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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE '

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE,

VOL. XL.
OCTOBER, 1884, TO M.ARCH, 1885.

NEW YORK:

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.,
9 Barclay Street.

1885.

H. J. HEWITT, PRINTER, 2? ROSE STREET, NEV YORK

CONTENTS.

An Apostle of Doubt. Agnes Repplier, , 337
Ancient Iri->h Literary Remains. T, O } Neill

Russell, '. . 54

Antigonish. Atny At. Pope, .... 41

Barbara Redwood. William Seton, . . 523
Beatification asked for American Servants of

God./?. //. Clarke, LL.D., ... 808

Carlyle as Prophet. Part \.Rev. A. F.

He-wit, 721

Catholic Missions. Rachel Ewing Sher-
man, ........ zoo

Catholic National Council, The, . . .708

Common Sense vs. Scepticism. A. T. Mar-
shall, ........ 746

Country Editor's Experience, A. Henry C.

Walsh, . 65

Critic of the Great Republic, A. Rev. Wal-
ter Elliott 244

Dedication of the Church of St. Paul the Apos-
tle. Daniel Paul, 836

"Dies Irao," Two Translations of the.

George M. Davie, John Mason Brown, . 175

Down the River to Texas during the Flood.

Thontat F. Galwey, .... 228

Ecclesiastical Survivals and Revivals. St.

George Mivart, ...... 604

Educational Question in England. ^Henry

Charles Kent, ...... 577

Falls of Wend, The. Agnes Repplier, . . 436

Fanchette's Fnend. Helen Atteridge, . 613

Fashionable Event, A. Richard Power, . 760

Fray Junipero Serra. Bryan J, Clinche, . 205
Frenchwomen Portrayed by a Frenchwoman.

Kathleen O'Afeara, .... 156

George Eliot's Married People./?. M.

JttHttston, 620

Glenribbon Baby, The. Julia M. Crottie, . 417
Gordon and the Mahdi. Al/ied M. Cotte,

LL.D., 650

Heaven in Recent Fiction. A gnes Repplier, 843
Historical Value of Family Names, The

C. M. O'Jtee/e, 781

Home Life in Colorado. Brendan Mac-

Carthy, 389

Hotel Bellecour during the Siege, The. John

Augustus O'SAta, 454

Influence of School-Life on Eyesight. P. A,

Callan, M.D., 559

Inspiration, Nature and Extent of. Rev. C,

A. Walworth f

Ireland's Argument. -James Redpath, . . 739

Italian Pessimist, An. A. J. Faust, Ph.D.,. 296

Junipero Serra, Fray. Bryan J. Clinche,

205

Katharine. Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, HI, 253
394i 542, 694, 821

Leaves from English History, A.D. 1570-85.

5. Hubert Burke, . . . 346, 753

Lilies among Thorns. Maurice F. Egan, . 484
Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius.

Louis B. Binsse, .... 125, 264

Nature and Extent of Inspiration. Rev, C.

A. Walworth, i

New Provencal Poem, A.. Hugh P. McEl-

rone, 684

Piety of the French Ptople, The. Eugene L.

Didier, 76

Present and Future of the Negro in the United

States, The. Rev. John R. Slattery, . 289

Quartier Latin since the War, The. Wil-
liam O* Donovan, 326

Scriptural Questions, L, II., III., IV. Rev.

A. F. Heivit, . . . 145, 316, 444, 635

Shakspere and his ^Esthetic Critics. Apple-
ton Morgan, 379

Shakspere's Tragic \JOVVK. R. M. Johnston, 84

Solitary Island. Rev, J. Talbot Smith, 14, 179
358, 507, 661, 790

Stray Leaves from English History, A.D. 1570-

85. S. //. Burke, .... 346, 753

Tin Soldiers, The. Robert McPhail, . . 469
True Reformer, A : Nicholas Krebs. Rev.

Henry A. Brann, D.D.) .... 274

Wikwemikong. Rev. E. McSiveeny, D.D.^ . 594

CONTENTS.

POETRY.

Annunciation, The. The Rev. Inigo Deane,

S-J-, S5

Daybreak. ,4. M. Baker, . . . .789

St. John the Evangelist. George Rothsay, . 820
St. Mona's Lambs. Agnis Repplier, . . 337

Christian Childhood. //. T. Henry, . , 735

Christmas, A Shadow of. Edith W. Cook, . 433 Tired Heart, A. Katharine Tynan,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Acadia, 286

American Men of Letters : Ralph W. Emer-
son, ........ 719

American Politician, An, 573

Annual, Illustrated Catholic Family, for 1885, 428

Annus Sanctus, 567

Art of Thinking Well, The 143

" Ave Maria " Series, The, .... 432

Bishop England's Works, .
Brownson, Orestes A., Works of,

720
279

Cantico dei Cantici, II, 432

Catholic Belief, 8$6

Catholic Christianity and Modern Unbelief, . 575

Catholic Hymnal, The, 281

Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky, The, . 571

Commonwealth Series : Kentucky, . . , 719

Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations, The, . 285

De Deo Uno secundum Naturam, . . . 134
De Dispensationibus Matrimonialibus juxta
Kecenticissimas S. Urb. Cong. Resolu-

tiones, 431

De Naturu Rerum, Libri Sex, T. Lucretii Cari, 860

Drifting Leaves, 139

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 719

Faith of Catholics, The, 280

Kate of Mansfield Humphreys, The, . . 135

Game of Mythology, The,
Gaston de Segur,

140

568

Historical Researches in Western Pennsyl-

vania 57'

Historical Sketch of Persecutions of Catholics
of Ireland under Cromwell and the Puri-
tans, 2 g,

History of the Catholic Church, . . . 7 , 7

History of the Thirty Years' War, . . . i 4O

History of the United States of America, . 852

Human Body and its Health, The, . . 576

Hymns and Verses, 859

John Bull's Daughters, 574

Leaves from the Life of a Special Correspon-
dent, 857

Life and Times of Jesua the Messiah, . . 715
Life of Rt. Rev. John N. Neumann, D.D.,

C.SS.R., 718

Life of St. Charles Borromeo, .... 566

Life of St. Margaret. Queen of Scotland, . 571

Life of Ven. Padre Junipero Serra, . . 430

Light from the Lowly, 142

Luther, 429

Maryland : The History of a Palatinate, . 570

Maurice Tyrone, 573

Meditations for Every Day in the Year, . 568
Meisterschaft System, The, .... 144
Men and Women of the Far-off Time, . . 285
Miraculous Episodes of Lourdes, . . . 566
Modern Scient fie Views and Christian Doc-
trines Compared, 428

Montcalm and Wolfe, 566

Mowbrays and^Harringtons, The, . . . 574

Phillips' Historical Readers, _. . . . 527

Philosophical Catechism for Beginners, A, . 568

Portraits Officiels des Souverains Pontifes, . 143

Reading and the Mind, with Something to

Reasons Why we should Believe in God,

Love God, and Obey God, . . . 426

Roman Hymnal, The, 287

Sermon against Drunkenness, A, . . .431

St. Martin's Day, and Other Poems, . . 141

Three Prophets, The, 575

Told in the Gloaming, ..... 143
Trait^ de Droit Naturel Thdorique et Appli-
que 1 , 716

Tribunal of Conscience, The, .... 576

Ubaldo Ubaldi ; L'Ecclesiaste, . . .432
University Education in its Bearings on the

Higher Education of Priests, . . . 576

Vocal and Action-Language, .... 432

Which is the True Church? . .' .135

Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls, A, . . 288

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XL. OCTOBER, 1884. No. 235.

THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION.*

FRANCOIS LENORMANT, the distinguished son of a distin-
guished father, is professor of archaeology at the National
Library of France. He stands eminent in this science, as in its
associate science of philology. Like his father also, he is a faith-
ful child of the church. " I am a Christian," he says; "and just
now, when my belief may be a cause for reprobation, I am more
than ever desirous to proclaim it emphatically." And again :
" I believe firmly in the inspiration of the Sacred Books, and I
subscribe with absolute submission to the doctrinal decisions of
the church in this respect."

Ernest Renan is a philologist of a different stamp. He is not
only an aggressive infidel in religion, but a wild speculator in his
own special science. His hardihood in building grand generali-
zations with nothing but ignorance to support them has been
cuttingly exposed by the Abbe Cuoq, a philologist of patient
study, and our highest authority in the languages of the Iroqtiois
and Algonquin tribes. f It is doubtful if M. Renan would ever
have received any public notice from Cardinal Newman, except
for an accident, and to that accident both faith and science are
indebted for one of the most luminous and timely contributions
which this century can record. A late article in an English
journal, commenting on a work of Renan's, attributed his aban-
donment of Catholicism in no small measure to his study of the

* Cardinal Newman, "On the Inspiration of Scripture, " in the Nineteenth Cenfitry, Feb-
ruary number, 1884.

The Beginnings of History, By Francois Lenormant. Translated from the second French
edition. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883.

t Jugement Errant de M. Ernest Renan sitr L's Langites Sauvages. Montreal, 1869.

2 THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. [Oct.,

Biblical text, especially that of the Old Testament, and then
said :

"He explains 'that the Roman Catholic Church admits no compro-
mise on questions of Biblical criticism and history.' . . . ' Hence the un-
doubted fact that the Roman Catholic Church . . . insists on its members
believing ... a great deal more in pure criticism than the strictest Pro-
testants exact from their pupils or flocks.' Should, then, a doubting Angli-
can contemplate becoming Catholic by way of attaining intellectual peace,
'if his doubts turn on history and criticism he will find the little finger of
the Catholic Church thicker than the loins of Protestantism.' "

Any one who knows how earnestly the heart of the illustrious
cardinal is set upon the conversion of his countrymen will under-
stand that he is not the man to let such an imputation grow on
English ground. It called him forth at once from his saintly
retirement; and that his eye is not dimmed or his natural force
abated may be seen by all who read what he has written on
" Inspiration " in the February number of the Nineteenth Century.
That article is henceforth inseparably identified with the history
of this question.

Twenty-four years ago the writer of this paper published a
book upon the authenticity and truthfulness of ' the Old-Testa-
ment records. At that time the principal attacks were occa-
sioned by developments in geology. A long and patient study
of the mooted questions convinced him that their satisfactory
settlement must be looked for, not in any ingenious manipulation
of the discoveries in geology, but in a more carefully developed
view of inspiration. Henry Holden in his Analysis Fidei, Ber-
gier in his Dictionnaire de Thdologie, and Amort in his Demonstra-
tio Critica, were the only Catholic authors of note, so far as
known to him, that distinctly upheld the view upon which his
own mind had settled. It has been reserved for Cardinal New-
man to lend the authority of his great name to it, and withal to
set it forth so luminously, so prudently, with such manly frank-
ness and yet such filial submission to holy church, with such
respectful deference to all respectable opinion, and with such
gentle sympathy for every devout conscience, that opposition
must be either strongly prejudiced or strongly armed not to
find itself completely disarmed.

It will not, perhaps, be thought too hardy for one so long
interested in this field of thought to follow humbly in the foot-
steps of this beloved guide of his early years, and with un-
changed but maturer judgment to bring a great question once
again before his fellow-Catholics in the United States.

1884.] THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 3

By inspiration we understand " a certain direct and superna-
tural influence of the Divine Spirit upon a writer, moving him to
write, illuminating his mind also with holy truth, and guiding him
to express that truth without error."* This seems to us amply
sufficient to set forth the nature of a truly divine inspiration in con-
tradistinction from every inferior and usurped sense of the word.
It does not reach, however, to the principal end and aim of this
article, which seeks to investigate something more than the simple
meaning of inspiration in the abstract. We are not aware of
much controversy or difference of opinion among Catholics in
our day as to the nature of inspiration ; but as to its actual prac-
tical extent in the Sacred Scriptures there are some questions to
be settled. Is the inspiration of the Bible plenary, or not? If,
as we love to maintain, it is plenary and covers the whole authen-
tic text, in what sense is it so ? How far or in what respect does it
guarantee our confidence in the record to which it attaches, and
claim our faith in the accuracy of its statements ? Not, certainly,
in every respect, " unless," as Cardinal Newman remonstrates,
"we are bound de fide to believe that 'terra in asternum stat,'
and that heaven is above us, and that there are no antipodes."
This is already enough to show that some discrimination is to be
made.

But far more urgent reasons exist for discrimination reasons
which sometimes oblige the interpreter of Scripture to adopt
one of these three expedients : Either he must abandon the
literal, and ofttimes the only simple and natural, sense of the text ;
or else he must maintain it against clearly-ascertained facts of
secular science ; or else, while accepting it as the true sense, or
one true sense, of the text, he must take the ground that it does-
not fall within the scope and purpose of divine inspiration to-
guarantee the writer against errors of that nature. None but aa
infidel would assert that genuine Christianity can come in con-
flict with any genuine facts of science. Nor would any Chris-
tian who understands the conditions necessary to the pursuit of
all science, whether sacred or profane, wish the student to be
fettered from theorizing to a very considerable extent in advance
of certainty. On the other hand, there is such a thing as theo-
rizing too much. It is possible to waste time in hopeless theo-
rizing ; and this applies to Biblical criticism as well as to other
sciences. The book of Genesis has been tortured with theories*
of interpretation framed to escape its only simple and natural

* Any special providence or assistance, affecting the record but not through, the prophet's
mind, or reaching his mind indirectly ab extra, would not be inspiration..

4 THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. [Oct.,

meaning, in order to make a good scientist of Moses. And
now a current of thoughtful sentiment asks : Is it necessary to
suppose that Moses understood geology, or astronomy, or his-
tory, or any other matters of mere secular knowledge, better
than his compeers of that age ? And if sometimes the imperfect
knowledge of his day is manifest in his writings, was it always
necessary for the Divine Spirit, when illuminating his mind, to
set him right in matters of that nature? " The intention of Holy
Scripture," says Cardinal Baronius, " is to teach us how to go to
heaven, and not how the heavens go " ; " still less," adds Lenor-
mant, "how the things of the earth go, and what vicissitudes
follow one another here. The Holy Spirit has not been con-
cerned either with the revelation of scientific truths or with uni-
versal history. In all such matters ' he has abandoned the
world to the disputes of men ' tradidit mundiim disputationibus
torum." * Cardinal Newman takes the same ground, but with a
cautious distinction which must not be overlooked. " It seems
unworthy of divine greatness that the Almighty should, in his
revelation of himself to us, undertake mere secular duties, and
assume the office of a narrator, as such, or an historian, or geo-
grapher, except so far as the secular matters bear directly iipon the
revealed truth"

The ordinary opinion of Biblical students seems to be con-
trary to so liberal a view.f And yet, strange to say, those
canons of the church on inspiration which approach nearest to
the points in question not only appear to favor that theory, but
even suggest it. The councils point out the scope and purpose of
inspiration most distinctly, and always in the same way namely,
as simply guaranteeing the teaching of the sacred writings in
matters of faith and moral conduct. These definitions of the church
are gathered and epitomized by Cardinal Newman as follows :

"Four times does the Tridentine Council insist upon 'faith and moral-
ity ' as the scope of inspired teaching. It declares that the ' Gospel ' is
4 the fount of all saving truth and all instruction in morals '; that in the writ-
ten books and in the unwritten traditions, the Holy Spirit dictating, this
truth and instruction are contained. Then it speaks of the books and tradi-
tions 'relating whether tofazt/ior to morals: and afterwards of ' the con-
firmation of dogmas and establishment of morals? Lastly, it warns the
Christian people, ' in matters of faith and morals,' against distorting Scrip-
ture into a sense of their own. \

* Op. cit. Prasf.

t On the contrary, Amort claims the " common opinion among judicious interpreters and

;ians" for the liberal view. Cited in the Gentle Skeptic, chap. xvii. p. 187.
t Archbishop Dixon, while holding that no error of any kind can be admitted in the Scrip-

1884.] THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 5

" In like manner the Vatican Council pronounces that supernatural
revelation consists 'in rebus dtvinis? and is contained 'in libris scriptis et
sine scripto traditionibus ' ; and it also speaks of ' petulantia ingenia ' ad-
vancing wrong interpretations of Scripture 'in rebus fidei et morum ad
aedificationem doctritia Christianas pertinentium.' "

The councils (as the cardinal notices) do not say a word of in-
spiration in matters of fact. It was not necessary to make any
such distinction. The Holy Ghost has spoken to us in various
ways which there was no occasion to enumerate ; not only by
statements of religious truth in doctrinal form, but by history and
by prophecy, by argument and by dogma, by illustrations drawn
from heaven and earth, by literal facts and by allegorical pic-
tures. Inspiration speaks under all the various forms of thought
and departments of literature, and in all she guards the believ-
ing heart from error in matters of faith and morals that is,
in everything which pertains to the edification of Christian
doctrine.

We, for our part, accept loyally all the decisions and defini-
tions of the holy church in this as in other questions of the
faith. We bow also in loving submission to that " magisterium
ordinarium et universale " which is always hers. At the same
time we accept most thankfully and joyfully that large liberty
which she throws open to the progress of scientific thought both
in theology and in secular science. Such liberty is necessary to
advance the Christian scholar to a deeper knowledge of the ways
of God, whether he studies them in the pages of Holy Writ, in
the monuments of profane history, or in the bosom of nature.

These things being. premised, we are ready to apply ourselves
more thoroughly to the development of the idea of inspiration as
we conceive it.

However vague and undefined the Christian's conception of
inspiration may be, it always involves this much : Two minds
are recognized as engaged in the production of one document.
There is a divine mind in the work, and a human mind. This
double agency kept steadily in sight will account for many diffi-
culties and settle many. There are always two authors to the
record, but authors with a difference in the sense of the word.
One is the human author, who holds the pen. The other is God,
who inspires the penman. The penman does not write blindly,

tures, makes this acknowledgment: "The Council of Trent, session fourth, in its solemn de-
cree on the Scriptures and divine traditions, manifestly abstracts from the question whether,
besides the salutary truth and discipline contained in the sacred books, the other things
therein contained were divinely either revealed or dictated, or in any manner divinely written"
(Introd. ch. iii,)

6 THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF. INSPIRATION. [Oct.,

but with full intelligence, at least of the literal or primary sense
of what he writes. Indeed, in his mind the thought is conceived,
and by its action also it takes shape in words. Hence the pecu-
liar gifts, or genius, and the natural attainments of the writer
appear in the thought and are impressed upon the style, except
where he copies. For the most part he writes as other men are
accustomed to write, studying and reflecting upon his subject,
choosing and adjusting his words and phrases, drawing some-
times upon his own recollections for facts, and sometimes relying
upon other witnesses, searching, if need be, for authorities ; some-
times, too, especially when writing history, copying from older
records. If betimes his spirit is caught away from a conscious-
ness of surrounding objects, and burning words flow from his

pen,

" Like rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire,"

it is very possible that at other times he may have been for the
moment quite unmindful of any divine inspiration. God can
reach the mind without disturbing the action of its faculties and
without announcing himself. He can address himself especially
to one single faculty (to the judgment, for instance) without
arousing the others. It is in accordance with that quiet power
with which the Almighty is accustomed to move that inspiration
should move with the same economy to the accomplishment of
its purpose. In every sense in which any historian, scholar,
poet, or moralist can be the author of the book which he pub-
lishes, the sacred penman is the author of what he has written.
Inspiration is not substituted in place of his natural faculties.
The natural and the supernatural can work together without in-
terference.

Keeping all this in view, is it wonderful that the limited
powers of the human mind and the deficiencies of human know-
ledge should be frequently manifested in a work which owes so
much to the human author ? On the contrary, ought not such
manifestations to be expected? We find them in matters of
style and grammar, in hasty suppositions regarding matters of
little consequence,* and a faulty chronological sequence is ad-
mitted in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Why must we repudiate
all idea of possible mistake where archaeology or the natural
sciences are concerned ?

This liability to error must, however, be limited in some way,
otherwise we could not sustain the sacred character of the
Scriptures nor confide in them as sure monuments of faith and

* St. John xxi. 25.

1 884-] THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 7

guides to our supernatural destiny. Here comes in the Divine
Author who speaks to us by the same record. It is inspired.
How far does this inspiration reach ? To what extent does it
illuminate the penman, guide his pen, and counteract his natural
liability to error? The councils tell us in a general way. It
reaches to all " matters of faith and morals pertaining to the
building up of Christian doctrine." And we have a right to hold
(salva fide, at least) that it extends no farther. The ground cov-
ered by the Vatican decree embraces all that is necessary to estab-
lish the Scripture as an infallible monument of the faith. It sets
the Bible before us as the word of God. It is the word of God
speaking of things which pertain to the kingdom of God. Ac-
cording to our view, it is hardly necessary to inquire if inspira-
tion extends to facts of history. Of course it does. The force of
the synodal decrees must be understood as applying to Scripture
narrative and to every special historical fact, so far as it has any
reasonable claim to be freighted with religious truth or to show
the providence of grace in human affairs. As Cardinal Newman
is careful to say : " Such is the claim of Bible history in its sub-
stantial f.ulness to be accepted de fide as true."

