiliza-
tion. He was a Catholic ; he believed all that he remembered of
the Little Catechism he had studied in Sunday-school, which he
had attended irregularly after he had made his First Communion.
As to giving reasons for what he believed, he had literally none
to give. He was a Catholic " all through," he said himself ; to
have heard him talk you would have thought that he had been
dyed, religiously speaking, when young, and that the color was
warranted to wash. He had assisted at Mass, approached the
sacraments once or twice a year, partly out of a vague fear that
he might die unexpectedly, and partly because his father and mo-
ther would have been struck to the heart by any known omission
of his " duty." His brothers and sisters had gone their own
ways ; they had no influence on his life.

In his heart he had always felt that Providence had not
treated him fairly in making him a Catholic that is, in giving a
mind like his into the keeping of Irish Catholic parents. His
mother poor, ignorant old soul ! had always struggled against
his going to the public-school.

" Mike," she had said over and over again to his father, " the
faith's in us, blood and bone, heart and soul, and nothing could
change us. But the children aren't like us. They're among new
people, in a land of Protestants ; and who's to teach them the
true religion, if they don't get it in the schools? Sure, we can't ;
and, if we could, we haven't the time."

And Cornelius had always rebelled at this. It was an
" Irish " way of thinking, and he despised it ; he felt grateful that
his father had been too enlightened to give way to it. It made
him shiver to think that if he had gone to the parochial school,
mostly attended by the sons of Irish people not yet American-
ized, and taught by Irish Christian Brothers, he might never
have gotten rid of the Cork brogue. His mother had had her
way in the education of the girls, but the boys all went to the
established schools.

746 PHILISTA. [Sept ,

" The Sunday-school's enough for them," their father had
said. " Religion isn't everything in this country ; and if a boy
is to earn his living, it's mighty little good craw-thumping will
do him."

Cornelius had come out of his succession of schools trium-
phantly. He knew a great deal of several things. He could
" bound " any place in Europe, Asia, or Africa at a moment's
notice. He could cipher with amazing rapidity and demonstrate
the whole of Loomis' Geometry. He had studied physiology,
homceopathically. He wrote a good " business " hand. His essay
on " Centrifugal and Centripetal Correlation " had taken the first
prize on the day of his graduation ; and his rendition of " Curfew
Shall not Ring To-night " had " marked him," as an observant
journalist had said on the day after commencement, "a born
orator."

He was "smart," and, though he had come out of school
with the conviction that he was literally a master of all arts
worth studying, he was by no means more of a fool than nine-
tenths of his fellow-citizens. What he did not know speaking
of reading and study he despised. He felt that he was well
equipped for life; he was sure that he was equal to anybody ; he
resolved to be of importance in the world. He had read a stray
volume of Controversy between Bishop Hughes and Breckenridge
and Smarius' book of Controversy just after a "mission," when
his mind had been inflamed to a point of unusual devotion. But
he had forgotten them easily. His last teacher had recom-
mended him to read Draper's Conflict of Religion and Science. He
looked on that work as worthy of respect, as, indeed, he had no
means of contradicting the falsehoods concerning the church it
contains. He had, by dint of reading reviews and editorials in
the daily press, acquired a knack of quoting Tyndall and Huxley
against his Catholic acquaintances, as if he had read those popular
authors. He had worried through Daniel Deronda and Middle-
march, in order to talk about them. He had never bought a
book of any kind. He read newspapers unceasingly and " kept
up " with the magazines. Once or twice a year he heard a
sermon. But it made him tired to have the preacher tell him
what he knew already.

Having hung out his sign with " P. Cornelius Blake " em-
blazoned on it, he discovered that there were too many lawyers
in Philadelphia, and, hearing of a chance to enter a law-firm in
Philista, he had emigrated.

He had a kind heart ; good impulses constantly arose from it.

1884.] PHILISTA. 747

He would have died rather than have done anything dishonest
or acknowledged that his Christian name was Patrick. He
wanted to be good and he wanted to be well thought of. So far
the facts that he was a Catholic and had a suspicion of the
brogue had not gone much against him. He had felt that he
was an "outsider" when some of his friends had made social
arrangements in which he had participated ; but he was not sure
whether this had been only a feeling of his or really a feeling of
theirs. Taking him altogether, he was a man of excellent possi-
bilities warped by the atmosphere around him. He had all the
best qualities of his Irish parents, tempered and strained a little,
the charming facility of the Celtic temperament, the impulsive-
ness and hopefulness, and a rooted dislike to the saying of un-
pleasant things. He was said to be " magnetic." He was only
Celtic of the Irish.

in.

When the Misses Catherwood had left the parlor Alice
untied the cord that kept the window-shutters " bowed " and let
in a little more light. The young people showed to better
advantage. Alice O'Brien, if not altogether beautiful, was a
distinguished and graceful-looking girl. The Grecian knot of
her dark hair, and her white gown relieved at the belt by a large
bunch of bergamot blossoms, were very becoming to her.

" I never expected to see you again," she said to Cornelius,
with a smile. " Let me see, it is three months since I met you at
my cousin's."

" I have come here to stay to improve my prospects. I am
a lawyer, you know."

She smiled again.

" I never heard of anybody coming to.Philista to improve his
prospects before, but I suppose you intend to grow up with the
city. Your beanstalk will not grow as rapidly as Jack's in the
story. If it keeps pace with Philista in growth it will be ready
for you to climb when you're seventy years of age at least."

Cornelius felt a little piqued by her easy tone. When a
young man comes from a large city into a comparatively rural
town, with all the tone of progress that residence in a centre of
culture gives, he expects the simple country lass to show a sense
of his condescension.

" I don't know Philista at all," he said.

" That must have been the reason you came here. After all,

748 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

you may find it lively in comparison with Philadelphia. The
canal is most interesting. There's an insane asylum. The
churches are always having ' cake love-feasts/ sociables, oyster-
suppers, and fairs, and we had a troop of negro minstrels last
week. At election time the excitement is intense. On last elec-
tion day twelve men passed our windows.'*

" Is there much society ? "

" Much ! The churches, particularly the Methodist, are cir-
cles within circles of gayety. But I'm a Catholic, so I'm barred
out of that. Our own people are mostly factory-hands and that
sort of thing. Positively there are not ten Catholic young men
in Philista that a nice girl could marry. Not that I ever think
of that. I'm a school-teacher, you know, and we neither die nor
resign."

Cornelius felt more at his ease.

" They are not fond of Catholics here."

" I should think not. The first families are generally Presby-
terians, who talk of Catholics as Aunt Tamar Ann talks. Those
that have travelled are broader in their religious views, but they
consider it socially 'low'' to be a Catholic with an Irish name.
It took all the influence of all the Catherwoods to get me a place
as teacher in one of the schools. And I know there would have
been less mourning in the best circles if my mother had married
a negro instead of my dear, dear father. With your Irish look
and that touch of the brogue you'll have a hard time here."

Cornelius flushed so deeply that his reddish mustache looked
yellow by contrast.

" Do you really think that I talk as if I was Irish ? " he asked,
with an ingenuousness and anxiety that made her eyes twinkle.

" Certainly. No man, except an Irishman, could talk with an
echo of the music of the old sod in his voice." She broke off
with a slight blush and a little laugh. " I wish I had it. I've
the flat, semi-nasal accent of Philista, except when I speak a
' piece ' or read poetry."

These young people, who had met only once before, seemed
now quite well acquainted with each other. Young folk's friend-
ships often grow as rapidly as Jack's beanstalk.

Cornelius was mortified by her opinion about his " brogue,"
and, although he tried to conceal it, she said :

" It is a pretty accent, not a vulgar twang. Do you sing ?
The choir at St. Bridget's is very bad. They want a tenor. I
hope you sing."

" Not at all. If I did I don't think I could stand choir-sing-

1884.] PHILISTA. 749

ing- and going to church twice every Sunday. Once is enough.
Protestants have a much pleasanter time. They don't go, if they
don't want to."

" But they want to here. Church-going, and the social revi-
vals that spring from it, are the excitements of the town. I don't
think it makes them much better ; I think most of the people
here would be as good as they are if there were no churches.
But a ' broom-drill,' an oyster-supper, a donation-party, or a new
minister sets the place talking for a month. The Catholics have
not progressed that far yet. St. Bridget's had a fair; but there
was such a mob there ! But all the politicians went and spent
money. Are you going in for politics ? "

" I may," he returned, with an air as if he were undecided
between the Presidency or a United States senatorship. She
shook her head.

" I don't think you'd have the ghost of a chance. The feeling
against Catholics here is very strong, and the Irish vote, though
it's worth fishing for, would not carry you through. Besides,
unless you are a Land-Leaguer the fact of your being a Catho-
lic wouldn't carry all the Irish voters with you. I hope you'll
keep out of politics."

Cornelius had come to say pretty things to this young lady
and to patronize her a little. But there she sat, acting the part
of monitress. She was a pretty monitress, an interesting moni-
tress, but a man never likes a woman to teach him anything di-
rectly. If she teaches him with an ^appearance of ignorance he
will assimilate her wisdom and use it as his own. Alice O'Brien
despised tact ; she despised the male sex ; she would rather have
proposed marriage to a man than have let him think she was his
inferior.

Cornelius, listening to her, felt as if a cool breeze, laden with
moisture, had touched him.

"You seem to have studied the political situation, Miss
O'Brien."

" I have. Being a Catholic and half-Irish, with a name that
all the Catherwoods dislike, I have been a ' looker-on in Vienna.'
Besides, I have always wanted to be a man."

" Why ? I assure you, if you were a man, the world would
lose a great deal of "

"Oh! yes, of course. Being a girl, I've no chance of doing
anything better than teaching the primary class in a public-
school. If I were not a Catholic I might rise to be principal of
Hypatia College, for instance, where they would like to have

750 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

me, if it wasn't for that. If I were a man I could, I would, sur-
mount all the obstacles in the way."

Her lips were tightly shut ; but no flush tinged the opaque
white of her cheeks.

" But why can't I overcome these obstacles ? "

" Oh !" she answered impatiently, "because you are a man.
They're coming from Vespers at St. Bridget's," she added, push-
ing the shutters open. " Look at them ! Servant-girls and
factory-hands ! Look at the clothes of the men and the bonnets
of the women ! And yet we are of those people ; we can't es-
cape them. I am a Catholic ; I have stuck fast to the church
in spite of all jeers."

" Why ? " he interrupted maliciously.

She turned towards him with a startled look in her deeply,
shaded eyes.

" Why ? " she echoed. " Why ? "

" Don't ask me" he returned. " When somebody asked me the
other day why I wore a scapular I couldn't tell. It does seem
like nonsense. All I know about it is that the priest put it on
me one day in church, and I wear it because I've always worn it.
I'm a Catholic for the same reason I've always been one.'
v . " A Mohammedan might say that," she replied, with a serious
look in her eyes and a note of scorn in her voice.

" Or a Methodist, or a Presbyterian yes. Have you a bet-
ter reason?"

" Yes. The church is true is truth itself. I believe."

" And your reasons? "

" I don't want reasons. I don't know why I believe. No-
body taught me the reasons. I have had no Catholic friends,
and my aunts never liked me to see the priest much. And the
Catholic books I have happened to find among the people here
have been silly things in awfully bad taste and more Irish than
Catholic. But I believe I sometimes wish I didn't ; I should
have a better time every way ! "

" Well," he said, " you are frank. For myself, I am a Catho-
lic through inheritance and habit. It seems to me that America
has outgrown religions I don't call Protestantism a religion
and I have never, in all my reading " ( he said this quite seri-
ously), " found any reason why I shouldn't be abreast of the
country. Men are about alike, no matter what religion they
profess."

" That's a mistake," Alice O'Brien said. There was a pause.
" I wish," she continued, " there were no such things as mixed

1884.] PHILISTA. 751

marriages in the world. I am the victim of one. You think
that's too strong ? Ah ! but you don't know. I'm separated
from the people I love best. I suppose I'll be separated in the next
world, too. I don't know whether I ought to pray for the souls
of so many dear relatives who on earth hated the church and
the Blessed Virgin with all their hearts. And yet I loved them
and they loved me. Here I am a Catholic among Protestants,
like a fish out of water.''

Cornelius laughed. It was an ill-timed laugh. She showed
she thought so by silence. The drone of the reading in the
room above broke the quiet.

" Well," he said, with a light air that seemed frivolous to her,
" as we can't give reasons for the faith that is in us, what
reason have we for sticking to it? Life would be much pleasanter
and longer, perhaps, if religion did not demand sacrifices."

" I intend that my life shall be pleasant, and I think it will be
long. I can never imagine myself dying."

" I never try to," he answered, with a laugh. At this moment
the little servant-maid announced that tea was ready.

Cornelius talked a great deal. The impression he made may
be judged from a snatch of dialogue which Alice happened to
overhear.

" I must say," Miss Tamar Ann said, " that, for a Romanist,
he is very liberal."

" Yes," replied Miss Catherwood, " but just a little limp. I
like to see a man stand up for his principles."

Alice herself was divided between a vague disdain of him and
a distinct liking. And he said to himself that if a man wanted a
clever wife who would help him to rise in the world, he could
not do better than choose Alice O'Brien.

IV.

Next Sunday Cornelius went to Mass as usual. He stood
at the door and took a comprehensive look at the interior before
kneeling, although the priest was at the Offertory. He did not
see Alice. He scanned the silent congregation with an obser-
vant eye. His education had trained him to judge a man's
pocketbook, and consequently a man's usefulness to him, by his
clothes. He shook his head and called to mind the richly-
dressed people whom he had passed on their way to the temple
of Episcopalianism, the Church of the Survival of the Fittest.

During Mass he thought much of the contrast. If one may

;52 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

hear Mass by being physically present Cornelius fulfilled the
obligation ; but his mind was engaged in speculating as to his
future.

He was not really bad ; he had no intention of doing anything
dishonorable or disreputable. But during childhood and youth
the longest times of our life he had learned that what we see
with our corporeal eyes is the only thing that exists. Religion
was well enough on Sundays. With the old people, particularly
with old Irish people, who. were naturally behind the times, it
might mean much. A young man with his way to make in the
world had other things to think of. He knew many men, wear-
ing white linen, broadcloth, and diamond studs, who were re-
spected by everybody, and who, without any religion, were good
enough for all practical purposes. He said to himself that he did
not want to be any better than such successful men.

His religion had been a habit. And as he went out of church
and compared the congregation of St. Bridget's with that of the
Church of the Survival of the Fittest, he asked himself why he
should cling to a habit that might be a fatal bar to his success in
Philista.

The Misses Catherwood learned to expect him to tea on Sun-
day nights regularly. They approved of him. Nobody had
anything to say against him, except that he was a " Romanist,"
but a " liberal one," Miss Tamar Ann always hastened to add.
They were getting old, and their income would cease at their
death. They were glad to think that this promising young man,
when he had gotten established, would preserve Alice from a
career of ill-paid school-teaching.

" If she was not a Romanist they would give her the Litera-
ture and Elocution at Hypatia, with nearly two thousand a year.
Mr. Longwood, the president, has told her so more than once."

" But she is a Romanist," tartly answered Miss Tamar Ann.
" She can't save anything teaching in that primary school, so
she'll have to marry if she can."

After many walks and talks, some ice-cream-eating in the
fashionable saloon in Philista, and a quarrel or two, Cornelius
and Alice were " engaged."

Cornelius was not in a position to marry yet. All his funds
were invested in the law-firm. Alice had nothing, but she was
the more ambitious. They had resolved to wait two years. How
in the meantime could she help him to make money ? She was
entirely wrapped up in him, in his plans, in his future. She
thought and thought about the problem of the future, until the

1884.] PHILISTA. 753

quick, spasmodic beating of her heart reminded her that she was,
as Miss Catherwood often said, " Rosalia's child."

Although Cornelius and Alice were much in love with each
other, they never lost sight of the material resources they consid-
ered necessary to their position in life which they put, as a mat-
ter of course, greatly above that of the Misses Catherwood. The
ways and means of those old ladies would be unsuitable for Cor-
nelius Blake, Esq., and his wife. The growth of the law business
was slow. Alice said bitterly over and over again that girls
were utterly useless, so far as the making of money went.

" Well," Miss Tamar Ann had answered more than once,
" the place at Hypatia College is still open."

But Miss Catherwood had always said, " Hushl "

On All Souls' day Alice went to Vespers, which at St.
Bridget's were sung after nightfall. Her forehead took a deep,
perpendicular wrinkle upon it, and, as the choir began the " Mag-
nificat," she half rose in the pew, as if to go. But something
seemed to push her back. When the soprano voice began the
" Tantum Ergo," and the kneeling people began to prepare for
the Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament, she hastened
down the aisle, and, once in the open air, ran home.

" Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui ! "

It rang in her ears ; she could not get rid of it.

She threw herself on her bed, the frown still on her brow.
Opposite her was the little crucifix her father had left her. It
stood in the centre of the mantel. With a sudden movement, as
of irritation, she arose and held it a moment at arm's length
and with her head averted. The moonlight fell through the
window on her white face and whiter dress, and, if it were not
for the color of her hair and the dark circles around her eyes,
she would have seemed a statue. With the same sudden move-
ment she put the crucifix into a Japanese box on the mantel,
locked it, and, going to the window, threw the tiny key as far as
she could fling it. Her lips were white and drawn.

" It is done! " she said. " I shall live and forget."

Then she threw herself upon the bed again and covered her
eyes with her arms. There was no sound but a distant whistle,
which sounded like a despairing shriek, from a steamboat in the
river.

Cornelius Blake came back to Philista after a week's stay in
VOL. xxxix. 48

754 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

Philadelphia, and found Alice in a strangely silent mood. When
he was about to leave her she said :

"On the ist of January I shall open the classes of literature
and elocution in Hypatia College."

"Good heavens ! " he cried, starting, " you haven't "

" I have. Don't let us say any more about it. You know
why I have done it. My aunts seem pleased. Henceforth you
will have to meet me at the door of the Baptist church, if you
still continue in your present way."

He was shocked. He was glad, too ; he had wanted her to do
it, and she had understood his thought, though he had never
spoken it to her.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

" I have given up more than you can appreciate, being a man,"
she said bitterly; " but, O Neil!" she added tenderly, "you
will never forsake me, you will always be mine ? "

" Till death," he said.

She shuddered. He laughed and said, " Somebody is walk-
ing over your grave."

She pushed him farther from her.

" If you were different, if you were not as you are, Neil, I
might not have done it. You would have, helped me "

"Bosh! my dear girl. Keep up, and we'll start in life with
a flourish," he said. " Good-by, good-by ! You'll read some-
thing pleasant in the Star to-morrow."

His thoughts were not as light as his words. He had wanted
her to do it, and she had done it. Religion was not of much
value to him, he thought, as he went home through the quiet
streets, but it ought to be a great deal to a woman. Of course
Alice must laugh in her heart at the Baptists. She could not be-
lieve in their doctrines. But a woman ought to have some religion.
He was glad that it had been done, but he wished she had not
felt obliged to do it. Alice a Catholic and Alice without any
religion Alice playing at being a Baptist, that they might set up
housekeeping in a handsome house in Court Terrace were two
different girls. He did not feel the same towards her. It did not
.make much difference what a man believed, he said, as he lighted
a cigar, since life was to be lived in the pleasantest way ; but a
woman but a woman

And he shook his head ; and as he struck another match a
charm on his watch-chain, with Masonic emblems on it, glittered
in the light. He had made " progress," too.

1884.] PHILISTA. 755

Cornelius Blake had often been pressed to join the Masons,
even by Masons themselves, although this is said to be against
the rules of the order. He had always said " no " apologetically,
and, when pressed for his reasons, had said that he had reasons
of his own ; but he had not. He had refused because he be-
lieved that the Catholic Church forbade its members to enter a
lodge. He had said angrily to himself that Catholics had no
cause why they should not join the Masons ; it was simply a
piece of superstition to handicap themselves so, and absurd to
bind themselves to keep out of an association that could be of so
much use to them.

When Sherwood Archer, cashier of the National Bank of Phi-
lista, who had been delighted with what he called Cornelius'
" Irish smartness," had said that the Young Men's Reform Club
wanted a candidate for the State legislature who could catch
the Irish vote, as an anti-monopolist faction had recently car-
ried off a big slice of it in Philista, Cornelius felt the blood rush
to his face with pleasure. He felt that this great man, who was
grand tyler and everything else that was grand in Masonic
circles, and consequently great socially, meant him.

" I'll pledge the Masons to you and I'll leave you to catch the
Irish ; but you'll have to join us. What ! scrupulous ? Why,
dear boy, you haven't let go your mother's apron-strings yet.
Bless you! you'll lose nothing with the Irish Catholics. They
don't care a cent for religion in politics, but they do care an
awful sight about ' patriotism.' We'll let you work that racket."

The consequence was that Cornelius Blake followed Mr.
Sherwood Archer's advice, borrowed all the money he could, and
in the Philista Star of the day after his interview with Alice
O'Brien the following paragraph occurred:

" The Young Men's Reform Club, of which Mr. Sherwood Archer is the
genial president, have at length announced their 'dark horse ' who will
enter the race for nomination to our legislature. This ' dark horse ' is no
other than the promising young lawyer, Cornelius Blake. While an en-
thusiastic American citizen, Mr. Blake is an Irish patriot of the old school
that wore 'the collar of gold' won from the proud invader. Three cheers
for Con ! He is a friend of our glorious institutions and we say empha-
tically, ' Boom ' him ! "

The Catherwoods and Alice were pleased with this ; but
when the Philista Eagle was sent to them the next day they
were enraged by an editorial article headed, " Was his Front

756 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

Name Patrick?" and a long "interview" with a supposed
cousin of Cornelius, in which the Blake family history was more
or less accurately given, and the nominee of the Young Men's
Reform Club denounced as an " apostate " and an." informer."

Cornelius was inclined to rush into print and to declare that
he had never missed Mass when he could help it. But the astute
Archer held him back. " You've got to expect this. If you
talk about Mass you'll shock the respectable element, and they'll
begin to say you don't love the public-school system."

" But I do ! " cried Cornelius. " I'm a public-school boy
myself."

" All right !" returned Archer, with a wink ; " we'll work that
for all it is worth."