To follow up our reflection upon that part which the Divine
Author takes in the production of the Bible would lead us to
show how rich it must be in deep spiritual meanings. " The
Scriptures," says Lord Bacon, " being written to the thought of
all men and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all
heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the church, yea and
particularly of the elect are not to be interpreted only according
to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively
towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered,
or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or
after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place ;
but have in themselves, not only totally, or collectively, but dis-
tributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of
doctrine to water the church in every part." * If we were at
liberty throughout the first chapters of Genesis to ignore its
literal meaning altogether, there still would remain enough of
symbolical, typical, and prophetical truth to make it a grand
storehouse of spiritual wealth.

A few words more will close what is to be said upon this part
of the subject. According to the view taken in this article, is the
inspiration of the Bible plenary f This question cannot properly
be answered without making distinctions. Is it asked : Was the

* On the Advancement of Learning, b. ii.

8 THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. [Oct.,

writer always inspired while occupied upon the sacred record ?
Yes, we think so. A supernatural light was given him which,
when dimmest, would allow him to make no mistake in faith or
morals. Are we asked : Is the whole authentic text inspired ?
Yes, again in matters of faith and morals. The sacred page
throughout must be stamped with the same character which in-
spiration first impressed upon the writer's mind. The Bible is
inspired in all its parts. The distinction of verbal and non-verbal
seems to be an unfortunate one. It leads the mind away from
the broad ground taken by the councils, where the true distinc-
tion lies. If, however, the question is put in this form : Is every
statement to be regarded as a revelation or a positive suggestion
of the Holy Ghost, so that standing by itself, detached from the
rest of the record, in its literal and secular aspect alone, it is still
a divine dictum ? No. This goes beyond the definitions of the
councils and seems contrary to their spirit. It is a ground which
may show well in a class-room, but it is a hard one to maintain
with an actual foe in front.

The reasons which are commonly given against a plenary in-
spiration extending to every word or every clause seem to apply
with equal force to one which extends inspiration to every secu-
lar matter of fact. " Neither the authority of the Scripture nor
its dignity as an inspired work," says Archbishop Dixon, " re-
quires of us to carry inspiration so far." And again : " In this
opinion difficulties are removed which must appear very con-
siderable if it be necessary to defend verbal inspiration''' *

For our part, we can feel no force in either reason which does
not lend equal support to the view taken in this article. Were
not these the paramount reasons which guided the fathers of the
Tridentine and Vatican councils when, drawing a boundary line
for our faith, they were so careful not to extend the authority of
inspiration beyond " matters of faith and morals " ? Neither the
authority of Scripture nor its dignity requires us to extend the
action of inspiration beyond the true scope and purpose of
inspiration so distinctly indicated. In the second place, the
difficulties to be removed are, many of them, such as cannot be
classified as verbal. They are historical,' geographical, geologi-
cal, astronomical, zoological, biological, ethnological, archaeologi-
cal, philological. Some of them cannot be removed by the most
careful correction or interpretation of the text. Nevertheless
they are difficulties which have no direct or influential bearing
upon religious truth. If allowed to stand as statements of the

* Introd., ch. ii.

1884.] THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 9

writer, apart from the purposes of revelation or inspiration, and
bearing only a human authority, then they need no defence by
the children of the faith, and may freely be subjected to every
fair rule by which critical science is guided.

Whatever the reader may think of this idea of the extent of
inspiration, he cannot deny that one may conscientiously hold it,
salva fide. Great names may be enlisted against it. There are
great names also that favor it. Some of these are less cautious
than we are.

The question may now be asked : Does not this view of inspi-
ration leave many passages of Scripture open to doubt ? Yes,
open to the doubt as to how far their literal statements are
unquestionably true. And, on the other hand, it closes many
portions of Scripture against most distressing doubts, and silences
a multitude of cavilling critics. But how can we always tell, in a
given case, where this line between divine and human authority
lies ? I answer : How could we ever tell under any other theory ?
These are young men's objections. The inexperienced always
look for trenchant principles which shall settle all difficulties
without expense of time or study. But healthful theology, like
all true and healthful science, is a thing of gradual growth. It
requires long labor of thought and study. It calls many minds
into competition, and is sifted and made clearer by collision. It
involves the occasional making of mistakes widespread mis-
takes even, to be corrected by time and a cumulative experience.
Should any of thes$ mistakes become seriously dangerous the
holy church is behind us, thank God ! It is for her to interfere
when interference becomes necessary. She then guards the de-
posit of faith by some precept or canon. No true child of hers
will contradict or disobey.

There is no branch of knowledge", in sacred science or any
other, where old doubts may not remain long unsettled and new
doubts cannot originate. The theory of inspiration advocated
by Cardinal Newman and others is in this respect on no more
precarious a footing than Archbishop Dixon's view or Professor
Healy's. It shows an ignorance of the very nature of science to
demand certainty from it in all the questions which it raises.
The Catholic's faith is certain, but our science of the faith is always
capable of growth and will never grow to universal certainty.

We do not care to adopt the principle of obiter dictum in a
matter of this kind. As we understand it, it does not adequately
represent that liberty which we would claim. B} r obiter dictum,
a lawyer understands 4< an opinion expressed by a court, but

io THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. [Oct.,

which, not being necessarily involved in the case, lacks the force
of an adjudication." * In theology it means the same thing,
substituting an ecclesiastical council or judicial authority for the
civil. It supposes a res adjudicanda and a tribunal authorized to
pronounce upon the question. When decided the res adjudicanda
is converted from a disputable point into settled law or dogma.
Declarations made aside from the res adjudicanda, even though
cogently used in reasoning up to it,f lack the force of an adjudi-
cation and cannot be quoted as establishing a precedent. To say
the least, there is an awkwardness in applying this principle to
declarations of the Scripture. It is not needed ; it falls short of
the demands of critical science for larger liberty, and it lends to
a confusion of ideas. When speaking of any dictum in the Bible,
either we mean a word of God or not. If it be the Holy Spirit
that speaks, obiter or not, his word is infallibly true. The Holy
Ghost makes no mistakes, is subject to no oversights. If it be
only a human mind that speaks, the principle of obiter dictum may
be applicable after a fashion, although it speaks from no tribunal.
But of what value is it in our thesis, since in such case it only
distinguishes between two grades of authority, both fallible ?

Let us now listen to the voice of an eminent Catholic scholar,
who is familiar with the main features of our theory, but views it
more especially from the standpoint of his own special studies in
archaeology and philology :

" The submission of the Christian to the authority of the church, in all
that relates to those teachings of faith and morals to be drawn from the
books of the Bible, does not at all interfere with the entire liberty of the
scholar when the question comes up of deciding the character of the narra-
tives, the interpretation to be accorded to them from the historical stand-
point, their degree of originality or the manner in which they are con-
nected with the traditions found among other peoples who were destitute
of the help of divine inspiration, and, lastly, the date and mode of composi-
tion of the various writings comprised in the scriptural canon. Here
scientific criticism resumes all its rights. It is quite justified in freely ap-
proaching these various questions, and nothing stands in the way of its
taking its position upon the ground of pure science, which demands the
consideration of the Bible under the same conditions as any other book of
antiquity, examining it from the same standpoints and applying to it the
same critical methods. And we need fear no diminution of the real
authority of our sacred books from examination and discussion of this
nature, provided that it be made in a truly impartial spirit, as free from
hostile prejudice as from narrow timidity." \

* Bouvier, Law Dictionary^ apud v. " Dictum."

t Chief Justice Marshall, Cohens v. Virginia, Wheaton, vol. vi. p. 399.

JOp. cit. Prasf.

1884.] THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 11

There is a great deal of useful truth in these words of the dis-
tinguished archaeologist which theologians need not be too proud
to study, without adopting quite all that he says. For our part,
we could easily put a good construction upon the entire passage,
if, unhappily, M. Lenormant had not explained himself more fully
elsewhere. He accepts the faith unhesitatingly, as every Chris-
tian must. He claims breathing-room and a necessary freedom
of action for archaeology in its own sphere ; and there he is right.
But he banishes theology altogether from the field of human sci-
ence ; and there he is dangerously wrong. Within two pages
from the above quotation we find the following ill-considered
language : " I am a Christian. . . . But at the same time I am a
scholar, and as such I do not recognize both a Christian science
and a science of free thought. I acknowledge one science only,
needing no qualifying epithet, which leaves theological questions
on one side as foreign to its domain." And, again, of " science
and religion " he says: " The two domains are absolutely distinct
and not exposed to collision. There can be no quarrel between
them unless one encroach improperly upon the territory of the
other. Their truths are of a different order ; they co-exist with-
out contradiction."

M. Lenormant means well, but his language is inaccurate and
indefensible. It harmonizes too much with that agnostic slang
which sets all religious conviction out of the field of science and
treats it as a mere sentiment. That one science which Lenor-
mant acknowledges is not the only one. It does not include all
of human science. It does need a qualifying epithet. It is natu-
ral, or profane, science, as theology is the science of the supernatu-
ral, or divine. Their truths are indeed mainly and primarily of a
different order; but truths of any order, when known, can be
brought into the domain of human science. Theology is a sci-
ence in the strictest and purest sense of the word. Faith is not a
science, but its truths are open to scientific treatment, and when
so treated develop into theology. Theology is the Christian faith
presented to the mind in the scientific form, based on facts ascer-
tained and proved by the most critical rules of scientific observa-
tion, and developed into a system by the most perfect scientific
methods. Such, at least, is Catholic theology. If any one would
test our Christian science let him not content himself with criti-
cising utterances from the pulpit. Oratory is an art, and is not
generally governed by the rules and methods of science. But let
him take up some complete treatise of systematic theology, and
read it carefully through, We think that a fair study of such a

12 THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. [Oct.,

book will show that theology is governed by rigid principles of
investigation and reasoning, and with far less theorizing than
prevails in books of secular science. " The Catholic Church,"
says Father Searle, the Paulist, himself both scientist and
priest, " courts the fullest examination both of her teaching
and of her evidence for it. ... There is not a single point in
the whole edifice of Catholic faith which we do not undertake to
rest on the rock of reasonable evidence, to begin with, and to
support by corroborative proofs through all these eighteen centu-
ries. . . . If it is thought that our evidence is insufficient, or our
methods not strictly scientific, let these faults be shown." *

It is a second mistake to suppose that the two domains of secu-
lar and religious science are absolutely distinct and not exposed
to collision. All sciences interlock and are exposed to collision.
Between the various branches of secular science there always
has been more or less conflict, and always will be. This ought
. not to be so, but so it is. Every yearly meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science shows it. Not long
ago it was laid down as a settled acquisition of geology -that be-
low a thin crust enveloping the earth an interior fire holds all
its mass in solution. The astronomer, on the contrary, met this
with a speedy denial. He had weighed the earth, and its weight
was inconsistent with any such state of things. Astronomy, on
the other hand, has furnished us with a nebular theory, arranging
an aboriginal history for all the stars and planets. It supposes
these to have gradually cooled down from a gaseous to the solid
state. This, at first, was very acceptable to geologists, according
well with their own earlier plutonic theories regarding the forma-
tion of rocks and mountains. Modern geology, however, does
not chime in with this hypothesis. Our own planet must be
counted out. In the very earliest periods of the earth where
signs of life are manifest in the rocks that life was of a kind that
required the same gentle temperature as in our own day.f
There is no evidence of an earth cooling down since then. This
liability to conflict between sciences does not come from any lack
of harmony between truth and truth, but from the imperfection
of that human mind in which science has its seat. It is only in the
Infinite Mind that all science harmonizes.

If it needs must be that conflicts will sometimes occur be-
tween the various sciences, so also they may occur between any
one science and the faith. Theology itself may come into colli-

* THE CATHOLIC WORLD, February, 1884.

t Sep Address of Prof, James Hall, Proceedings of the Amer. Assoc.^ vol. xxxi part i.

1884.] THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 13

sion with the faith and need correction. It only requires imper-
fection on one side to make collision possible. The Christian
specialist must be allowed all reasonable freedom, and must not
be haughtily denounced by men as liable to err as himself. But,
at the same time, he has no more right to freedom in his special
science than has the theologian in his. Neither may claim such
liberty as will allow him to be careless when approaching the
Ark of God or the ground whereon it rests.

But it is time to bring this imperfect analysis to an end. Car-
dinal Newman has done a great service to science, both secular
and religious. Its greatness lies in the simple manner by which
it is done ; and its simplicity consists in following so naturally the
lead given by our great synods, instead of the customary treat-
ment by which he found the subject cramped. The councils of
Trent and of the Vatican had struck the keynote. Taking this
for his guide, the cardinal ranges slowly and cautiously over the
keys, seeking out all the natural and necessary harmonies. Yet,
with a masterful simplicity which never gets lost in the develop-
ment of his subject, he always -returns to the dominant thought.

Should opportunity and leisure combine we hope at some
other time to consider practically the chief difficulties in the sa-
cred text which have made a more careful analysis of the princi-
ple of inspiration necessary. There is a natural inertia in human
nature which makes the mind loath to exert itself in the investi-
gation of any question until ajroused by some urgent demand.
A demand exists at the present time for a readjustment of a certain
prevailing loquela concerning the Genesis, and the demand is really
urgent. This we hope to show, and also how simply and readily,
by the view here adopted, this demand is met. It is a key that
solves all the real difficulties raised by science, makes the sneers
of the infidel stingless, gives to the Christian scientist a liberty
really needed, while it vindicates the authority of Sacred Scrip-
ture and throws fresh light upon its golden pages.

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER IX.
ON RETREAT.

LINDA during the next two weeks slowly continued to im-
prove, and by the middle of October was sitting cheerfully in
the warm parlor, with every soul in the house and many more
out of it her devoted slaves. Choice flowers came from Mr.
Buck, through Sara, to call back the summer to her room and
have it live again in their sweet perfumes and gay colors. Squire
Pendleton brought his fearful voice daily to her court, and re-
lated over again the new and old phases of his political exile.
Mrs. Winifred was profuse with seemingly s, and Billy quarrel-
some for the sake of the smile his ragged utterances brought to
play upon her cheek, like sunlight over snow. Ruth's gentle
touch and sweet eyes were there most frequently, and most wel-
comed ; and Pere Rougevin and Florian made up a background
of spiritual and physical lights that were very dear to the sick
girl.

When she had arrived at this stage of returning health, Flo-
rian made ready to visit the hermit for a week's hunting and
fishing, as he had long intended to do, and was anxious to do
before bad weather came. " More for the purpose of studying
the hermit," he explained to Linda, " and learning the secret of
his happiness, if there is any."

Linda took up a bunch of ferns arrived that morning from the
kindly solitary, and buried her face in it.

" You but waste your time," she answered, " as far as he is
concerned. Still he is a good mirror. You will certainly learn
something about yourself."

She said this in the tone of a hint, which Florian received
with a laugh that discovered him.

" Your sickness has made you preternaturally sharp," he said.
" Well, let me confess, I do go to study myself. What then, Cas-
sandra? "

" Cassandra, indeed !" she pouted, and then surprised him with
a sob and a few tears. " I am so weak yet, Florian, and I know

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 15

you are only going to ask his advice about leaving here. I want
you to promise that you will tell me every word."

" I am not so certain that he can or will advise me, Linda.
Because he is a solitary, he does not know everything. Nor
would I be apt to follow his advice if it went against my own
desires. But I promise you, my dear ; and you are quite right. I
am going on my retreat."

He sat looking at her with troubled eyes. He never looked
at her otherwise since death first struck her down, and his first
sensation of real grief was gnawing at his heart as he thought of
what he should lose in losing her. And unconsciously, too, he
was studying the course of feeling in her bosom, the gradual
ripening certainty of death which, amid doubts and fears, was
already blooming in the girl's heart and soul. Ambitious as he
was, death had always appeared to him as a great monster who
might at any time destroy his ambitions. He had never yet come
in contact with it. But now it had seized most surely on Linda,
and he watched its process with a sort of fascination that sickened
body and soul, and crowded his dreams with terrors. He must
come to this one day. How soon ?

It filled his heart with a disgust for life and its ambitions that
all his days he must walk under the threatening shadow of that
greatest misfortune. Why live and work at all when death
might shatter the handiwork of years at one blow ? The reason-
ing was poor and foolish, but hislhelancholy had to find vent.

When he started one mild afternoon mild for that northern
climate to visit Scott he met Ruth on her way to call on Linda.

" I am going," said he, " and I want to speak with you. You
know why I am going."

" To fish and hunt, I believe," she answered absently. Linda's
failing health was a drag on every one, and quiet Ruth was too
saddened to feel interested in anything just then.

" And to think," he added impressively. " Matters are becom-
ing muddled considerably, and I feel like one in a tempest. I
must think. Sara's conduct annoys me. Linda well, well, I
won't speak about her. The angels are urging me towards New
York, and you and I, Ruth, you and I, will need to talk calmly
soon very calmly, very soon." A deeper shade settled on
Ruth's quiet face.

" I am going on a retreat, in fact," he continued, " and the her-
mit unconsciously must be my director. Pray a little until I
return for yourself and me. Good-by, dear."

She gave him her hand, and he held it thoughtfully. He was

16 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

not given much to romance or sentiment. His ambition toned
every feeling 1 in him, but he thought as he looked at the fair
fingers lying in his own how very near he stood to losing the
right to clasp them so, and of the two other women whom differ-
ent fates were snatching from him apostasy and the grave,

" Good-by, dear, good-by," he said again, as his eyes filled
with tears, and he turned down the hill to the shore ; nor did he
look back until far out on the river. Ruth was standing there in
the sunshine still, her blue dress making her clearly visible at
that distance.

" So far," he said, " my fate is wound up with three women, as
diverse as types. A month ago I had never thought of eternal
separation, and yet it threatens me, and one blow may deprive
me of them all. But Onward ! is the watchword. Let the dead
bury their dead ! If Linda must die, and Sara lose the faith, and
Ruth be lost to me, I have life yet and a will, and I cannot be
cast down by common misfortunes, and these are common. Com-
mon?"

He was so full of dreariness at that moment that his hard
words sounded doubly hard on his ears, and he asked himself if
there was not a suspicion of indifference in his nature, of cold
calculation that destroyed true warmth of affection and left only
a mock feeling instead. Was he too obtuse to understand really
what Linda's death meant to him ? Was his religion of such a
type that he could contemplate stoically the certain loss of his
sister's soul ? Was his love for Ruth of so calm and ethereal a
nature that he could resign himself to a life among his ambitions
and her to another man? " I know," he said, " that if Linda's
life could be saved by entire renouncement of any life outside of
Clayburgh I would do it. And more to save Sara, and still more
to keep my Ruth beside me until death. I only feel that if all
goes wrong in these matters my sufferings will be bitter, but
that I shall recover without fail. Men do not die of grief for
such things at least men like me."

" Yes," he added meditatively, " I am cold and I cannot help
it ; and yet it seems as if man never loved those dear to him as I
love those girls."

The day shamed his melancholy by its magnificent joy. The
wind was not strong eno.ugh to roughen the water into ugliness,
but white-caps lay along the deep green of the river, and, like the
foam at' the mouth of a wild beast, gave a fearful suspicion of the
cruelty that lurked below. Against Round Island's rocky and
flat shore the waves beat with monotonous murmuring, and dis-

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 17

tant Grindstone showed dimly through the mist. Across Eel
Bay Bay of Mourning it should be named the afternoon sun
sent a blinding- radiance. The islands about were still in sombre
green, for very few maples found a foothold in the rocky soil.
Here and there their warm* colors of death relieved the dark
background. He paid very little attention to the sights about
him. The swish of the water from the bow, the brightness of the
sky, the sombre shores, the green waters, the whistle of the wind,
and the loveliness of the scene passed before his senses and be-
came inwoven with his melancholy. There was a bitterness
even in the cheerful day.

When he arrived at the Solitary Island the hermit was away.
He took possession of the hut, and, finding some remnants of the
squire's tobacco and a pipe, made himself at home and began to
inspect one of the notable volumes on fishing. Scott returned
shortly and gave him a most cool reception.

" How do?" he said shortly, bringing his brows together and
sending a sharp look into his face. " How's the little 'un ? "

As before, Florian answered wearily. He had made up his
mind that no behavior of Scott's would drive him away until he
had accomplished his purpose. If coolness and " cheek " were
the only requirements for a lengthy stay with 'the solitary he was
prepared to furnish a large supply. And Scott saw it in his easy
and unconcerned manner, and seemed willing to submit to the
intrusion.

" She bade me thank you for the ferns," said Florian, " and if
it would not be asking too much, would you call and see her as
often as you visit the town, and would your visits be oftener
made."

" She is kind," was all Scott replied, and set about getting
supper. Florian made no offer to help him, but walked out on
the boulder with his book and pipe, and gave his attention to the
long shadows that crept through and over the islands and the
last feeble whistle of the dying wind. Far away east glimmered
a single star.

" Supper's ready ! " called Scott in a few minutes, and Florian
sat down to a table of Spartan simplicity boiled corn-meal and
fish. It was speedily ended, for neither seemed to be hungry
nor disposed to talk. The hermit sat silent, and Florian was de-
termined to interfere as little as possible with his humors. He
ate less than a child.

" I have met him at an unlucky time," thought the youth ;
" he is ill and out of sorts." But he said nothing whatever, re-

VOL. XL. 2 j

!8 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

lighted his pipe and took his seat on the boulder over the river.
For a few minutes there was the clatter of tin dishes as the soli-
tary cleaned them and put them away, then he came out and sat
beside Florian.

" I am going away," said Florian simply. " I wanted to talk
with you first, and so came over."

" There is no hope, then, for the little 'un ? "

" None," he answered, almost carelessly. " A month will end
her life at the most two. Then there are other calamities."

"For her?" He turned quickly on the youth, and perhaps
flushed a little ; yet in the gathering twilight Florian could not be
certain, but he was interested.

" No, but for us all. She is safe, poor child, from the world's
harshness for evermore."

" For evermore ! " repeated Scott, and he was silent. The
stars were coming out more rapidly, as if a mist were being
swept off the sky, and the shadows lay very deep around.
The water in the channels, like a wizard's mirror, changed
from dark to bright and back again, as if veiled forms swept up
and down beneath the surface.

" And you are going away ? " said Scott, presently.

" I should have gone long ago. Clayburgh is no place for
one who looks to a future. I am smothered and cramped for a
better element."

" Your dreams are too big for your brain. Six feet of earth
hold a man comfortably when he's not full of nonsense."

" But it takes an eternity to hold the soul."

"Not as I understand it, boy. It's not the soul gets cramped
with such quarters as ye have here. It's proud notions of one's
body : what it should eat and wear, how it should look to others,
an' the niceness o' bein' better than its kind. People don't go
looking for eternity to New York. Them who find it suited
to their constitutions thoroughly hunted in narrow caves an'
monks' cells for it long afore New York was known to a soul."

Florian laughed at the reply. It was more than he had
heard from Scott in many weeks, and the hermit was a little
moved. " I won't dispute your assertions, Scott. But what
would you have me do? I am young, able, ambitious. The
world must go on as it has from the beginning. Why should
not I take place and part in it, using my talents for the good of
the many ? I have no inclination for any other kind of life, and
there I feel that I shall do the most good."

"Why not?" echoed the hermit with a touch of sarcasm,

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 19

perhaps. "Saints did the same often, I've hearn ; but they made
their talents and high power a means to an end. With you it
will be the end. With the big majority these good things of the
world are the end. The man that looks after his own soul keeps
away from 'em till God calls him to 'em."

He rose suddenly as if he had spoken too much and was just
aware of it. There was no moon, and Florian could not see his
face nor discover what mood accompanied these words, but he
would have given something to catch the light of his eyes at
that moment.

" You can have the hut to yourself while you stay," said
Scott, starting off down to the shore.

" Thank you," Florian said quietly, and was tempted to ask
him to remain, but adhered firmly to his original policy, and kept
his mouth shut grimly until the sound of oars down the channel
had ceased. It was chilly and darken the island. There was no
wind, only the gentle plash of the wayes ; and the odd, mysterious
sounds which break the vast silence of nature quivered on the
air. He could see nothing but outlines and the shining surface
of the water. Like an inverted bowl the sky arched over him.
He knew that for miles there was no living man, and he was in
utter darkness and solitude; and it seemed to him that he was
left nothing to look upon but his owji soul. He was too sad to
endure thought at that moment, and began to bustle about,
lighted a candle in the hut and put on a fire, closed the doors
and fixed the curtain to the window.

" I must get a look of civilization about," he said. " Pure
solitude is too much for me."

He began to think then, if he was to get much advice from the
hermit or information he must proceed with a system, yet make
it appear accidental. He was to find out what the hermit
thought of himself, of Ruth, and of Sara, and get a strong opin-
ion on his proposed change of residence. Nof that he would
give up the idea of a removal for any advice, but for the sake of
knowing more about the man. And then he formulated an
axiom : " If you wish to know a man, have him talk of his neigh-
bors." With this he was so satisfied that he went to bed.

The October nights were cold and left a touch of frost in bare
places. When the sun opened his eyes the next morning at an
early hour, and Florian looked through the window on the scene
without, there was a silvery whiteness on certain objects, beauti-
ful but depressing. An army of individual mists was rising from
the river, and every object was bathed in so fresh and deep a

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

color that it seemed to have just been laid on by the great Mas-
ter's hand. He dressed and bade a hasty good-morning to the
hermit, who was getting the breakfast, and ran out on the boulder
to say his prayers in the midst of that sublime scenery. The
silence was so great yet so silvery that the voice of the man rose
like a solemn hymn floating into the shining haze above. He
prayed aloud, and never in his life did prayer seem so sweet,
so real, so refreshing, never was God so near to his heart, never
did he realize what it meant to see God face to face better
than with this mirror of God spread out before him.

" And if it be so sweet to see through the glass darkly, what
will it be face to face."

Bowing his head for a moment it seemed as if he had per-
manently caught the true idea of a divine affection, and under-
stood how the desert became a paradise when such feelings
actuated a man.

" Grub," said the hermit, briefly, from the doorway, and he
went in composedly after that ethereal flight heavenward. The
meal passed in silence. When it was over, " I'm going for pike
this mornin'," said Scott, briefly.

Florian took this for a gingerly invitation, and coolly removed
himself, his pipe, and his book to the boulder without answering.
The hermit busied himself in preparing his boat.

" Would you like to come? "said the solitary.

" I have much to think of," he replied. " I am annoyed with
knotty questions and I would like to think them out."

" Better get town cobwebs from your brain first. The fishing
is good, an' if ye are going away 'twont be many more chances
you'll have after the world's pike take your time."

" To-morrow will do, Scott; much obliged."

" No, I'm in-doors to-morrow."

" Next day, then."

" Not at all if not now," said Scott, and if his voice was not
sharp his words were. Florian was surprised at his urgency.

" Oh ! if you are determined," he laughed, and came down,
book and pipe, to the boat. They rowed through the channel
out into the broader space that opened into Eel Bay or rather
the solitary did, for Florian lay in the stern idly smoking, with
his eyes fixed dreamily on the changing shore or the hermit's
face.

" They have a strong resemblance," he said aloud, and Scott
understood him and replied that he was something of a woman,
for he found likenesses in everything.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 21

" A poetic gift," said Florian, " which I have never exercised.
Why, in the name of heaven, Scott, don't you write poetry ? I
couldn't stay in these solitudes an hour without finding words to
paint some of its beauty."

" It is like grief, boy ; no words can ever express it."

And then a shade came over Florian's face, for his mind went
back suddenly to Linda and his own peculiar position.

" At this hour," he said, with moistened eye, " Linda is taking
a look at the new sun that will shine for her only a little longer."

" Poor little girl ! " muttered the hermit, giving a harder pull
to his oars and looking keenly at nothing.

" But what of that, Scott ? She goes to heaven safely I know,
and her agony will be trifling to her recompense. I would not
care but for that other dying at the same time, not in her body
but in her soul."

" It is one of the world's chances," said Scott. " She will
marry the minister and come to belieVe what he will preach day
and night for her sake. There is no fixin' such accidents. The
devil's too many for ye there."

" You seem to know all about the matter, Scott."

" It is town-talk, lad. Ye brought it up yerself as if ye
wanted my opinion, an' I gave it."

Florian smiled to conceal a slight sense of mortification. The
hermit had discovered his artful courses, and thus simply laid
them bare.

" Well, I did want your opinion," he said ; " I wanted to know
what you would do in such a case as that of my sister's. If she
wishes to marry Mr. Buck I see no way of preventing her, unless
it be by stratagem. It is not so much love of the minister as a
romantic silliness that prompts her to marry."

" If you want stratagem," said Scott, "see Pere Rougevin.
That's my whole and only opinion on a family matter. Jes'
hand up the minneys, will ye, and I'll drop the line yonder."

There was nothing more to be said, for the hermit's manner
was decided, and Florian resigned himself to idle gazing and
dreaming. In such moments his mind was clouded with melan-
choly, for his first thoughts were of these three women with
whom the intimacy of years had inwoven his fate, and the dark
mists which seemed to be gathering about the hour of his de-
parture from the scenes and friends of early days. The strong
colors of the early morning that glowed around him only added
to his melancholy. He merely raised his head and smiled when
Scott landed his first pike, a handsome ten-pounder, and felt none

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

of that joyous excitement which such an incident raises in the
heart of the true sportsman. It was as if life had come to a
standstill with him because of this tangle in his affairs, and he
was borne away through a fairy region of indifference.

Before noon the hermit had landed a few dozen of the shining
pike and Florian had dreamed the hours away. Not unprofit-
ably, perhaps, for he had arrived at the sensible resolve that he
would make no attempt to win Scott's confidence, but let the
man display himself as it pleased him. And was he to spend the
hours as he had spent the forenoon, in useless imaginings and
doleful picturings of his future troubles ? He took the rod after
dinner and began to whip the water with an energy unnecessary
so far as the fish were concerned, but he wished to show himself
that he was in earnest. He had come to fish, hunt, and study
the hermit. The true way to do all this was to fish, hunt, and
study at the proper times, and Scott implied by secret smiling that
he conjectured his course of thought. As a consequence, when
night found them again on the plateau in conversation the hermit
was quite humorous and fluent, and inclined to talk of anything.
When Florian made bold to tell him something of his present
sorrows he was sympathetic.

" I am afraid there is little real warmth in my nature, Scott.
I contemplate Linda's death, and Sara's apostasy, and separation
from Ruth with a moderate degree of sorrow, a stoicism that one
does not often meet with in the young. I foresee how I shall
work all the harder afterwards, and I have that feeling which
says ' Sorrows even greater shall not disturb thy soul.' '

" A young man's feelin's," said Scott, " are not to be depended
on. Wait till all these things happen, and then you'll find how
you'll take 'em. It's much like a man in consumption. He will
die in four years, the doctor says. He's resigned, and surprises
hisself by not thinking o' death often at all. When death gets
hold on him, though, he finds his former feelin's weren't much.
Now, I think your Linda will die and Sara marry the minister,
an' ye'll go to New York without Ruth. An' it isn't so much
these things that ought to bother a man as his steppin' out inter
life an* takin" a choice of labor. He ought to see that he got the
right place. He ought to be sure that he wouldn't do better in
all ways whar he is than thar. People are hasty about things of
this kind. Money is the object an' high position. If they get
these, life is complete. If not, they're lost. They don't think
much about the soul. They drag it anywhere, quite sure they
can get along. Some people there are who will be damned for

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 23

studying medicine, an' they might hev known it before. An'
political ambition will damn others, jes' as I think it will damn
you."

Florian laughed loud at this last remark, which was delivered
with innocent solemnity.

" I would like to know your reasons for such a thought,"
said he.

" Mostly because your weaknesses will be pretty well edicated
and your strong points let run wild in politics, but entirely be-
cause you are cut out for another sitiwation."

" You interest me," said Florian. " Pray what are the weak-
nesses and the strengths, and the other situation ? "

" A young man about to make a jump for sich big prizes
ought to be ashamed to ask sich questions from any man. Ye
came here to study yerself. Do it ; I'm off. A pleasant night to
you. I'll not see ye to-morrow."

Florian sat silent until the sound oi oars had been lost in the
distance. It was such a night as the preceding one had been
the earth all darkness, the sky pierced with starlight, and a cool
south breeze beginning to wake strange murmurs from the shore
and the trees. A few clouds lay like shadows, on the horizon,
and above and below was that beautiful stillness, so beautiful yet
so painful, like that which lay about the prophet waiting on
Horeb's rock to hear the still, small voice of God. It seemed to
Florian that some voice must be born of such an agony of
silence ; perhaps it was born, and his ear too coarse to catch a
sweetness so

" Fine that nothing lived 'twixt it and silence."

Those were ^harp words the hermit had uttered, and they
shed a new light on the youth's mind. What an idea was this,
that some men could be damned for studying medicine ? Yet it
was true, he had admitted when he found the proper sense of the
words. And might not he be placing himself in such a position ?
He was humbled to admit that, after all, he did not know him-
self nor had studied the every side of his ambitions. How far
was he prepared to go, in seeking position and a name ? The
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were sometimes
easily bought by falling down to adore Satan. How would he
withstand such a temptation ? He hardly knew, but stole to
bed crestfallen.

The sound of the morning rain woke him from a very sweet
sleep, but when that mournful patter reached his ears the con-

24 SOLITAR Y ISLAND. [Oct.,

versation of the preceding- evening recurred to him and a deso-
lation crept upon his spirit. He threw himself back upon the
pillow and reviewed that sharp saying, " Some men politics will
damn. I believe they will damn you." Why ? The hermit had
refused to say, but left the enigma to be answered by himself.

" I-^am a Catholic of rather a severe type," Florian thought,
" with a fair knowledge of the faith and honest principles. My
inclinations all run towards political life. I am a good speaker,
have a good physical presence and considerable talent, and not a
little local influence, all which, with health and determination,
promise me high position. Why should the life be dangerous to
the soul of me, Florian Wallace ? Is there another life for which
I am better fitted ?"

That other could be but a retired life in Clayburgh with its
safe but respectable dulness, and Florian dismissed it with a
savage snort as he dressed himself. To look day after day at
such a scene as yesterday's, or a rain-storm after the fashion of
the present ; to study its lights and shadows, and scrape one's soul
for a sentiment that would make these act on the mind again
bah ! He felt instinctively it was no life for him. He got break-
fast, lit his pipe afterwards, and sat in the open doorway singing
hoarse melodies of defiance at the mists that were closing in
around him and the melancholy murmur of the rain. How long
and how often such a dismal scene had been played upon the
island ! Perhaps a generation previous a group of savages had
sat in their smoky wigwams on this very spot 'and looked grimly
on such a rainfall, making weird fancies out of the mists and pre-
paring charms against their fatal powers ! And all these were
dead ! Linda was dying ! Old affections of his heart were dying !
The very scene about him was showing symptoms of decay ! In
fifty years at most he too would be dead. What difference then
between him distinguished and influential and the unknown her-
mit ? Would wealth and station and influence be more than the
simple pleasures of the solitude ? And it was a doubtful matter
if the statesman blessed by his country would stand as high as the
hermit in the esteem of God ! Well, well, what queer thoughts
were these in a young man, properly the product of gloomy days
and solitude ! He let them take their course. They would
not hurt him, and there were certain periods of the year when
circumstances or passing disease would bring on just such
attacks.

The next day towards evening Scott made an unlooked-for
appearance with a bright eye and a flushed cheek.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 25

" I'm goin' to take possession of the bed," said he, " and you
must shift to the floor. I'm ill."

" Oh ! " said Florian, quite surprised that the hermit should
make such an admission, but asking no questions. Scott had
taken cold and was in a fever, and the youth rejoiced that fate
should have thrown them together at a critical time. He was
handy about a sick-bed, womanlike in his gentleness and skill and
power over his tongue. He made himself master of the situation
at once and proceeded to treat the patient according to his own
ideas. Had he discovered the true way of dealing with the her-
mit ? Scott made no objections to anything he said or did, but
seemed rather pleased with him.

He was sick until the third day, when he became convalescent
and began to turn to the old routine of cabin-work meal-prepar-
ing, mending, and reading. It was raining still and the mists lay
heavier on the island world, and Florian had by intense and
desultory thinking wrapped his mind in mists so profound that
he felt a positive desire to fly to the town. Wherefore on the
fourth evening he announced his departure for the next day.

" And I hope," said Scott, " that you got some benefit from
close study of yourself, and that you can p^gtty well answer the
questions ye asked me when ye first came."

There was some irony in the tone, but Florian felt that he
was master of the situation for the present.

" I shall go to New York," he replied, " come what may. I
shall not trouble myself with much thought hereafter, for I find
it confusing ; and as to studying myself, my blunders will do that,
and my enemies and friends."

" If you wait to know yourself that way, my lad, very good ;
your political life will be short."

" We must run some risks, Scott. - Anyway, I have got
enough of solitude, as I have of Clayburgh, and I see nothing in
my strengths or weaknesses to tell against success in my chosen
life. On the contrary I find myself longing for it; I can feel
even now the fierce joy with which I shall plunge my loneliness
and pain in the whirl of the mighty current. I shall be alone, I
suppose, and for a time grief-stricken, but life will be there and
will ; while you will fish and sleep in this prison and groan over
your rheumatism. Before going it would tickle my vanity to
know your estimate of my character, and a hint, just a hint, of
that situation you spoke of the other day."

Florian had no expectation of receiving an answer to his im-
pertinent request, and turned to the window through which he

26 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

could see a break in the cloudy sky and the gleaming of a few
stars. It was a dreary scene and his heart was full of its dreari-
ness.

" I'm not anxious to disturb your good feelin's," said Scott.
" You are bound for to go, and your blunders will teach you
better than my words. I can fancy how you won't know your-
self ten years from now, and I propose that when you go home
to-morrow you sit down and write an account of yer present
feelin's and opinions, and leave it with me. I'll see that you git
it to read ten years from date. You'll be surprised."

" Done," said Florian eagerly, delighted beyond measure at
this evidence of the hermit's interest in him. " I'll make it mi-
nute in essentials, my friend."

" I s'pose. All the worse for you, an' maybe you'll not be
astonished and 'shamed readin' that paper in days to come. I
had an idee of a man gentle and quiet, whose mind was jes' like
the water on a still night, deep, clear, sweet, and full o' heaven
an' the bright pints in it ; who'd settle down to a steady, pious,
thinkin' life, writin' fine things for other people to read, comin'
nearer to God every year and bringin' others along with him, till
he'd be so ripe for heaven as to fall into it from this world, jes'
as natural as a ripe apple falls to the ground. I had that idee,
but it's gone, and I mentioned it jes' to show ye what a stranger
thought o' ye."

" I'll put that down too," said Florian, thoughtfully, " and it
might be interesting to read at the same time as the other. I'm
much obliged to you, indeed ; but it doesn't suit, and never
would."

That was the end of the conversation. The hermit and Flo-
rian retired to rest with their usual indifference to each other
and in their usual silence ; but the youth was so charmed at his
fancied success in winning the solitary's interest that he fell asleep
thinking of it, and dreamed that the honest man rose in the night
and, stooping over his bed, kissed him gently two or three times,
as his father might. He was weeping, for the tears fell in a
shower on Florian's face, which set the youth laughing, he knew
not why. At this he awoke. Everything was still save the
patter of the rain on the roof, while the hermit was sleeping
gently as a child.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 27

CHAPTER x.

" LO, AS A DOVE."

FLORIAN returned from his solitude with a feeling of lofty in-
difference for the world and everything in it. He had, more-
over, a profound contempt for solitude in respect to men of his
disposition, for, having gone out to ascertain by himself and with
the aid of a sage of silence and loneliness his own tendencies and
fitness for certain work, he had instead been perplexed and con-
founded, both by his own meditations and the sage's advice. He
now arrived at the conclusion that he should go on in the path
already chosen, nor turn aside even at the command of an angel.

He found a suspicious lull resting on the home atmosphere of
Clayburgh. Linda was quiet and happy, to judge from her man-
ner and look. Billy and Mrs. Winifred had lost the feverish anx-
iety of the week past. Ruth was placid, and Sara deeply involved
in a new novel. Matters had fallen into the old routine sudden-
ly, and it gave Florian a sharp pang of grief. If the lull was so
complete, what would not be the coming storm ? He had been
very fearful and ashamed of his own calculating disposition, but
there was no mistaking the sudden agony that seized him as he
kissed Linda on his return. The blood leaped to his head in a
blinding way, the tears pressed like a torrent to his eyes, but
only a few drops fell, and dry sobs struggled in his throat and
bosom. Did she understand the cause of such emotion ? A
tender, far-away look on her pale face, a luminousness that might
have been from the cold external moon of the unknown world,
a shadow in the sweet eyes that threatened at once to dim them
for ever, was what had taken away his self-command so violently,
and, as if it were but natural that he should so act, she drew his
head to her breast, and, placing her cheek against his soft hair,
smoothed it with her delicate hand until the storm of grief had
spent itself. When he looked up again both understood one an-
other perfectly Linda knew at last that she was dying !

Evidently Florian had never until this moment realized his
coming misfortune. He was unable to speak without fresh bursts
of grief, and was compelled to rush out into the open air to calm
himself. There he met his father working at the garden, and in
a very happy frame of mind, which his son's manner at once dis-
pelled. Billy sat down suddenly on the gravel, limp and spirit

28 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

less, every wrinkle smoothed out from terror until his face re-
sembled a blank wall.

" She's dying ! she's dead ! " he gasped.

" No," said Florian, " she's all right. But in a week or two
we shall bury Linda. O Linda! "

That long-drawn wail of suppressed but exquisite anguish
startled a lady who sat reading in the favorite arbor, and Sara
appeared pale and frightened. Florian was pacing the gravel
with hasty stride, while Billy threw handfuls of it over his per-
son in mute despair. Seeing Sara, he flung some pebbles at her,
mumbling anathemas, but she hardly noticed it in her terror at
the scene. Then Mrs. Winifred chanced to stumble into view
with her placid face and well-arranged hair, and for a moment
was struck motionless by the tableau. She ran quickly and si-
lently to Linda's room and saw the girl smiling on the pleasant
scene without, for the river was in full view from her window.
What was the cause of the general grief? When she returned to
the garden Sara had withdrawn and Florian was visible walking
down to the shore. Billy still sat on the gravel and threw hand-
fuls into the air, and over his wife when she approached. Not
understanding the spirit of the thing, she could afford to laugh in
her quiet way and inquire if the little bull were going crazy.
Billy sprang to his feet and threw a double-handful over her.