For the six weeks preceding the meeting of the convention at
the capital Philista was not the capital of the State Cornelius
did little but talk and " treat the boys." He was in the hands of
his friends, particularly of his friend Archer. He did not pre-
tend to do any business, and the placard on his office-door, " At
court back in ten minutes," became yellow and dusty from
long use.

The public-school " racket," as Mr. Sherwood Archer ex-
pressed it, " was worked." The Star even became so enthusi-
astic in the matter as to produce a wood-cut of an innocent-look-
ing cherub on his way to a Grecian temple labelled " public-
school," while the pope drawn after the model furnished by
the Pilgrims Progress endeavored to force him back to a hut
labelled " superstition." Cornelius did not like this, but he was
in the hands of his friends. The " Honorable Cornelius Blake "
danced before his eyes like a will-o'-the-wisp. What a magnifi-
cent future he with his cleverness, and Alice with her brilliancy
and tact, would carve out !

It must be remembered that the Star and the Eagle were of
the same party ; for parties in Philista, finding themselves about
to fall to pieces from rottenness, had united on a " reform " plat-
form. They represented opposing factions. The Eagle s candi-
date was a Mr. Seth Weldon, remarkable only for having made
a large fortune in the lumber trade.

The day of the convention came. Alice was so nervous and
anxious that she asked to be excused from her lectures at Hypa-
tia. Cornelius visited har early ; but, early as it was, his face
was flushed and his eyes sparkled unnaturally. Miss Cather-
wood detected a strong smell of whiskey about him. He had
been out all night with the " boys."

1884.] PHILISTA. 757

11 1 have risked everything in the world on this, Alice. If I
do not get the nomination I shall be a beggar. Archer promises
to advance funds for the election expenses. I've spent all I had,
and I'm in debt."

Alice smiled. " You must not fail, and if you do we'll begin
over again. I wish I were a man ! It's glorious, this excite-
ment ! It makes me forget."

Miss Catherwood had noticed a strange change in Alice of
late. She was silent and preoccupied, or talkative and feverishly
gay. Since she had given up the practice of her religion she
had become a new and changed girl. There' seemed to be no
peace, no tranquillity about her. Miss Catherwood, seeing the
wrinkle that came so often on her brow and the sullen look of
her eyes, felt almost afraid of her.

" Don't you think," Miss Catherwood had said to Miss Tamar
Ann, " that there may be more in Romanism than we know of ?
Alice seems to have lost something she can't find with the
Baptists."

" Rubbish ! " answered Miss Tamar Ann. " She's made her-
self, and she ought to be perfectly happy."

Miss Catherwood sighed. " I wish she hadn't done it, after
all. I've been reading the little catechism she used to study,
and I must say I like it more and more. I'm going over to St.
Bridget's next Sunday *o see what it's all like."

Miss Tamar Ann laughed.

The convention opened. The excitement was intense.
Everybody drank with everybody else. There was much but-
tonholing of the obstinate and knowing whispering by .the wire-
pullers. After three ballots no progress had been made. The
two candidates had an equal number of votes. There was a
recess then. The editor of the Eagle was seen to approach Mr.
Sherwood Archer.

After the recess another name which had been courteously
put in nomination and had received only two votes that of Mr.
Sherwood Archer himself suddenly went to the top. Mr. Sher-
wood Archer received the nomination. It was known that both
parties had sold out to him. But he made a speech so full of
intense self-sacrifice on the " altar of t his country " that few
people, outside the convention or the press, believed this when it
was brought up against him at a later day.

Cornelius Blake did not get up to compliment the nominee,
as he was expected to do. He had fallen forward in his chair,

758 PHILISTA. [Sept.,

unconscious. The excitement, the heat of the summer, and im-
moderate drinking had made his blood boil until the fumes stifled
him. An ambulance was sent for by the considerate Mr. Archer,
and he was taken, talking incoherently, to St. Vincent's Hospital.

There he lay for seven weeks. The Misses Catherwood
went often to see him. Alice went twice with them, but he did
not know her. She wanted to take him home, for she shrank
fromr the Sisters of Chanty who nursed him ; but the physicians
would not allow it.

Her fear of the Sisters or of any suggestion of the church she
had abandoned she could not be said to have abandoned the
faith, for she believed still had become morbid ; therefore her
aunts could not induce her to return to the hospital after the
second visit.

Cornelius became conscious at last, and was so near death
that he asked eagerly for a priest when the Sister in charge pro-
posed it to him. And, after a long talk, some explanation and
persuasion, he humbly received the last sacraments, perhaps for
the only time since his First Communion with the proper dispo-
sitions.

The crisis of the fever passed and the physician gave Cor-
nelius hope. The Sisters brought him books, which he read
during the long days of convalescence. But Alice was con-
stantly in his mind. He sent for her ; she would not come, and
Miss Catherwood told him the reason*

She would come back to the church, he said to himself, and
they would begin life as his father and mother had done, with
true hearts and strong hands, and the God they had outraged
would forgive them.

At last he was set free. How sweet was the air, how blue
the sky, how hopeful everything !

Miss Catherwood met him at the door of the house with a
little cry of pleasure.

" Alice has not got home yet from the college it is near her
time, though ; and Tamar Ann is out, too. I'll get my shawl, if
you like, and we'll go and meet her."

Cornelius agreed willingly. Miss Catherwood was anxious to
be present at the meeting of the lovers. She said to herself that
" Rosalia's child needed great care in moments of excitement."

Miss Catherwood and Cornelius, a shadow of his former self,
went out into the quiet street. Sunset had tinged the white
shutters of the uniform houses red, and mothers were calling
lingering children to supper.

1884.] PHILISTA. 759

Very near St. Bridget's Church they met Alice. She looked
very pretty and graceful. She wore her favorite white gown, a
dainty little hat, and a bunch of scarlet sage in her belt. Corne-
lius' heart leaped. t

" Alice, dear Alice ! " he said.

She drew back from him, with a mingling of fear in her face
and tenderness in her deeply-shaded eyes.

" We are in the street, remember," she said. " I have heard
it all. Is it true? I didn't believe it. Have you gone back?
Are we separated for ever ? "

She spoke quickly but quietly, walking at her aunt's side.

" It is true," he answered. " You must come to me out of
that that place. We shall be poor, but at peace."

" And this after all I have done," she answered in a low tone,
clasping her aunt's arm so tightly that Miss Catherwood started ;
" after all I have given up for you. I can't go back, Neil ; no-
body can go out of hell out of hell ! "

Miss Catherwood felt suddenly a heavy weight against her.

" Quick, Cornelius ! " she cried.

Alice, her right hand pressed over her heart, had become
white and rigid. They carried her into the vestibule of St.
Bridget's. It was an August day the Feast of the Assumption.
Borne on the air came the solemn words,

" Praestet fides supplementing
Sensuum defectui."

Her face was calm, except for the deep wrinkles on her brow.
She shivered when Cornelius touched her.

" She wants something, Neil she wants something. It's the
same look I saw in Rosalia's eyes."

" A priest ! " cried Cornelius.

The eyes lost their dumb, despairing look or seemed to lose
it for an instant, and then closed.

" She is dead ! " cried Miss Catherwood, and then, turning on
Cornelius Blake with a fierceness he never forgot; she cried:
" My God ! how unworthy are you of what He gives you. It
is you and such as you that help to blind us to the Light! "

760 UNITARIAN BELIEF. [Sept.,

UNITARIAN BELJEF.

AT last we have a Manual of Unitarian Belief, and it has
been prepared by one of the ablest and most accomplished Uni-
tarian clergymen of Boston ; we mean the Rev. James Free-
man Clarke, the popular pastor of the Church of the Disciples in
that city. If anybody is capable of producing a representative
manual of Unitarian belief, we believe every one acquainted with
Mr. Clarke's position in the denomination of which he is a dis-
tinguished ornament will be ready to say that he is the very
man. In the various stages of development which characterize
the leading " liberal thinkers " of the Unitarian denomination
Mr. Clarke occupies a conservative position, and is, perhaps, the
least removed from orthodoxy in doctrine and sentiment. In-
deed, some of his writings are quite Catholic in their tone, and
he has often been known to speak and write complimentary
things of the Catholic Church. Experience abundantly proves
that there are men of conservative temperament and devout as-
pirations who will occupy an illogical position all their lives and
refuse to develop their principles to their legitimate conse-
quences, though they may actually, in some things, hold the ex-
tremest views of radicalism. Though belonging to the same de-
nomination, and in some respects holding similar radical views,
we can hardly conceive Mr. Clarke's being in perfect sympathy
with such a man as the Rev. Minot J. Savage, for instance, pas-
tor of the Church of the Unity, who, though perhaps equally
honest, is thoroughly pagan, and even infidel, in sentiment, deny-
ing all the characteristic doctrines of Christianity, even ridicul-
ing some of its most sacred verities, and advocating generally
the most minimizing sentiments of rationalistic naturalism. It
has, no doubt, been recognized as a very hazardous experiment,
by all leading Unitarians, to essay anything in the shape of a de-
nominational symbol; but we believe the feeling has become
quite prevalent among the denomination lately that they ought
to have some settled and fixed principles in which all could
agree, and which might pass current as an exponent of the de-
nominational belief. We have noticed with interest several re-
cent public though rather informal attempts at exposition of
Unitarian doctrine, among which that of the Rev. Brooke Her-
ford, pastor of the Arlington Street Church, Boston a very

1884.] UNITARIAN- BELIEF. 761

popular clergyman, who came from Chicago something more
than a year ago, and is now spoken of as a rival, with other lead-
ing clergymen, in the race for precedence in the denomination
in Boston is a somewhat noteworthy instance. But Mr. Clarke's
Manual is, so far as we know, the first effort to produce a for-
mal, systematized statement of Unitarian doctrinal belief with
the express design of its being used as a text-book ; and as such,
if not for any distinguished intrinsic merit, it deserves at least a
passing notice. Whether it may be looked upon as a truly rep-
resentative manual of the thousand-sided system called Unita-
rianism may possibly admit of a doubt ; but that it may be
taken as a perfect picture of that which constitutes the leading
characteristic feature of Unitarianism we mean the utterly con-
fused and illogical state of mind on the great and all-important
questions of religion which prevails even among the most accom-
plished leaders of Unitarian thought there can be no question.
We hope we shall be pardoned if we express frankly our opin-
ion that this brochure should properly be classed as a religio-
literary hodge-podge, such as none but a " cultured," literary,
conservative-liberal Unitarian could produce.

What strikes one at the very outset, in reading this singular
production, is that it is called a Manual of Unitarian belief, yet
the very first declaration of the author in the preface is that
" Unitarians have no creed." Now, how in the world there can
be a manual of belief without a creed it is impossible for us to
conceive. What is a creed but something to be believed ? The
very word itself indicates that, creed being from the Latin credo,
I believe. Perhaps the learned theologian desires to convey the
impression that their credo is Non credo ; that a real creed is impos-
sible, because it is impossible to ascertain definitely what we ought
to believe. This, in fact, is what it amounts to. The Manual is
purely a negative discussion. Unitarianism is a revulsion from
Calvinistic Puritanism. It is simply an additional step in the
downward progress of Protestantism, which, having severed itself
from the centre of unity in the Catholic Church and the authorita-
tive traditions and infallible teachings upon which alone Chris-
tianity is founded, has for three hundred years been doing its
work of disintegration and destruction. Ignoring the old church ;
taking for granted without examination that the old faith is false,
corrupt, and superstitious, and that it is entirely unworthy the
attention of reasonable beings ; knowing no other Christianity
than that of their Calvinistic Puritan forefathers, these intelli-
gent and cultivated free-thinkers claim the same privilege in

762 UNITARIAN BELIEF. [Sept.,

separating- from the Puritan Congregational body that their fore-
fathers did in separating- from the body which separated from
the original church. Hence their work is principally a negative
one a protest against a protest ; and destruction, not construc-
tion, is their principal aim and effort. As might .be expected,
Mr. Clarke's Manual is, as we have said, purely a negative dis-
cussion. It is occupied principally with telling what Unitarians
do not believe. It is thoroughly Protestant. So far as there is
anything positive about it, it is a positive protest against some-
thing positive to which it is opposed a protest against Protes-
tant orthodoxy ; the rest is vague, personal discussion about
important principles. " Every proposition contained in it,"
writes the author, " is liable to discussion, to correction and re-
vision. No one is bound by it, and it does not attempt to limit
thought, but rather to stimulate and rouse inquiry." Nothing
definite, it will be observed, nothing settled, fixed, and reliable.
Yet, strange to say, this Manual was prepared principally for the
benefit of Sunday-schools. It discusses twenty-one different
topics under the head of " lessons," and each lesson is followed
by a series of questions which have been prepared by Mrs. Kate
Gannett Wells, a literary lady of Boston ; and the book was
published by the Unitarian Sunday-school Society. " It is in-
tended," says the author, " to be made the theme of discussion
and to help the teacher in the Sunday-school." How? Not by
seeking to store the youthful mind with the positive truths of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or even of natural religion ; but " to
furnish for the teacher and his pupils topics for examination."
Good heavens ! we cannot help exclaiming. What is the
learned theologian talking about ? Topics for examination by
the children of the Sunday-school ? Why, we thought the or-
der, both of nature and of Providence, was that children should
take the law from their parents' and teachers' mouths ; that their
young minds should be stored with positive religious truth ; that
they should be taught what they ought to believe and what to
do in order that they may attain the great end of their existence.
We have often wondered what our Unitarian friends did or could
teach their children in their Sunday-schools. As they have no
creed, no catechism, no formal exposition or fixed symbol of be-
lief, we could not conceive how their children could be educated
with any kind of definite notions on the subject of faith and
morals. And we must confess that, so far as our experience has
gone, the practical result has been what might reasonably have
been expected. We would not, of course, be understood as even

1884.] UNITARIAN BELIEF. 763

intimating that our Unitarian friends are below the common
level in point of morality and general culture. On the contrary,
we take pleasure in bearing witness to the high character of the
denomination generally, in point of intelligence and respecta-
bility, especially in Boston and New England ; and they are by
no means behind their orthodox contemporaries in matters of
practical benevolence. But we believe, so far as our acquaint-
ance has extended and we have known a good many Unitarians
in our day that we have never yet met with one, however in-
telligent and cultivated, who was not all at sea on the great ques-
tions of Christian doctrine. And it is a serious question, well
worthy their careful attention, how far they are indebted to the
current Christian traditions and the all-pervading Christian at-
mosphere in which they live for what of true Christian senti-
ment and practical beneficence may still exist among them. Na-
tural religion, no doubt, is very good when supplemented and
reaffirmed by the supernatural revelation of divine truth ; but
natural religion alone, though advocated by soi-disant Christians,
and with all the advantages of the surrounding light of superna-
turalism, is but a refined paganism at best, groping in darkness
and doubt; reasoning, speculating, examining, discussing, "ever
learning, but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth,"
and tending continually to social degeneracy, corruption of
morals, and final atheism and despair.

We have tried to imagine how a teacher in the Sunday-
school, with Mr. Clark's "lessons " in his hands and acting upon
the " examination " theory, would proceed. Let us see. Here
is a class, say, of seven to ten year-olds. We suppose the teacher
would address his youthful " responsibilities " something after
this fashion : " Now, my dear children, the first and most impor-
tant topic suggested for our examination this morning is the
doctrine about that Great Being they call God. Now, you must
understand that there is really nothing settled and fixed about
God. On the contrary, there are a great many conflicting opin-
ions about his existence, his nature, and his attributes. Indeed,
the latest and most popular opinion is that of the scientific
agnostics who say that we do not and cannot understand or
know anything about God, because he is beyond the cognizance
of our senses, and therefore unknowable. It is also contended
that matter ' contains the promise and potency of all terrestrial
life.' Of course, my dear children, I do not wish to forestall
your youthful judgments on this most important of all questions,
therefore we will leave it open for further examination and dis-

764 UNITARIAN BELIEF. [Sept.,

cussion. True, some Unitarians, Mr. Clarke among the rest,
profess to believe in ' one God, who is infinitely wise, holy, and
good/ with a good deal more of apparently positive teaching ;
but I have really no right to impose this belief on you. In fact,
my dear children, the great business of life, according to Uni-
tarian belief, is not to believe anything as certain, but only to
examine, and discuss, and speculate, and seek after truth. When
you shall have come to years of discretion you will be better able
to appreciate the arguments on these all-important, vital ques-
tions. But I warn you beforehand not to indulge any fond
dreams of ever being able to solve the problems of human life
and human destiny, or to have them solved for you. Nobody
hate any right to think for you, and you have no right to think
for anybody else. The constitution of the human mind is such
that men will differ on the most important subjects. Even the
union of Unitarians in 'societies ' is not a union of. 'formularies
or creeds,' as Mr. Clarke very properly says, but ' a union of
sympathy and co-operation.' In progress of time, my dear chil-
dren, you will hear a great deal about the Bible, the Trinity,
Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Atonement, future life, heaven
and hell. Now, what I have to say about all these questions,
which certainly are all of paramount importance, is, don't believe
as the orthodox do. You may settle that definitely in your
minds. Orthodoxy is heterodoxy, and no mistake ; but further
than that I can only say, examine for yourselves and live accord-
ing to the light you have."

Now, we insist that this fairly represents the spirit and gen-
eral tenor of this remarkable Manual. It is a perfect jumble of
inconsistencies, and is a striking illustration of the thoroughly
loose way of writing on religious subjects that prevails among a
class really distinguished for what, in modern parlance, is called
culture. It is not our purpose now to notice and expose all the
inconsistencies and false teachings of this new Unitarian cate-
chism, if we may so designate it ; to do that would require a vol-
ume rather than the narrow limits of a magazine article. But
some of the most salient points we think it quite worth while to
notice briefly.

In Lesson i., on " Religion Necessary to Man," the author dis-
tinguishes between natural and revealed religion. After ex-
plaining what he understands by natural religion he goes on to
say : " Revealed religion consists of the revelation of divine
truth made to the souls of inspired men, thus producing law-
givers, prophets, and spiritual leaders of the human race." That

1884.] UNITARIAN BELIEF. 765

sounds orthodox, certainly ; but be not hasty in concluding that
the reverend theologian really believes in the supernatural char-
acter of Christianity. In the very next chapter, Lesson ii., on
" Christianity," he is very careful to dispel any illusion of that
kind you may have been laboring under. . " When we are able,"
he writes, " to compare the character and teaching of Jesus with
those of other teachers and masters as Moses, Confucius, Bud-
dha, Mohammed, Socrates if we find in him a greater depth and
fulness of spiritual life than in any other, we shall believe intel-
lectually in him as the best of teachers and masters." On the
same principle, of course, if we find in any of the other " teachers
and masters " Confucius or Buddha, for instance " a greater
depth and fulness of spiritual life " as we understand it, we shall
" believe intellectually in him as the best of teachers and mas-
ters." It is purely a matter of intellectual examination and ex-
perience. One is as truly inspired as the others. As to which is
most inspired, and therefore the most worthy of intellectual be-
lief, each one must judge for himself and according to the light
he has. If that is not making every man his own pope and his
own divine teacher, we know not what is. What is the use of
having inspired writings, or writings claiming to be inspired,
unless you have some rule for determining what are inspired and
what are not? One thing is certain : the author nowhere gives,
or attempts to give, any such rule. In Lesson iv., on " The
Bible," he says : " Unitarians regard the Bible as a sacred book
because full of the utterances of inspired souls." " It is full of
thoughts which come to men by inspiration." " But, though
considering it an inspired book, Unitarians also regard the Bible
as coming not only from God but also from man." " It is hu-
man, therefore fallible. Written by many men and at different
times, it is of very v'arious application and value." " Unitarians
do not believe in the infallibility of the Bible." But is not divine
inspiration infallible? Certainly, if only a part of the Bible be
inspired, that part must be infallible. The thing is to ascertain
the part that is inspired. " Inspiration," continues our non-in-
spired author, " leads to the sight of truth and reality, but not
necessarily to a perfectly accurate description of what is seen."
Well, then, the question returns with accumulated force, How
are you going to ascertain what is " seen " ? If your inspired
documents do not explain themselves, if they are not a perfectly
accurate description of revealed truth, and if a knowledge of
that truth is essential to our highest well-being in this world
and the world to come, does it not seem absolutely necessary

766 UNITARIAN BELIEF. [Sept.,

that we should have some safe and reliable guide, some authori-
tative interpreter, some inerrable tribunal of final decision as
to what the divine revelation really is ? However, there is one
thing- that does seem quite certain to our profound theologian,
and that is that the doctrine of the Trinity- is not one of the in-
spired truths. Lesson vi. is devoted to this subject, and he very
properly remarks : " The orthodox doctrines constitute a logical
system of which the doctrine of the Trinity is the keystone ;
when that is removed the arch falls." So he proceeds to remove
the keystone by quoting the principal passages of the Bible
which seem to favor their views, but carefully omitting any re-
ference to the most salient passages and the most convincing
arguments in favor of it. But his principal argument is that
which is always in the mouth of every Unitarian when convers-
ing on this subject we mean the mysteriousness of the doctrine.
"Unitarians," he says, " reject the church doctrine of the Trinity
because it is unintelligible. Although many attempts have been
made to explain it, none have proved satisfactory. It therefore
remains, even by the admission of its advocates, a mystery ; and a
mystery is something unintelligible and therefore cannot be an
object of belief." It would scarcely be believed that so intelli-
gent a man as Mr. Clarke would hazard his reputation, we will
not say as a theologian, but even as a " thinker " or a man of
common sense, by giving utterance to such an absurd declaration
as that. The Trinity a mystery? Yes. A mystery unintelligi-
ble ? Yes, so far as it has not been revealed. " Therefore can-
not be an object of belief ? " Not so. Mr. Clarke himself knows
very well that we believe a thousand things which we cannot un-
derstand. Omnia exeunt mysteria all things go out in mystery
and if we undertake to restrict belief to that only which involves
no mystery, our creed will be contracted* indeed. Is not the
Unitarian belief in God a mystery ? Do they or can they un-
derstand all about the " one " God in whom they profess to be-
lieve ? Is there not an infinite depth of mystery in his being and
his attributes ? And do not the atheists and agnostics make the
same objection, and with equal force, against the idea of a per-
sonal God that he is unknowable, incomprehensible? Mr.
Clarke believes in divine inspiration ; but can he tell how the
Spirit of God acts upon the soul of man so as to " lead to the
sight of truth and reality, but not necessarily to a perfectly ac-
curate description of what is seen " ? With all due deference to
the gentleman's superior penetration, we do not hesitate to af-
firm that, in our view, his definition of inspiration involves a

1884.] UNITARIAN BELIEF. 767

much more incomprehensible mystery than the church doctrine
of the Trinity.