Mrs. Winifred retreated, sick at heart and quite unmindful of
the gravelly appearance of her smooth hair. It was very clear
to her now. Linda was dying. That was the echo which sound-
ed in Florian's ears like the steady tones of a bell, as he walked
down by the river and allowed his eyes to rest on the quiet city
of the dead which crowned the nearest hill. Henceforth that
was to be Linda's home ! He sat down on the river-bank and
moaned in agony, but he was quite composed when Pere Rouge-
vin, passing by, touched him briskly and inquired after his
health.

" Your attitude," said the pere, looking over the water in his
absent-minded way, yet darting sharp glances at Florian mean-
while, " reminds me of poor Paddock, the builder, with his terri-
ble face you recall it ? nose turned to the ears, one eye gone,
mouth awry "

" I heard the story," said Florian abruptly.

" Well, this Paddock was boarding at the Cape last week
you didn't hear this, my boy ancl one night had the pleasure of
jumping into a bed out of which his bedfellow had politely re-
moved the slats. He fell through in consequence, struck his

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 29

chin against the bed so violently as to draw blood, and cried out,
' Gosh amighty, Sam ! light the lamp ; I'm all disfigured.' "

Florian laughed a little, very little, and rose.

"Will you come up to the house?" he said. "Linda, you
know, is dying."

" So I believe. I can't call now ; Linda knows it, for I told
her."

" You told her ! " cried Florian with a strong feeling of rage
against he knew not what. " You you " he wished to say,
" sentenced the child to death " ; but felt its foolishness and was
silent.

" I saw she would not last much longer," said the pere in his
professional tones, "and so informed her. There was no one
else to do it, and if 1 had told her she was to live she could not
have taken it much better. Good day."

He was going off, but thought of something and returned.

" It is a happy change for her, and I am really glad to see
how well you all bear it. I wish I could tell you how sorry I
am for your sake."

" Thank you, thank you, pere," said the y^pung man, and he
would have said more but that a stentorian voice interrupted
him. The squire was rolling towards them from the distance
like an unwieldy ship in a heavy sea. He saw by their faces
that there was calamity in the air.

" So you got back," he said to Florian, " and found Linda
worse than ever. Dying ? That's tough. Poor little girl !
I'd have given my whole head to any of these rascally govern-
ments to save her. I was just going up with you, but I'll wait
I reckon, and strike company with Pere Rougevin. Flory, my
lad, you know what you're losing, but such a flower wasn't made
to grow in our soil ; I made up my mind to that since I knew her
first. I wish more of us could be like her ; I do, by thunder ! "

" Thank you," said Florian, and they parted.

He was very cold and quite himself when he came into
Linda's presence again.

" How is Scott?" said she. " I have done nothing but dream
of him since you left."

" He sent you his very best esteem," said Florian, " and is to
call on you soon, and all the flowers and herbs and grasses the
islands afford are to be sent you. You have charmed him,
Linda."

" I do not know why he has been so much in my thoughts
lately, but his red beard and keen eyes have haunted me pleas-

30 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

antly for two weeks. Probably because you were there with
him. And what did he say to you ? You know you promised
to tell."

" He told me, very much like a fortune-teller, that I was cut
out for a quiet life, and fitted to write beautiful things for the
million. And when I told him my tastes ran in any direction
but that he said many people are damned for studying medicine
or taking up politics, and he thought I would be too."

Linda's old nature, though softened by illness, rose up at this
declaration and she laughed herself into a fit of coughing.

" Well, well ! what an idea," she said. " But it is true in part.
There are less temptations in such a life as this than in the life of
a public man. And, O Florian ! I want to be so sure of meeting
you again that, whatever life you choose, be faithful to our reli-
gion and true to God, and never forget Linda. I don't care
where I would be, I think I would feel so unhappy if you and
they were not to meet me again."

He could say nothing, but clasped her hand gently.

" And what were your own thoughts?" she asked. "How
did you follow out your idea of a retreat ? "

" You remember the crowd we saw at the revival camp-
meeting ? I have been in the condition of that crowd since I
left, all turmoil and excitement, and my solitude put on so loud
a personality before I left that I was less at home than in a ball-
room. I got enough of the wilderness. I prefer a prison."

She shook her head deprecatingly.

"You made a blunder somewhere. You had no system.
You were prejudiced from the beginning. Well, no matter."

Florian grew suddenly uneasy. He had something to say,
and could not command himself to say it. She saw his emotion
and understood it.

" You must not think," she said, " that I am afraid or very
sorry to die, and if you have anything to say you must be very
frank with me."

" While we are together, Linda " how very dear that name
had become to him, that he hung on it as if it were sweetest
music ! " whatever wish you have concerning me I would like
to know and follow it."

" I will tell yoti all soon enough," she said, and for the time
she was too weary to speak more. He sat beside her holding her
dear hands and looking into the pallid face. Could this be the
lively, cheerful girl of a month past ? He could not realize that
it was. The changes made by death were very painful. It had

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 31

robbed them of the dear girl even before the soul had fled, for
this was no more the Linda of old times than a stranger. She
fell asleep soon, and he saw how completely death had seized on
her. The hollow eyes and parted mouth, the wasted hands, the
feeble but labored respiration, were all eloquent of death. She
slept sweetly, indeed, so sweetly that he could not help saying
the angels were around her ; but her eyes were only closed in
part, and it awed him to see how she seemed to look on him with
her senses locked in slumber.

" Or do the dying really sleep ? Is not the soul, conscious
of its coming pain and disenthralment, hovering rather on the
confines of life and eternity, and studying as one on a mountain
the valley left behind and the valley rising into view ?"

And this was death ! And just like this one day he would be,
pale and hopeless and helpless, thin, forsaken, the most neglect-
ed and the most respected of his kind, his uselessness protected
in the sight of man by the overstepping majesty of death.

" At least we are attended by a king ! "

Poor consolation ! For then no remedy lay against the sting.

The day after his return Linda remained ifr bed, and to her
mother's inquiry replied that she would never rise again. Mrs.
Winifred accepted the position in her quiet way, but her silent
despair brought the tears into the girl's eyes.

" There is no pain in dying," she whispered, " but in leaving
you, mother."

From that moment she began to fade gently oh ! so gently
that it seemed as if an angel, incapable of suffering, had come in
her place to die. Florian did not leave her day or night. Ruth
was often there, and Sara and Billy, and the strong-voiced squire,
for she liked to see them all about her as in the earlier, happier
time, and to hear their jokes and bright sayings and pleasant gos-
sip, and to imagine that she was just going to fall asleep for a lit-
tle while, and, waking again, would find them all just as she had
left them. Every day came a bunch of forest treasures from the
hermit, mosses and rare leaves, and bright red berries, and, rarest
of all, tender bluebells and pink honey-suckle, which he had kept
growing for her sake in favored places. He did not come him-
self, but her bed was so placed that she had a full view of the bay
and the islands, and often saw his canoe or yacht flitting from one
point to another.

In the lonely nights Florian and Mrs. Winifred sat alone in
the room, dimly lighted by the night-lamp, and talked or read
to her in her waking hours. When it became painful for her to

32 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

speak, at length, she contented herself with watching him for
hours, as if studying out some difficult problem.

" Florian ! "

" Yes, dear."

" You will be very much afraid to die."

" I trust not, Linda."

" But you will, I know, and I want to tell you that it is not as
hard as we imagine. Only be good, do good, and it will be very
easy."

" I shall try with my whole heart, Linda."

" You will not marry Ruth? She is so good, Florian."

" How can I," he replied with some bitterness, " when my
own good sense and hers, and Pere Rougevin, are opposed to it ?
If she be not a Catholic I must be a Protestant."

There was a pause, and she seemed to have fallen asleep,

" You will not forget, Linda, that you are to tell me your
wishes before before You said you would."

" I only want to be sure of meeting you all again," she said.
" You are very good, Florian, now. Promise me you will never
grow worse, only better ; that you will never cease to think as
you think now ; that you will always remember Linda."

" Is that all, dear ?," he answered, with something like re-
proach.

" All ! " she repeated. " Oh ! the old, old spirit of confidence.
If you do that, Flory, if you do that much " She ended with a
smile, and after a little added : " Be careful of Sara ; be kind to
her, and save her if you can."

Those were almost her last words to him. Early the next
morning Pere Rougevin anointed her and gave her the Viati-
cum, the whole family and Ruth being present. She beckoned
Ruth to her after the ceremony and whispered :

" If you knew how sweet it is to die in this way you would
not hesitate to become a Catholic. Dear Ruth, I shall hope to
see you again ; you were always so good."

Around the house that day fell the heavy curtains of death,
invisible yet felt, and shedding everywhere a funereal sadness.
Only one window was uncovered, and that was in the white
chamber, where she lay with half-closed eyes drinking in the
colors of the scenes she had so tenderly loved. The end was
very near so near that at any moment the light might fade from
her face and the gentle breathing cease. Out on the blue waters
the western sun was shining in a long bar of light broken often
by the passing clouds, yet shining out every moment just as

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 33

bright as before, and this shifting movement of the light occupied
her attention. Mrs. Winifred alone was with her. In her meek
way she supplied her needs and silently anticipated her simple
wishes, and was so wrapt in her dying child that she did not
hear the- knock at the door without, nor its repetition, nor the
steps which ascended the stairs and, entering the room in a quiet
but abrupt way, suddenly presented to her the uncouth appear-
ance of the hermit. Mrs. Winifred was rather exasperating on
such occasions. She was frightened, and her face showed it ;
nevertheless she made no sign, and was meeker than usual when
Scott rather imperiously waved her aside and took Linda's hand
in his own.

So it happened Florian found him a half an hour later in the
same position when Mrs. Winifred came to hurry them all to
the death-room for death-room now it had become, since Linda
lay like an infant in the arms of the king at last. At last and for
ever! There was no recall, no further hope. The girl's face
bore the new expression, the seal which God first placed on
Abel's young face, the protest of the body and the seul against
sin's merited punishment, the reflected light from the torch of
death ! Florian took her left hand and gazed composedly on her
face. There was something strange in her manner ; a strange
glory or triumph rested on her lips ; there was more color and
fire in her cheeks and eyes ; and now she turned from Scott to
him and back again, looking, looking like one hungry beyond
words to tell, and looking yet again until death suddenly caught
her weak breath and, with a sob and a muttered sentence, carried
it to eternity and God. The last words were :

"Jesus, that we may meet again ! Jesus."

And it was the first day of November, at four o'clock in the
afternoon, with the sun shining on the- river and great clouds
rising in the east, that Linda died !

CHAPTER XI.
THAT WE MAY MEET AGAIN.

The day after Linda's burial it was snowing, and you could
not see the houses on the next street. It promised to be a heavy
snow-storm, but not unusual for that district, and the dwellers
by the river settled themselves comfortably for six months at
their warm firesides. The Wallace home was gloomy and disor-
dered ; its members were all hidden from one another's sight, for
VOL. XL. 3

34 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

none could look in the other's eyes and keep from tears, and
Florian in his own room was busied packing clothes and books
for an immediate departure to New York. He had realized the
hermit's predictions as to his own feelings. While Linda was
living he would speculate mournfully on his own grief and her
departure for heaven, and feel disgusted with himself for his
calculation and coldness. But Linda dead was another thing.
To go about with the vision of that sweet face as it lay in its last
narrow bed before him, with the moan of the Dies Iras and the
falling, rough clods dinning the ear day and night, with the
funeral train, the sobs, the prayers, the tears and loneliness pass-
ing, always passing through waking and sleeping dreams, and
the throb of that fearful bell which tolled the tidings of their
loss oh ! these were the circumstances of real grief a grief that
weighed on him like a mountain, and made him feel that life was
something of a delusion and something still terribly real. Well,
there was no help for it, and action was the only remedy. He
had his affairs long since arranged. There was nothing left but
to pack his traps and go, and he was working with feverish haste
and unnecessary care. A knock at the door interrupted him,
and his mother entered at his bidding, calm as usual and the hair
smoothly arranged over the placid cheeks. She was nervous,
however, and distressed. Did he know what had become of
Sara ? Seemingly she had not returned to the house after the
funeral, and it was rumored that she was married to Mr. Buck
the preceding evening. Mr. Wallace had heard it just then in
the town, and was looking for an axe in the shed to demolish the
pair if it were the truth. Florian could not but smile at Mrs.
Winifred's calm acceptance of the ridiculous facts, and thought
she must have perceived their absurdity.

" She went to Ruth's, probably," said he. " And who would
blame her for leaving so lonely a house ? But as to the story,
don't you trouble yourself with such nonsense."

Mrs. Winifred, however, did not like to think it nonsense any
more than she liked to doubt Florian's conclusion. A view of
Billy with an axe on his shoulder stepping off in the direction of
the episcopal parsonage depressed her and angered her son, but
it had a contrary effect on each as to the truth of the report.

" Does father believe it? " said Florian.

" He is going to inquire of Mr. Buck himself, seemingly. If
the minister denies it, he will come back ; but if he does not, Mr.
Wallace will smash and cut -everything in his way."

" Let him," said Florian grimly. " If it be true, I'll second

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 35

him. Then, paying the damages will teach him how to use an
axe."

Mrs. Winifred sighed and cast a meek look at the trunks and
boxes scattered through the room.

" Yes, I'm going, mother, at last," said he. " There is nothing
here to hold me, is there ? And as soon as I get settled I shall
take Sara to keep house for me until she gets over her folly. I
would prefer her following Linda than Mr. Buck. A monument
is more satisfactory over one than an episcopal meeting-house,
even if it is "

He kicked things around noisily and drowned the short,
sharp burst of grief that followed his sarcasm. The door-ham-
mer was going vigorously when silence was restored, and Mrs.
Winifred hastened to admit the callers. Her voice was strangely
agitated as a moment later she called Florian to the parlor. He
found her pale and trembling at the foot of the stairs, and shak-
ing as if with ague.

" It's true, true," she repeated. " O Linda ! "

"What's true?" said Florian roughly, as he threw open
the door violently and strode in like an angry deity, frowning.
Mr. Buck was there as painfully correct in costume as ever, and
beside him Sara languished in her mourning robes. One glance
was enough, but Florian pretended not to understand.

" I thought it would be but fair," said Mr. Buck, " to let
you know of the relations which now exist between your sister
and myself. We were married last evening at the rectory in
presence of the. officials and the leading members of my church,
who understand the peculiar circumstances which led to the
ceremony at so sad and unfavorable a time."

" It would have been better to have waited," said Florian,
aping a calmness he (Jid not feel ; " but 1 am not surprised, nor
will any one be, I presume, with whom you are acquainted. My
sister is of age. We would have done our best to prevent what
in itself is undesirable, but there is a satisfaction in knowing that
matrimony will not be a means of increasing the number of con-
verts for the future. Am I to understand that Mrs. Buck in
adopting your name has also adopted your particular religious
views ? "

" Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Buck vacantly. He was not
prepared for so cool a reception.

" Mrs. Buck expressly stipulated that she should be allowed
to attend her own church on alternate Sundays, and after consul-
tation with friends it was allowed."

36 SOLITARY ISLAND. . [Oct.,

" I congratulate you, Sara," said'Florian sadly, for this smote
cruelly on his heart. " We have done our duty towards you. I
hope you will be happy. I am going away to-morrow for good,
so good-by."

" Good-by," said Sara, shedding a few tears. Her shallow
soul was beginning to see that her brother's generous nature and
high motives had been sadly misunderstood.

" I was intending to bring you with me," Florian continued,
smiling, " and have you preside over my house ; but that plan
must be laid aside. You will excuse me now, Mr. Buck ; I am
busy."

Mrs. Winifred came forward and meekly congratulated her
daughter, being somewhat encouraged by Florian's admirable be-
havior. Then they returned to the parsonage.

But it so happened that as the door closed on them a short
figure with an axe over its shoulder emerged from the snow-
storm, and Mr. Buck was suddenly confronted with his angry
father-in-law. Billy's face was working convulsively, but he
could not speak. He smiled villanously, and Mr. Buck, taking
it for approval, was beginning a set speech, composed expressly
for Billy's benefit, when a blow on his stomach cut off wind and
eloquence.

" This," gasped Mr. Buck, " is violence."

" You divil ! " sputtered Billy, and knocked off his hat. But
it would be painful to describe the indignities to which Mr.
Buck was subjected in a minute's time by his wife's father.
Florian, coming to the rescue, found him struggling for freedom
with a desperation which had deprived him of many articles of
apparel, while over him, speechless and infuriated, Billy waved
the bonnet and veil torn from Sara as she fled.

" You are essentially vulgar," said Mr. Buck, when his breath
returned and Florian had assisted him to resume his clothing
and safely retreat.

The occurrence, though awkward, was a family affair purely,
thanks to the falling snow, nor did any one ever discover just
how the Wallaces received the defection of their daughter.
Billy's smothered relation of the affair was considered a pure
effort of the imagination.

The incident had a depressing effect on Florian beyond the
power of words to tell. He had mastered himself very thorough-
ly at a trying moment, bu.t a physical weakness added itself to
his mental desolation, and left this new sorrow very hard to
bear. His packing, was ended before night, however, and, having

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 37

despatched his boxes to the. "depot, he went on foot around the
bay to Squire Pendleton's. The squire was in his study smok-
ing, and listened to Florian's tale with much commiseration and
delight.

" It's a great pity Billy didn't use the axe," said he, "and cut
off his head, as those rascally governments wanted to do with
me. I'd like to tell the story, but as it's a family matter I sup-
pose it won't do? I thought not. But it's a reflection on the
family to have such a goose in it. Here, Ruth, come in and hear
the news."

Ruth was passing in a room beyond and came to the door at
her father's shout.

" You couldn't guess," said the squire. " Sara's gone an' done
it at last ; married the parson last night after the funeral, and
Billy gave him a fearful lickin' this morning."

Ruth was shocked so violently that she grew quite pale, and
stammered out:

" I knew they would marry ; but Linda's death, I thought,
would make a difference. Poor Linda ! "

" That hurt me most/' said Florian, with a wan smile ; " but it
was done very respectably. The whole congregation was called
in and consulted. If they did not marry then while we were
taken up with sorrow it might become impossible to marry at
all. The circumstances as they saw them justified the action."

" Not by a "jugful," quoth the squire, purpling. " But then
I forgot " and he quieted suddenly with a laugh " almost any-
thing justifies marriage in this country. I dunno but it's better,
too. These confounded old-country notions take half the fun
out o' the thing."

" There's the rub," said Florian. " There's the weak point ot
our people. They do so much just for the fun of the thing."

" Now, you've remarked, Flory, Mackenzie was serious as a
ghost. I went into the scrimmage for the sake of a high old
time, and I got it."

" Considerably higher and older than you wanted it, squire,"
laying his finger on his nose to signify just how high and old
the time was.

The squire chuckled.

" Mackenzie's in jail south," said he, " and here am I. Political-
ly I'm dead and in jail, but just as soon as the thing quiets down
I'm coming out in a way that'll not leave much breath in some
people. Next year the sheriff's to be appointed. I'm going to
be sheriff. Mark that, Flory, and that I told you so. And then

38 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

you'll see fun. They've laughed and snickered at me long
enough. Lord ! what a laugh they'll have when I come out. A
grasshopper couldn't hear it. And Buck's been at the head of
it. He's your brother-in-law, Flory, I don't forget that; but his
jaw has been going and going, and his laugh's been the loudest
and longest, and so help me, I'll sell him and his 'piscopals out
before I'm six months in office."

" O papa! " said Ruth, smiling, " how vindictive."

" Vindictive ! " snorted the squire, with a snap of the fingers.
" Yes I am, but I don't make no pretensions to any more charity
than they've got, the hybrids! cross between a Methodist and
a Catholic, and that's the meanest kind of a cross. If I was
in Congress I'd prohibit 'em. They'd have to be one thing or
'tother, swing incense or rant. They ought not to be tolerated."

Florian nodded mock-seriously at Ruth.

"There's a specimen of the American citizen," said he.
" Having been kicked out of England for ranting by the incense-
swingers, he's going to retaliate."

" Turn about is fair play," said Ruth.

" But this is a free country/' Florian replied.

" Free country be hem, g-r-r-r ! " spluttered the squire, with
difficulty crowding back an unruly expletive. " There must be
a limit to freedom." And seeing a curious expression on the faces
of his two auditors he began to proceed more coolly. " We can't
allow trash to overrun the country. We can't have the simplic-
ity of our people spoiled by the trimmin'sand fixin's of 'piscopals.
If they're Protestants, let 'em stick to it ; and if they're Catholics,
let 'em hang on to the pope, and we'll know how to deal with
'em. But here they come chanting and whining with flowers,
and robes, and candles, and bells, and crosses, and saying, We are
not Catholics nor yet Protestants. We hate the Pope, and hur-
rah for the constitution ; and that's all there is to 'em. They're
hurting the morals of the people, and that's good reason for 'em
to go."

" I told you he would come to that," said Florian gravely to
Ruth.

"Why, papa," said Ruth, " you have been giving us the argu-
ments of the Inquisition in Spain against Protestants."

" Have I ?" said the squire in vague wonder and alarm, trying
in vain to think of an escape from his dilemma.
i " Yes, you have," said Florian, with cruel delight ; " and you
must now either eat your own words or swallow the Inquisition
without sauce."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 39

" Well, you see, Flory," said the squire desperately, " this is a
new country, and principles and reasonings consequently take a
new application."

The shout of laughter which followed this sentiment drove
the squire from the room in shame and confusion.

" You young folks don't know anything," he growled as the
door slammed after him.

" I am going to-morrow," said Florian when they had done
laughing. He was glad to have this opportunity of speaking to
Ruth alone, and of discovering, possibly, whether fate had any
more stones to throw at him.

" I knew you could not endure life here," she replied with
much feeling, " after so many sorrows."

" The one thing I most regret is that I cannot bring you with
me, Ruth. You must know," he went on hurriedly, " that a very
little time should decide for you and me whether we part or
unite for ever. In a year, if you say it, I will come back for you,
Ruth."

" I fear I can never say it," she answered quite calmly ; " and
I fear, too, we have been wrong in expecting confidently what it
is God's alone to give. I have studied your faith, and find I have
no affinity with it. It is beautiful^ indeed, but it does not seem
to me to be the true one."

Fate had thrown its last missile. He was unable to speak
for a few minutes, and it was so silent that the tickings of the
clock seemed to be lances piercing the dead silence and his own
soul !

"There is a year yet," he said at length; "you can decide
better at the end of that time, perhaps."

" Perhaps," she repeated. Oh ! she was very calm in her
statements, simply because she had gone over this scene many a
time in the past few months. " But I think it would be better to
end it now."

He was so pale and pain-burdened when she looked at him
that her good sense faltered.

" Have we ever really loved each other?" said he brokenly.
" Do you know, Ruth, that if you persist we shall never meet
again."

" I know it," said she. fl I will wait for a year, if you wish.
We have been always under a restriction, you know, and I feel
as if it made truth harder for me to learn, because you were to
be the reward of my lesson."

" I release you," he said, rising. " I release you, Ruth, from

4O SOLITARY ISLAND. [Oct.,

any obligation to me. You are right y ou always were. Good-
by for ever."

They shook hands, and with this simple ceremony his first
love ended. Was he tempted to go back to his paradise and take
her as she stood, difference of faith included ? The thought did
occur to him, as would the thought of flying. With a sad smile
at its impossibility he faced the dying storm, bearing something
in his bosom that looked to his mind's eye like a vast desert filled
with aching pain. His feet turned unconsciously to the grave in
the church-yard, and, falling upon it, he moaned :

" O Linda ! all our good fortune went with you."

"Not all," said the hermit's voice near by.

He looked up indifferently and saw Scott leaning. against a
neighboring monument. He was covered with the falling snow,
and must have been out long in the storm. Feeling ashamed of
such a display of weakness, Florian rose and staggered away in
silence. What the hermit never before did he did then stopped
the youth and held him.

" You're not yourself, my lad," he said, with a touch of tender-
ness in his voice. "And I am told you're goin* away to-
morrow."

" Yes," said Florian, " to-morrow. Thank God ! I'm done with
this place for ever. There is nothing here for me but graves.
You see, Scott, I have lost them all Linda, Sara, and Ruth. And
the one nearest to me isn't it strange ? is the little girl in her
grave: Yes, I am going, and I wish it was morning and the
whole place out of my thoughts for good. There's not as much
cool calculation in my disposition as I thought. I don't care if I
was dead."

" There's a difference between dead and dying," said Scott
grimly. " You'd soon change your mind if death caught on to
you. You forgot to give me that paper

"I'll write it this very night," Florian answered; "my last
will and testament of the old life, and then hurrah for the new !
God ! how completely we can be torn up from the roots and
transplanted in new soil."

" Bosh ! " said Scott. " You kin no more git rid of the old life
than of yourself. You'll think of all these things for years, an'
you'll find them three women, an' me, an' the water, an' islands,
an' boats, an' things, twistin' in your thoughts and promptin' your
will until yer dead almost. You're a leetle apt to get senti-
mental."

Florian said nothing, for a sudden daze came over his senses

1884.] ANTIGONISH. 41

and he leaned heavily against the hermit, with his face upturned
to the snow-clouded sky ; and it so happened that the hermit's
beard brushed his chin and the weather-beaten cheek lay for an
instant against his own.

" Faintin', hey," said Scott. " You'll have a spell of sickness."
" Not at all. I was just thinking of Linda's last words. They
are a good motto as well as a prayer : ' That we may meet again.'
Good-night, Scott, apd good-by. As usual, you are right. The
old life shall not out for the new."
He went off briskly down the road.

TO BE CONTINUED.

ANTIGONISH. ,

" CHANGE cars here for Antigonish and the Straits of Canso ! "
So sings the veteran conductor of the Intercolonial Railway
train between Halifax and Pictou, as the morning express rushes
up to the bustling station at New Glasgow. The train pauses to
allow those of its passengers to whom the above intimation has
reference to collect their ideas and their impedimenta, and dis-
mount to wait twenty minutes in the draughtiest of waiting-rooms
until the carriages of the Halifax and Cape Breton Railway come
into view. New Glasgow is not a charming place in which to
while away even twenty minutes ; but if you come from Pictou or
from Prince Edward Island you must perforce spend six dreary
hours here and are likely to fall into uncomfortable musings.

A few yards from the station an iron bridge spans the small
river on which the town is built; on the_other side of this river
is a narrow track, where, at all hours of the day and night, a
small, grimy locomotive, fairly draped in soot, crawls laboriously
backwards and forwards, dragging equally sombre coal-carts.
This is said to be the oldest railway in America. Tradition tells
that two Highlanders, who had never before seen that triumph of
modern mechanism, the locomotive, were once terribly frighten-
ed by this coal-train. They were walking along the road towards
New Glasgow when suddenly, with a hoarse roar followed by a
series of short puffs, this black monster appeared to come out
of the earth, and crawled slowly along in a groove between two
banks of ashes, dragging a long line of " coal-hoppers." " Seall !
seall ! Dondill, sea!/, tiodhlacadk an Diobhail ! " cried Sandy, which

42 ANTIGONISH. [Oct.,

being interpreted means, "See! see! Donald, see the devil's
funeral ! "

Besides its great coal-mines New Glasgow boasts of many
other thriving industries, such as glass-works> steel-works, etc.
A short distance from the town, across the line of route of the
" devil's funeral," is the Catholic church, and beside it a beau-
tiful convent and schools, telling of the presence of the good Sis-
ters of Charity, who here do a noble work among the children
of the miners. The church is spacious and handsome, the style
of architecture resembling that of the more modern Anglican
churches.

New Glasgow contains probably the " oldest inhabitant " of
the globe. Some years ago a miner, in detaching coal from a
piece of stone in which it was embedded, broke the stone with
his pick-axe. To h\s amazement out hopped two live toads.
The stone was hollow and contained a little water, and, as the
reptiles had neither mou-ths nor eyes, it would appear that they
had lived by absorbing the water through the pores of their skin.
One died on its 'exposure to the air and light ; the other lived for
some time, and then, as befitted the scion of such an old family,
ended its days after the manner of the Duke of Clarence, and,
still preserved in spirits of wine, gives evidence that thousands
of years ago toads looked very much the same as do the toads
of this Darwinian century.

While we were meditating on all the history of all the ages
that might have been divulged had one of these toads developed
a woman's tongue, the Halifax and Cape Breton Railway con-
ductor shouts^ "All aboard ! " and off we go to the unknown re-
gions of eastern Nova Scotia, ensconced in one of the cosiest car-
riages possible. The railway enters Antigonish County from
Pictou County by the Marshy Hope Valley, running along the
base of Beaver Mountain on the south and skirting the south-
ern extremity of Brown's Mountain on the north. It emerges
from Marshy Hope Valley and passes by Beaver Meadow on to
James' River, coming in view of a mountain called the Keppoch.
This mountain extends far back into the country, and upon it are
one or two villages and churches or " stations." After a while
we leave the Keppoch behind and come out into a more smiling
landscape, where the fertile intervales wave their golden grain,
and angry little torrents rush noisily along, clamoring in their
eager escape from their mountain fastnesses. Here and there
are '^wonderful white hills, with a light tracery of hard-wood
throwing their chalky cliffs into relief. Nearing Antigonish, we

1884-] ANTIGONISH. . 43

see the grand outlines of the Sugar Loaf, and Brown's Mountain
gleaming russet and gold in the autumn sunlight, and towering
over the sister hills that; with them keep watch and ward over this
" city of the vale." Antigonish, the capital of the county of that
name, is as pretty a little town as one would wish to see. From
New Glasgow the grimy to Antigonish the fair and comely is a
sudden and pleasing transition. The latter is one of those places
that are always clean and neat and orderly. Yet there is one re-
miniscence that makes me pause. It is sometimes muddy. But
the mud is well-regulated mud : it seems to stick to the streets
and has no foolish ambition leading it to adhere to garments, and
shoes, and door-mats, and floors, as does the mud of Halifax.
One has a feeling that when Antigonish has sidewalks they will
be well-behaved sidewalks, and not tip up nor tilt down, but run
along smoothly and look fresh and new for ages. Without wish-
ing to belittle the green pastures of the highlands of Nova Scotia,
after the manner of Mr. Warner, I may* say that, comparatively
few people have much idea of Antigonish or of its eastern boun-
daries. They might not rush madly across maritime Canada it
sent to look' for Baddeck, but until the last few years this charm-
ing route for tourists was almost unknown ; and, as the Boston
traveller says in conceited wonderment, when speaking of the
aurora seen in his midnight drive to Port Mulgrave, " these
splendors burn and this panorama passes night after night down
at the end of Nova Scotia, and all for the stage-driver dozing on
his box from Antigonish to the strait!" Then the beautiful
Bras-d'Or, and historic Louisburg, and other charming spots in
Cape Breton had not become fashionable, and Antigonish itself,
only accessible by post-roads or schooners, had not taken her just
place among the towns of Canada.

The population of Antigonish is about two thousand ; of these
almost all are of Scotch descent, and the large majority are Ca-
tholics for it is a cathedral town and the home of the bishop ot
Arichat. The cathedral of Antigonish is generally admitted to
be the finest ecclesiastical building in the maritime provinces,
second only to the far-famed cathedral of St. John's, Newfound-
land. It is in the Roman style of architecture, and is built of blue
limestone and . brick ; it is one hundred and seventy feet long
by seventy feet wide. The arched roof is supported by Corin-
thian columns, its white and gold relieved by light touches of
color. The chancel and numerous lancet windows are very fine ;
indeed, everything about this cathedral of St. Ninian is on a
grand scale and solid as well as beautiful. On the facade over

44 ANTIGONISH. [Oct.,

the main entrance is graven the Gaelic Tighe Dhe (the House of
God) ; and the house is worthy of its dedication.

St. Ninian was chosen as the titular saint of Antigonish by
Bishop Plessis in 1812. This prelate, according- to his own show-
ing, was very particular in looking up Scotch saints for his chil-
dren in Nova Scotia. St. Ninian was the apostle of the south-
ern Picts ; he was the son of a prinCe of the Cambrian Britons,
and went to Rome in early boyhood. After many years spent
in the holy city he returned home to teach his countrymen. He
built a church at Whittern, now in Galloway, which church he
dedicated to St. Martin, whom he had learned to love in France.
There he reigned as bishop, and from there he converted the
Cumbrians and the southern Picts. He died on the i6th of Sep-
tember, 432. In September, 1874, fourteen hundred and forty-
two years after his death, this stately cathedral of the New World
was consecrated and dedicated to his holy memory.

Beside the massive and beautiful cathedral stands St. Francis
Xavier's College, a flourishing institution, taught by secular
priests of the diocese. Across the road is St. Bernard's Con-
vent, one of the most beautiful houses among the many missions
of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame. Up on the
hill overlooking these religious institutions towers the palace of
the bishop of Arichat. From its windows the view is beautiful,
and the little town is seen in its best aspect. Here the saintly
prelate lives whose wisdom, learning, and prudence have made
him famous the good and gentle Bishop of Arichat. From here
he rules his immense diocese, containing nearly sixty priests,
spending his leisure moments in literary pursuits. The Gaelic
catechism just issued for the use of the diocese is from the pen
of Bishop Cameron.

Little places, like little people, are apt to think too much of
themselves. And such is the case with this little country town.
The name Antigonish signifies in the Mic-mac language River of
Big Fish, and the metaphor may be applied to the towns-people,
who in their own estimation are very big fish indeed. Their
several callings are designated by the definite article : there is the
judge, the doctor, the professor, the banker, and, acme of provin-
cial greatness, the speaker ; for the legal gentleman who bears the
proud title of Speaker of the Nova Scotia Parliament resides in
Antigonish.* Here law and medicine run riot, as is the fashion in
Canada, and almost every window shows a " shingle " or a pestle

* Indeed, the place itself is called the town, to distinguish it from Halifax, which is the
city.

1884.] ANTIGONISH. 45

and mortar. The shops are good, both as regards their architec-
tural merits and the quantity and style of their contents. -Lines of
importation get a little mixed sometimes. For instance, I bought
a "high art ''copy of Blue Beard at a druggist's! There is
the usual book-store and fancy emporium the rendezvous for
mild gossip, where, if one loiters long enough, one may gauge
the intellectual and artistic tastes of the place. Lawn-tennis is
much in vogue in Antigonish, and a love of flowers seems gen-
eral ; the fair white houses rise up iti the midst of blooming gar-
dens, and the tennis and croquet lawns are shaded by vene-
rable and cool-looking willow-trees, of the kind used by Rhoda
Broughton as reading-retreats for her hoydenish heroines.

A lovely little river runs through the town, and is spanned by
one or two graceful bridges, which must be crossed to gain the
most important spot of this town of tkes, the railway station.
Here twice a day is a scene of hurry and bustle and local im-
portance a very Babel of English, Gaelic, and French. " How
are you?" and '' How's yourself? " " Ciamar a tha sibh ? " and
" Ciamar a tha sibh-fein?" and " Comment cava-t-il?" etc., fill
the air. There one sees all the celebrities and most of the oddi-
ties. We were fortunate enough to travel with no less a person
than an acquitted murderer. I use the term advisedly ; he was
certainly acquitted,' but public opinion held him as certainly to
be a party to the murder. Driving towards the station, we saw
the poor wretch washing his hands in the bright ripples of the
"Big Fish" River, and possibly echoing the somewhat profane
adjurations of that strong-minded Highland heroine, Lady Mac-
beth. Our other fellow-passengers were a poor woman, very
sick and weak, who had travelled home from the far, far West ; a
comely dame from Bayfield, which is the seaport of Antigonish,
and distant about nine miles. Another and more frisky matron,
on her way to Sydney, discoursed loudly abou^t thergayeties of
Halifax, in which she had been participating ; while a pale and
serious clergyman, seated opposite, read his breviary in happy
disregard of the latest gossip concerning Prince George or the
comparative merits of the balls given by the general and the
admiral. Behind this priest was a party of French people three
girls just returning from Boston, who had acquired the Bosto-
nian accent and added it to their somewhat slender knowledge
of English ; the effect was funny, and became funnier when they
recognized in a stout Acadian, returning from shopping at Anti-
gonish, an old neighbor who had not acquired "style." As the
train passes through South River district the view is most beau-

46 ANTIGONISH. [Oct.,

tiful. Cliffs of gypsum edge the shore, and lovely islets, all of
gypsum, dot the water, with here and there ferns and vines, and
little trees bending into the waves, forming a very fair landscape.
Heatherton was our destination a tiny village with a most
exquisite hurch all white and gold and inlaid wood, a gem of
delicate and refined taste. The country round Heatherton is
very rich and fertile, and settled by prosperous farmers, for the
most part Chisholms from Strathglass, in Scotland men of a
clan that, unlike the dwellers in Antigonish, disapprove of a lavish
use of the word the ; in fact, according to the judgment of clan
Chisholm, the definite article is applicable only to four per-
sonages : the pope, the queen, the Chisholm, and the devil!
Attached to the parish of Heatherton is the Indian church of
Summerside, where some of the descendants of the once mighty
Souriquois meet several times a year for the exercises of that
religion to which they have been so faithful. There are quite a
number of Indian missions in the diocese, in some of which the
red man seems to have retained his primeval simplicity. A
good story is told of a surveyor in this country who, many years
ago, was appointed to lay out some land at a place called Afton.
He ran his lines, and ordered an Indian who was with him to
drive stakes at given points. The Indian, maintaining that
the stake was not in the right place but encroached on the
Indian reserve, wished to drive it further back. The surveyor
allowed him to proceed as best it pleased him; but what
was the Indian's horror, as he commenced driving the stake,
to hear coming out of the innocent-looking piece of wood
the words, " Devil here." At every stroke, back, clear and dis-
tinct, came the words, " Devil here " ! And all along the more
distant line, try where he would, his hammer elicited the same
awful refrain. The trembling red man came back to the sur-
veyor and reported what he had heard. The surveyor gravely
.accepted the fact, and suggested that he should try placing the
stakes on the correct line. The Indian did so; they were ham-
mered in without further trouble, and the Indians were quite con-
vinced that they were the trespassers. The surveyor, it is
scarcely necessary to say, was an expert ventriloquist.

In this neighborhood they raise an immense number of cattle
for the Newfoundland markets. Within a circle of eight miles
are the thriving parishes of Pomquet (from Pogumkek, an Indian
name), a place chiefly settled by Acadians ; and St. Andrews, the
home of Father John MacDonell, a fine old Highlander, who has
never preached an English'sermon in his life.

1884.] ANTIGONISH. 47

Leaving Heatherton, the train calls at Bayfield, the seaport of
Antigonish.* A little further on than Bayfield is Tracadie, an-
other Acadian settlement on the shore. Tracadie, commercially,
is chiefly celebrated for its oysters ; religiously, for the monastery
of Petit Clairvaux. In a valley about two miles from the railway
station live a large and flourishing community of Trappisf monks,
who work and pray, and are proprietors of a valuable and flour-
ishing farm. There are forty-two in the community, governed
by a mitred abbot, from whom we received the kindest hospital-
ity. About half a mile from the monastery stands what appears
to be a rookery of old and tottering buildings, innocent of paint
and gray with age. It is not inaptly named (if we may say so
without irreverence) the Convent of the Seven Dolors. Within
its humble walls nine poor old women represent a community in
its death-agony. Originally Trappistine nuns, founded by Father
Vincent, a Trappist of holy memory, they did a good work in
the neighborhood ; but the first sisters died, and those who re-
placed them were ignorant of even the rudiments of learning,
unable to read or to write, and without the knowledge of order
and routine necessary for the conduct of a religious house. So
matters went on from bad to worse, until the bishop of the diocese
forbade their receiving any postulants; and the poor old ladies
live on in piety and simplicity, waiting for the summons that
will give to these humblest of God's servants an exceeding great
reward. To describe the Trappist monastery and convent
would take too much space ; yet they are most interesting, the
convent especially so. Tracadie has quite a large colored popu-
lation, descendants of fugitive slaves who came to the country
in 1814. They are nearly all, Protestants.

The next place of interest is Havre-Boucher, so called from
the circumstance of a Quebec captain being obliged to winter
there in 1759, on account of the ice having formed too quickly to
allow him egress. This pretty French village guards the en-
trance to the Strait of Canso, the bright waters of Bay St.
George laving one of its shores, the swift tide of the strait flow-
ing past the other.

The people go in for both fishing and farming. Here we
were entertained by one of the most hospitable and popular
clergymen of the Dominion the Rev. Hubert Girroir. His
piety and zeal were great, and his love for his race and their his-
tory knew no bounds. Death has since stilled the warm heart

* There is not sufficient depth of water in Antigonish harbors to allow of ships loading
there.

48 ANTIGONISH. [Oct.,

and closed the bright eyes of- this fine old man, but his good
deeds outlive him, and his name will long be cherished in the
hearts of the Acadian people.

Few who have not travelled in the Highlands of Nova
Scotia have any idea of the large Celtic population scattered
over the country from prosaic Pictou to romantic Louisburg.
Antigonish County alone has a population of eighteen thousand
and sixty ; of these fifteen thousand three hundred and thirty-
six are Catholics. Some of these people are the descendants of
emigrants, others are descended from the soldiers of the High-
land regiments that were disbanded. With but scant aid from
the government these gallant and indomitable men threw them-
selves into the work of clearing the forests and tilling the soil ;
most of them soldiers, accustomed to the desultory manner of
camp-life, or fishermen whose daily occupation had been to cast
their lines in the misty lochs of Inverness-shire or hunt for seals
in the northern waters of the Minch, it is wonderful how they
succeeded in the new rdle of hard-working farmers. They who
were contemptuously turned from their crofts to make room for
the Lowland sheep-tenders gave themselves heartily to the new
avocation of agriculturists, and adhered to it with the tenacity of
their race. To-day their descendants are possessors' of " cattle
upon a thousand hills," and have become a power in the land of
their adoption.