Cognate with the doctrine of the Trinity is that of the char-
acter and work of Christ. Lessons vii., viii., and ix. are devoted
to " Jesus Christ/' " Faith and Belief in regard to Christ," and
" The Work of Christ." What is the upshot of the whole mat-
ter ? Christ is not God ; that is settled. " He is a created being,
finite, not infinite." Beyond that all is vague and uncertain, a
mere matter of opinion. The author states briefly some of those
opinions : " Some say he was an exceptional man," " a leader of
the race, and even endowed with supernatural gifts by which he
was distinguished from other men." That is very remarkable,
certainly, that any Unitarians should believe in the supernatu-
ral character of Christ when they do not believe in the super-
natural character of his religion. Some believe that he was " a
representative man, such a man as all are intended to be. In this
sense he was an ideal man." That is, we suppose, as all men are
" intended " to be like Christ, their representative, the ideal man,
and experience proves that they are not all like him actually,
they must be ideally like him ; that is, ideally perfect while actu-
ally extremely imperfect. That, we presume, is an " ideal "
theology. Then there is a class who, " though they do not
believe it right to call Jesus God, yet see no objection to the
epithet ' divine.' ' This class, we believe, are called " divine "
Unitarians. They certainly are " divinely " liberal if not divine-
ly consistent. Again, " Unitarians generally believe that Jesus
wrought wonderful works of healing, but that it is possible that
some of the accounts in the gospels have been imperfectly re-
ported." That is, as we understand it, the miracles of the Bible
are hard for the " natural " man to swallow. True, the accounts
are very plain and simple, and wear the appearance of verisimili-
tude. But if they are strictly true it would seem that Christ
must have been something more than man. But we have de-
cided that he was not and is not more than man ; therefore it is
most probable that the accounts of these extraordinary miracles
were " imperfectly reported"!- An easy way indeed of dispos-
ing of a hard argument, if one can only convince one's self that
it is rational and conclusive. Again, " Unitarians believe it the
chief work of Christ to save men from sin and evil here. They
do not believe it his chief work to save them from the conse-
quences of sin hereafter. He comes to take them out of a pre-
sent hell and lead them into a present heaven." Now, we have
seen a good deal of the world, but we have never yet discovered

768 UNITARIAN BELIEF, [Sept.,

a heaven upon earth ; nor have we found that men, very gene-
rally, have been delivered from the hells which so much abound
even in the best-regulated communities. In fact, we thought
that if there was any one thing clearly and unmistakably taught
by Christ it was that we should not seek our happiness in this
world, but look for it in the world to come. " My kingdom is
not of this world." " Labor not for the meat that perisheth, but
for that which endureth unto life everlasting." " In the world
ye shall have tribulation." " Lay not up for yourselves trea-
sures upon earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."
" These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the
righteous into life eternal." What could be plainer or more em-
phatic than such language as that? You may say you do not
believe it ; that Christ was mistaken in his views and teaching
on this subject ; but we respectfully submit that you cannot
consistently deny this plain, positive teaching and yet claim to
be true disciples of Christ. We have often felt, and even in-
sisted when occasion offered, that our Unitarian friends really
ought not to call themselves Christians. Mr. Clarke evidently
realized the difficulties of his position in drawing up his Manual.
They must have some test of discipleship, some distinctive
principle which shall indicate their title to the venerable name
of Christian. We beg our readers not to laugh at the simplicity,
shall we call it ? or the ingenuity of our " liberal " theologian in
constructing his platform of discipleship. " All those," he says,
" born in Christian lands are Christians, just as all born and edu-
cated in England are Englishmen and all in America are Ameri-
cans. Without our own choice we receive an influence from the
circumstances by which we are surrounded in childhood and
youth. We are unconsciously educated by Christian institutions
into certain habits of Christian thought and feeling." We call
that " Broad Church " with a vengeance. But now, if nation-
ality is to determine the important question of Christianity, we
are met in limine with the important question, What nations
are to be deemed Christian ? How or by what rule shall we
determine what constitutes a Christian nation ? If it be a mat-
ter of majorities, who shall be admitted to vote? Shall it be
merely nominal Christians or those only who belong to the
church ? If you take only church-members, as the churches
themselves do not all recognize each other as true churches what
rule shall we adopt to determine which is true and which false?
This brings us to the very question we are trying to solve. It
looks to us like reasoning in a circle. The Christian nation de-

1884.] UNITARIAN BELIEF* 769

termines who are Christians, and Christians determine what na-
tion is Christian. The nation proves the Christians, and Chris-
tians prove the nation. The test of discipleship proposed by
the great Head of the church was much narrower and more ex-
plicit and logical than that : " Go ye into all the world, and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." " He that be-
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved ; he that believeth not
shall be condemned " or, as the Protestant version has it, "he
that believeth not shall be damned." That may not be esteemed
popular language in these days of progress, of " sweetness and
light," but it certainly cannot be charged with ambiguity. We
may think to parry the force of it by ruling it out of the inspired
portion of the Scriptures by the " superior authority " of reason
and private judgment. But, even so, admitting that Christ was
only a" man and that the Bible is all uninspired, he was, at least,
the author of Christianity, and we insist that no man has any
right to alter the test of discipleship which he has given. No
man has any right to call, himself a Christian who does not accept
the conditions which Christ himself prescribes ; much less has
he a right to set himself up fora teacher of Christianity and an
authorized minister of Christ's church.

But, finally, not to mention other topics of equal force and
consistency, our author seems to feel the necessity of some
apology for, or explanation of, the fact of such a great variety of
opinions among his co-religionists. This he attempts in the fol-
lowing remarkable passage : " It is objected to Unitarians that
they differ from each other so widely in opinion as to have
no common creed. Roman Catholics make the same objection,
against the whole Protestant Church. But God has so made
the human mind that as soon as men really begin to think they
begin to differ." That is, it is the order of Providence that men
should differ ; you cannot expect them to agree in opinion. " If,
therefore, there is no difference of opinion in a church, it shows
there is no individual thought in that church. Men think alike
only by not thinking at all. This is assent, not conviction. Such
belief is, in reality, no belief, and has no value." But are not
men to assent to anything that they have not thought out for
themselves and proved to their own satisfaction ? Does autho-
rity go for nothing in this world ? Are we never to rely upon
the testimony of others, however unimpeachable the witnesses?
Does the reverend author himself, take nothing on authority,
either in the natural or the spiritual order of the universe ? And
VOL. xxxix. 49

UNITARIAN BELIEF. [Sept.,

how about the uneducated masses, the great majority of mankind,
who have neither the learning, the leisure, nor the ability to make
profound investigations is their assent to the well-settled truths
of science, of philosophy, and of common life unreasonable and
absurd ? Is their belief in these truths " no belief and of no
value " ? But if it be right and proper, and according to the
order of nature and of Providence, that men should assent to the
truths of common life in the natural order upon the authority of
others, why should it be considered absurd and of no value for
them to assent to the truths of the supernatural life in the spirit-
ual order upon the authority of others ? But listen, now. We
must not misrepresent our astute theologian. There is, after all,
a possibility of agreement in opinion. " The only agreement in
opinion which is worth anything is that harmony which comes
after full and free inquiry about subjects on which men differ.
Only thus can questions be really settled. Without such free
discussion differences are only covered up." Now, will some
kind gentleman who can see farther into a millstone than we can
please tell us how it is possible " for men to think alike only by
not thinking at all," and yet that "questions about which' men
differ can only be really settled and harmony produced by full
and free discussion"? And if harmony of opinion is to be the
result of full and free discussion, when are we to look for the
happy consummation? American Unitarianism is a hundred
years old ; yet, by their own confession, there is really no agree-
ment among them, no common belief, and, in fact, no better pros-
pect of their ever being likely to come to an understanding as to
the great verities of the Christian code than they were at the
beginning. Not only is there no creed and no substantial agree-
ment among them, but each man claims the right of being inde-
pendent of all the rest and of differing from anybody and every-
body. At the very time that they profess to be aiming at agree-
ment in some future time they insist upon the privilege and
duty, here and now, of free thought upon all questions whatso-
ever. Our author finishes his brief but significant apology by
saying boastfully that " the variety of opinions among Unita-
rians-is, therefore, an evidence of free thought " as if free thought
were the great boon of Heaven to man ! If there was agreement
among them, that would prove that there was no free thought,
for " men think alike only by not thinking at all." If there is
no free thought there is no belief, at least none of any value.
Free thought produces differences of opinion, yet, strange to
-say, it is only by free thought that agreement in opinion can

1884.] UNITARIAN BELIEF. 771

be brought about ! Of all the cheerfully hopeful beings in the
world our Unitarian friends take the lead. To them there is
always a " good time coming," though it never comes, and they
are always ready to " wait a little longer." It seems to make no
difference to them that they have, for a hundred years, been
laboring in the same barren field, always with the same unsatis-
factory result ; they have the same buoyant hope, the same ex-
ultant anticipation of a favorable harvest at some remote and in-
definite period in the future. They have actually put it out of
their power to agree, yet they never despair; the very instru-
ment of their divisions is, by some mysterious metamorphosis,
to be transformed into an organ of agreement, and they shall
then see eye to eye, and the whole world shall be united in the
glorious bonds of a common faith and a universal brotherhood.
Alas ! that men should be so blind shall we say wilfully blind ?
to the plainest principles of reason and common sense. What
our Unitarian friends need to learn, and what they could easily
learn from the teachings of holy church but for their persis-
tent adherence to the prejudices of early education, is that we
must have ruled cases in the spiritual as well as in the natural
order. There must be a fundamental law for the government of
the whole body of believers. Absolute agreement in all mat-
ters of opinion is not to be expected is not required ; but
in matters of faith, that which constitutes the fundamental
law of the Christian organization, there must be perfect
agreement, cordial assent, the most absolute submission. This
is not less necessary in the church than in the state. And for
this purpose there must be a central authority, an organ of
unity, a final court of appeal to decide disputes and settle the
principles of fundamental law whenever called in question. God
hath made all things in unity, and all things in the universe
tend to unity. As he is One not by a simple unicity, but by
a mysterious, divine unity of the three Persons of the Godhead,
so has he constituted his church, which is the representative
and embodiment of the spiritual order on earth, in unity. " There
is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of
your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."
What a wonderful description of the spiritual brotherhood of
man ! What a magnificent idea of the unity with which God
designs to unite the race in one grand spiritual fraternity ! This
idea of the apostle is but the carrying out and embodiment of
the spirit of that last solemn, touching, and mysterious prayer

772 UNITARIAN BELIEF. [Sept.,

of our Lord : " That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in
me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." Why?
" That the world may know that thou hast sent me." The
unity of the Church contains the " promise and potency " of all-
spiritual life for the healing of the nations. It is the divinely-
constituted organ for the propagation of the faith and the con-
version of the world. The world will never learn that God has
sent his Son Jesus Christ to be its Saviour until it is convinced
by the unity of his true disciples. But how can Christians be
one when divided into a thousand differing and contending sects,
each having its own " shibboleth," and every man claiming the
right of free thought and independent action? Of all the flimsy
and absurd inventions of Protestantism, that of a spiritual union
without unity of faith and communion is the flimsiest and the
most absurd. The language of inspiration is plain, simple, and
direct. There is one body as well as one Spirit, one faith, one
baptism ; and the whole of the New Testament teems with ex-
hortations to unity and warnings against divisions. " Mark them
that cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which
you have learned, and avoid them." " Now, I beseech you,
brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all
speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you,
but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and
in the same judgment." You cannot mistake that language.
But, unfortunately, schism has occurred and is rampant through-
out the world. It exists in high places. It pervades society. It
controls governments. It rules among the nations. It has
dominated literature and art. It has practically dethroned God
and enthroned itself in his place in the hearts of the people.
For three hundred years it has held nexj to omnipotent sway,
and now it is not to be so easily discredited, cast out, and aban-
doned. On the contrary, it must be justified and defended and
apologized for. Rather than entertain for a moment the possi-
bility of their being in error, and returning to their allegiance
to the old "enemy " whom from infancy they have been taught
to hate and despise, these proud schismatics will deliberately
shut their eyes to the truth ; they will falsify history ; they will
parry the force of the plain language of Scripture by specious
glosses and fanciful theories of man's invention ; and the)'- will
throw all things relating to man's duty and destiny into doubt
and confusion by endless speculations, vain subterfuges, and
.plausible but assumed deductions of " philosophy falsely so-
called." " Oh ! would that there were such an heart in them " ;

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 773

that their eyes might be opened to see the wondrous beauty of
God's law as it is embodied in his own holy church, where alone
sure faith, solid unity, perfect fraternity, and true and lasting peace
and perennial joy can be found.

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER V.
A SOLITARY AND HIS SOLITUDE.

WHEN Ruth and Florian had landed and the boat was safely
anchored the hunter led them into a double-roomed cabin stand-
ing on the summit of a huge boulder. It was such a hut as lone-
ly men of his class are accustomed to build stout and service-
able, with a table and stools, a single window, a great fireplace
heaped with logs for the nights are chilly so near the water
fire-arms and fishing-tackle in picturesque profusion, a print or
two, and a few well-thumbed books. There was nothing notice-
able in the hut save its cleanliness, neatness, and wholesome
smell, as if no more offensive intruders than sun, air, and appe-
tizing cookery ever found entrance.

" Make yourself quite at home," said the hermit, placing the
single candle where it would afford the most light. " Your paw
is not here, miss, but he'll be here right off as soon as I kin git to
him. You, youngster, kin see to miss while I git her paw. He's
not a thousand miles off, and if you want anything to eat thar's
the door to the pantry."

This was quietly, though roughly and perhaps seriously, said,
while Florian kept his keen eyes fastened on the speaker, study-
ing every look and movement. For to him this hunter had
always been a mystery because of his retired manner of life and
his taciturn disposition, and yet all his fanciful theories concern-
ing him found no support in the closest observation he could
make of the man. When he went out Florian began a minute
examination of the whole place.

" Why are you so inquisitive ? " said Ruth. " Have you another
theory concerning this poor fellow ? "

" No ; but I wish to find one. He is an odd character and
ought to have a history, a romance something that will give
the key to his present position. Whence came he ? "

774 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" * From Ottawa's sounding 1 shore/ '

" So he says, but / think otherwise. Was he born there ?
Was he brought there from some other part of the world ? Was
he crossed in love? Did he commit a never-to-be-forgotten
crime ? Had he friends ? "

" * Had he a father, had he a mother? ' " said Ruth, repeating
all of the delightful poem, while Florian examined and talked, and
finally sat down disappointed.

" Not even a pencil-mark in these old works," he exclaimed,
" nor a bit of writing anywhere, nor any indication of better
days. Books on fishing and hunting ; a cabin like all of its class ;
a man of fishy smell and look and speech poor material to col-
lect a romance from. "

" Now, as to the look," said Ruth, " I fancy there is some-
thing poetic about him. His eyes are clear, blue as the sky,
well shaped, large but for bushy eyebrows. He has a fine head
and beautiful hair, but that cap spoils or hides all."

" You are thinking of his magnificent surroundings," said
Florian. " He looks well, because the image of him always car-
ries this setting of nature. But matter, obese, inert, filthy, rules
this temple. There is no mind here."

" That is, you have never seen any ; and I notice you are
positive about the non-existence of what doesn't fall under your
senses. I would like to see you disappointed in this case."

" That's my prayer also ; and as to my positiveness, I got it
from my mother, seemingly. It's common to females.

"' When she will, she will, you may depend on it ;

When she won't, she won't ; and there's an end on't.'

You see the argument, and its point is she."

" Father," murmured Ruth, slipping into her father's out-
stretched arms as that gentleman entered, followed by Scott.
The hermit smiled approvingly on the scene till, looking at
Florian, he seemed suddenly and strangely overcome, and shuf-
fled awkwardly into a corner with his hands trembling and his
teeth chattering.

" I have it," thought Florian : " he had a daughter, and this
scene recalls many a painful one."

" Florian, a thousand thanks," said the squire, shaking hands
violently with the youth, his face purple with emotion, restrained
because the hermit had forbidden him to roar. " She is yours,
and you will guard her when I'm far away on the billows."

" On your pillow ? " cried Florian. " Why"

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 775

" On the billows, sir ! " stormed the squire. " No tricks, sir ; I
can't stand 'em now. I mean, when I am sailing for sunny France
take care of her."

" I'll go with you," whimpered Ruth, beginning to cry and
patting his white head.

" Ay, that's right," said the squire. " Pat away. You may
not know, my dear, how costly a piece of furniture that head of
mine is now with two governments after it. You'll come with
me ? Not at all. You'll stay here with Florian and go to France
on your bridal tower. I'll have a place for you. I'll be the
thorn of those two rascally governments. I'll be lonely, I know,
but I'll make up for it by fight. I will, sir by thunder and the
constitution I will! There, there, little girl, just sit down and
get sensible again. You don't happen to have a pipe, Florian ?
This man here don't smoke not enough fire in him for that."

" Here you are," said Florian, producing the article. " Not
smoke ! " he thought. " Why, I did not notice the absence of to-
bacco. Two points acquired."

Ruth made strenuous efforts to recover from a fit of sobbing,
and her father lighted his pipe. Under its soothing influence he
grew melancholy.

" When I'm in France, Florian"

" But you're not there yet, sir, and we don't intend you shall
go."

"Nonsense! You don't know the malice, the devilish what-
d'ye-call-it, of those two governments. ' If we fail,' says Mac-
kenzie to me, ' we're damned ' politically I mean. What's the
use? I must go. I'm cut out for an exile ; I feel it all over me,
along with rheumatism, since I began jigging around these con-
founded islands. Hear that sigh ? It attacks me regularly night
and day."

The gigantic effort of the old gentleman produced a secret
laugh among the company, which outwardly was all sympathy.
Even Ruth smiled.

" That's right, dear," said he. " I know what you're thinking
of that it will take many sighs to make the old man give up
the last one. You're right, by thunder! They may search and
persecute, but I won't lose a pound of flesh for 'em. No, sir !"

"What do you think, Scott? " said Florian to the hermit.
" Isn't there some way to get the squire out of this muddle? "

" Muddle, sir ! " thundered the squire in a crescendo which
sank to a whisper at the warning gesture of Scott. " You mean
revolution."

776 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" I beg your pardon," said Florian "revolution."
" There is but one way that I kin see," replied Scott modestly.
" You ! What do you know about it ? " said the squire rough-
ly, " Why, Florian, what can any one think of a man who says
that it takes as much power in Almighty God to knock a thing
into nothing as it did to take it out of nothing ? He says that and
swears by it. Don't you, sir don't you?"

" Third point," muttered Florian : " he studies philosophy."
" What I was thinkin'," said Scott, heedless of the squire,
" this young man might go down to the governor of the State
and jist settle the matter in a quiet way without much talk "
" Certainly ! That ends it a boy settles a revolution."
" No, no, papa," said Ruth. " He means that Florian shall
bear your submission "

" I'll never submit ! Well, go on."

" To the governor, and may be he will accept it, and you will
not have to go so far away and leave me alone."

" That's the hardest part of it leaving you, dear ; but what
can I do what can I do ? "

Scott beckoned Florian, and the two went outside.
" You see," said the hermit, " as far as I kin learn, this country
an't so much against the squire as he thinks. It's my opinion
that if some friend went to the governor and said, c Here, thar
an't no earthly use in drivin' an old man out of his senses
because the British lion is roarin' ; s'posin* he gives hisself up,
wouldn't the government kind-a parole him and let him stay at
home while he keeps quiet ? ' that would settle the hull business,
I think: 9

" I think the same," said Florian. " We'll persuade him to
give me the authority to treat for him, and you will be kind
enough to keep him for a few days until I return."

" In course, in course ; he's welcome as long as he stays."
" You have a nice place about here," said Florian, desiring to
draw him out. " A little lonely, perhaps."

" Somewhat, but I like it," answered the man simply. " I
couldn't stay in your towns now, and there isn't another place in
the world I'd exchange with jist at this moment."'
" You have not had much experience in towns ? "
" A good deal," said Scott reflectively ; " but not for a long
spell. I crammed a pile of fact into a short spell and got tired
mighty soon. It's always the way, even here, I notice, though
you don't get tired so quick nor you don't stay that way long.
When I get all out of sorts, be it night or day, I jist walk out on

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 777

this island, and that's enough for me : I'm quieted right off, and
me and everything in the world*seems jist suited one to t'other.
I look at them stars a-shinin' an' a-twinklin' so easy and careless
up thar, and then I see them looking jist the same in the wafer,
with a little tremble all through the purty things, and I say : ' If
you, who are so beautiful and so big, can be so cool, why mayn't
I be cooler, when I'm bigger and twice as beautiful?' Oh! I
wouldn't give up this place for all the rest of the world ; and I
know something about the rest, too."

Florian had waked the hermit into a quiet enthusiasm, which
showed itself only in the quantity of his words ; for as to extrava-
gance of gesture or look, there was none. He thought it a fair
opportunity to put a few leading questions. " I do not wonder
at such feelings," he said ; " for I have often thought that such a
life would be a second paradise."

" It is, it is," interrupted Scott earnestly. " I declare to you
I never knew what happiness really was till I lit on this place.
I know it now, and I know in part what it must be in heaven."

" But its disadvantages are so many," continued the youth,
" and loneliness is the first. Then when sickness overtakes you,
or feebleness, the comforts of companionship, and particularly of
religion, are wanting."

" Well, about religion I can't say much," taking the youth by
the arm and beginning to walk up and down, " for I don't s'pose
I've got a good pile of it. I don't care for the comforts of com-
panionship. I have never suffered half as much from lonesome
feelin's here as in the world. There's nothin' stands between me
and God but this, boy " and he beat his body. " And God is
here," he added reverently, taking off his cap and bowing his
head ; " and who can say that he is lonely with such a bein' round ?
I can't. I found out when I was like you that you've got to be
alone most of the time. Those you think most of are very near,
but they only show you that you can't git any mortal man or
woman as near your heart as you want. God only can fold you
right up and satisfy you ; and he's all I want or expect."

" Then he has no particular religion," thought Florian ; " now
to see if he has any relations. You are right in what you have
said," he remarked aloud, " and I feel the force of every word.
But a man must suffer to be educated to the practice of such
ideas."

" A little not much." And Scott was silent.

" I have often thought of trying it for a time," said Florian
" this life. I love these scenes so. I love the beautiful solitude

778 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

of such a night as this a solitude so full of voices that but for
their harmony you might think yourself among men. But old
ties are hard to break. Father, mother, sister, friend, long-spun
ambitions, are all against it. You, perhaps, had no such ties to
hold you to the world."

" I had my ambitions," said Scott, " but a breath blasts those
foolish things. I had a few hearts bound to mine kind-a strong,
but death makes short work of sich. No, of course I mightn't
have had as many as you, but I had enough, I reckon ; but still
I got over 'em, and they never trouble me now."

" No relations, probably," thought Florian ; " no religion.
How did he come here ? is the next question, and what are his
expectations ? How did you happen to get a liking for this kind
of a life, Scott ? Was it very hard at first? "

" No, it was never hard. I was kind of broken up and took
to it for health's sake ; then I stayed in it, and I'm goin' to stay
in it till the end, if I can. Some morning they'll be lookin' for
me and they'll find me dead. I'll be buried thar, I trust, whar the
old house stands unless," he added playfully, "the angels of the
island bury me quietly themselves, for I love 'em well, as they
know."

" You are deserving of such a burial," said Florian ; " no man
has ever paid such honor to nature as you have in this section.
I would like to be present when they bury you."

" The world doesn't come in to such funerals," Scott answered,
laughing; "so you needn't expect to. Hadn't we better goin
now and try to win over the old man ? "

" One moment, Scott. I am going to ask a favor of you
which you must grant me. I like this solitude and I like you.
Will you permit me to come here sometimes and stay a week
with you, and fish and hunt and talk with you? It will be
only for a short time, as I will soon be going off from this
place."

The hermit listened with patience to this bold request. " I
don't invite any one here," he said reservedly ; " but if you want
to you kin come on conditions. You're not to talk about me to
any one as long's you live; and as to your comin', remember I
don't invite any one, and they can't come too seldom."

Without waiting to receive Florian's thanks for so concise
and negative an invitation, he went hastily into the cabin. Ruth
had reconciled her father to the proposition of an embassy of
peace to the governor, and from considering the woes of exile
the hearty squire had passed to the contemplation of a homely

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 779

yet safe future, while he was ready with all sorts of advice for
his young ambassador.

" Don't stoop, Florian don't yield an inch. They'll be glad
enough to listen to you when they hear your message. I'd rather
an older man should go ; but you have the ability, and 'twill be an
opening for you. You'll get acquainted with the nobs, and a
slight hint that you're related to me won't do any harm. A
good deal may come of it. Revolutionists are the style of this
age, and you reflect some of their glory. Mackenzie won't like
it. He'll be in jail, and I'll be out ; but, pshaw ! why didn't he
have gumption enough to hoe his own row in Canada ? I did
my share on this side. I'll be blest if I'll do any more."

" That's the way I look at it," Scott began.

" I'don't want you to look at it," snapped the squire. " What
do you know about the matter? Get correct ideas of Almighty
God before you dabble in politics."

" Good advice," said Florian, " if politicians themselves will
follow it."

" Now, see here, PenTton," said the hermit bluntly, " don't
you know you've made a fool of yourself in this matter? "

" Yes, of course I do. I admit it. Go on, confound you ! A
fool who wouldn't make a fool of himself talking with you ! It
makes me foolish just to look at you."

" Sh ! " cried Florian, with sudden and tragic emphasis. A
death-like silence fell on the place. Ruth threw her arms about
her father, and the hunter blew out the candle.

" I'll reconnoitre," said he, and stole away. Not a word was
spoken until he returned.

" I think all's squar," he said, re-lighting the candle, " but the
best thing to do is to .git to bed, or the next warning might have
some meanin' in it. You, miss, can have this room here, and
take the candle along. Your paw an' the youngster kin take the
floor with a blanket."

Ruth took the candle and kissed the squire good- night with
an anxious face. As she was passing into the room Florian
whispered :

" Don't be frightened. I only did it to stop the argument."

She laughed and went in.

" There's your blankets," said Scott, throwing them on the
floor. " Good-night."

And without paying any attention to their protestations, he
opened the door and was gone.

" A nice fellow, but glum," were the squire's last words as he

780 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

glided into the bass of an all-night snore. Florian himself was
already asleep, and a real stillness, for the first time that evening,
dove-like settled on the little island. Florian's dreams were very
beautiful when the moon, extricating itself from the clouds, looked
in through the little window of the cabin and shone on his up-
turned face. It seemed to him that he never slept, but, passing
from the cabin when all had retired, floated like a spirit on the
moonbeams that surrounded the island. He was pleased with
his new quality of buoyancy, and sported like a wild bird : dived
into the shining water, bounded into higher regions of the
glorious element, and seemed to glow like the moon itself when
he trod the earth again.

While he was resting a sublime figure stood beside him. It
was an angel, before whose radiance the moon grew dim, and his
broad wings stretched from horizon to horizon, long spears of
brilliancy. On his face rested a smile so heavenly that Florian
stretched out his hands to invite his embrace. The angel
stooped and kissed him ; he felt the cold lips and the cold cheek
on his own, and at once felt all his glory departing. With a cry
of sorrow he awoke. All was stillness around him, and the moon
was smiling through the window.

" A dream worthy of the place," said Florian. " I'm going to
see the island at two o'clock of the morning."

He jumped up and was preparing to go out when a low moan
met his ear. It was smothered and distant, yet the agony was so
exquisite that a sudden tremor of fear seized him. He tried to
locate it, but in vain, and hurried out into the open air. The
moaning never ceased for a moment, and the anguish was so
keen that Florian ran hither and thither in great trepidation, but
no trace of the cause could be found. The huge boulder on
which the cabin stood was searched on all sides. Away from it
the moans grew fainter, yet around it they seemed far off and
smothered, and, although he continued the search until they died
away entirely, Florian could discover no one.

Somewhat relieved, he got out his boat, trimmed the sail, and
started down the river. The violence of the wind had abated,
and the charm of the night was far beyond the praise of words,
so weird, so unreal, so supernatural was every tint that the
moon's delicate brush laid on the canvas. After an hour or two
he returned and sat down on a bench that overlooked the river.
The aurora had already announced the day, and the witchery of
night had vanished into dull gray shadows. He heard a noise
below him at the river's edge directly under the boulder. Tak-

1 884.] SOLITAR Y ISLAND. 78 1

ing the shelter of a bush that grew there, he looked down to see
the hermit quietly standing there with his eyes turned to the sky.
He was weeping, and his face was very pale. Florian drew back
and fled softly to the house. He had no wish to play the spy,
however great his curiosity, and as he lay down his heart was
full of a great pity for this lonely man whose heart responded so
quickly to emotions of sorrow.

CHAPTER VI.
REV. MR. BUCK.

Two days after the events related in the last chapter Florian
was in New York on business with the governor, and affairs at
home had taken up the usual routine. Sara was making the
most of her liberty while her stern brother was absent, and car-
ried on a desperate siege against Mr. Buck's affections, which
heretofore had secretly shown homage to Belinda.

" I know you'll tell," sneered the shallow girl, " but I don't
care one cent, Miss Belinda. I'm going with whom I please; and
certainly I've cut you out with Mr. Buck."

" You probably told him your name was Pearl," Linda re-
torted. " There is no need of me telling Florian. The town
is talking of your shamelessness, and a hundred tongues will
trumpet it to your brother the moment he gets off the train."

" Let them," said Sara, with a defiant gesture. " I don't care.
I'm going yachting with him this afternoon." And she went,
and Linda sat moodily on the veranda thinking of many sad
possibilities of the future. When Ruth Pendleton joined her
shortly afterwards her first remark was :

" If I thought there was any danger of me falling into such
complete indifference to religion for any man I would pray to die
now or I would join an order."

" Yet it is just what you and Florian are determined I shall
do," said Ruth "turn my back on the religion of my fathers."

"You misunderstand me, Ruth. Sara would marry Mr.
Buck if he were a Mormon or a Mohammedan. You will change
your convictions. You will become a sincere Catholic, and you
and the world will be better for it. But Sara is dead to real
religion, and always was. You will be so good a Catholic, Ruth,
that I often wish I were you when you change."

Ruth shook her head, and a sad shadow fell on her face.

782 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" I am despairing," she said. " I read and think until I am tired.
I admire so much your church, and yet I am quite far off, and I
do so love my own."

" Well, we must not talk of it now," Linda gently interposed,
" if it wearies you so. Florian is a better teacher than I, any way,
and a look from him is an argument. Do you know, I am uneasy
about this New York visit."

" We are thinking of the same thing," said Ruth, turning her
thoughtful eyes on Linda. " His ambitions will be fired by the
first glimpse of the world. We shall lose him, Linda, before the
winter is over."

" How calmly you say it! " murmured Linda with tremulous
lips.

" How long I have thought of it ! " said Ruth ; " and, besides,
I was looking at a final separation, so that the first thought was
made easy."

For a few minutes nothing was said by the two girls. Ruth
was not demonstrative and had accustomed herself to look calmly
at possibilities, even while the thrust of a knife would have been
less painful ; and delicate Linda grew sick as with death from
apprehension of changes.

" Well, we must grow old some time, Ruth, and death will
take us by the nose, if other changes do not. He will get a firm
hold here," she added, laughing and smoothing the Roman pro-
minence on her handsome face.

"For one with so firm a face," said Ruth, "you are very
childish. When you are forty you will look like old Virginia
or the mother of the Gracchi."

" Or the mother of a Jew pedlar, Ruth. But what can you
expect ? Am I to play lion because I have the lion's skin ? If
Florian goes I'll cry my eyes out and get married. What will
you do ? "

" What a question ! I will join him some time, if I can become
a convert to your faith. If not " she hesitated.

" If not," said Linda, " favor the family in the next best way.
Marry Mr. Buck."

" O Linda ! "

" I'm in earnest, and you will thus show yourself determined
to stick ! No regrets, no remorse, no returning then. Hey, Mrs.
Buck ! "

" You are bound to be gay, Linda ! Well, I have no decided
objections, but your sister is somewhat ahead of me. Could any-
thing be more cavalier than that? "

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 783

She pointed to the bay, where a boat had just anchored and
Mr. Buck was assisting Sara ashore.

Linda's eyes filled with tears.

" I get desperate sometimes looking at her actions," she said,
while her face flushed and her throat swelled with anger.

" There is a way, but I cannot stoop to that. Let her go.
Still, she is my sister and has a soul. All means are fair in war.
Why not?"

" You are dipping in pitch, dear, or why do you hesitate ? "
said Ruth.

" She will marry him," said Linda ; " but there is a way to pre-
vent it. Mr. Buck oh! I am ashamed to name it."

" I know it already, dear. Mr. Buck prefers a Roman nose
to a pug, and yet must get one of them. Why should not the
Roman allure him from the pug ? I have thought of it many a
time."

" And what would you think? " said Linda eagerly.

11 1 can see no harm in Sara becoming Mrs. Buck, and so can
give no opinion; but I know just what Florian would say."

" Desperate straits require desperate remedies," murmured
Linda, leaning over the veranda, with her eyes fixed on the forms
approaching. " I'll do it," she added with determination, " and
Fiorian will never know."

When Mr. Buck arrived with Sara at the gate Linda sweetly
invited him to enter, and, as Mr. Buck had many times yielded
to the enchantress, he yielded again. Sara ran off to change
her clothes, and the clerical gentleman sat down delighted be-
tween two very pretty women. Ruth could not but look re-
proachfully at her friend for her wilful boldness in laying the
snare so quickly and so temptingly ; but Linda had no looks or
words or smiles for other than Mr. Buck. That ritualist was
rather vapid. No man could be gotten up more carefully or
expensively. He was as neat as a bandboxed hat on a holiday ;
shaved so that no hair wandered apart from the flowing side-
whiskers, and his face was white and expressionless. Spectacles,
round and gilded, sat astride of his lean, long nose with the cor-
rect sanctity of an old-style deacon on his antique filly bound for
the meeting-house. Ordinary men feared to contrast with Mr.
Buck, he was so painfully clean and perfect, while all ladies found
a real pleasure in looking at him.

The news of his presence brought Mrs. Wallace in a flutter
to the parlor.

" Seemingly, Mr. Buck, you are quite a stranger here. And

784 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

there isn't any excuse, as I told the little bu Mr. Wallace ; we
live so near, and he taking such delight in argument, seemingly."

Mr. Buck emitted a cloud of vaporous language, gotten up,
like himself, profusely, in reply to this welcome ; but before it
was ended Billy's boisterous shouting at Lady Gwendoline Far-
an-near in the hall made it necessary for Mrs. Winifred to go out
and announce the presence of a visitor, with a whispered entreaty
for silence.

" Keep still ! " roared Billy. " What do I care for Buck ?
He got over that last beating, did he, the divil ? I'll be there
soon ; I'll collar him. I've got a text for him," and so on, until
Mrs. Winifred returned hastily with a flushed face and sat down
in the darkest corner of the room.

The ladies, as far as possible, drowned these threats by their
chatter and polite attention, but it was impossible for Mr. Buck
to avoid showing some uneasiness over the mention of the text ;
only the dark eyes of Linda blazing their fullest were capable
of dispelling the cloud that enwrapped him. Sara came in pre-
sently, and was at once taken up by Ruth and carried so far
away that she could only see and not hear her adored one, who
was given up by Linda shortly after to the argumentative ferocity
of Billy. So two groups by degrees came to be formed, the
three girls at one side and the rest of the company at the other.
Billy was dreadfully vulgar, every one must admit, in the sequel.

" Did you look up that question? " said he, with a malevolent
grin in every one of the thousand wrinkles on his face. " Did
you? You know you didn't. There an't a book on the con-
tinent speaks about it. All my own every word worked it all
out like a sum. Did you, I say did you ? "

" I examined," began Mr. Buck, with a despairing glance at
the girls that made Sara's heart ache to go to the rescue " I
examined several documents, but not all "

" No, of course not," chirruped Billy, with many chuckles.
" Keep right on examining it'll do you good, you divil ! You
need it.' I've got another nut for you."

" The labors of your church," interposed Mrs. Winifred,
" must take up considerable time. Seemingly, Mr. Wallace
doesn't keep that in mind. He has nothing to do but attend his
garden and hunt up grubs and texts. It would be strange if
he did not find a new one occasionally."

" Exactly," said the minister, taking refuge behind this got d
and irritating shot.

" Bah ! " snapped Billy. " Nothing to do, hey ? Why, a hand-

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 785

ful of people, silly ones too, make up his church. You don't
do anything but dress, Mr. Buck. You don't have time to
you know you don't. Do you, now ? Come, confess ! Then you
take Lady Far-an-near sailing". She's a text ha! ha ! a text of
good manners ho ! ho ! preach on her for a week ; a mighty
spread to that text but shallow, shallow. I have you there
fine text. No, you don't have time to do anything but dress
same way with the text isn't it, Linda? same way with Lady
Far-an-near. Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

Billy's laugh was like his face, excessively wrinkled and an-
noying. There was no music in it and no mirth, so that he
against whom it was directed was like a man fighting with
smoke. Mr. Buck looked more vapid than ever under it, and
tried to think of some telling expression that would cover him-
self with glory and his tormentor with ridicule. But it was in
vain, and the end was not yet come. Billy turned on Mrs.
Winifred. " Grubs, hey ! nothing more?" he cried with a feroc-
ity that quite paralyzed the lady. " I've been hunting them
always, and I find them to kill them, but some will stick and
turn out butterflies. You were a grub, Mr. Buck "

" Father," interrupted Linda, troubled at this personality,
"you have been talking so much about the text that I am quite
anxious to hear it."

" We all are, seemingly," said Mrs. Winifred.

"You!" laughed Billy, "you, seemingly! Oh! ho! what do
you know about texts ? You don't care to hear it. Do you,
I say do you ? Speak out, woman do you ? "

" Well, not very much."

" Of course not I knew it ; and Mr, Buck doesn't care, either.
It floors him every time ; doesn't it, me boy doesn't it, hey ? "

" Every text is capable of many interpretations " began the
reverend gentleman.

" Not mine, not mine, sir ; only one, and that's the meanin*
I give it. But you can make meanin's ; that's your business.
How would you live, if you didn't ? Rascals all of you no con-
science."

" I think it's only fair," said Mrs. Winifred adroitly, " that
there should be many meanings to a thing, so that all people can
enjoy it. Look at Mr. Wallace's grapes there. Some are red,
some are purple, and some, in the hot-house, green ; and yet
they're all grapes. You didn't see Mr. Wallace's grapes? The
loveliest oh ! " And Mrs. Winifred rolled her eyes.

"The finest in the town," said -Billy, with enthusiasm.
VOL. xxxix. 50

786 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" Your grapes aren't a circumstance to mine, are they ? Come,
admit the truth now."

" I have not yet seen your grapes," said Mr. Buck, with the
deepest apparent interest.

" Not seen 'em? Sho ! now, sho ! they're town-talk" Linda
looked at her sister. " Come right along and I'll show 'em to
you. Lady Far-an-near eats 'em, though, all she can get no
mind, all stomach; her mind's in her stomach. She'd eat your
boat, too, if it was grapes ; wouldn't you ? You know you would,
you - Ha ! "

Mr. Buck made his excuses and dragged the little man away.

" I'll go, too," said Linda sweetly, following them.

" Such vulgarity ! " said Sara in a passion, when they had gone.
" O mamma ! if we could only do something with that horrid
old fool, insulting every one who comes here. And he is my
father. Oh ! I could tear him to pieces."

Mrs. Winifred saw by Ruth's shocked face that she was not
prepared for such an outburst.

" Seemingly, dear "

" There it is ! " snapped Sara ; " your intolerable ( seemingly' is
all you ever do or say, and you only make matters worse. I'll
not stay here to endure this, and Mr. Buck to be put to such
shame."

" I don't think it injures him in any way," said Ruth, by way
of letting her know that she was present ; " and I notice your father
is never vulgar except with people who can understand nothing
else."

Sara winced at the innocent directness of this arrow.

" Well, some people can swallow such medicine," she said,
with a toss of the head, " but I can't and I won't."

" You get enough of it," said Linda's quiet voice at the win-
dow. " But the dose has lost its good effect, mother. Ruth,
Mr. Buck is gone, and father is standing on the garden-wall shout-
ing the text after him. Just listen."

" We shall not all be changed," came in faintly to their ears,
the last echo of Billy's theological gun.

" Mr. Buck was twice vanquished this morning," said the
bold girl, with a comprehensive smile. " Sara, here are your pet
delicacies." And she handed in some grapes as a peace-offering.
It was characteristic of Sara that she ate them with much satis-
faction, and was at once as cheerful as her nature permitted.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 787

CHAPTER VII.

AN ACCIDENT.

FLORIAN returned from New York one week later and bore
on his smiling face the triumph of diplomatic success.

The girls met him at the depot, delighted.

" It's all settled/' said he. " All your father has to do, Ruth,
is to deliver himself up to the marshal, when he will be released
on parole and no further trouble given him."

" How can we ever thank you ? " said Ruth tearfully ; for
her anxiety had been very severe.

" Oh, nonsense ! " said Florian. " It was none of my doing.
The governor was only too glad to hear my proposition, and
there was no diplomacy required. I had dinner with him after-
wards, and found out the true inwardness of the whole matter."

" I should have been there," said Linda. " I do so want to
dine with a governor ! What a place this is not a distinguished
man in it ! "

" It's the next best thing to dine with one who dined with a
governor," Florian replied. " But I met one who goes ahead of
governors ; one whose hand-shake and very polite attentions and
compliments I shall never forget no less a person than Andrew
Jackson."

" Oh ! " cried both girls, drawing their breath with delight and
taking another look at the hero, to catch some expiring rays of
the glory that had lately shone upon him.

" And what did he say to you ? " asked Linda.

" So many things that it will take some time to relate them.
When we have had dinner and I am a little rested you shall
hear every word."

They proceeded to the house, laughing and talking, and were
unfortunate enough to meet Sara and Mr. Buck just setting out
for a morning walk. The situation was painful for some of the
parties. Sara flushed and paled until her natural obstinacy
floated cork-like to the surface and gave a defiant twist to her
nose. Mr. Buck was unconscious of any guilt and greeted Flo-
rian politely. Florian himself showed no feeling in the matter.

" If you will be so kind as to excuse Sara," he said to the
gentleman, " I shall be much obliged to you."

" Certainly, certainly, Mr, Wallace. I hope you enjoyed
your visit to New York. Good-morning! "

And lifting his hat elaborately, he went on his way, comforted

788 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

by a glance of Linda's dark eyes. Sara bounced indignantly into
the house without paying further attention to the party.

The news of Florian's brushing against greatness drove Billy
almost to distraction, so overpowering was his delight. His
wrinkled face was illumined.

" You'd show well beside the best of 'em," said he " you
would, you divil ! Ha ! ha ! the old buck himself shook hands
with you, hey? Old Hickory smart smartest President we
ever had. You'll match him, Flory ; you'll lead him some day,
you divil you ! "

" Seemingly," said Mrs. Winifred, " you look tired."

Billy snorted and swept all the books from the centre-table
with a gesture.

" Tired, woman ? Bah ! what d'ye think the boy's made of?
When I was his age I'd have walked to New York and back and
danced a jig afterwards. Tired? After seein' Old Hickory a
smart man, the smartest man in the country to be tired !
Seemingly," with a second snort, "you might say something
sensible when you do open your mouth."

Mrs. Winifred hastened away to prepare an early dinner, and
Florian began a graphic description of the metropolis, choosing
his words carefully, showing none of the enthusiasm he really
felt, for he was well aware that the girls were looking for an
exhibition of that kind. They left him when the recital was
ended, and on the veranda compared notes.