Pictou town, a pretty enough place when seen at a distance,
has a very neat little Gothic church and a large and flourishing
convent taught by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre
Dame. The popular parish priest of Pictou is the brother of
the last incumbent, Father Ronald MacDonald, nojftv bishop of
Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. This prelate, during his ministry
at Pictou, built both church and convent, erecting the latter at
his own expense. From Pictou to the boundaries of Antigo-
nish County the shore, called the " Gulf Shore," is limed with
Highland Catholic parishes Merigomish, Lismore, Malignant
Brook, and other names of mixed origin. Malignant Brook,
though a name calculated to inspire awe, is a harmless place
enough, and acquired its forbidding cognomen from its being
the scene of wreck of a ship of war called the Malignant. It is
either in connection w/ith Malignant Cove or Lismore that
there is a good story of Indian generosity and taste. The
worthy pastor received one anorning- a visit from a Mic-mac,
who brought him as a present a fine moose. After thanking the
generous donor the good father said: "But how shall I cook

1 8 84.] ANTIGONISH. 49

it?" The Indian made answer: "First roast him, then boil
him," and turned to leave the room ; but, struck by a forgotten
item in the recipe, he came back, and> putting his head round the
door, remarked : <; More better put a piece of candle with him,
father make him more richer ! "

Arisaig, the northern parish of Antigonish County, with its
districts of Knoydart and Moidart, was the pioneer settlement,
and around its history is a halo of unwritten deeds of bravery,
loyalty, and faith. To quote from a sermon preached by the
Right Rev. Bishop of Harbor Grace when he was " Father
Ronald " of Pictou :

" In 1787 the first Catholic Highlander, the pioneer of faith, took up his
solitary abode in the bosom of the forest primeval which then waved in
unbroken grandeur on these shores.* In the territory included by the
boundaries of the diocese of Arichat Catholics were at that period few and
far between. In November, 1783, the Eighty-second Regiment, which had
a large contingent of Catholics from the western Highlands, was disbanded
at Halifax. None of these, however, had hitherto made their way thus far
to the west. To these forlorn inhabitants of the forest in a strange land
the consolations of religion were first carried, as often they had been to
others in similar circumstances, by the irrepressible Irish missionary a
character that perhaps had never before been more fully sustained than it
was in the present instance by the zealous Father Jones. This was an
Irish Capuchin friar, as learned as he was pious. Protected by the tolera-
tion extended to him by Edward, Duke of Kent, he publicly exercised the
sacred ministry at Halifax unmolested, and held a vicar-apostolic's juris-
diction over the extensive region laved by the waters of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. The country, it is true, had, under the domination of France,
an anterior period of Catholic history dating as far back as 1604. Few of
the colonists of that period had remained, and fewer were the prospects,
from the same quarter, of future colonization. . . . With the former settlers
the Catholic religion was banished from Acadia, or at least was confined to
the poor, dear, faithful Mic-mac Indians. Thus had the fruits of the first
victory of faith gone. Could they ever agai rr be retrieved ? Did the last
hopes of Catholicity in this country expire when the arm of the French
monarch had become powerless to protect it? No! 'Behold the hand of
the Lord is not shortened.' How mysterious are the ways in which he
brings about the accomplishment of the wise designs of his all-ruling pro-
vidence ! The invincible Highlanders who, on the memorable 25th of
July, 1758, followed Wolfe to the conquest of the doomed city, were, in the
hands of God, the harbingers of a new, a more glorious, a more enduring
victory for our faith.

" On the restoration of peace in 1763 the Highland regiments were dis-
banded and offered by the imperial government free grants of lands in the
most fertile portions of the provinces in which they had so gallantly
served. But their predilections for their native straths and glens still

* One John Ban Gillies.
VOL. XL. -4

50 ANTIGONISH. [Oct..

chained them to the sweet homes of childhood. And who could find it in
his heart to blame them ? What son of the heather could of his free,
will exchange his own ' loved green slopes of Lochaber ' for the then
inhospitable, unexplored wilds of America ? Alas I the time at length
came when the exchange was no longer a matter of choice but of dire
necessity. The heartless chieftain has discovered that the raising of cattle
and sheep affords larger profits than the letting of his lands to poor tenants,
and forthwith he begins to eject them from the cosey cottages on the
mountain where they and their forefathers for centuries had found shelter.
This unpatriotic and inhuman policy was maintained in 1790. The year
following saw the full tide of emigration rapidly ebb away from the
' Misty Isles,' from the straths, glens, and mountains of Invernes-s, from
Glengarry, Knoydart, Arisaig, Morar, and Strathglass. With the prudent
forethought so characteristic of their race, these exiles kept together.
Wherever they went they settled down in large groups. The first arrivals
to this country colonized the parish of St. Margaret's (Arisaig), and this
was the humble beginning of the second epoch of Catholicity in eastern
Nova Scotia. Hither the Highland immigrants were soon followed by the
first Highland priest, the Rev. James MacDonald, of Morar, and in 1792
their first church was built."

This Father James left Arisaig in 1795, and between that
date and 1802 the people of St. Margaret's depended for spiri-
tual care upon Father Angus McEachern, a missionary priest of
Prince Edward Island, and afterwards the first Bishop of
Charlottetown, who now and then visited them in his canoe. In
the year 1802 God sent these faithful people a priest whose name
will live for ever in ail the country side. Rev. Alexander Mac-
Donald was born in 1754 at Cleanoeg, in Glenspean, in the braes
of Lochaber. He was a man of commanding appearance and a
brave and generous nature. Of him Bishop MacDonald says :

"The dark horizon which had hitherto circumscribed the wavering
hopes of the settlers was at once relieved of its gloom. He inspired them
with his own manly courage and cheered them by the example of his great
powers of endurance. Everything seemed the better and every heart
lighter for his presence."

For fourteen years this pastor led his flock, ministering,
preaching, exhorting, teaching, and helping them, loved and
venerated by all. In the spring of 1816 he went to Halifax on
business, and on the i$th of April he died in that city.

Deep and heartfelt was the grief of his parishioners, sincere
the sympathy of all who had known the venerable missionary.
The admiral on the station offered to send a man-of-war with
Father MacDonald's body to Arisaig ; but, though sensible of the
honor intended to be conferred both by the admiral and the

1 8 84.] A N TIGONISH. 5 1

governor, the dead priest's people declined the offer. A gallant
little band of Highlanders, who had hastened to Halifax upon
hearing that " he whom they loved was sick," decided that no
strange hands should be the means of conveying their dear sog-
garth to his long home. Carrying his loved remains on their
faithful shoulders, those sturdy men started on foot, and night
and day, over almost impassable roads, dense forests, and swollen
rivers, they bore all that was mortal of their best earthly friend
until they tenderly laid him to rest within the shadow of that
altar the steps of which he had so often ascended to offer the
Holy Sacrifice for the living and the dead.

Not far from Lochaber is a parish called St. Joseph's, where,
under the shelter of the Keppoch Mountain, ripples a silvery
little lake, its waves reflecting one of the prettiest country
churches to be found in eastern Nova Scotia. The view Irom
St. Joseph's Church is singularly beautiful, with its lake, moun-
tain, and rich intervales stretching away as far as the eye can
reach. In autumn the foliage here is magnificent, in all the
bravery of crimson, russet, and gold. By the shore of St.
Joseph's Lake is one of those curious conical little hills where
the fairies are said' to dwell. A belief in fairies prevailed very
generally among the Highlanders of old, and to this day it exists
in the minds of their descendants. These small, grass-grown
hills are named by them sin-skill, the habitation of a multitude,
or sith-eanan, from sith, peace, and dunan, a mound ; and here in
the gloaming the little people are supposed to hold their revels.
The idea seems to harmonize with the landscape. The tourist
might say with Kilmeny :

" She saw a sun on a summer sky,
And clouds of amber sailing by;
A lovely land beneath her lay,
And that land had glens and mountains gray,'
And that land had valleys and hoary piles, ,
And marled. seas and a thousand isles ;
Its fields were speckled, its forests green,
And its lakes were all of the dazzling sheen,
Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay <
The sun, and the sky, and the cloudlet gray,
Which heaved, and trembled, and gently swung
On every shore they seemed to be hung ;
For there they were seen on their downward plain.
A thousand times and a thousand again,
In winding lake and placid firth,
Little peaceful heavens in the bosom of earth."

52 ANTIGONISH. [Oct.,

The country for several miles around St. Joseph's is called the
" Ohio " why, nobody seems to know.

In Anti^onish town the first settlement was that of Colonel

Hierlihy and the soldiers of the disbanded Eighty-third Regi-
ment. The government granted to each soldier one hundred
acres of land and provisions for three years ; but after unsuccess-
ful attempts many of these amateur farmers gave up in despair
and left the place. Some of them sold their clearings; others left
without even trying to realize money on their farms, which were
afterwards sold to pay taxes. It is said that in those days two
hundred and fifty acres of land were sold at auction for 2 us.
yd., and one farm was sold for a suit of clothes !

The principal purchasers were Captain Hierlihy, Edward Irish
Baxter, Ogden Cunningham, and several MacDonalds. To these
were added in time two parties of United States loyalists, one
of whom, Nathan Pushee, was said to be General Washington's
trumpeter. These people underwent great hardships. Pictou
was their nearest market for supplies. There were no roads, and
their only way of getting to it was along the gulf coast. This
journey they often performed on foot. If they possessed a horse
it was attached to a sort of vehicle constructed of two poles, the
ends of which served as shafts ; these were connected with a few
cross-pieces of wood. The harness was of straw, and, as a modern
historian writes, " Many an honest countryman preparing to
return home had the annoyance to find that the hungry village
cows had eaten the harness off his horse." As there were no
roads, the meal-sacks were often the victims of the thick bushes
through which they were dragged and it was usual for a driver
to be provided with needles and thread to repair damages. In
every possible way the early settlers suffered inconvenience
from scarcity of horses and oxen, from want of wool and cotton,
from want of roads and mills and bridges ; their sheep, when
they got them, were in constant danger from bears and wild-cats,
which infested the forests. These and mosquitoes were a con-
stant source of annoyance, and one year, 1815, the invasion of
mice became a real plague. They made their appearance in the
month of March, and stood not on the order of their coming,
but came in thousands. The first contingent were succeeded by
an army of smaller ones, and a deadly feud was kept up all sum-
mer. It is said that on their march they packed down the snow,
or, in local parlance, " broke the roads." A track through the
forest at that time was effected by what they called " blazing
it." The journeys were very arduous. Great economy was

1884.] ANTIGONISH. 53

necessary regarding 1 the size and weight of parcels ; the first
wheat was brought by handfuls, and the man who introduced
potatoes bought a bushel in Pictou, cut the eyes out of them, and
brought them home in his pocket. As late as 1817 the mails for
the whole of Antigonish and Guysborough were brought over
Brown's Mountain in the pockets of the postman.

Near what is called the Town Point the early settlers found
the remains of a small chapel, supposed to have been a hundred
years old. Age had destroyed its walls, and the roof had sunk
to the earth. Under it was a subterranean passage leading to
the sea. Here were found several images. Tradition says that
the bell, chalice, and vestments belonging to this church are
buried among the plaster caves on the shore, and the Indians
affirm that on Christmas Eve, when " all things are in quiet
silence and the night in the midst of her course," the silvery
tones of the bell are heard mingling with the plashing of the
waves on the strand. This church was doubtless a relic of the
old Acadian times, possibly of the pioneer Jesuits, Fathers
Richard, Lionne, and Fremin, who first brought the glad tid-
ings to this Ultima Thule.

Dear, primitive old-fashioned Acadie ! What though the
splendor has gone from lie Royale and the picturesque costumes
from Grand Pre ? Is not the whole land, from Louisburg to
Cape Blomidon, dowered with a history of undying fame ? The
lions of England now float where the lilies of France were wont
to wave, and the silvery notes of the sweet French language
are heard in concert with the guttural sounds of the Gaelic
tongue.

Side by side, guaillean ri gnaillean, with the descendants of
the persecuted Acadians has risen a strong and stalwart race
from the " true and tender north," and Acadia is richer than
ever in prosperity, in beauty, and in faith. For though

(> In the beauty of the lilies Christ was borne across the sea,"
these loyal sons of St. Andrew who have " left their nets
and followed him " have done much to insure peace and lib-
erty in the exercise of that religion that was brought to their
shores by the sons of Loyola in the bygone days of the old
regime.

54 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. [Oct.,

ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS.

FEW nations possess a more extensive or more interesting
ancient literature than Ireland. It may be safely said that none of
the European languages, Greek and Latin excepted, contains an
early literature of even an approach in quantity to the immense
mass of ancient writings which remains in Gaelic to prove the
wonderful literary activity of the Irish in mediaeval times, or, to
be more explicit, from the seventh to the fifteenth century. We
use the word " remains," because the existing vast mass of Irish or
Gaelic literature is nothing but a remnant. There are evidences
which cannot be reasonably doubted that by- far the larger part
of ancient Gaelic literature was destroyed in the almost unceas-
ing wars which were the curse of Ireland from her very earliest
historic period. It is true that after the establishment of Chris-
tianity the Irish, in their wars amongst themselves, seldom
ravaged churches or monasteries ; and as it was in churches and
monasteries that books were not only written but kept, literature
did not suffer as much from civil war as might be supposed.
The two great causes of the destruction of ancient Irish books
were the Danish and Norman invasions. The Norman invasion
was much more disastrous to Ireland in the political sense than
the Danish invasion ; but the Danish was the one by which
the most of her literary treasures were destroyed. Ruthless as
the Norman invaders may have been, they were at least Chris-
tians and professed the same faith as those on whom they
warred; and a book, especially a book that treated of religious
matters; was more or less an object for their veneration. With
the Danes it was quite the other way : they were pagans and
hated everything connected with Christianity. Christianity is
essentially a book religion, and the invading Scandinavian saw
in every book an emblem of the creed he hated, and destroyed
all of them he could lay his hands on. When one reads the
chronicles of ancient Ireland and learns the almost inconceiv-
able frequency with which every seat of religion and learning
was plundered and burned by the Danes, he marvels how the
remnant of early Celtic literature that we possess could have
escaped destruction, and by what apparently miraculous chance
it was preserved.

There is one historical fact which painfully illustrates the
horrors of Scandinavian ravages not only on the coasts of Ireland
but of Scotland. The monastery of lona, in the Hebrides, was for

1884.3 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. 55

several centuries the most important and most famous of all the
early Celtic seats of learning and piety. It was founded by the
famous Columb Cill in the latter part of the sixth century. It
was the radiant centre from which the light of the Gospel was
spread amongst the rude tribes of the north ; pious monks and
converted barbarians were alike emulous of worshipping in its
holy fanes ; the fame of its sanctity and learning spread abroad
over Christendom, and the name of the rocky islet of lona be-
came almost as familiar as that of Rome. It was there, according
to the opinion of the best authorities, that the wondrous Book
of Kelts, the most beautiful relic of illuminated art in the world,
was written. But lona was doomed to destruction. The maraud-
ing Northmen burned it and massacred its monks ; it was rebuilt,
but was destroyed again and again, until at last it had to be com-
pletely abandoned in the ninth century and the whole establish-
ment removed to Kells, in Meath.

The great secret of the preservation of so much of the litera-
ture of ancient Ireland is no doubt to be found in the material of
which most of the ancient Irish books were manufactured. They
were generally made of vellum, which is in reality leather, and a
rather indestructible substance. There is no evidence that papy-
rus was ever used as a writing-material by the ancient Irish.
Vellum is very difficult to burn, and the Danes often found it so.
We read in more than one place in Irish history that they were
in the habit of droivning books, as the ancient chroniclers quaintly
term the throwing into water of what could not be easily con-
sumed by fire. Many of the most valuable and ancient Irish
manuscripts must, judging by their appearance, have been res-
cued from flood or fire more than once ; for parts of them are
so discolored and so black that at first sight none but one tho-
roughly accustomed to the examination of such relics of antiquity
would ever imagine that they contained writing of any kind, or
that the blackened leaves, on which the unaccustomed eye can
hardly trace a letter, were once bright with illuminated capitals
and written with marvellous care and skill.

The Elizabethan and Cromwellian epochs were hardly less
disastrous to Irish manuscript literature than were those of Tur-
gesius and Broder. Hundreds of invaluable volumes that had
escaped the fury of the Dane and the hate of the Norman were
destroyed by the soldiery of Elizabeth and Cromwell. Many
books which we know to have been in existence down to the
time of these rulers can be traced no further, and we are forced
to conclude that puritanical bigotry was hardly less a force for

56 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. [Oct.,

barbarism and ignorance than the savagery of the "blue-eyed
myriads from the Baltic Sea."

It is commonly believed by the greater part of Gaelic scholars
and antiquarians that the Irish did not know the use of letters
prior to the fifth century, and that St. Patrick not only taught
them Christianity but the alphabet also. It cannot be denied
that the very earliest existing monuments of literature, either in
Gaelic or in Latin, that ancient Ireland can boast of were written
subsequent to the time of Patrick. It is also .certain that the
most ancient inscriptions on stone that have yet been dis-
covered in Ireland cannot be assigned a date earlier than the
fifth or sixth century. The oldest of these is supposed to be the
one at Inchaquile, in the County Galway, written in Roman cha-
racters on a monument erected to Lugnathan, a nephew of St.
Patrick. It reads thus : Lie Lugncedon mac Lemenueh that is, the
stone of Lugnsedon, son of Lemenueh. There can hardly be a
doubt that the Roman letter, in its modified form popularly
known as the Irish letter, was unknown in Ireland in early pagan
times, and was introduced by Christian missionaries during the
fourth or fifth century. Modern research has put this matter
absolutely beyond dispute; it is the opinion held by all the
Gaelic scholars and antiquarians of the present day, and it was
the opinion held by O'Donovan and O'Curry. But if we have to
admit that Ireland got the Roman letter from Rome, it by no
means follows that the pagan Irish had not a literature and were
not acquainted with the art of writing. There seems every rea-
sonable cause to think that the only literary changes effected by
the Christian missionaries in ancient pagan Ireland were a change
in the form of letter employed in writing, and a remodelling,
sometimes amounting to an entire change, of the popular litera-
ture.

That the character employed by the pagan Irish was the
Ogham there can be no reasonable doubt. Little as may be
known about it in general, contradictor)'' and different as may be
the readings of any Ogham inscriptions that have been preserved,
there is abundant monumental, historic, and traditional evidence
to show that it was not only par excellence the character em-
ployed by the pagan Irish, but, more important still, that its use
was generally, one might almost say popularly, known amongst
them. There is hardly 'a tale relating to what is generally
known as the " heroic period " of Irish history in which mention
is not made of Ogham writings of some kind. To find proof of
this the reader will only have to examine O'Curry 's magnificent

1884.] ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. 57

work, the best, most reliable, and most honest ever written on
ancient Ireland namely, the Manuscript Materials of Irish History.
The author gives abundant evidence from Gaelic manuscripts of
undoubted antiquity to prove that Ogham writing was not only
employed but popularly known in ancient pagan Ireland. He
also states it as his own belief that the benefits of the change
from the Ogham to the Roman characters were not so great as
one might suppose, and he gives good grounds for such a belief.
In the first place, Ogham writing-materials were much more
easily procured and much more simple than those necessary for
writing the Latin or Roman letters ; pen, ink, and paper could be
done without, and, as Prof. O'Curry forcibly puts it, " No one
could be at a loss for writing-materials as long as he had a piece
of wood in his hand and a knife in his pocket." The great
trouble about the Ogham style of writing was that it was usu-
ally written on such perishable material namely, wood. No
matter how immense the volume of pagan Irish literature might
have been, the preservation of any considerable quantity of it
would have been a sheer impossibility, owing to the nature of the
material on which it was usually written. It must be confessed,
however, that it is strange why Celtic savants have not given
more of their attention to studying whatever remains of Ogham
writings are still in existence. It is true that these remains
are comparatively few and consist almost altogether of inscrip-
tions on stone. These inscriptions are, for the most part, in
a very bad state of preservation, and that puts an almost insur-
mountable barrier to their true rendering. However, a conside-
rable number of them remain ; the Royal Irish Academy has
casts of some fifty or more stones, engraved with Ogham inscrip-
tions, found in different parts of Ireland, and there is an elaborate
treatise on Ogham writing in one of the ancient Gaelic books ;
but in spite of all it would appear as if no one now living knows
how to read it, for some of those who have attempted to do so
give entirely different renderings of the same inscription. That
Ogham writing continued to be employed for centuries after the
introduction of the Roman letter can hardly be doubted. There
is a pure Ogham inscription on one of the most beautiful of the
bronze brooches found in Ireland, and which may be seen in the
museum of the Royal Irish Academy. It has been correctly de-
ciphered, for three or four savants have agreed as to its meaning.
The inscription is merely the name of the person to whom the
brooch belonged, and he was a well-known ecclesiastic who lived
in the ninth century. Thus we see that there is abundant his-

58 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. [Oct.,

toric and monumental evidence as to the general use of the
Ogham form of writing in ancient Ireland ; there is also a certain
amount of traditional evidence about it which goes far to prove
its almost universal use not only amongst the pagan Irish, but for
many centuries after Christianity had taken root. There is hardly
one of the more modern Ossianic stories and poems commonly
known as nuadh sgeula, or modern stories, to distinguish them
from the more ancient compositions in a dialect which would be
only partially understood at present that does not contain some
reference to Ogham writing. If one were to judge the age of
these " new stories " by the language in which they are written,
they cannot be assigned an earlier date than the fourteenth or
fifteenth century. Even the common Gaelic of the present day
is not without its traditional evidence as to the popularity of
Ogham. There is one phrase quite common at present amongst
the Irish-speaking population of the west of Ireland. A piece of
news which some might think a secret, but which at the same
time would be well known, is called sgeul air bhdrr bhata lite-
rally, " a story on top of a stick." The meaning of this is so
evident that it strikes one at once ; it refers to ancient times when
memoranda, messages, and probably the orders or proclamations
of the nobles or kings used to be engraved in Ogham on a staff
or stick. These things all tend to prove the ancient popularity
of Ogham, that it is the real Irish letter, and that O'Curry's
views as to the general knowledge of it possessed by the pagan
Irish are founded on monumental, historic, and traditional evi-
dence.

Immense as has be.en the amount of ancient Gaelic writings
translated within the last forty years translations in which, un-
fortunately, the generality of the Irish people take very little
interest it is only a very small part indeed of what remains to
be translated. There are seven immense volumes of Gaelic mat-
ter in existence known as the " Seven Great Books," and of these
probably hot the tenth part has been yet translated. The first of
them, the LeabJiar na k-Uidhre,or Book of the Dun Cow, is a com-
pilation of the eleventh century. Then comes in order of anti-
quity the Book of Leinster, compiled in the Abbey of Kildare some
time in the early part of the twelfth century ; then comes the
Leabhar Breac, or Speckled Book, compiled in the fourteenth cen-
tury. The other four namely, the Book of Lecain, the Yellow
Book of Lecain, the Book of Ballymote, and the Book of Fermoy do
not differ much in age from the Speckled Book. These old books
are most heterogeneous in contents. They treat of almost every

1884.] ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. 59

subject under the sun. Religion, genealogy, history, wars,
fairy-tales, romances, courtships, cattle-spoils, adventures, and
other matters almost too numerous to mention find place in
these gigantic scrap-books. When we contemplate the size of
these old volumes we find that the term "gigantic" may be
justly applied to them. Each of them except the Book of the
Dun Cow, which is only a remnant, the greater part of it having
been lost contains as much matter as would, if translated into
English, make a book nearly if not quite as large as the Old Tes-
tament. But the amount of matter in the Seven Great Books is
very small indeed compared with that existing in a more scat-
tered form in the libraries of Trinity College, Royal Irish
Academy, British Museum, and many other public and private
collections. The Royal Irish Academy alone possesses a thou-
sand volumes of untranslated Gaelic matter. Most of this vast
collection of manuscripts consists of what might be termed
mediaeval Irish literature that is, works written in language
very little different from the Gaelic of the present day, but a
great deal of it as early as the fourteenth century, and some pro-
bably as early as the ninth or tenth. That there exists a large
quantity of valuable Gaelic manuscripts of unquestioned anti-
quity in the public libraries of continental Europe there can be
no doubt. A great many of them have been examined by Irish
and German Gaelic students, but there is every reason to think
that if a thorough search were made amongst the many collec-
tions of books in the Spanish monasteries and religious houses, a
large quantity of valuable ancient Irish books would be discov-
ered. Spain was the land of refuge for- the persecuted Irish
Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many
Irish manuscripts of great value must have been brought there
by the banished Irish priesthood and nobility. That there are
many in Spain seems very probable, and it is generally believed
by Irish Celtic savants that a search through the Spanish monas-
teries would result in the discovery of a large quantity of impor-
tant literary remains, and probably in the discovery of some of
the missing books which are known to have been in Ireland in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the Psalter of
Tarah, the Cinn of Drumsneachta, etc.

The Gaelic literary remains in the public libraries of France,
Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy consist principally of
glosses on the Latin texts of religious books. They are not gene-
rally of very great value from a literary point of view, but from a
philological point of view they are almost beyond price, as they

60 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. [Oct.,

furnish examples of perhaps the very most ancient forms of Gaelic,
and some of them can hardly be assigned to a later date than the
sixth and seventh centuries. It was from these abundant evi-
dences of early Irish learning and piety that Zeuss, the great
German-Celtic scholar, compiled his famous work, the Gramma-
tica Celtica. All the other Celtic scholars of Germany have com-
piled their numerous treatises on ancient Gaelic grammar, if not
entirely, at least in a great part, from these ancient glosses ; and
however uninteresting they may be to the general reader, they
have largely contributed to popularize the study of Gaelic on
the Continent of Europe, especially in Germany.

The ancient Gaelic remains belonging to Scotland are, strange
to say, very meagre. It was the home of the Gael quite as much
as Ireland was, and contained a large number of religious houses
where Gaelic was the only language, at least the only cultivated
language, spoken as a vernacular north of the Tweed. There
exists, however, but one ancient Gaelic book in Scotland, and
that is the Book of Dier, a compilation of the tenth century,
according to the opinion of the best Celtic scholars of the present
day. Dier was an abbey in Aberdeenshire, and the book of that
name is very small and consists of only a few pages of Gaelic,
the rest being Latin. The Gaelic is merely a deed of some lands
donated by the chief of the district to the abbey of Dier. The
language is, of course, exactly the same as Irish Gaelic of the
period. Scotch Celtic savants account for the paucity of ancient
Gaelic literary remains in Scotland by saying that when the
country was ravaged by Edward I. in the early years of the
fourteenth century the English made it a point to destroy all the
records and books they could lay their hands on, and that the
destruction of literature committed by the English during the
few years when their power was supreme in Scotland was quite
as great as that committed by the Danes during the two or three
centuries when they had either entire or partial control over the
greater part of Ireland. There are strong reasons for believing
that the way in which the Scotch account for the scarcity of
ancient Gaelic remains in Scotland is correct. The English
king was most anxious to wipe out every trace of the ancient
Scottish regime, which he hoped to supplant by one purely Nor-
man ; and there is no doubt but large numbers of Gaelic books
perished during that short but dreadful period of early English
domination in Scotland.

The great defect in ancient Gaelic literature is the non-exist-
ence of any great epic poem, or even story, in it, such as the Iliad

1884.] ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. 61

in Greek, the Chanson de Roland in French, or the Niebelungen-Lied
in German. One such poem, were it even the whole of the an-
cient literary remains of Gaelic, would do more to popularize its
study amongst the learned than all the vast mass of heterogeneous
writings it contains. There is almost "any amount" of short
pieces in prose and verse in ancient Gaelic, many of which are of
wondrous beauty ; but one long poem or tale, however prosy or
uninteresting it might be, would be of more value in a literary
point of view than a hundred shorter and more brilliant pieces.

There is, however, one great tale, or it might be called poem,
in ancient Gaelic; it is of undoubted antiquity. None of the
European languages outside of Greek and Latin possess any-
thing so ancient. This is the Tain Bo Culigne, or Cattle-Spoil of
Cooley. The time the story refers to is the heroic period of
Irish history the epoch of Cuchullin, Meobh, Ailill, Connor Mac
Nessa, Connall Carnach, etc. These worthies were, for the most
part, contemporaries of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and have
left an unmistakable impress of their existence on Irish history
and on Gaelic legend, chronicle, and song. The Tain Bo Cu-
ligne has not been yet fully translated, but enough is known about
it to convince the most sceptical that it contains many passages
of the greatest power and beauty. Its defects are extravagance,
toth of ideas and language, and an absurd attention to details.
These mar what in itself is a wonderfully dramatic poem, with
an extraordinary and interesting plot, and which could easily
have been made to rank with the great poems of ancient and
modern times, had the author's love for extravagance and detail
not marred it almost completely.

It would be impossible in one short article to treat of all the
numerous pieces in prose and verse which have been translated
from Gaelic during the last forty years. - Many of them are
worthy to be placed side by side with the most choice produc-
tions of any age or any country. There are some which cannot
be well passed over in silence ; amongst the prose translations
from ancient Gaelic, the Sick-Bed of Cuchullin and Only Jealousy of
Emir, the Battle of Math Rath, and the Battle of Moy Lena take
the most prominent place. No matter how biassed against Gaelic
one might be, a perusal of these not only very beautiful but very
unique tales would go far to remove his prejudice. There was
a time, and not very long ago either, when an admission that
Gaelic contained anything worth reading would cause all with-
in hearing of the remark either to smile or shake their heads.
But new and more just ideas are beginning to be rapidly de-

62 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. [Oct.,

veloped about the worth of the ancient literary remains in Gae-
lic ; its study is getting every day more popular, and every
new translation from it is received with steadily increasing
interest. While credit must be given to O'Donovan as the
pioneer in the movement which brought ancient Gaelic litera-
ture into notice, O'Curry must not be forgotten in connection
with it; from being a pupil of O'Donovan he became, towards
the end, his master's master, and now holds in the estimation of
many first place amongst the Gaelic savants of the last genera-
tion. At present, however, Germany is par excellence the land of
Celtic studies, and contains probably more thoroughly trained
Gaelic scholars than are to be found in all other countries put
together.

The last most important translation from ancient Gaelic has
come from the pen of the learned Mr. Whitley Stokes, who,
though not a German but an Irishman, is decidedly the greatest
living Celtic scholar, and probably one of the greatest living
philologists as well. The translation in question is the FJleire, or
Festival Calendar of Angus the Culdee. It is the longest and
most important poem in ancient Gaelic, and is most unique in
conception and detail. One would imagine that an enumeration
of the feast-days of saints would be about as dry and uninteresting
a subject for a poet as the catalogue of the ships in the Iliad.
But the old Celtic bard was more successful at the task than the
father of Greek poetry, and the reader can judge, from a few
verses which will be given, whether Angus has made a " dry "
poem of it or not. The Ftleire is divided into three parts : a pro-
logue ; a catalogue of the saints' festivals for each of the three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year, making a verse or qua-
train for every saint and consequently for every day in the year ;
and, lastly, an epilogue. The entire poem contains nearly five hun-
dred verses, and is the most ancient existing in any European lan-
guage, Greek and Latin excepted. It was composed about the
year 795 A.D. The reader will very naturally wonder why such
an important poem was translated only a year or two ago. There
were many reasons why the translation of this venerable relic was
delayed so long ; first amongst them being the blight with which
the continuous harassing of misgovernment has afflicted the lite-
rary, poetical, artistic, and scientific spirit of the Irish race. The
work of translating it was one of vast labor and difficulty owing to
the extreme antiquity of the language. Neither O'Donovan nor
O'Curry felt himself quite equal to the task, which it remained
for one of their pupils to achieve. Nothing can exceed the tho-

1884.] ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. 63

roughness and elaborateness of Mr. Stokes' translation. Every
item he could find in the still vast, untranslated mass of Gaelic
writings that could throw light on the history of the period at
which the poem was composed, or on the life of its author, is
placed before the reader. Mr. Stokes has made no attempt at a
metrical rendering of this remarkable poem ; the translation is as
literal as it could be made. Here are a few quatrains from the
prologue. The first stanza given is the first in the poem :

" Bless, O Christ, my speech.
O Lord of Seven Heavens,
Let the guerdon of devotion be given me,
O King of the White Sun."

The poet thus sings of the honor in which the relics of saints
were held :

" The soldiers who crucified them,
Though strong were their battles,
Their pains they are great,
Their graves are unknown.

" Not so are Jesu's soldiers :
They have reached a radiant homestead ;
Behind them their holy bodies
Are in shrines of sparkling gold.

" Not known is Nero's grave,
Because he was not godly ;
The world, with a multitude of people,
Magnify Peter's tomblet.

" Though great the world's kings,
O man, thou seest
A hundred, hundred times nobler
In Jesu's lowly servants." -

The following refers to the ruin and abandonment of the an-
cient seats of political power in Ireland, and the rise of new
seats of Christianity and learning :

"Tarah's mighty burg hath fallen
With its kingdom's splendor,
But knowledge and wisdom
Abide in great Ardmagh.

" Rath Cruachan hath vanished
With Ailill's offspring of victory ;
A fair sovranty above kingdoms
Is in Cluan's city.

64 ANCIENT IRISH LITERARY REMAINS. [Oct.,

" Allin's proud burg hath perished
With its warlike host ;
Great is victorious Bridget,
Fair her multitudinous city.*

" Eman's t burg hath vanished,
Save that its stones remain ;
The Rome of the western world
Is multitudinous Genndaloch.

" Paganism hath been destroyed,
Though fair it was and wide-spread ;
God the Father's kingdom
Hath filled heaven, earth, and sea."

The translation of this very remarkable and very beautiful
poem was made for the Royal Irish Academy, and, it is fair to
presume, paid for from the small government donation which
that institution is allowed annually. This circumstance accen-
tuates one feature of the present condition of the Irish MSS.
What a sad testimony it is to the misfortune a country suffers by
the destruction of her national autonomy that the translation and
publication of these glorious relics of a nation's piety, civilization,
and learning depend upon the niggardly grants of a government
which is not only alien but unsympathetic, and which begrudges
every penny it doles out for such a purpose ! With a restoration
of her national life, with an end to her prolonged and harrowing
necessity to struggle for political and material reforms, with her
national ambition stimulated and all her magnificent energies
aroused, we can fancy with what zest and pride Ireland would
apply herself to this inspiring duty.

It is to be hoped that enough has been now said to disprove
the born-of-ignorance, most stupid, and often-uttered assertion
that Gaelic literature contains nothing worth reading. That
such an unfounded assertion should be made by any cultured
person is bad enough, but that any cultured Irishman should be
found to make it is infinitely worse. We must not, however,
judge too severely those who by their early education and sur-
roundings were left in complete ignorance of almost everything
relating to the history of their country. With more knowledge,
and consequently broader views, new ideas will be generated, and
future generations of Irishmen will make up for the enforced, the
pathetic apathy of those who preceded them as to their national
language and literature.

* Kildare, now an insignificant village.

t Better known under the Latinized form of Emania. It was the residence of the pagan
kings of Ulster. Its ruins remain, and are about two miles from Armagh.

1884.] A COUNTRY EDITOR s EXPERIENCE. 65

A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE.

" FOR my part," remarks the brilliant Theodora to Lothair, in
Disraeli's novel, " my perfect life would be a large and beautiful
village. I admire nature, but I require the presence of humanity.
Life in great cities is too exhausting; but in my village there
should be air, streams, and beautiful trees, a picturesque scene,
but enough of my fellow-creatures to insure constant duty."

I had not read Lothair when I became a villager, but I am
certain that if I had known Theodora then we would have held
views in common. I too cherished a dream like hers regarding
village life. A year's practical experience, however, has shattered
this dream ; it has floated away with many another fond illusion
of youth. Not that, upon the whole, I regret my experience; I
became acquainted with a peculiar phase of life which otherwise
would have been a blank to me ; indeed, it seems much like a
blank to me now. Still my experience teaches me to avoid this
peculiar phase of life in future, and this I consider a very valu-
able piece of knowledge indeed.

My village contained all the ingredients for the " perfect life "
which Theodora mentions. There certainly was air there (Theo-
dora appears to think that this is not common to all villages), and
then there were streams and beautiful trees, a picturesque scene,
and enough fellow-creatures to insure constant duty. That is, if
editing a weekly paper with patent outsides for the sole and es-
pecial benefit of these fellow-creatures can be looked upon as a
" constant duty." The constant duty, indeed, resolved itself into
a constant endeavor to induce these fellow-creatures to pay their
subscriptions. But very probably Theodora did not intend to
mar the serenity of her " perfect life " by editing the village paper.
Nor do I believe that Theodora could have enjoyed her blissful
rustic existence in all its perfection had she put up at a village
hotel. One has a great deal to put up with in a case of this kind.
It takes a very valiant trencherman, and one who hath an excel-
lent stomach, to put up with it for any considerable length of
time. I registered at the village hotel, and as I had taken up my
bucolic life chiefly to gratify the whim of a rebellious stomach,
which I had been led to believe would become peaceful and qui-
escent under the influence of country air, it is no wonder that in-
ternal discords soon drove me in search of pastures ne\v. There
VOL. XL. 5

66 A COUNTRY EDITOR' s EXPERIENCE. [Oct.,

is a dreary monotony about a country hotel table which casts its
baleful influence even over the automatic female who attends to
the wants of the guests. One wearies of the manner in which
she day after day hoarsely whispers in one's ear, " Roast-beef,
mutton, or weal"; and a little later, " Appeberrypumpkinpie."
It may be well to explain that the meaning intended to be con-
veyed by the last-named whisper is that you are to have your
choice of three kinds of pie apple, berry, or pumpkin. This
guarantees a "pleasing variety. One day you may dine on roast-
beef and apple-pie, on another on mutton and berry-pie, and then,
again, you can, if you desire, revel in " weal " and pumpkins. Or
with so large a selection you can attempt all the combinations of
which the bill of fare is susceptible. Unfortunately for me, my
impaired digestive organs rebelled then against pie in general,
and as for veal, well it might be weal at dinner, but it was sure
to be woe just afterwards,* so that I was, to say the least, some-
what confined in my selection. However, I was soon fortunate
enough to secure a couple of rooms in a prettily-situated private
house. The family here would not allow the privacy of their
table to be intruded upon, so I made arrangements to take my
meals at a boarding-house close by. The village boasted a
business college, and at this boarding-house several of the stu-
dents of both sexes resided. Had I space I would like to deliver
a tirade against these country business colleges in general. They
are for the most part clap-trap institutions, run solely for the
purpose of money-making ; garrisoned by an ill-paid and ill-edu-
cated handful of teachers ; and make all sorts of promises which
they never pretend to fulfil. Raw country youths, often bearded
rustics and grown-up women, deluded by the circulars sent to
them, come to town to attend the college, in the fond belief that
they will gain an extensive knowledge of business, and upon
graduation be immediately presented with lucrative positions.
Most of them return to their old lives sadder and wiser beings.
Some time, perhaps, I shall have something more serious to say
regarding the many moral flaws that one who has lived it can-
not help detecting in the " perfect life."

Such an awful and oppressive silence hung over the table at
my new quarters that I was glad to beat a retreat within three
days. At my right hand a great, silent, cross-eyed rustic
munched and munched, and rolled his off eye at me in a way
that was positively fearful. Among these children of, toil a

* Not the least proof of the strange effects of village life is the fact that I can make a pun
like this.

1884.] A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. 67

person from the city is always an object of unpleasant suspicion.
They seem desirous to forestall any possible airs of superiority
which he may assume by audibly sniffing whenever he may
express an opinion or a desire which they think peculiar to the
city. The first day that I sat down to dinner I was treated to a
piece of fried steak which the landlady dextrously harpooned
from out an ocean of grease. I meekly suggested that for the
future I would prefer my steak broiled. This remark, breaking
in as it did upon the solemn silence, occasioned a general sniff,
and the cross-eyed man glared at me defiantly. This peculiarity
of taste immediately gave me a reputation for being " perticu-
ler." A "perticuler man" is much scorned among village peo-
ple, and is looked upon as a sort of epicurean dude. After three
days of silence and fried meat I fled. But my reputation pre-
ceded me. The first landlady whom I interviewed remarked :
"Oh! you're that 'perticuler' gentleman as was at Mrs. So-
and-so's. No," she said, with a scornful toss of her head, " I'm
afraid we couldn't suit you." Out I went into the cold world
again, feeling that somehow my former tastes and ways in life
had been all wrong. My aversion to the hotel gave me courage
to knock at another door, and I was again met with the charge
of being " perticuler " ; but this landlady possessed more liberal
views, was open to argument, and had moreover a thirst for
gain. She was at length persuaded to attempt to suit my " per-
ticulerness " with broiled steak for a consideration. The fol-
lowing morning I revelled in broiled chops, and went to my
work with a more contented mind and stomach. But oh ! the
instability of temporal happiness. When I returned for dinner
I was met by my new-found friend, the landlady, who informed
me that I could not eat beneath her roof again. She said that she
was very sorry to have to part with me sa soon, but that one of
her boarders was a widow-lady from whom she rented the
house, and this widow-lady had an old grudge against the paper,
on account of some uncomplimentary remarks which had for-
merly appeared in that lively sheet concerning the widow-lady's
son, so that the aforesaid widow-lady had declared with wrath
and decision that the editor of the paper should not again enter
her house. It was in vain that I attempted to explain that the
objectionable matter had appeared in the paper before my con-
nection with it. The fates were against me, and I was obliged
to return to the hotel, where I was received with silent scorn by
the proprietor, who was cognizant of my futile attempts to leave
him.