" He doesn't seem to be much taken up with the city," said
Linda.

" But you can't be sure of him," said Ruth. " Perhaps he
knows we looked for some sign, and was careful to conceal it.
In a few days, when our anxiety is gone, he will rave of New
York, and then"

" Then we shall lose him directly, you dismal croaker of fu-
ture sorrows," said Linda. " I'm beginning not to care. There
is one thing almost certain : while you waver, and Sara is at-
tached to Mr. Buck, he will not go. So his feet will press this
winter's snow, and by the time spring comes who knows what
will happen ? "

" Who knows what will happen ? " repeated Ruth. " You are
right. Who knows ? " And she rose to go.

" You will stay for dinner, Ruth ? "

" No ; I must get ready for our visit to the islands this after-
noon. My father must be at home to-night. Very likely Flo-
rian will accompany me, and you might "

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 789

"Two's company," said Linda, "but I'll go nevertheless.
Look there," she added suddenly, pointing through the vines in
the direction of the garden. Ruth, looking, saw Florian pacing
the gravelled walk abstractedly, his head bowed, his hands
clasped behind him.

<( He hasn't done that in an age," she said. " He is troubled,
and New York is the trouble. O Ruth ! "

" I thought you were beginning not to care, " said Ruth, as
the tears glistened in Linda's eyes.

"Only beginning," answered Linda; "and really I don't
care." So she laughed the next minute.

Florian, still pacing, was called into the sitting-room by his
mother. Mrs. Winifred was full of anxiety with regard to many
things, but never found it necessary to make any parade of her
feelings before her family. She fought in a seeming way with
the shadows of coming events and was always worsted natu-
rally ; never suffering from defeat, however, but merely from the
annoyance of knowing beforehand that she was to be defeated.

" Seemingly, dear," she said to Florian, who was most pa-
tient with her, " we're going to have trouble in various ways,
and I was wondering if you noticed anything."

" Did jy0 notice anything, mother? " said Florian.

" Well, I can't say that I did, but it's hard sometimes to de-
cide. Now, there's Linda "

" Linda?" said Florian, smiling. "I wasn't aware there was
anything the matter with her."

" No, to be sure not," said she, astounded and abashed that
no other had found anything amiss with Linda ; " but seemingly,
Florian, she doesn't eat much, and she grows thin and white
with every day ; but of course I'm wrong."

" No, you're not, mother," said Florian, jumping up. " I did
take notice, not so very long ago, either. What a fool I am, al-
ways thinking more of myself than others !"

" Then Sara," began Mrs. Winifred with more hesitation" I
don't know. I'm not sure, but. seemingly she's quite indifferent
to her religion lately. I may be wrong "

" No, no," said Florian ; " but that's a gentle way of saying a
very serious thing, mother. Go on ; you're not wrong."

" She has a great liking for Mr. Buck, seemingly ; of course
I wouldn't say that she had, but her actions And then if the
little bull your father, I mean saw anything wrong he would
be put out."

"I should think so/' said Florian; "and Sara would be

790 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

locked up, as she must be, I fear, before this unhappy affair is
ended. Poor Lady Far-and-near ! she hasn't enough mind to
know what religion is, and I fear Ifear "

f ., He passed into a moody meditation without finishing the
sentence, and tapped the table with his fingers. A sob aroused
him. Mrs. Winifred was weeping and was plainly ashamed of
herself for the action.

" Well, I don't think the matter requires "

" I know it," said she ; " but then I couldn't help thinking of
her being a minister's wife, seemingly."

" Time, time," said Florian " give me time and I'll move Mr.
Buck in another direction. He is afflicted with the desire of
converting us all, Pere Rougevin included. Was the pere here
to see us? Does he know of the matter? "

" No," said Mrs. Winifred.

" I must tell him, then. He is good at devising sharp man-
oeuvres. Perhaps he will think of something. But now Linda
must be looked after. If we lost that flower "

He went out to hunt her up, without finishing a sentence
whose import he did not realize while he thought of it. Linda
was eating grapes in the garden.

"That looks well," thought Florian, and called her to the ve-
randa. " You are to come with me this afternoon," said he,
" and make one of the squire's triumphal procession homeward.
Here, what's this ? You are too pale. And why does your dress
fit so loosely, miss ? I noticed it a week ago, and to-day I notice
it still more."

"I never fatten till winter," said she soberly; "and then I
am thinking a good deal lately."

" Sleeping, you mean. What about? "

".About your visit to New York, Florian," she said, holding
up some grape-leaves to shade her face. " You needn't hide it.
I know you're more than ever determined on going there, and I
was thinking how I should amuse myself when you were gone."

" I won't deny your assertion, Linda, but my going is far off.
There are too many obstacles in the way."

" I know them, and I feel wicked enough to wish they would
stay in your way a long time. What nonsense," she added, " to
borrow trouble! While Ruth wavers and Sara is under Mr.
Buck's spells we shall not lose you."

"You remind me of my chains," he said smilingly to hide
his real annoyance. " And there is another more binding than
they."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 791

She looked at him inquiringly.

" I won't tell you. Be content that while Ruth wavers and
Sara affects Mr. Buck I shall remain and then longer, perhaps,"
he said, sighing, and went into the house.

Linda remained, looking and thinking at random, and ques-
tioning why these things should be. In a few months the most
perfect object of the perfect scene would make part of it no lon-
ger. That sun and sky above her ; those marvellous islands,
whose perfumes the fresh winds fanned to the shore ; that spark-
ling, shimmering water, whose beauty was beyond that of jewels ;
the quaint town, so old and so clean and so loved, its white-head-
ed and dark-headed people, its green foliage and autumn fruits,
its bells and sweet and harsh noises ; the stars that besprinkled
the river firmament as well as that of heaven ; the ghostly moon,
the white-winged boats, and a thousand other loved, familiar
things, would all be just as they were to-day and last night, but
her brother would be gone. Nay, there was a time when she her-
self would make no part of the scene, and yet the glories of it
would remain ; newer eyes would gaze upon it and'see, perhaps,
all that remained of her a white stone in the graveyard, and a
name. How could that little world of which she was the centre
ever get along without her? Would it not be strange to feel that
Linda Wallace lay out of sight in the earth, and children played
thoughtlessly on her grave, and no one spoke of her more ? She
began almost unconsciously to weep.

" This is all there is of earth," said she, " and one might as
well live in a desert. Heaven is the only thing worth striving
for ; and as for our memory, even a stone is too much, and a name
and a grave I shall have no grave or stone. Flatten it to the
ground. Only heaven and a place in God's memory for me."

" A correct sentiment," said Florian. " Dry your tears and
come in to dinner. Your liver is plainly out of order when you
become so lugubriously religious."

She laughed and went in with him, and was ^fay enough for
the rest of the day until the boat was fitted out and the three
were sailing to Solitary Island. The wind was quite fresh at
three o'clock in the afternoon, but not too much so until they
entered Eel Bay. There some caution was required up to the
very landing-place in front of the hermit's dwelling, for the wind
blew straight down the channel. It was very awkward of Flo-
rian that he should have thrown his hat into the air as the
hermit and the squire both came to the door together. He was
so vain of his good news !

792 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" Look out, boy ! " said Scott and the squire with a yell.

But it was too late. The boat capsized and threw the crew
into the rough water. There being no danger, the squire raged
and became profane. The girls both swam into shallow water
and were helped ashore, laughing and yet a little frightened, by
Florian and the hermit. Florian was cast down with shame.

" The house is open to ye," said Scott, " and you young
ladies had better light a good fire and dry your clothes or you'll
ketch an almighty tall cold. And when you go a-sailin' agin
jes* look out who runs the boat."

" It never happened before," muttered Florian, "and I'd give
my right hand if it had never happened."

" There it is," said Scott; " mighty big pay for so little value.
'T won't hurt the girls, Pm sure."

" I'm not," said the youth briefly, as he looked apprehen-
sively at Linda climbing the rock in her wet clothes. However,
they appeared at sundown with clothes dried comfortably, and
none the worse, apparently, for their ducking. Florian had also
put himself in proper shape and was entertaining the admiring
squire with his account of New York and its notables.

" Ah ! Florian," said he, " there's where you should be, among
kindred spirits, among the high-fliers, among the birds that
would teach you to wear a steadier wing and carry your flights
into the chambers of the sun."

" If I were a young man " Scott said.

" But you aren't you never will be. When you were you
didn't follow your own opinions ; so what use to inflict them on
the young fellow, who doesn't care a button for your solitary
way of living ? " said the squire.

" I don't want the lad to live solitary, PenTton," said Scott ;
" let him double up, if he wants to, but let him stick to Clay-
burg and happiness. He'll go wrong sure, if he gets out into
these dizzy conventions. He hasn't got the right well, I
don't know what to name it, but here's the place for him to
thrive."

" Theory, theory ! " shouted the squjre. " Scott, I'm obliged to
you for what you've done, and if I could make you a sensible
man I'd do it; but I can't, so call and see me and Ruth she's
sweet on you \vhen you feel like it. Come, girls home,
home to that confounded government." He ran down the shore
to the boat after a hearty hand-shake with the hermit, while
Ruth poured her gratitude upon the solitary.

11 It's all right % miss," said he, " I'm content, and I hope you'll

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 793

pray for me that I may never be more unhappy than I am now.
Go ahead. I'll call to see ye some time."

He stood on the rock in front of his house long after they
started.

" It makes me lonely to look at him," said Linda " we going
to our cheerful homes, he to his solitude."

" He is like a man dead," said Florian ; " the world leaves
him, but what kind of loneliness is it to be face to face with
God ?"

CHAPTER VIII.
LINDA.

THE next morning Linda awoke with a high fever and a
slight cough as the effects of her wetting the day before, and
Florian felt a severe twinge of grief as he saw the extreme pallor
of her countenance and its faulty bloom. She had taken a chill
during the night, but a little addition to the bed-clothing had
banished it. No alarm was felt. In healthy people these little
irregularities occur and pass away, and so it would be with Lin-
da. Mrs. Winifred, however, was anxious. The girl was not
strong, she said ; a doctor could be easily summoned ; and then
no one knows what might happen.

Youth laughed at these anxieties until pain came to add its
warning pain in the lungs, sharp and distressful and the cough
grew mightier and more racking with every hour. Towards
night it grew serious. They tried their old house-remedies and
wished to treat her illness as a cold, a mere cold, which youth
and health throw off so easily. But in vain. Linda grew more
feverish and caught her breath more frequently as the dagger-
thrusts pierced her breast. She was banished at last to bed 'and
the doctor called in.

There is his knock at the door. Every one looks cheerful on
hearing it, and the physician, smiling as he enters, gruffly desires
to know what people have been doing to get sick this fine
weather. Why, even the old are full of silly thoughts of escap-
ing this year's rheumatism ! And Linda there with her brows
contracted with pain ! Pshaw ! nonsense ! Pain in the lungs ?
How do you know it's the lungs, you you female ? What do
women know about the lungs ? Lungs, indeed ! Pains when
you breathe, hey? Ah! where have you caught cold? Ducked
in this weather? Yacht upset? Who upset it ? Never mind who?

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

But I will mind, and I'll call him a donkey, an ass, a mule, to
upset a yacht with a woman in it ! Why not have drowned at
once instead of coming home to take a pain in the lungs, and
get a fever and a pulse at one hundred and ten ? Why go out
on the water in stormy weather ?

" Why do anything naughty and nice?" says Linda between
two frowns of pain.

" There's Eve over again," says the doctor, writing out pre-
scriptions with a laugh.

Mrs. Winifred is laughing, and Billy also, and even Florian
tries to persuade himself that the laugh is unprofessional. Di-
rections are given ; medicines are bought and administered ; there
is running and coursing through the house for a long time ; the
night-lamp is brought to Linda's room and arrangements are
made for watchers.

" I'll call at two o'clock in the morning," says the physician.
" I'm going out ten miles in the country, and I'll call coming
back; have the door open for me. Good-night, Miss Linda.
You had the ' nice ' yesterday ; you are having the ' naughty '
to-day."

Outside he looked significantly at Florian.

" Pneumonia," said he " not necessarily fatal, but apt to be.
Follow my directions to the letter until I return. We may
bring her through, and if we do it will be to see her die of con-
sumption later on. Linda is booked for heaven."

Florian stood holding the door and looking out into the glow-
ing autumn night. The cheery voices of sailors came up from
the river, and the lights at the mastheads shone like colored
stars. He was hot and disturbed. Linda's days were over, and
that one dear obstacle to his ambitions was to be removed by
death. He went in again with a smiling face, and ran against
Mrs. Winifred crying silently. What could he say? Death
was bitter enough, but she was to suffer death so often that he
hastened on into the sick-room and left her unconsoled.

" Shall I stay with you," he asked, " or do you prefer to sleep,
Linda?"

" I can't sleep," she answered with a hushed voice ; <c and if I
doze it is better to have some one near and the lamp burning. I
am very ill, Flory, and I am afraid."

"Afraid, dear?" trying successfully to steady his voice.
" Afraid of what? " though he knew right well the cause of her
fear, and trembled because of its truth. How sad he would feel
if death stole on him so suddenly, and he so young !

1 884.] Sou TAR Y ISLAND. 795

" Of death," she answered. " We talked of many things,
Florian, but never of that, never of that ! And it is so hard to die.
Tell me something of it, Florian ; you have read of it many
times/'

"If you are near to it," said he, "your 'own feelings can tell
you more than books or men. Mostly the dying are indifferent
to the agony, particularly where they have led good lives or
innocent lives like yours, Linda."

" Yes, yes, I led an innocent life," she said simply. " Thank
God for that ! Innocence is something."

" It is all," said Florian ; " it has never known sin, and does
not know suffering. But what a subject for a patient who is to
get well ! It would be better to go to sleep ; or shall I read to
you ? "

" Read to me, Flory, and talk as you read."

He went down to his study to select a volume. There were
many books in his possession for so young a man, and he knew
them all by heart ; dangerous books none of them, only the best
and purest grain of the world's harvest.

What should he select ?

" Nothing too pious, for that would frighten the poor child ;
nothing too frivolous, for that would not suit the condition of
one so near death." He walked suddenly to the window, chok-
ing. " I am very cool ; I use correct language, and she so low !
Do I realize it, Linda, that I shall lose you?"

He took out Bonaventure's Life of our Lord, and when he had
gone back to the sick-room, and had announced the story of the
Passion, she was not surprised at the subject.

" It is so appropriate," she murmured : " I am having my pas-
sion."

He read to her until her eyes closed in uneasy slumber, and
then sat watching the flushed face and thinking. Mrs. Winifred
was the only other person who came near the sick-room, and she
was unable to control her tears even under Florian's sharp
reproof. She remained a great part of the time in self-banish-
ment, and he dwelt alone in the sacred silence of a sick-room.
Linda was fond of white and light colors, and her chamber was
fitted up accordingly. In the dim light it looked like a dream.
Her pale forehead and flushed cheeks on the pillow were more
an outline than reality. It scared him when he thought how
short the time until they would lay on another pillow in the
grave-yard.

" Linda ! " he called suddenly in an overflow of anguish. She

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

awoke with a start, and at the same instant he heard a carriage
at the door.

" The doctor has come again, dear," he said. " Did I frighten
you ? "

" No," looking around in amazement, and then, with a sigh,
realizing her sad position. Mrs. Winifred brought in the doctor,
who was tired and grumbled very much, with a healthy sense of
slight discomforts, which brought a new atmosphere into the
sick-room and certainly banished the presence of death. He was
busy for a long time with remedies, quite exhausting Linda's
patience, and even Mrs. Winifred's tears, but he looked so hope-
ful while he announced his intention of calling in the morning
that all were reassured. The remarks outside the door were :
" I can tell better later on whether she will recover or not.
Anyhow, she will die within a few months you may be sure of
that, and get ready for it."

When the news went out of her dangerous illness a number
of friends called, but very few got farther than the parlor and
Billy, whom Florian had established there as guard. Ruth and
Fere Rougevin alone were admitted along with the doctor,
and, seeing them, Linda began to fear because of all the trouble
in her behalf. Three visits from a doctor in so short a time,
one from the priest, and the distant sound of doors closing fre-
quently, with many little circumstances to which she had hith-
erto paid no attention, were at the least ominous ; and even
while they stood about her smiling cheerfully she closed her
eyes to keep back the bitter tears that would fall in spite of
her determination to be brave and hopeful. They understood
the reason of the grief, and could say nothing. Even the doctor
felt it beyond him to be gruffly hopeful and quarrelsome ; for
if she was to die, then better that the knowledge should come
to her in this manner than to have a formal pronouncement of
her doom. He had promised to tell that morning if there
were chances for her recovery. The promise was premature.
There were no graver tokens, no nearer approach of the dread
angel, and he could but vaguely say " to-morrow " as he went
away.

Sara, coming in as her sister's tears were falling, was im-
pressed, as only her shallow soul could be impressed, with a wild
fright that prompted her to scream. Fortunately she restrained
the inclination, since it was purely personal, and a little thought
convinced her that it was another's, not her own, death-bed she
was attending. Pre Rougevin prevented a scene by banishing

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 797

the whole company, himself included, from the room, leaving
Ruth to attend the patient.

" Wait," said Linda feebly. " If I am going to die I must get
the sacraments."

" I can do nothing more than hear your confession," said the
priest ; " you are not in sufficient danger for the reception of the
others."

The look in Linda's eyes was a very pleasant one at this pre-
cise, official declaration, and it said clearly that she regarded Pere
Rougevin, stout, flushed, and short though he was, as an angel.

" I thought I was dying," she stammered.

" Nonsense, child ! But you may die, and it's well to be pre-
pared," he said. " You must be ready to live or die, as God
wills."

" Alas ! " murmured Linda, with a fresh flood of tears, " I am
only too willing to live."

" There's no sin in that," was the sententious remark, and she
proceeded with her confession.

" I must be very bad," she said to Ruth afterwards when they
were alone. " I am terribly afraid of dying."

" Who is not ? " said Ruth. " And then it is so near us always.
I have tried to get used to the thought of it, but I can't. I sup-
pose it does indicate a lack of some good religious feeling that
we all ought to have."

" I must ask Florian when he wakes, Ruth. He knows every-
thing. I wonder would he be afraid if he was called on sud-
denly to die ? "

" Perhaps not so much afraid as grieved to leave his dear
ambitions," Ruth replied, with a tone of gentle irony that escap-
ed Linda. " But no more talking, if you please. You have every
chance to live, but there is no use in being prodigal. I shall read
to you."

She read until Florian had slept off the night's weariness and
came again to his sister's bedside.

" There is one thing I should like to be sure of before I die,"
murmured the sick girl.

" What ! " cried Ruth, " already so reconciled to death ? "

She smiled and said : " No, no ; but lying here so weak makes
me feel that way, I suppose. I should like to feel in dying that
your doubts were all settled, Ruth, and that Florian and you
would soon be married, if it could be."

" That must be as God Jwills," answered he with a sigh, as
Ruth turned away her head.

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" Still," said Linda hopefully, closing her eyes in sleep, "you
will not leave us while Ruth wavers, or Sara and myself too."

" Be sure not," answered Florian ; and he was not at all hope-
ful that any of these chances would turn out as he wished.
When she was asleep he drew Ruth to a distant part of the
room. " This disease is to end fatally," he said ; " if not, this week,
then next month or the month after."

" Linda to die ? " gasped Ruth, paling. " And you can speak of
it so coolly, Florian ? "

He was silent before her reproach, and fidgeted nervously
before he spoke again, while Ruth turned her weeping eyes to-
wards the pale form on the bed and sobbed quietly.

" It is a man's way, I suppose," he ventured to say ; " but you
have no right to think me callous."

" No, no," protested Ruth. " I beg your pardon. I know
you love her dearly."

" Ah ! how dearly," he said, with a sigh. " But see how little
the death of our dearest and best interferes with the business of
our lives. When she is dead, alas ! we must eat, and drink, and
labor, and laugh with the world as before. We look to one an-
other then more hopefully, expecting that the living will make
up by increased affection for the loss of such as poor Linda."

" Yes," she said, starting a little as she began to see the drift
of his talk.

" Ruth " and he took her hand and pressed it "you heard
what the dear girl said just now. May I not look to you for
comfort when Linda is gone ? Do not think me selfish or indif-
ferent, but this indecision cannot endure longer without injury
to both of us. What a happiness and a real help to Linda if you
could give a favorable answer very soon ! Let me urge you,
Ruth, to hasten."

" Pray do not speak of this now," she replied coldly, and
much hurt. " It is poor taste, but I can decide, I think, very
soon."

He thanked her, and they continued to converse until Linda
awoke. Mrs. Winifred, in the meantime, had entered in a sur-
reptitious way, and was allowed to remain, being in a more hope-
ful, less tearful mood than on the previous day. It was charac-
teristic of the position she held in her own household that Lin-
da very rarely inquired for her. As for Billy, he was so over-
whelmed with grief that he remained among his grapes and
vegetables in a state of inter jectional grief, hoeing and apostro-
phizing by turns with unusual ardor.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 799

The next day was a very pleasant one for the whole family.
At ten o'clock the doctor announced that Linda would recover
from the present attack, and thereupon the timid ventured to ap-
proach the sick-room with smiling faces. Billy himself came up
in advance of a distinguished and unexpected visitor, the her-
mit. In his solitude Scott looked picturesque, with his rough
ways and dress, and curly red hair ; but in the dainty sick-room he
was as much out of place as an Indian would be in full war-paint.
All were startled, and Mrs. Winifred so much so as to lose her
senses. Old habits are strong, however, and she offered him a
foot-stool instead of a chair, vainly feeling for its absent back
while her eyes stared rudely but helplessly on the apparition.

" No, thank ye. I'll not come in," said the hermit, with his
eyes fixed on Linda. " I jest heard the little girl was sick, and I
thought it might have been the duckin'. I'm glad you're better,
miss. Take care of yourself. Good-morning."

He was off in an instant, but Florian seized him almost rude-
ly and pushed him into his study.

" You are very kind," said he, " and you must not go until
you are thanked and hear all about Linda."

" She's gettin' well," said the hermit. " I reckoned so from
her eyes."

" She had pneumonia ; she's getting over it, but she will never
recover from the shock. The doctor gives her but two months
to live," answered Florian.

" Poor little thing ! poor little thing ! " said Scott, with the
simple pity of a child. " Yet it's better for such as her. She
knows it, I s'pose ? "

" No, but she will learn it soon enough, and for her the know-
ledge will not be hard or bitter, as it would be for me or you."

The look which the hermit bestowed on Florian made the
young gentleman feel that he had blundered in his last expres-
sion. It might mean that it would not be hard or bitter for the
hermit to die ; or, on the contrary, a reproach that Florian him-
self should find it hard or bitter in his own case. Neither, how-
ever, said anything. Scott began to examine the books in the
room with interest.

" All of 'em good, sound ones," he said, " if their names
mean anything."

" Would you like to borrow some? " said Florian.

" No, thank ye ; I han't no need of 'em, but I'm right glad to
see you with sich books. I guess I'll be goin' ; I'm kind of
hasty in my calls, but usually I don't make any."

goo SOLITARY ISLAND. [Sept.,

" We're so obliged to you," Florian replied, " and would be
very glad to see you again."

The hermit made no remark as he left the room and ran
against Mrs. Winifred outside in the hall. The lady evidently
wished to say something, but was disconcerted at the right mo-
ment. Florian felt like laughing.

"What is it, mother?"

" Linda ! " gasped Mrs. Winifred "the gentleman seeming-
ly-"

II Oh ! Linda would like to see you before you go, Scott."

" Anything to oblige the young miss," said the hermit, and
he followed Florian into the sick-room. -

II 1 wanted to thank you," whispered Linda ; " you are very
kind. Send me some wild flowers the very latest."

" You'll have 'em to-night, miss," said the hermit. " Good-day,
ma'am good-day."

And he hurried awkwardly from the room, ran once more
against Mrs. Winifred, and examined and pronounced judgment
on Billy's grapes to the old gentleman's satisfaction.

" I shall call on you soon," said Florian as they parted.

He merely bowed gravely and walked away.

" Evidently," said Ruth, " your visits will not be the most
welcome."

TO BE CONTINUED.

1884.] WITH THE CARLISTS. Soi

WITH THE CARLISTS.

IN the fall of 1873 I was instructed to proceed to northern
Spain, and, if possible, to push my way to the headquarters of
the partisans of Don Carlos, who were then striving desperately
to push their way to Madrid. On leaving- London I obtained
recommendations from the Carlist committee in permanent ses-
sion there to the Carlist Junta in permanent session at Bayonne,
and, what turned out to be of infinitely greater practical advan-
tage, letters of credit on a banker and letters of introduction
to a few British adherents of the royal cause.

The Junta revealed itself as a grave body of elders, who held
perpetual pow-wows, and whose chief aid to the arms of His
Most Catholic Majesty appeared to consist in mumbling gossip,
manufacturing canards, rolling cigarettes, and sipping chocolate.
They gave me certain credentials, and told me that I would pro-
bably come across the gentlemen to whom I had my letters of
introduction at the Fonda de la Playa in St. Jean de Luz.

At the " Inn on the Beach " I was not surprised to hear that
my compatriots were at Biarritz, but might be expected back at
any moment. St. Jean de Luz, though nominally French, is
thoroughly Basque, and takes more interest in Spanish politics
than in French. The landlord was a Frenchman and a cook,
and fortunately paid more attention to his kitchen than to
affairs of state an excellent thing in a landlord ; his wife was a
Madrilene and worshipped the ex-Queen Isabella, whom she
resembled in dowdy obesity ; but their daughter, a plump,
homely, black-eyed lassie of sixteen, Maria del Pilar, was a sworn
Carlist. She had been born in St. Jean de Luz, and had inhaled
its attachments with its atmosphere. I roamed round the place,
with its massive, ancient houses with sculptured lozenge-shields
over their entrances, its dusty promenade shaded with trees, its
quaint, heavy gray church, its background of green slopes, and
the crescent-shaped inlet which it edged the inlet into which
the billows of the Bay of Biscay, soothed to well-tempered
waves, came tumbling over each other on the sands in tousled,
white-haired frolic.

As I re-entered the common room of the inn I observed two
gentlemen, one the antithesis of the other in appearance one
VOL. xxxix. 51

3 2 WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept,

sickly, sandy, and small-nosed ; the other robust, brown-haired,
but with a respectable proportion of nose seated at table.

" I tell you it is true," said the former ; " Christobal saw him."

His companion burst into a loud laugh.

" Well, of all born idiots, you are the boss, Charles. You are
as bad as the old fools themselves. The idea of a big London
paper taking up our cause ! Why, they all hate us, man." And
he laughed again.

These, I felt, must be the countrymen to whom I had the let-
ters of introduction; and so they proved to be. Both had been

officers in the British army. He of the small nose, M , was

Scotch, and was a Carlist because his forebears had been Jacobites ;
but he was hindered from being more than a theoretic Carlist by
a physical ailment contracted in India. The other could I mis-
take his accent? was a native of Cork, full of fire and ambition.
He was a Carlist, I verily believe, because he needed a safety-
valve for his exuberant energies. Poor Willie Leader ! Light
lie the soil on your remains in that thickly-peopled cemetery of
Philippopolis where so many thousand victims to typhus in the
Russo-Turkish war are indecently huddled. This gallant Irish-
man was a veritable soldier of fortune. He had thrown up his
commission in the British service to join the French shortly
after the outbreak of the great war, and had gained the red
ribbon by his reckless valor with Bourbaki. When the Carlist
rising seemed to open up a new scope for martial enterprise he
hurried to the Spanish frontier and joined the first partida he
encountered. He managed to convey to them that his sympa-
thies were with them, although in what tongue I could never
find out. He did not speak Spanish at that time ; and as to
conversing in Basque, it was out of the question. The legend is
that the devil once tried to learn Basque, but broke his jawbone
in the process. In any case, the zealous foreigner, who could
not speak Spanish (or Castilian rather, to use the orthodox word),
succeeded in getting his ankle lacerated by a Spanish bullet. It
was his maiden skirmish in those regions, and the wild Irishman,
to give courage to his companions, ran ahead, leaped upon a
bank, and hurled defiance at theioe. The grotesque part of it
was that he was shouting Vive la Rdpublique / when he was picked
off. He was the only man wounded in that affair. When I met
.the buoyant young fellow he was still pale, but had long been
;able to move about without crutches.

" I lost a great deal of blood," he said ; " but, thank God ! I
did not lose my leg, though it looked like it for a while. These

1884.] WITH THE CARLISTS. 803

Carlists are noble, faithful lads. They hid me in their cabins and
carried me by night across the border, so that I might have
repose and good surgical advice in safety. The agony of my
dangling limb at every jolt, as we trudged over the mountains,
was almost insupportable. But you'll crack a bottle of Bor-
deaux with 'us ? 'Tis the best tipple here."

From Leader I ascertained that a rumor had originated at
Bayonne that day, had sped to Biarritz 'twould be in St. Jean
de Luz presently, and in the heart of Navarre to-morrow or next
day that the Royalists of England had at last ardently taken up
the kindred principle in Spain in one of their leading papers, and
that an emissary of theirs, with secret orders and bursting money-
bags, had specially arrived from London and was on his way to
the headquarters of His Majesty.

I was the emissary ! Those doddering elders of the Bayonne
Junta had manufactured another canard.

When I explained to him that I was anxious to penetrate
to headquarters he smiled as he answered that it would be indis-
pensable, in the first instance, to discover where they were : the
Carlists, like the cab-drrvers on a rank, were presided over by the
genius of the unforeseen ; they could not always go where they
listed ; their movements were erratic and were as often regu-
lated by those of their opponents as by their own wishes.

" However," he added, " I think I can put you on the right
track for the field of honor."

" The field of honor?" I repeated.

"Yes, el campo de honoris the date of their location always.
Look here." And he showed me a diminutive sheet of a coarse,
yellowish paper crudely printed over with the type common in
rudimentary school-books and known as long primer. " This
is our court circular and official organ, El Cuartel Real. It is
brought out on the summit of that snowy pea> yonder, the Pena
de la Plata."

The Cuartel Real was a unique journal. At the head of the
opening column of the front page was the announcement that
His Most Catholic Majesty Charles VII. was in the enjoyment
of admirable health and spirits, for the which God be praised ;
and that his august spouse, Queen Margaret, with the royal
children, were in similar condition, for the which God be praised
likewise. This was a stereotyped paragraph. Then there
was the gazette of sundry appointments and promotions, a
proclamation by General Lizarraga, scraps relating to the for-
mation of troops of volunteers, and an account of the monarch

g 04 WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept.,

having taken the oath to respect thefueros, or privileges and im-
munities, of the Basque provinces, under the oak-tree of Guer-
nica, in presence of a distinguished company, amongst whom
figured " Don Guillermo Leader, Irlandese."

" Oh ! " said the young Irishman in answer to my amazed in-
terrogatory glance, " we have not only our organ at the press,
but our bands, our ambulance corps, our artillery it is a treat to
hear Lizarraga yelling ' Ar tiller ia al f rente] when up trot two
mules dragging a pair of mountain-guns ; no matter, we took them
from the enemy and even our cuirassiers." And here Leader
laughed. *' The bare thought of those cuirassiers tickles me. We
captured four of a crack corps of those nondescript Republicans
of the south, and forthwith some of our fellows donned their
shirts of steel. They were half a size too large for them, but that
only added to the effect as the chicos clattered and jingled along
the rough stones of a village street. But it was too much for
me to see cuirassiers with alpargatas * on instead of jack-boots."

At this moment the landlord, in the white cap and apron
which are the livery of the culinary department, rushed in and
said Monsieur Sheehan was coming up the street.

Another Irishman, and from Cork too a tanned and freckled
stripling, slender and wiry, with an alert step and erect bearing.
He was covered with dust and perspiration, and was evidently
off a tiresome tramp, although he bore himself with an affecta-
tion of freshness as he neared the end of his journey.

" Mr. Smith Sheehan," said Leader, " formerly of the Ponti-
fical Army. A countryman of ours, Sheehan. How comes it
that you are back so soon ? What news ? "

" Good and bad."

"How! Dissensions between the provinces? Santa Cruz
on the hills again ? Are we beaten ? "

"No, not that. The cause is going ahead. There is no
doubt that we have taken Estella, and Dorregaray is carrying all
before him in Catalonia."

" Hooray ! " shouted Leader, and the Scotchman feebly joined
in. " How is Walton ? "

" Better than we, I trust," sighed Sheehan as he dropped into
a chair. " Walton is dead. I shall never forgive myself."

" Dead ! Dios mios ! But what had you to do with it ? "

" It was my fault," said Sheehan. " One of us had to come
back. Why did I not force him ? When he won the toss I was
sure he would have chosen to return, he was so anxious to hear

* The sandals of twisted rope worn by the Basque mountaineers.

1 884.] WITH THE CARLISTS. 805

from his mother ; but he insisted on remaining with the ckicos,
and I had to do duty as letter-carrier. He was shot the follow-
ing night, leading an attack on a post held by the Guardia Civil,
and his body remained for three hours in the open between as-
sailants and defenders while they exchanged fire. He had none
to close his eyes ; his litany for the dying was the ping of rifles ;
and I had not even the melancholy satisfaction of seeing his
corpse or cutting off a lock of his hair to send to his mother.
How shall I break the news to her? "

" He died a brave man's death," said Leader, "and I do not
see that you are to blame. It would have been your lot if the
other side of the coin had turned up."

" The fortune of war," remarked the Scotchman sententiously,
and we emptied our wine-glasses to the sentiment, " Peace to his
soul ! "

Episodes such as this were not infrequent in that civil war,
which campaigners of the fireside were wont to sneer at. If
there were seldom engagements on a large scale, guerrilla-fight-
ing was continuously going on, and the list of casualties was
quietly swelling to an aggregate which ought to have satisfied
the amateur blood-drinkers in their most feverish spasm of thirst.
It was the usage in England to talk of a Carlist conflict slight-
ingly as " another case of a mule killed," as if the importance of
a struggle were to be estimated by loss of lives alone. If the
march to Magdala were to be appraised by the butcher's bill,
where would its prestige be ?

The following day, which was a Saturday, Leader proposed
that we should cross the mountain on foot to the hamlet of Vera,
which nestled in a valley on the Spanish side through which the
Bidassoa flowed ; and the proposal precisely ran in the groove of
my desires. I was anxious to have a preliminary look at these
Carlists, of whom we had been hearing so much, and to acquire
some knowledge of the lie of the land. We started in the cool
of the morning, our courier-bags well supplied with provand
by the care of Maria del Pilar. After a trudge of some five
hours, by craggy by-roads, through a plantation, and thence up-
ward by a zigzag bridle-path to a lonely, undulating plateau
on a spur of the Pyrenees a plateau where the grass was green
and succulent if short, and beautiful ferns relieved the harshness
of odd, moss-covered boulders lying about irregularly, as if they
had been cast by Titans at play we came to a dense thicket.
From this yet another craggy by-path led by an almost sheer
descent to Vera. It was a straggling hamlet, the most imposing

WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept.,

building in which was the white-washed, barn-like church. Don
Guillermo was cordially welcomed by the pastor, who gave us
beds for the night, was grateful for the French newspapers
which we had brought him, and imparted with glistening eye the
tidings that a cargo of arms had been adroitly landed near Pa-
sages, in spite of the cruisers of the Madrid usurpers, and that
they would be distributed after Mass next day in the churchyard
to the volunteers of the Marquis de Valdespina.

11 You will see a character in Valdespina," whispered Leader.
" He is the very image of Dora's Don Quixote a gaunt, vel-
lum-faced, lantern-jawed giant. He has an illustrious reputation
for bravery stands unconcerned 'mid a hail of bullets. But,
'pon my conscience, I think the secret of it is, he never hears
them whizzing by his ears. He is as deaf as a tortoise."

The redoubtable marquis answered to my friend's description.
His dress was like that of his men a loose, dark woollen jacket
and light linen trousers ; indeed, in garb and accoutrements there
was nothing to distinguish him from them, except that his boina
the flat, peakless Carlist cap, somewhat like a Scottish scone was
adorned with a gold tassel, and that his trousers were stuffed
into boots, and that he carried a sword by his side and a revolver
in his girdle. But 'there was that in his mien which bespoke
the patrician, even although he were disguised in rags. The
volunteers were of every possible arms-bearing age, from the
boy of fifteen to the veteran of seventy, but all were strong,
hardy, deep-chested, bow-legged as mountaineers will be, broad-
shouldered, if under-sized, and all had their weather-beaten faces
glorified by the blaze of enthusiasm. They were gleesome as
children at the gift of a new toy at receiving their weapons.
Uniform they had none this was but an inchoate regiment ;
their only distinctive badge was the scarlet boina, but it was
easy to perceive that here was the raw material of effective
troops.

We returned to St. Jean de Luz the next evening, and were
informed that a strange craft was lying off Socoa, a fishing-vil-
lage to the left of the inlet. As the sun rose on Tuesday
Leader took a survey of the vessel from a telescope, shut it up,
and, turning to me, said, with a shrewd twinkle of intelligence :
11 Some mysteries are clear to me now. I think I know where
the arms we saw handed over to Valdespina's chicos pame from.
Be ready for a walk after breakfast."

The walk brought us, by a goat-path on a ledge of the cliffs,
to Socoa, where we hailed a boat to take us to the strange craft.

1884.] WITH THE CARLISTS. 807

She was a shapely screw-yacht, and we could read Reina Mar-
garita on her stern.

" That used to be the Deerhound" said Leader. " That is
the identical yacht that picked up the survivors of the Alabama
after her duel with the Kearsarge off Cherbourg. She is now in
the service of Charles VII., although, for reasons, she does not
show his flag, and her mission is to smuggle arms and ammuni-
tion to the ever-faithful forces of Legitimacy."

It was even so. The yacht had been purchased by some
wealthy supporters of Carlism in England and France, was
manned with a picked crew of British tars (all Catholics), and
was commanded by Captain Travers, an ex-officer of the East
Indian navy. He, too, was a native of Cork. These Corko-
nians have a knack of turning up everywhere. But the real
head of the expedition, the directing spirit and medium of inter-
communication with the Carlist leaders, was Charles Edward
Stuart, Count of Albany, who boasted that he was the last lineal
descendant 'of the luckless house. His face did not belie the
boast. The Stuart pedigree was to be traced in every linea-
ment. He was a perfervid Legitimist, one of the Cathelineau
and Charette stamp, and had held the rank of major in the
Austrian cavalry.

The captain and the count were not on the best of terms. The
enforced fellowship of a cramped cabin had developed little an-
tagonisms, and thus it came to pass that when the captain was
below the count was generally on- deck, and vice versa ; and when
both happened to be on deck together the one paced backward
and forward on the port side, while the other made his brief
promenade to starboard. By tacit consent there was a truce as
we clambered up the sides, and both extended us hearty greet-
ing. Leader was personally known to the count, and my name
and mission were accepted as passports to confidence. The
Reina Margarita so called in honor of the wife of Don Carlos
was, indeed, engaged in the hazardous venture of blockade-run-
ning, and her log had been fairly prosperous so far. She was a
fast boat, Travers was a neck-or-nothing skipper, and she had
with her the most wary pilot on that seaboard. The best ships
of the Spanish navy had been seized by the Intransigentes at
Carthagena or were employed watching them, so that it is no
great matter for astonishment that the swift and tricky Reina
Margarita, run by men with their heart in the work, could out-
distance and mystify the clumsy coast-guard craft from San Se-
bastian and Santander.

WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept.,

' "We are the Artful Dodger of the seas," said the count.
" We have dodged them over and over, and will again, with
God's help."

To my inquiry as to how the yacht could manage to return
so speedily with a second cargo after she had discharged a first,
the count replied that it might be just possible that a large ves-
sel was loitering about outside, and that this was capital weather
for transshipment of surplus stores. The bay was smooth as a
mill-pond. As we bade him farewell he pressed us to take a
cruise with him, and I made a half-promise that I would after
my return from the "field of honor," when, perhaps, I might
have some anecdotes to tell that might enliven the trip.

" By-by, gentlemen ! " he cried as he leaned over the bul-
warks. "Look out for squalls shortly." Travers lifted his
gold-banded cap in salute, and then the two devoted adherents
of the royal cause resumed hostilities and paced opposite sides
of the deck with haughty taciturnity.

The Scotchman, M , suggested that, as I had seen the

Carlists, it would be as well if I would accompany him on a
jaunt to Irun to have a glimpse at their opponents. Next day
we hired a vehicle at a frontier village, and drove by a long de-
tour, rendered necessary by the destruction of a bridge over the
Bidassoa, to Irun, the first Spanish town on the railway from
Paris to Madrid.

Our credentials were demanded at the gates. A document
emblazoned with a couple of engraved escutcheons and covered
with numerous visa stamps and signatures procured me much

respect, albeit not a line of it was understood. But M was

viewed askance. He was known to be on familiar terms with
prominent Carlists in St. Jean de Luz, and had no right to thrust
himself into the enemy's camp. A miguelete (local name for the
militia) jumped into the carriage and accompanied us into the

town. A French nobleman from Hendaya who knew M

intervened in his favor, and he was set. free on his solemn pro-
mise that he would return to France as soon as the horses were
baited and had a rest ; but he was " shadowed " all the time he
was in Irun. The town was virtually in a state of siege ; every-
body was in uniform, the walls had been pierced with loopholes,
the windows of the municipality were piled with sand-bags, rifle-
pits had been dug outside the gates, and there had been a rude
attempt to throw up a redoubt. While we were moving about a
bugle sounded the alarm, the organized civilians snatched up their
arms, and a company of cazadores, or sharpshooters of the regular

1884.] WITH THE CARLISTS. 809

army, came doubling up the street. We followed them outside
the further gate, and hardly had the soldiers, in their bluish coats,
formed upon the side of an eminence when a few puffs of smoke
rose from behind a hedge far in the valley below. The town
gates Avere forthwith shut behind us ! This was awkward. The
Carlists might be meditating an attack in force. I had no par-
ticular bias on either side; but M , who was a strong sympa-
thizer with the Carlist cause would it not be an embarrassing
irony of fate if he were to be knocked over by a stray bullet
from his friends ? The migueletes looked at him angrily, and it
was plain that if there were any gaps made in their ranks he
stood a chance of being maltreated, unless he took up a rifle
and made a pretence of potting a few Carlists. He calmly stood
his ground and awaited events. The migueletes, with the custom-
ary zeal of the amateur soldier, began banging away from the
cover of a wall at the position where they calculated the enemy
to be. But they saw nothing. I could see nothing through a
pair of powerful field-glasses. While the migueletes were wasting
powder the cazadores quietly stood at ease on the hillside. All
at once a corporal detached himself from their body and ap-
proached me. I was somewhat nervous until he presented me
his officer's compliments with a request that I would lend him
my glasses.

" With pleasure. I shall take them to him myself, in order to
explain how they are arranged for distances."

Was this a violation of my position as a benevolent neutral ?
Strictly, it may have been ; but I had no alternative. If I de-
clined I subjected myself to suspicion and the imputation of
churlishness ; and, besides, I knew that if the officer waxed Prus-
sian he could requisition the glasses and I had no remedy.

As I handed them to him he bowed courteously, and I lay
down on the turf a few yards in advance of his men. There
were more puffs of smoke from behind a hedge distant from that
from the screen of which they had fired before, and the migueletes
again* answered with a hap-hazard volley, which brought a return
in a spatter of shots from yet another direction. A few chips
were knocked off the wall behind which the migueletes stood, a
branch was cut from a tree, and the quick whirr of hurtling lead
could be heard overhead.

" Stand to attention," said the officer of cazadores coolly ;
" they are getting our range, scnor. Bah ! They should have
done that before."

The latter exclamation was aroused by the sight of some half-

g IO WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept.,

dozen of the bolder of the migueletes creeping stealthily as scouts
along the gripe of the road which led to the valley. The act was
daring, and, like many daring acts, was unattended with loss.
But from the moment they had caught our range the Carlists
did not fire another shot. When the scouts came back the gates
were reopened, and as the officer politely returned me my
glasses he remarked that the attack was a feint of some kind, and
that I must not be surprised if he had kept his men in reserve ;
for really he had to be considerate with them, they were so
harassed with heavy duty and frequent alarms.

M and I hastened from the place as soon as we had the

horses put to, and did not exchange a congratulation until we
were well within the French borders.

As we sat on a bench that night in front of the hotel, indo-
lently listening to the drowsy plash of the wavelets, Maria del
Pilar slipped a note into Leader's hand, which he read by the
light of a wax vesta. " The Artful Dodger has been at it again,"
he cried exultingly.

The pretended attack on Irun had been^made in order to
divert the attention of the enemy from the spot where pack-
mules and bullock-wagons had been massed to receive the long-
expected cases of Remingtons and boxes of ammunition con-
signed to Charles VII. by favor of the Count of Albany. The
tricky little Reina Margarita had successfully run another cargo,
contraband of war !

But long as the pitcher goes to the well, it is sure to be
broken at last. -The yacht was boarded by the captain of a
Spanish gunboat at the mouth of the Adour, off Bayonne, and
^ taken in tow to San Sebastian, where it remained a trophy for
months under the guns of the historic citadel, from one of whose
casemates the count and the captain had a pathetic view of their
bonnie skimmer of the seas. It transpired that they anchored, as
they thought, in French waters ; but somehow or other they erred
and were out of the mare clausum by half a cable's length, and
the Spaniard, interpreting international law to suit himself,
seized on them and escorted them off. I visited them in cap-
tivity ; they were well treated and had both been originally com-
mitted to the same cell, but, at their own request, had been as-
signed separate ones. The feud was still hot; communion in
suffering was as powerless to quench it as partnership in danger.

Having had a foretaste of what was to be experienced in
the Carlist country, and having gathered information as to what
was most needful there, I resolved to make an essay to reach

1884.] WITH THE CARLISTS. 811

headquarters, then, I learned, at Estella, in Navarre. To that
end I bought a horse at Bayonne, which necessitated, I after-
wards discovered, the purchase of two other beasts of burden,
one for my servant, the other for sumpter purposes. Crossing
the Pyrenees again to Vera, we proceeded by the valley of
Elizondo to a ford which brought us to Echalar, and there I was
directed by the pastor to go towards Tolosa, as the main body of
the Royalists were investing that town. Broadly speaking, the
majority of the natives of the larger towns (save Estella) were
partisans of the Madrid government, and the population of the
villages and rural districts were to a unit enthusiastically Carlist.
As a consequence the forces of the Pretender were posted on
every movement of the enemy with magnetic quickness by self--
appointed spies ; the women and children constituted themselves
into an intelligence department. The instant tidings came that
a government column was approaching, cattle and provisions
were spirited away to the mountains ; but when the Carlists were
at hand the beggared village brimmed with plenteousness,
larders were full, and nothing was too good for the boys. In the
circuit of hills around Tolosa I came across the bulk of the Car-
list forces. As I am penning, not a history of the campaign, but
some desultory reminiscences, I am impelled to give a short
account of some of the Carlist chieftains I met at this siege in
miniature.

Olio, the most capable of these, was in command of the con-
tingent from Navarre, the flower of the flock. He was a full-
bodied, gray-haired veteran with a fighting skull. He had served
in the regular army under Isabella, as also had Lizarraga, and
wore the uniform of a general, the only difference from those of
the same grade in the army of the motley Madrid government
being that his headgear was the tasselled boina instead of the
kepi. The boina was universal, red being the prevailing color
for the foot and white for the cavalry. Olio had been in banish-
ment in Paris when the message came to him from Bayonne to
hie him at once to the frontier, for that the harvest was ripening
and the king was sure to have his own again. The proud old
exile had not the wherewithal to defray the railway expenses to
the south, and asked his nephew, Joaquin Zubirri, to write a let-
ter of excuse, saying he was ill, or absent, or was tied to Paris
by engagements which it was impossible honorably to break.
Zubirri, taking his own counsel, wrote to the Junta, saying
his uncle's sword was at the king's service, but he lacked the
money for the journey to Spain. The Junta sent a check, and

Si2 WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept.,

the gruff soldier nearly cried when he received it, so regret-
ful was he that the former letter had been mailed. Zubirri, with
simulated surprise, suddenly exclaimed that it was in his pocket
still ; he had forgotten to post it. " How providential ! " said
Olio ; " then I can go where my heart guides me." The splen-
did old paladin died in less than a year after I met him, of a
shell-wound received on the " field of honor," but his last mo-
ments were not embittered by the thought that the flag he rode
under was to be beaten to the mire. The horizon was rosy with
hopeful promise over the avenue to Madrid then.

Lizarraga, who was the general of the Gtiipuzcoans, was a
dapper individual, sprightly and talkative, yet almost puritani-
cally pious, and imbued with a profound respect for the obser-
vances of religion and an austere resolve to make others respect
them, too. A proclamation of his was to be read on the church-
door of St. Esteban, menacing with a flogging those who absented
themselves from Mass without a proper excuse. He was constant-
ly pitted against Loma, an old companion-in-arms, and it was no
uncommon thing for Lizarraga to occupy one night the bed
which his rival had occupied the night previous. They were
wont to leave bantering messages for each other with their host.
" Ha ! ha ! my dear Sefior Loma, we will give you your chocolate
to-morrow morning," said Lizarraga gaily to me as he stood on
a point commanding Tolosa. This was his waggish manner of
announcing that he was about to bombard the place with that
famous artillery of his after due warning, of course. But the
bombardment did not come off. Moriones was speeding to'the
relief of his beleaguered comrade, and the Carlists had to beat a
retreat at chocolate hour. This is one of the charms of guerrilla-
fighting : it is not safe to unsaddle your horse, for an attack may
be made at any moment, and the mess-tin, out of which you were
already in imagination ladling the olla podrida, may be a football
for a satirical intruder who is restrained by no sense of courtesy
from interfering with your comfort. Lizarraga is now, I under-
stand, an inmate of a monastery at Rome, and can eat his frugal
repasts in peace.

The cavalry was rather a scratch pack, and was principally
mounted on chargers taken from the enemy. There was not
more than a squadron, but the want was not felt, as the terrain is
unsuited for horse tactics, and there was little need to reconnoitre
and less to go on foraging expeditions. The cavalry comman-
der was one Ferula, formerly an advocate a dandy who invented
an elaborate hussar-jacket for himself. He may have known no-

1884] WITH THE CARLISTS. 813

thing of the true use of the eyes of an army, but he had go in
him and made a capital partisan leader. He was a strong, strap,
ping type of humanity, the sort of parlor-hero who delights in
bending a poker on his fore-arm, and was invaluable when we
were trying to prize open our tins of preserved dainties. There
were quite a number of gunners, more than there were guns ;
but these, if few, were admirably handled, the servants being all
ex-officers of artillery. Every gentleman in the corps had re-
signed when General Hidalgo was appointed master of the
ordnance by Amadeo ; and their resignation was accepted in
block. Many of them came north in disgust. It may be well to
explain that the artillery regiment is the one organization in
Spain where esprit de corps is strong, and that the wholesale
secession was to be attributed less to political motives than to an
uneasy feeling that Hidalgo had been privy to a plot to mas-
sacre brother-officers on the occasion of the mutiny at the St.
Gil barracks at Madrid.

The rank and file of the Carlists was composed mainly of
peasants ; the regiments were territorially raised, and some were
better uniformed and more efficient than others, but on the
whole the drill was simple but effective, and discipline was well
maintained. There was a sprinkling of ex-Papal Zouaves and
some deserters from the French army amongst them.

On quitting the outskirts of Tolosa, Olio's division took up
the route by forced marches for Estella. There I saw Don Car-
los, a tall, dark, grave personage with the Bourbon face and lips.
He bore himself with dignity, and struck the observer as if he
were some imposing portrait by Velasquez which had been vivi-
fied and had stepped from its frame. His putative majesty kept
up as near an approach to regal state as he could : held recep-
tions, had his personal staff and a bodyguard of nobles, Spanish,
French, Belgian, and Austrian, who equipped themselves, were
magnificently mounted, and fought and revelled soberly rev-
elledlike their crusading sires. They had one weakness : when
there was a lull in the fighting, and they could obtain furlough,
they could not resist the temptation of scampering to Biarritz to
test their luck at. the gaming-tables. I spent some of the happiest,
most animated months of my life in the society of these gladsome
and courtly chevaliers. They were no degenerate samples of the
modernized chivalry, as the stout legions they cheered on in
many an onset were no false types of an old-fashioned and right
genuine democracy. I moved amongst them, on the march and
in their billets, at work and at play, and made it my business to

3 I4 WITH THE CARLISTS. [Sept.,

study them ; and the result is that I can aver that these Spanish
republicans (for such in effect they were) who had taken to the
field in vindication of royalty were sociable, cheerful, frank, and
hospitable. Politics they had none, from the ward-meeting 1 coign
of judgment ; they were the sons of those who had fought when
Ramon Cabrera flourished, and to them the sons of the Chris-
tinos were " vermin." To discharge a cartridge for " Charlie over
the water," or in Spain itself, was a heritage of family, a sacred
duty. They had the Celtic personal affection for their sovereign,
but on one point were they determined : not even to replace him
on the throne of his ancestors would they submit to have a single
plank torn from the beloved platform of their fueros. The con-
federate Irish of Kilkenny took as their motto : Hiberni unanimes
pro Deo, Rege et Grege. The Carlists, with a nicer sense of the
fitness of things, put country before king. The inscription on
their battle-banners was Dios, Patria y Rey.

These Spaniards of the north are a sturdy race, with grit and
grand qualities sober, virtuous, contented with little, honest to
scrupulousness, passionately fond of native land, and loyal as
dogs to those whom they esteem. . They have their faults, but
they are the faults of brave men, not slaves. As soldiers they do
not get in Europe half the credit they deserve. They are inured
to hardships and fatigue, and will cover the most extraordinary
distances without a murmur are, in short, the beau idfal of light
infantry. A lump of bread and an onion, with a drink of water,
or a pull at the bota of Val de Pefias if. they are in luck, will be
to them a full ration of beef and beer, and more. At the close
of a blistering march, as they loll on the sward, the thrum of
a guitar will set them singing in chorus or galvanize the most
jaded amongst them into activity and send him spinning merrily
round in the national jota. There is no lassitude in the Spaniard
of the north. He may be ignorant, but he does not seek to pass
bad money ; he may be superstitious, but he is no atheist ; he
may not be particular to have his tub every morning, but his
soul is clean ; he may be vengeful, but he is no hypocrite ; and
touching these charges of dirtiness and vengefulness, I am
bound to say, in all conscience, I was never ushered into a
bed in the Carlist country that spotless sheets were not
spread thereon, and I never saw a navaja unsheathed except at
meals. This in justice to the beslandered men of Alava, Gui-
puzcoa, Viscaya, and Navarre, especially heroic Navarre. That
they can fight it is almost insulting to affirm. The French
know it, and the Spaniards of the languid, intriguing south.

1884.] THE ORATORY IN LONDON. 815

whom they held at bay for years, know it. With the blithe au-
dacity of fanaticism for there are white fanatics, as there are
olive and black Carlists, as there are Pathans and Soudanese
they can plunge on naked bayonets, and, with the grim fortitude
of the same fanaticism, they can die with set teeth.

THE ORATORY IN LONDON.

THE solemn opening of the new church, or basilica, of the
Oratory of St. Philip Neri at South Kensington, on the Feast of
St. Mark, 1884, has been recognized as an event of especial im-
portance even by the Protestant world in England. It may,
indeed, be regarded as one of those " great facts " which become
landmarks in history and serve more forcibly than any written
record to chronicle the progress of events. What English Catho-
lic fifty years ago could, in the boldest vagaries of a sanguine
imagination, have pictured the scene which has just been wit-
nessed ? In broad day, in the metropolis of Protestant England,
a Catholic church of magnificent aspect and proportions has been
publicly opened, under the reverential and admiring gaze of
eager crowds of non-Catholic spectators, who vied with each
other for the privilege of gaining admittance to the ceremony
among the serried ranks of once abhorred " papists " and " idola-
ters." Fifty years ago the Catholic Church in England was
" but just emerging from the catacombs," as Cardinal Man-
ning (who fifty years ago had not joined the church) truly ob-
served in his admirable discourse at the inauguration of the
new Oratory. Fifty years ago the highest functions were cele-
brated under the humblest roofs, and the august ceremonials of
religion were, for the most part, only surrounded by aspects of
poverty and meagreness, like the shrouded Godhead in the lowly
obscurity of Nazareth. Then the priests of holy church were
objects of indignant scorn or insolent contempt. Then the vest-
ments of the prelate and the habit of the religious were prohibited
by law ; and if by chance one of the holy sisterhoods who devot-
ed themselves to charity ventured beyond the threshold of her
domicile, her appearance was hailed with brutal insults or heart-
less mockery. To be a " Roman Catholic " was then regarded
as a matter of opprobrium, and it required no small amount of
courage, in a mixed society, to avow one's self as such, or to ven-

THE ORATORY IN LONDON. [Sept.,

ture upon making the sign of the cross, or to persist in refusing
meat on Friday. Amid such painful and trying surroundings the
present and the passing generations grew up grew up to appre-
ciate with intenser zeal the hidden glory of their holy creed.
Each one individually felt (as was happily said by a worthy son
of holy church), when mingling unnoticed among the crowd of
unbelievers, " like a prince in disguise." But the time of proba-
tion and misconception has now, God be thanked ! passed away
passed away, as we may fain believe, utterly and for ever. The
stanch descendants of the Catholics of old, who, through good
report and ill report, have persevered and been faithful, have,
during this last half-century, had their ranks swelled and quad-
rupled by the zealous band of enthusiastic converts who have
flocked to the standard of Christ ffom among all classes and con-
ditions of the English people. As it was of old with the blood
of martyrs, the spirit of persecution is ever fertile in bringing
forth a fruitful harvest in the vineyard of the Lord. The Catho-
lic Church has now become a power in the land a power
whose influence it is impossible to ignore ; and that salutary and
life-giving influence, in these days of infidelity, has not failed
to obtain its recognition in the best and holiest sympathies of
Christian England, once "the island of saints " and " the dower
of Mary."

Such thoughts of exultant and grateful emotion must have
thrilled the hearts of the majority of those who took part in the
gorgeous ceremonial on St. Mark's day, 1884. It was no small
privilege to kneel, on that occasion, under the dome of the gor-
geous basilica; to observe its magnificent altars, richly decorated
with the triumphs of art at home and abroad ; its polished
columns of marbles of rare beauty ; its side-chapels, full of devo-
tional charm (each a study in itself) ; its goodly space and noble
architecture, which recall the glorious achievements of the Roman
basilicas. It was no mean privilege to behold in these later days
that grand procession of ecclesiastics a procession unwitnessed
in England since the days of the " Reformation." Sixteen mitred
bishops and abbots, with two hundred priests and religious (each
in the habit of his particular order), followed by the officiating
bishop the Bishop of Nottingham moved in solemn procession
from the sacristy down the side-aisle and up the centre of the
church, to take their places at the high altar, and when the
Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, in full pontificals, had been
conducted to the throne reserved for him, no fewer than eighteen
mitred prelates were assembled within the sanctuary, "which

1884.3 THE ORATORY IN LONDON. 817

proved sufficiently spacious for even this exceptional occasion.
Meanwhile a choir of rare excellence poured forth the heart-
stirring strains of the " Ccelestis Urbs Jerusalem." But while
rejoicing with grateful exultation (and what Catholic heart could
do otherwise ?) in the jubilant triumph of what the cardinal truly
called " this unequalled work," fond memory was fain to turn
to that humble roof (to which also Cardinal Manning, who knew
it well, made touching allusion) where five-and-thirty years ago a
privileged band of happy converts worshipped together in the
first London Oratory of St. Philip Neri. This was in King Wil-
liam Street, Strand ; not the more pretentious thoroughfare of
the same name in the City, well known to passengers by the
foreign boats, but an obscure by-street close to Charing Cross,
where in olden days, in the ages of faith, King Edward I. erected,
in the village of Charing, a cross to the memory of his wife,
Eleanora of Aquitaine (who sucked the poison from his wound in
the Holy Land). A fac-simile of this antique sculpture has been
recently placed in front of the Charing Cross railway station,
which, like so many other achievements of modern science and
civilization, is compelled, even in its very name, to bear witness
to the faith of other times, and to commemorate, in an age of
unbelief, the sacred emblem of the Redemption.

In King William Street, Strand, in 1849, the London oratory
of St. Philip Neri was first established. A long passage and a
few broad wooden stairs led the way to a large room, composed
of two or three rooms thrown into one, adapted for a chapel of
goodly size, but of poorest materials and most ordinary construc-
tion. The walls were whitewashed, and the fittings, for the most
part, were of painted deal ; but, like the heavenly Jerusalem cele-
brated in the consecration hymn, that humble church was built
with " living stones " (viventibus saxis) of priceless excellence.
Those plaster walls and that lowly roof re-echoed, time and
again, the soul-stirring eloquence, so full of devotional sweetness
and persuasive earnestness, that lingered for evermore in the
grateful memory of those who listened to Father Wilfrid Faber,
who, while he spoke of the impassioned fervor which charac-
terized St. Philip Neri, seemed, -in the loving unction of his
words and the ineffable tenderness of his compassion, to emulate
in his own person the " sweet-faced " saint whom he described.

There also it was that an admiring audience, composed of

the learned of the land, would 'listen spell-bound to the clear

argumentation and convincing logic of him who had been the

pride of Oxford's intellect, the erstwhile scholar of Oriel Col-

VOL, xxxix. 52

Sis THE ORATORY IN LONDON. [Sept.,

lege that Oriel window through which a flood of heaven's
own light had illumined the spiritual darkness of the university !
It was in King William Street that Father John Henry New-
man delivered the celebrated discourses which so cogently ex-
plained away the Difficulties of Anglicanism' 1 in the clear Saxon of
his silver style " ; and there, occasionally, the worshipper at early
Mass might recognize, perhaps with some surprise, the spare
figure of the future cardinal reverently serving the Mass of one
of his brother Oratorians. Daily, and hourly it may be said, the
boarded floor of the old Oratory that oasis of devotion in the
desert of worldly traffic was thronged with faithful worshippers,
ranging from the family of the premier duke to the little bare-
footed exiles of Erin, together with the ever-increasing troop of
countless converts. A more than ordinary bond of spiritual
brotherhood seemed to unite the members of that devout congre-
gation, as the tones of the "'Oratory Hymns," by the poet of
modern Catholicism, floated in the air glorious hymns, the very
heart-utterances of loving devotion, touching in their childlike
simplicity, yet glowing with seraphic fire ; hymns which are now
familiar on all lips and in all hearts, and which have reverberated
throughout the length and breadth of the Catholic world. How
fervently, how gratefully did the crowd of new believers re-echo
that tender, plaintive chorus of "St. Philip's Penitents," which
bears the impress, in every line, of the poet, the Catholic, and
the convert !

" Sweet St. Philip ! old friends want us

To be with them as before :
And old times, old habits haunt us,
Old temptations press us sore.
Help in Mary ! Joy in Jesus !
Sin and self no more shall please us ;
We are Philip's gift to God."

Conspicuous among the fathers of the old Oratory who have
since gone to their reward may be recalled the calmly earnest,
free, and energetic, almost ubiquitous, form of Father Dalgairns
(lather superior in succession to Father Faber) and the genial,
benignant features of the youthful Father Hutchison (the " dear
Father Antony " to whom Faber dedicates one of his books), so
full of ardent religious zeal and practical philanthropy so full
of good works and so early called away. It was under Father
Hutchison's direction that the ragged schools were opened in
Dunn's Passage, Holborn, at a late hour in the evening, for the
benefit of the little orange-girls and flower-sellers who were

1884.] THE ORATORY IN LONDON. 819

busied all day with their perambulating trade in the streets of
the metropolis. At that time board schools and compulsory
education were unknown, anci these city Arabs willingly flocked
together to the crowded night-school, where, under the guidance
of some good nuns from the convent in Queen Square, assisted
by the voluntary services of members of the congregation of the
Oratory, they were enabled to acquire the first rudiments of
knowledge. Sweet it was and sadly touching to watch the little
group, with their ragged attire and worn and dust-begrimed
faces, and to listen to the heartfelt fervor with which those
childish voices swelled the chorus of some favorite hymn.

" I was wandering and weary

When my Saviour came unto me ;
For the ways of sin grew dreary,

And the world had ceased to woo me ;
And I thought I heard him say
As he came along his way :

O silly souls ! come near me ;
My sheep should never fear me :
I am the Shepherd true."

Little they thought, poor children, as their untutored voices
lent a plaintiveness to the air, how full of tender meaning were
tjie words their perhaps unconscious lips repeated. Poor, wan-
dering lambs gathered together from the very brink of destruc-
tion to that haven of rescue ! Where are they now ? Scat-
tered here and there many of then^ no doubt, driven by the
pressure of hard times across the "Atlantic, where they have
found, God be praised ! the old religion giving life and strength
to the -New World. But wheresoever their footsteps may have
led them, very surely their kindliest memories will turn grate-
fully to the old school-room provided for them by the sons of
St. Philip, the " saint of the overworked and poor," as St.
Philip's own poet laureate has justly called him.

" If ever there were poor man's saint,

That very saint art thou ;
If ever time were fit for thee,
Dear saint ! that time is now."

In one of Father Faber's spiritual books (those wonderfully
practical guides to heaven through the tortuous labyrinth of
every-day life books wherein, by some providential forethought,
the wisdom of the serpent serves to protect the innocence of the
dove) in the eighth chapter of Growth in Holiness occurs the

g20 THE ORATORY IN LONDON. [Sept.,

following passage, which gives a forcible proof of the yearning,
compassionate love with which the first superior of the London
Oratory regarded the great city wherein his lot was cast :

" How one comes to love this huge London when God has thrown us
into it as our vineyard ! The monster ! it looks so unmanageable, and it is
positively so desperately wicked, so hopelessly magnificent, so heretically
wise and proud after its own fashion. Yet after a fashion it is good also.
Such a multitudinous remnant who have never bowed the knee to Baal,
such numbers seeking their way to the light, such hearts grace-touched, so
much secret holiness, such supernatural lives, such loyalty, mercy, sacri-
fice, sweetness, greatness ! St. Vincent Ferrer preached in its streets, and
Father Colombiere in its mews. Do not keep down what is good in it,
only because it is trying to be higher. Help people to be saints. Not all
who ask for help really wish it when it comes to be painful. But some do.
Raise ten souls to detachment from creatures and to close union with God,
and what will happen to this monster city? Who can- tell ? Monster as it
is, it is not altogether unamiable. It means well often, even when it is
cruel. Well-meaning persons are unavoidably cruel. Yet it is often as
helpless and as deserving of compassion as it is of wrath and malediction.
Poor Babylon ! would she might have a blessing from her unknown God,
and that grace might find its way even into "her Areopagus ! "

Not mere words these ; not mere empty aspirations ! Zeal-
ously indeed have the sons of St. Philip done their part in la-
boring to achieve this beneficent result. London has been the
chosen field of their work, and " poor Babylon " has not proved
ungrateful. For five years the community carried on their mis-
sionary toils in the restricted chapel-house in King William
Street. Then in 1854 the'Oratory was removed to Brompton,
or South Kensington, as that populous portion of outer London
is now designated.

The removal from the dear old tenement was a wrench to the
heart-strings of many, but in the large new church there could
again be recognized the venerated and much-beloved Calvary,
with its figures of painted wood, embalmed by the tears and
prayers and kisses of thousands upon thousands of devout and
sorrowing worshippers ; the well-known pictures of " sweet-
faced " St. Philip and other familiar favorites adorned the side-
chapels, and the same confessionals invited the same penitents to
lay down the heavy burden of care. The emigrants from King
William Street still found themselves at " home," and " the
Brompton Oratory " in its turn was crowded with a devoted
congregation, while its beneficent influences extended all around,
like the wide-spreading shelter of the foliage from the mustard-
seed. The church, which from the first was regarded as tern-

1884.] THE ORATORY IN LONDON. 821

porary, was of goodly size, but long and narrow, and possessed
few architectural attractions. It held its own, however, as one
of the most popular of the Catholic churches of the metropolis.
Schools and convents, hospitals and charities, grew up around it
under its fostering auspices, and the brothers of the Little Ora-
tory drew together for zealous work and Christian companion-
ship a noble body of Catholic youth from all ranks and classes.

Twenty years passed away twenty years of fruitful labor
and once more the harvest was overflowing, " heaped up,
pressed down, and running over." In the June of 1874, ten
years ago, the project of a new Oratory, to be erected upon
the site of the then existing church, began to be seriously enter-
tained. An iron building of large dimensions and elegant ap-
pearance was accordingly provided for the religious worship
of the congregation. Architects vied with each other in fur-
nishing designs for the new building, and in 1878 the plan of
Mr. Herbert Gribble was selected from forty others. On the
Feast of SS. Peter and Paul in 1880 the first stone of the pre-
sent edifice was laid by the Right Rev. Dr. Bagshawe, Bishop
of Nottingham, himself an Oratorian, who now, four years later,
has liad the happiness of consecrating the completed work.
The church was consecrated on the i6th of April, and solemn-
ly opened for public worship on the Feast of St. Mark, 25th
of April, 1884. This magnificent edifice, the largest Catholic
church at present (1884) in London, is two hundred and seventy
feet in length and one hundred and thirty feet wide ; it con-
tains no fewer than nine side-chapels ; the nave is fifty-one feet
in width and seventy-three in height, and the capacious dome
is one hundred and sixty feet above the ground. The cost of
the building has amounted to eighty thousand pounds, which
has been defrayed by the fathers themselves and by general
subscriptions. Conspicuous among the altars is that of the
Lady Chapel, which has been styled the gem of the church. It
comes from a Dominican church at Brescia, and was demolished
to enlarge a hospital. It is composed of the most beautiful
Italian marbles, exquisitely inlaid with variegated marbles and
precious stones, rock crystal, lapis-lazuli, mother-of-pearl, agate,
onyx, cornelian, and Val d'Arno green, representing cornucopias,
scroll-work, flowers, and birds. It is bordered with panels of
vases of flowers. It has four columns of the Corinthian order
in statuary marble, with recumbent figures of Isaias and Jere-
mias, and emblematic statues of Faith and Charity. The whole
is crowned by an angel descending with golden crown and palm-

822 KA THARINE. [Sept.,

branch. Among the side-chapels is one which measures sixty
feet by thirty, and can be used as a chapel of ease. It is happily
dedicated to St. Wilfrid, the patron saint of the revered Wil-
frid Faber. The altar of St. Philip's Chapel, composed of
Italian marbles of great beauty, is the generous gift of the first
of Catholic laymen, the Duke of Norfolk. The rising genera-
tion of Englishmen will, we may piously trust, see many other
and more magnificent churches 'rise to emulate the glorious
Catholic cathedrals of their forefathers ; but, conspicuous as the
first basilica of the Catholic revival in England in the nine-
teenth century, a place in history will be reserved for the Ora-
tory of St Philip Neri inaugurated on St. Mark's day in 1884.

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER X.

" A LETTER ? " said Kitty, seeing that unfamiliar object lean-
ing against a vase on the dining-room chimney-piece as she en-
tered, and walking quickly towards it.

" There ! " said Mrs. Danforth, " that came when I was set-
tling with the vegetable man about the tomatoes. I just looked
at the postmark and saw it was from Anna Germain, and after-
wards I forgot all about it. What does she say? "

Kitty had torn open the envelope and was glancing rapidly
down the page while her mother was speaking. She looked up
now with bright eyes and flushing cheeks.

"O mother!" she cried, "they want us all to come down
and spend this last fortnight before school begins, and fetch back
Anna with us. Shouldn't you like to go? Don't you think we
might ? Could father spare the time ? "

" I couldn't, for one," said Mrs. Danforth, with the little jerk
forward of the head she gave whenever she was minded to be
emphatic. " I've just been putting the cucumbers into brine this
morning, and Jones is going to bring both green and ripe toma-
toes to-morrow or next day. And there's the peaches and plums
they can't possibly be put off much longer. Hannah and I will
have our hands full for two weeks to come. I don't know
about father, but I don't believe he could get off either. Since

1884.] KATHARINE. 823

Deyo married this new wife he has been slacker and more unac-
countable than ever."

" Then I can't go, I suppose," said Kitty, with a fall in
her eager voice ; " father never likes to have me away from
home."

" Perhaps he wouldn't mind it so much just now. He was
saying, after you went out this morning, that you looked as if you
needed more fresh air than yo\i had been getting lately. I
should be well pleased to have you see the old place, for my
part. I was just about your age when I went for the first time,
and grandfather was an old, old man, upwards of ninety.
Straight as an arrow he was, too, and could read without glasses.
That was in the winter, but Tony and Becky had been down in
the July before. He was thirteen then and she was nearly
fifteen."

" I know," said Kitty. " Uncle Tony went out in the hay-
field, and Grandfather Germain was there with his scythe, like
Time in the primer. ' Do you know me, grandfather ? ' says
Tony; and 'Do you know yourself, young man?' says grand-
father, straightening up. Oh ! what a pity that people ever die.
Why can't they go on living and living until everybody that
wants to has seen them ? "

" He lived long enough," said her mother. " A hundred and
one years is all one would care to spend in this world, even if
they were as well and hearty as he was. He was built for long
life short, and square, and sturdy."

" Why, that is like my father," said Kitty.

" No, it isn't ; grandfather hadn't a short neck like his. Here
he comes now ; you can ask him about it."

Mr. Danforth, if not equally cheerful and reminiscent, was at
least equally amenable to his daughter's wishes. Katharine re-
membered later on, with a keen pang, the sort of wistful anxiety
to promote her pleasures which her father had shown of late,
and his haste now to expedite and so prolong her visit.

" If you can get her packed up this afternoon, mother," he
said, " I will take her with me to-morrow morning. One of us
has to be in New York by Wednesday at furthest, and this is
Monday. I meant Deyo to go, for I don't much like travelling
about alone this hot weather, but this will be the better plan. I
can spend to-morrow night at John's, see my man next day, and
take the boat home in the evening."

"Oh!" said Kitty, her face all smiles, "that would be de-
lightful. That is the way I would always like to do things

324 KATHARINE. [Sept.,

never dread troubles nor anticipate pleasures, but have them all
come on me of a sudden."

" Yes, you are your father's child all over," said Mrs. Dan-
forth. " You must have whatever you want right on the minute
or half the good of it is gone. Now, I like to think over things,
and plan them out, and get myself in shape for what is coming."

" But they never come the way you planned it, and then you
are disappointed."

"Kitty is like a young bear, with all her troubles before her,'*
said her father, looking fondly at the young face, all bright with
joyous expectation ; " she will learn some of these days that it is
only pleasant things that are all the pleasanter for coming unex-
pected. What do you say about it, mother? Can you get her
ready ? "

" There'd be no trouble so far as packing goes, for it is only
taking her clothes out of the drawers and closets and laying
them in a trunk. But it seems too sudden. Couldn't you go
next day just as well ? "

" I shouldn't go at all but for Kitty, but my business cannot
be put off. Either one or other of us must attend to that with-
out delay. I think I'll telegraph to Germain as I go back to the
mill after dinner, so that they may be on the lookout for us at
the station to-morrow afternoon."

" You are an awfully nice father," said Kitty, getting up to
give him a little hug and a kiss. " Whom do you think I saw at
the falls this morning ? Richard Norton. He is as tall as his
father and twice as broad, and he struck my mother with such
surprise that she immediately threatened to let down all my
frocks. / think she might buy me some new ones instead."

" I think we can afford to wait awhile yet before making a
woman of you," he answered. " I met the old man not long ago,
all bent and feeble, and looking as old again as he ought to at
his age. He told me the boy was coming soon. Make haste
now, this afternoon, and get everything done before I come
home. We must not have this last evening spoiled."

How long Katharine remembered that summer evening,
when for the last time she slipped wholly back into childish
ways and caressing confidences, and felt that sense of perfect
ease and security which belongs to the unbroken home-nest,
warmed by love and guarded by jealous probity ! They sat out
on the back piazza through the long twilight, the stars passing
westward overhead and growing bright as the clear darkness
deepened, and then paling again in the silver radiance of the

1884.] KATHARINE. 825

late-rising moon. Her mother, launched into the swift current
of memory by the associations connected with the approaching
visit, lingered over her recollections, and renewed in Katharine's
mind an old fancy which she expressed by saying that she felt
the roots of her own life striking deep into the past.

"I know all those things so well," she said, "that it seems as
if it were I who had lived through them all. But I can never
think of father as a little boy, even though I knew Grandmother
Danforth. Why have you always talked to me of things and
books, father, and never of people and of places ? You take me
on into the future, but mother always makes me feel as if I had
lived two or three lives already."

" Perhaps," he answered, " because I was living more in the
future than in the present when I was a lad, while your mother
has always taken each day as it came, on its own merits. But it
grows very late. Come in, now, daughter, and get the Book."

Katharine went back that night to the custom of her infancy,
kneeling beside her father's arm-chair while he prayed, and feel-
ing the weight of his tender hand upon her head as he com-
mended her to the Divine Goodness. And when they had fin-
ished reciting the " Our Father," which always ended family
prayers, he took her in his arms and looked long into her eyes
while he bade God bless her and gave her what she remembered
thereafter as their last farewell. For although they spent the
next day together, they talked of indifferent things, and when
they parted it was in the company of strangers.

CHAPTER XI.

<? No," said Anna ; " this is not the same house, of course.
You could hardly expect it, could you, considering that there
have been five generations of us Germains born on this farm ?
The old grandfather of all, as my mother used to say, came here
as soon as he could after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The great chimney and fireplace are all that is left of the first
house ; they form the end wall of the kitchen where the farm-
hands have their meals:"

" I should have wanted to build them into my best room,"
said Katharine ; " I love old things so."

" Everything is old here," returned her cousin, " even when
it is new. My father's father built this house upwards of sixty
years ago, but it has been altered and added on to since. But if
you are fond of old things I will take you down into the woods

8 2 6 KATHARINE. [Sept.,

back of the mill. There are first-growth pines there, and oaks
and beeches of unknown age. Our Huguenot ancestor came
from Normandy ; he had been steward or something of the sort
on a great estate near the mouth of the Seine, and his people had
belonged to the reformed religion for nearly a hundred years.
One of them was saved by the bishop of Lisieux in his own
house at the time of the St. Bartholomew massacre. You know
the Calvinists did not suffer quite so badly in Normandy as they
did in some other places. He preferred his religion to his
country and came away with the other exiles. I suppose he
must have feathered his nest pretty well beforehand, for he cer-
tainly did not come here with his pockets empty. And it seems
he took a fancy that this piece of woods, with the mill-stream
running through it of course it wasn't a mill-stream then, for
this was l the forest primeval ' was something like that around
the chateau at home, where he had been manager, and he kept
two or three acres of it uncut. We have made paths and cleared
away the underbrush, and it is really a very pretty place. We
will go there after dinner."

The two girls were returning in a pony-carriage from the
station, whither they had driven Mr. Danforth. It was still
early, and the pony was taking her ease along the road, not only
for the sake of Katharine's overflowing pleasure in the unfamiliar
country sights and sounds, but also to prolong the conversation
in which the cousins, so soon to be thrown into intimate com-
panionship, were making their preliminary essays at acquaint-
ance.

" There are so many of us at home," Anna had said as she
turned Molly's head in that direction ; " and everybody will want
a share of you as soon as we get back. We will take the long
road, which will have the double advantage of giving you a good
view of the river and securing a moderate amount of time to
ourselves. That is the worst thing about such a large family as
ours twelve of us there were originally, but two are married
now and two are dead. I was away a good deal before my
mother's death, with her folks. I went to school with my cousin
Lizzie. But I had to come home three years ago and help Mary
with the younger children. There was a baby then, but it died
the summer after mother. Now Mary is going to be married
next June to Jonas Asbell, who has the farm adjoining ours.
They have been engaged this long time. I must say I am sorry,
for her marriage means that I shall have to give up all my own
plans and devote myself to elder sisterhood for an indefinite

1 884.] KA THARINE. 827

time unless my father should take it into his head to marry
again. And that wouldn't be pleasant on some grounds, al-
though it would be convenient enough on others. So I am taking
advantage of this last year, and of a thousand dollars that
Aunt Anna left me some time ago, to go on as far as possible
with my studies. I began Latin with Lizzie, and I want to
take up French. There is no chance of anything of that sort
here."

" Do you like to study ? " asked Katharine. " I don't. I like
the results of it, but I should be very well pleased if there were
some way of absorbing knowledge through one's pores."

"I like it for itself," said Anna. " It gives me a sense of be-
ing very virtuous to work hard at something really important
not like this endless looking after dairies and milk-pans and
cheese-presses, and keeping the little ones out of mischief, which
all has to be done over again with every new day, and nothing
to show for it. I should have liked such a life as Lizzie Carew
is going to lead ; but here I am, tied hand and foot to the same
old treadmill of women's work in which my mother died."

" What is Lizzie going to do ? "

" She is preparing for the ministry."

" What? " exclaimed Katharine in a surprise which was half-
amusement.

" Yes ; Cousin Aaron, her eldest brother, was a Unitarian
minister. You know that mother's relatives are not orthodox
Friends any more ; they became Hicksites."

" No," said Kitty, " I don't know what a Hicksite is, nor
even what the original Quakers were."

" Well, they believed in private inspiration and the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, and worshipped without external forms, but
otherwise were orthodox. The Hicksites are just like them, ex-
cept that they do not believe in the divinity of Christ. Mother
was a Hicksite, as far as she was anything. I can remember as
a child the disputes that used to go on between her and father
and his folks. They were Presbyterians, you know, and my fa-
ther used to be very set in his ways at first, and there was con-
stant trouble. But when my Aunt Sally went mad about pre-
destination, and hanged herself over the balusters, it gave him
such a shock that I think he must have forced himself to stop
thinking about such things. They agreed to disagree, I suppose,
and the younger ones have come up without any particular
views being taught them."

" Was that the Aunt Sally who ran out of the barn where

828 KATHARINE. [Sept.,

they were all hidden away from the Indians, to snatch her bon-
net from one of the young braves ? "

" And cried out, when they called her to come back and not
run the risk of being tomahawked, ' I'd rather lose my life than
my bonnet ' ? No, it was her daughter, father's sister."

"And she hanged herself over the balusters?" said Kitty.
" I never heard that. Was it in this house ? "

" Yes ; but that part was altered afterward and the new wing
built."

" What trouble religion makes ! " said Katharine. " It is a
great pity, I think, that our forefathers did not stay in the old
church and the old country. Fancy how delightful it would be
to be French girls and have all our thinking done for us on that
score, and be free to devote our minds to something else ! Now
we all have to puzzle it out for ourselves or else remain in the
maze all our lives."

" I don't agree with you at all," said Anna. " I am very
proud of my Huguenot descent, and I like, besides, the constant
struggle of independent thought on that and all other matters.
The result one arrives at doesn't matter so much ; it is the work
and play of one's mind that is of consequence."

" Is Lizzie Carew of the same opinion ? " asked Katharine.
" If she is I don't quite see the object of preparing for the
ministry. What is she going to teach and preach about?
And what could have put such a notion in a girl's head, any
way ? "

" I began to tell you, and then we switched off on to another
track. Cousin Aaron preached for a while, but then he thought
he would have a larger field by going about lecturing on slavery
and women's rights. And he thought, and so did some of the
great women who are connected with that last movement, that
the cause is best served by example. Lizzie writes and talks
very well ; she is twenty-one now we were both born in the
same month and she read two or three essays before her
brother's congregation, and they gave her a call. She will settle
down over the church next fall, I think. Yes, she has just the
same opinions that I have. There are a thousand things to
preach about slavery, and the freedom of the mind, and general
culture, and philanthropy, and the liquor-traffic and then there
is the popular theology to be ridiculed off the field. One of my
far-away cousins is settled now at that very work in your city.
That is one of my reasons for wanting to go there."
, " In Albany ? " said Katharine. " Who is he- or she ? "

1884.] KATHARINE. 829

" Arthur White. He has quite a society of Unitarians there
now. I don't think they had any church before his time."

" Oh ! yes, I know. They have a little church that used to be
a theatre."

" He is an immensely clever man he has written a book."

"Has he? " said Katharine, much interested. " I should like
to know an author. What is his book about ? Is it good ? "

" Splendid ! The Almighty Dollar he calls it ; it is against
materialism and worldliness. We will go and see him when I
come up ; I met him five years ago at Uncle Carew's. He was
there with a great friend of his. They had not been long out
of college then they were Harvard men. Lizzie and I used to
regard him and Mr. Giddings with great awe on account of
their cleverness. Mr. Giddings was a poet, I believe ; at least he
had the class poem the year he was graduated. And then he
was very moody and melancholy ; we used to think he was the
very ideal of a poet on that account. We heard afterwards that
he had had some serious trouble. I never knew exactly what,
but I think it was a love-affair. Whether he married while he
was still in college and was repenting it, or whether he only
wanted to and was disappointed, I don't know."

" The name sounds familiar," said Katharine. " I wonder if
it is the same person that a friend of mine from Boston men-
tioned to me this week ? He said I was like him."

" Then it surely isn't," said Anna, looking at her cousin, " for
you are not the least in the world like Louis Giddings. He was
a French-Canadian on his mother's side, I believe, but his father
was a Massachusetts Yankee. I don't know where he lives now,
nor what profession he adopted. Arthur White was the really
great man of the two. He is a sort of Luther, engaged in the
reformation of Protestant orthodoxy. We will go and hear him."

" Perhaps we will," said Katharine, smiling. " My people be-
long to the class he is trying to reform, and it is just possible
that they may not see the utility of a new Luther, with his hand
raised against them instead of the old enemy."

"But you? "said Anna. "They would surely not prevent
you from going to see and hear him, if he should happen to
please you ? "

" Wouldn't they ? You see it isn't the same thing with us
and with you. My father and mother have always been of one
mind. There have been no such disputes as you speak of here,
and they take their religion very seriously."

" Yes, I know," said Anna. " There wouldn't be much oc-

8 3 o KATHARINE. [Sept.,

casion for Arthur's special kind of warfare, if the old people were
not all in a tolerably solid line before him. But the future be-
longs to him, and to us who think like him ; and you are young,
and you belong to the future."

*\Ah ! " said Katharine, " I belong to the past, too, or to the
passing. And I doubt if your Cousin Arthur could tell me
much that I want to know, if ridiculing Protestant orthodoxy is
his special function. I hardly remember the time when I have
not been able to do that for myself. I am not of your mind
about the pleasures of warfare. I don't see that there is room
for any real struggle. Either there is something positively true
in revealed religion and then what one has to do is to go back
along the road and look for the original starting-place or there
isn't, and in that case there is no use in disputing about it. Let
every one please himself. What my mind wants is rest. There
are, as you say, a thousand things to think about, though I would
hardly choose to stop long over those you mentioned. But
there is the world itself to see and know. I should like to travel,
and look at what men have done and know what they have
thought. I could feel myself perfectly free, I think, in either one
of two cases. If I knew that God had spoken, revealed himself
and his will, I should ask nothing better than to obey. But I
want to be sure. And if he has not, then I could be at ease too,
I fancy, if once I felt assured of that. If I conclude in the end
that I am no better off than a cow or a sheep, it will go hard
with me if I don't at least try to be as peaceable about it. I
don't see the good of disputing when you never can arrive at
any conclusion, and I should be very sorry to unsettle any one
who was contented in his belief, so long as I had nothing better
to offer him."

They were driving in at the front gate as she spoke, and little
Lucy, whose lisping speech and coquettish baby ways had en-
chanted Katharine the night before, came running out to meet
them.

" I should prefer your task to Lizzie's," she went on, as Lucy
climbed into the carriage and her lap. " To be elder sister to
little tots like this must be delightful. If only they would never
grow up and never learn to talk straight ! "

"Ah! yes," said Anna, "it is easy to see you have none at

ome. Wait until you have three or four bothering around un-

ler your heels, wanting their faces washed and their shoes tied,

and leaving you not a minute for your own pursuits, and see how