68 A COUNTRY EDITORS EXPERIENCE. [Oct.,

The widow-lady was not the only one who poured the vials
of wrath upon my unfortunate head on account of publications
in the paper of which I was entirely guiltless. I had hardly
been in the office a fortnight before an irate countryman, fol-
lowed by two strapping sympathizers, stalked into the sanctum
in a defiant sort of manner which boded a disturbance of some
kind. " Where's the editor of this paper ? " fiercely demanded
the foremost man, gazing wildly about him. I informed him that
I had the honor of filling that important position. " Wall," he
remarked, " I want ter know, and I'm goin' ter know, who writ
that article agin me in the paper." I answered him that I was a
new man in my position, and so could not give him any informa-
tion about the matter, and moreover that I did not even know
his name. Logic had no effect upon him, however ; he only
brought his fist down upon my desk with terrific force and re-
peated, " Wall, I'm goin' ter know." I felt a wild desire to jump
out of the window, but restrained myself and mildly asked my
interlocutor his name. " My name's Kelley," he remarked, " and
I'm goin' ter know afore I leave." I then found out from Mr.
Kelley that the article in question had appeared some weeks
before, but as this was the first opportunity he had had to come
into town he wished to square matters then and there. I looked
over a file, and sure enough Mr. Kelley had been pretty roughly
handled by my predecessor in office, who seems to have been of
an exceedingly acrimonious disposition. He had denounced Mr.
Kelley in a terrific philippic, which would have done honor to
the famous Mr. Pott of the Eatansivill Gazette. I then explained
to Mr. Kelley at length that the man who had written the objec-
tionable article had left the town, and that his whereabouts were
unknown to me, but that if he would call again some time when
the proprietor was in he might gain the desired information. It
took a long time for this proposition to enter Mr. Kelley 's head.
A painful silence ensued, during which he gazed at me hard and
earnestly, and at length, to my intense relief, remarked : " Wall,
I reckon this is about all I can do." He then wended his way
out, followed by his two silent companions, and went into a
lawyer's office just across the street. I heard afterwards that he
had some intentions of suing the paper for libel. But no con-
scientious lawyer could advise him to pursue such a course. It
would be very hard to collect even the slightest amount of
damages from a country newspaper office.

Everybody who came into town seemed to deem it a duty
to drop into the newspaper office. Farmers would hitch their

1884.] A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. 69

wagons outside and come in to discuss crops and weather, often
bringing with them, not their first-fruits but their largest, as of-
ferings to that oracle the editor. Of course, in the next edition
an item would appear to the effect that Mr. So-and-so brought
us in the largest apple, or potato, or whatever the specimen
might be, that we have seen this season; and Mr. So-and-so's
heart would swell with pride when he read the item, for country
folk take a keen delight at seeing their names in print. Nothing
to them is so interesting as the local column in their paper
wherein they see their own names and those of their friends, and
there behold in cold type a record of the week's events, all of
which they already know by heart.

It is a very hard matter to persuade some of the old farmers,
in particular, that they are in duty bound to pay for their paper.
Most of them seem to imagine that by reading the paper they
are conferring a favor upon the editor ; that the debt, if anything,
is upon his side. Perhaps it is, but then the editor must live. I
heard of an old farmer who had taken a paper for years without
making any return. At length a bill was presented to him. He
gazed at it in great astonishment, and then indignantly exclaim-
ed : " Look-a-here, I've been supportin' this here paper for eight
years, and never had nothin' of this kind poked at me afore;
now you can jist scratch my name off your list ; I won't support
you no longer"; and, boiling over with virtuous indignation, he
stalked away.

Another and numerous class of visitors to the office are the
pedlars and prize-package venders who pass through town and
village seeking what they may devour. The latter seem to reap
a good harvest by deluding the country people into the belief
that they are genial philanthropists, who not only give their cus-
tomers the full worth of their money in the stationery contained
in the packages, but actually throw in a valuable present out of
pure good will.

One day, while some alterations were being made in my
rooms, I occupied a little room just behind the parlor in the
house next door, where dwelt the aged parents of my landlady.
While sitting in this room I could not help overhearing one of
these prize-package spiders in the act of catching his flies. The
old couple were sitting in the parlor when the spider ushered
himself in, and in his usual bland style remarked : " I have here
the very finest prize-package in the world. Every package con-
tains one dozen envelopes, one dozen sheets extra fine note-paper,
one penholder, and one pencil. Besides all this, which is more

70 A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. [Oct.,

than worth the money, every package contains a ticket which
draws either a half-dozen silver spoons, a half-dozen silver forks,
or a beautiful oil chromo, thus making a prize in every package.
All this will cost you but the trifling sum of twenty-five cents."

" I've got lots o' paper and writin' stuff," said the old gentle-
man, rather dubiously, " an' I don't want no oil chromo, but
I might like some o' them silver spoons; d'ye think I'd draw
'em?"

" O yes ! " chirped the spider, " all the chances are that you'd
draw 'em ; only one chance in twelve of drawing a chromo ; just
sold three packages to a lady near here, and she drew eighteen
silver spoons."

" Are they genuine plated?" cautiously put in the old lady ;
"would they last?"

" O yes, ma'am ! last you all your life (the lady was about
eighty years old), heavy double extra plate, never get yellow,
never wear out."

" I'd like to have some o' them spoons," repeated the old gen-
tleman, " but I'm afraid I'd draw one o' them chromos."

" O no, sir ! " answered the spider, " not much chance of that ;
only one chance in twelve, remember ! Only one chance in
twelve ! "

" Now," remarked the aged wife to her consort, " you went
to see ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' all by yourself, and didn't take no
one. I think you ought to buy a package."

" Wall," said the dutiful husband, " I reckon you can give me
one."

I heard the package torn open, and then the old gentleman
read out ruefully, " Number nine draws an oil chromo." " But I
don't want a chromo," he said ; " you might as well keep it your-
self."

" O no ! " answered the spider magnanimously, " you take
what your ticket calls for ; besides (in a soothing tone) these are
very fine oil chromos, and you can wash 'em, when dirty, with
soap and water, and make 'em look as good as new."

v " Won't you swap it off for some of them silver spoons ? "
queried the old lady.

" O no ! I couldn't possibly do that, madam. Whatever the
ticket calls for you get. But now, if you'd take a package,
ma'am, I could almost swear you'd draw some spoons. Remem-
ber, only one chance in twelve of drawing an oil chromo, and
this is the first one drawn to-day."

" Wall," said the old wife desperately, "give me a package."

1884.] A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. 71

She tore open the package and read the little inscription on
the ticket enclosed: " Number twelve draws an oil chromo."

The spider handed over another chromo, and, sweetly bidding
the pair good-morning, went his way.

"There!" gasped the old gentleman, "didn't I tell you so? I
knowed he was a cheat ; saw a man on a train wonct took in just
the same way."

" Wall," said his spouse fiercely, " I've got some experience
anyway ; but I never will buy another, I never will." She put
her head out of the window to catch a last look at the man who
jingled their silver in his pocket, and saw him about to enter into
her daughter's house. "Oh! there he goes into. Maggie's," she
exclaimed with sudden energy ; " run in, get ahead of him, but
don't tell 'em we got sold, don't tell 'em we got sold." I heard
the old gentleman rush out, slamming the door behind him, but
whether the old fly succeeded in keeping the young fly out of
the web I do not know.

This old lady introduced me to a family whose table I graced
until I fled back to the imperfections of city life. The family
consisted of a minister's wife, whose husband had gone to Florida
for his health, and who meanwhile added to her slender means
by taking a few table- boarders, and two children, an over-grown
boy and a little girl. With them was a certain Mrs. O , a child-
less widow, whose exacf relation to the family was difficult to
establish. She was, as I afterwards ascertained, no kin, but bore
such an affection for the minister's wife that she cooked and
aided in the house-work as a labor of love, and was called by
the children " Aunty," so that her position in the family would
not be mistaken.

The family had but recently moved to the village from a
somewhat larger place. The minister had been sent to take
charge of the Methodist church in the village by the conference,
but was obliged to resign on account of his health and go South.
His wife was a delicate and fragile woman, so that Mrs. O was
the main-stay of the house. The villagers, who scorned all who
were not to their manor born, looked askance upon Mrs. O ,
and shook their heads, and remarked under their breath that
she was a very queer woman. Indeed, Mrs. O would have
been a puzzle anywhere, except perhaps in her own native place,
where, as she grew up with her surroundings, her good qualities
would no doubt be recognized, and her eccentricities become a
part of the place. She parted her hair on one side, had the air
of a suppressed engine, and a laugh which fairly echoed among

72 A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. [Oct.,

the hills. But the more the villagers kept apart from her the
more did Mrs. O seem to feel it incumbent upon herself to dis-
play her independence of spirit. She reminded one of the young
lady of Lucca,

" Whose lovers completely forsook her ;
But she climbed up a tree,
And said fiddle-de-dee,
Which embarrassed the people of Lucca."

Not that Mrs. O ever did anything so completely erratic as
to climb a tree ; but something in her manner suggested a con-
tinual snapping of her fingers at the country folk, and a defiant
fiddle-de-dee.

Like the majority of people who dwell in small places and
rarely visit large ones, Mrs. O seemed to imagine that the eyes
of the world were upon her native village, and that its great men
enjoyed an universal fame. It was amusing to hear her institute
scornful comparisons between her present place of abode and the
great town she had left behind her a place that could boast a
population of four hundred more living souls ; besides, as she
often remarked, the cemetery of her town was a great deal larger
and there were ever so many more folks buried there. Indeed,
Mrs. O 's native village deserved to be famous if all she related
about it was true ; but Mrs. O 's remarks had to be taken with
many grains of salt, for with all her good qualities she did not
possess a love of truth for its own sake, but revelled in hyper-
bole. Nothing could ever be told or happen of an extraordinary
nature but Mrs. O would immediately overmatch it by relat-
ing a still more extraordinary event that had happened in her
town. This lent an element of excitement to the table-talk, and
spurred one on to draw upon the imagination for wild and im-
probable stories.

At the table of a minister's family religion, of course, came in
at times for its share of discussion. There was here that re-
markable ignorance regarding the tenets of the Catholic faith
which is not by any means peculiar to the natives of a village.
Still, as Mrs. O once patronizingly remarked, "I don't doubt
but there are some good people among the Catholics. There's
St. Bernard," she exclaimed with an air of triumph at being so
readily able to recall an example, " I've often seen pictures of
him and his dogs a-hunting folks in the snow. O yes ! I reckon
he was a very good man indeed."

Country people have a somewhat embarrassing way of dis-

1884.] A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. 73

cussing you before your face, using the personal pronoun.
They will even argue matters of your individual tastes without
appealing to you for a settlement of the point at issue. " He
don't like beans," would remark some one at the table ; " there
an't no use in offerin' him any." " Yes, he does," would retort
another. " Well, I never see him eat any," etc., etc. That I
was able to keep my hands clean and white seemed to strike
Mrs. O with peculiar wonder. " Look at his hands," she
would exclaim ; " I never seen a printer keep his hands so white."
Mrs. O seemed to labor under the impression that I not only
wrote all that was in the paper, but that I also printed it myself.
I even think she held me responsible for the sentimental poetry
which appeared in the patent outsides. The illusion that I
printed the paper was, however, finally dispelled by the young
man of the family. He was a very silent young man, of an ex-
ceedingly morbid disposition, with large and melancholy eyes,
like those of the cow he daily led to pasture. I noticed him
prowling about the office once or twice, watching the progress
of things with his curious large eyes. Soon afterwards, when
Mrs. O had again broken out in wonder at the whiteness of
the hands of one who followed the printer's trade, the young
man put down a glass of milk he was about to quaff, and slowly
remarked, with unutterable scorn: "He don't do no work, he
don't do narthing but write."

Every now and then, of course, a "show " would pass through
the village, and ornament the fences with huge and gaudy pos-
ters. A handful of complimentary tickets were always left at
the office, in order to conciliate the editor and draw the venom
from his pen. To Mrs. O I always presented a ticket, for a
show would have been nothing without her as one of the au-
dience. The village people gazed upon the performance curi-
ously but stolidly. Sometimes a village wag would throw a
cabbage upon the stage, which would provoke a ripple of merri-
ment, but the show itself rarely occasioned laughter. Mrs. O ,
however, would enjoy it independently of the audience, in fact in
a sort of antagonistic manner, for when the audience was most
silent Mrs. O would become convulsed, and burst into such
terrific peals of laughter that the attention of the audience would
be entirely concentrated upon herself. But Mrs. O possessed
too much sang froid to be cowed by any number of reproving
eyes ; she would toss her head in a manner which seemed to as-
sert that if the audience was too stupid to enjoy a good thing
it was not going to influence her. Until the curtain dropped,

74 A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. [Oct.,

perhaps, her laugh would be the only one that would give a
hearty welcome to the venerable jokes which the company
would endeavor to palm off as new upon a guileless village au-
dience who rarely saw a joke in anything.

It is marvellous how little village people seem to know of the
art of enjoyment. They go dully through forms of amusement,
but the life and soul of pleasure is wanting. Church sociables or
festivals were here an oft-repeated form. But they were neither
sociable nor festive lucus a non lucendo. 'At these affairs the
people gathered together mournfully and ate in silence and de-
jection. The monotony of village life destroys joyful emotions.
Here the butter seems evenly but very thinly spread all over the
bread of life ; there are no sudden places thick with rich lumps,
perhaps there are no entirely bare spots. Life seems always and
ever the same. Those who enjoy intensely feel sorrow deeply.
But these people seem to do neither. A festival or a funeral
seems to be much the same thing, merely an occasion for gather-
ing together and looking mournful.

Even the dances given every now and then in the town-hall
under the auspices of the Hooks, the village fire company, were
a mournful sort of affairs. Nearly everybody attended, but very
few appeared to enjoy themselves. Slowly couples would come
straggling in, the men filing to the right and the women to the
left ; then they would seat themselves upon long rows of benches
ranged along the sides of the hall, and look silently into space,
awaiting the coming of the orchestra. At length a tiny, hump-
backed woman would mount the stage and seat herself at an
organ, then a man with a cornet under his arm would ascend the
steps, followed by another with a fiddle. A few scrapings and
tunings, a wave of the fiddle-bow, and a nasal " Gents ! please take
pardners," and the dance would begin. It was a curious per-
formance which they called " Money-musk," in which the dancers
and the music seemed to be running a sort of slow race for
second place. The sad-eyed gentleman with the fiddle would
keep the revellers in mind of their various gyrations ; and over
and over again, above the noise of shuffling feet, his thin, nasal
tones would pipe out : " Ladies on the one side, gents on the
other " ; " Swing pardners " ; " Forward four, and docey-do" And
so the dance would go on in an unbroken monotony until the
revellers' " feet with the dances were weary," and the music had
become tired and uncertain. What wonder that with such sad
forms of amusement the people were dull and knew nothing of
the delightful art of entertaining each other. An intelligent

1884.] A COUNTRY EDITOR'S EXPERIENCE. 75

young Presbyterian minister, who had a parish in the town, told
me that the hardest and most tiresome part of his work consisted
in the calls he was obliged to pay upon his parishioners, who
would become mortally offended did he not call at regular inter-
vals, and yet had nothing to say to him when he did go his
rounds.

Of course there may be other villages in which Theodora's
perfect life is realized. We are all such Philistines that we judge
a very wide world by very narrow experiences. Still, a single
experience will generally satisfy each one of us ; a burned child
dreads the fire. I have fled back to the imperfections and " ex-
haustion " of city life, and no longer dream a dream of a peaceful
and happy rustic existence. Life in its " perfection " was stale,
flat, and unprofitable ; the popular idea that country papers are
not mines of wealth is by no means an erroneous one. " I edit
my paper," remarked a brother editor of a village sheet, " to
support my reputation, but I saw wood to support my family."
Fortunately,

" No child, no sire, no kin had I,
No partner in my misery,"^

so that I was not obliged to resort to the wood-pile, but con-
tinued to do " narthing but write " until I left behind me my
once fancied Eldorado. Perhaps the Eldorado is not to be
found in the city either; as we grow. older and wiser we cease
to look for it, at least upon this side of the Stygian River. We
all become like the knight in Poe's song :

" But he grew old,
This knight so bold,
And over his heart a shadow
Fell, as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado."

I have not grown so very old, and am only learning where
not to look for Eldorado. However, I am certain that I shall
not wander to another village in search of the " perfect life."

y6 THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. [Oct.,

THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE.

I HAVE recently travelled through France from Dieppe to
Marseilles ; I have seen the French people in city, town, and
country ; at home, in church, in cafes, and in places of public
amusement, and here are the impressions which that tour has
left upon me.

The government of France is infidel, but the French people
are true to the faith of their fathers. Literature, art, and science
are generally anti-clerical, but they represent only a very small
portion of the thirty-five millions of French people. The press,
with some brilliant exceptions, is either .infidel or indifferent to
all religion, but it does not influence the convictions of one in a
thousand of French readers. The piety of the French people is
deep, solid, strong. It enters into their daily life. It is a part
of their national life. Paris is said to be bad, seductive, danger-
ous. I did not seek for its wickedness, and therefore did not
find it, for it is not of that rampant and reckless kind that dis-
gusts the eye and saddens the heart in the streets of London. It
has been said that French vice loses half its wickedness by losing
all its grossness. We certainly are not shocked on the streets of
Paris, as in London, by drunken men and women, ay, and chil-
dren, making night hideous.

Beneath the superficial gayety of Paris which fascinates the
stranger there is a true spirit of Catholic piety and charity.
Enter any one of the hundred churches that stand as enduring
monuments of the pious generosity of the French people, and se"e
the devout worshippers kneeling before the grand high altar or
the numerous side-chapels and shrines the lady in velvet by
the laborer in his blouse, the gentleman in broadcloth by the
poor servant-girl. Long before the votaries of pleasure have re-
covered from last night's dissipation the pious Parisians are at
early Mass. The following paragraph, by a clever American
journalist who wrote under the name of " Aguecheek," applies to
the French people to-day :

" The parish churches of Paris, the churches of the various religious
orders and congregations, and those numerous little temples which are so
thickly scattered through the city, attract me in a manner especially fas-
cinating. There is an air of cosiness and at-home-ativeness about them
which cannot be found in the grander fanes. Some of them seem by their

1884.] THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 77

architectural finish to have been built in some fine street or square, and to
have wandered off in search of quiet to their present secluded positions.
It is beneath their arches that the French people may be seen. Before
those altars you may see men, women, and children kneeling, their lips
scarcely moving with the petitions which are heard only in another world.
No intruding tourists, eye-glassed and Murrayed, interfere with their devo-
tions, and the silence of the sacred place is unbroken, save by the rattling
of a rosary, or at stated times by the swell of voices from the choir chapel.
These are the places where the real power of the Catholic religion makes
itself felt more unmistakably than in the grandest cathedrals, where every
form and sound is eloquent of worship."

But it is not this inner phase of French life which the travel-
ler sees who spends a few weeks in the gay capital, stopping at
the Grand Hotel or Meurice's, who spends his mornings on the
brilliant boulevards, his afternoons in the Bois de Boulogne, and
his evenings at the opera. The French life which is revealed to
the generality of strangers is shallow, superficial, soulless. But
that feverish life of the Bois, the boulevards, and the opera is
very different from the real life of the French people. Yet it is
this outside life of Paris which passes for the real life of the
French people, by which as a people they are judged, from
which as a nation they are condemned.

Paris is a city of startling contrasts. Behind those beautiful
boulevards and splendid avenues which are the admiration of all
travellers there are narrow streets filled with the hovels of the
poor that dangerous element of French society which, when
driven to desperation by the want of bread, raises revolutions
and overthrows governments. But French poverty, like French
vice, loses all its hideous features, except in the last extremity,
when it changes men into tigers and produces the frightful
scenes of 1789, 1848, and 1871.

I have been present at the Madeleine during a wedding ;
scarcely had the bridal party left the church when a funeral en-
tered, and a coffin was deposited near the high altar, where a few
minutes before a happy bride had stood. The vestments of the
priests, the black clothes of the mourners, and the solemn De Prc-
fundis were in strange contrast with the music, flowers, and tout
ensemble of the wedding. The funeral procession passed slowly
out of the church, and I lingered before Signol's masterpiece of
the " Death of Magdalen." While I was studying the exquisite face
of the dying penitent I heard an infant's cry, and, turning in the
direction of the baptistery, I saw a priest pouring the regenerat-
ing waters of baptism upon the head of an infant. What I had
that day witnessed recalled Chateaubriand's striking thought:

78 THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. [Oct.,

" Religion has rocked us in the cradle of life, and her maternal
hand shall close our eyes while her holiest melodies soothe us to
rest in the cradle of death."

Paris has been compared to a theatre, filled with gay com-
pany, to whom the same grand spectacle is always being shown,
and whose faces always reflect something of that brilliancy which
lights up the gorgeous, never-ending, last scene of the drama. I
know that the play has its underplot of poverty and crime, but
they shrink from the glare of the footlights and the radiance of
the red fire that lights up the scene.

Paris is France politically, but France is not Paris in any
other sense. A successful revolution in Paris changes the gov-
ernment of France, but the French people do not become repub-
licans because Paris declares for a republic. Napoleon III. said.
" L'Empire est paix." But it was not so. The Empire began
in blood and ended in blood. It was maintained by war the
Crimean War, the Austro-Italian War, the war in Mexico, and
the Franco-Prussian War. France, whether regal, imperial, or
republican, has always been governed by minorities. The Bour-
bons reigned by the power of the sword, not by the will of the
people. The Reign of Terror was the bloody work of an auda-
cious minority. Napoleon said he found the crown of France
lying on the ground and picked it up with his sword. He was
the idol of the army because he planted his victorious banners
upon every Continental capital from Madrid to Moscow. The
people of Paris were dazzled by the sight of the spoils of Europe
brought to adorn the palaces and galleries of the capital, and the
national vanity was flattered by the glory acquired by France.
But it was Paris in particular, and not France in general, that
gained by the victories of Napoleon, and the people grew tired
of supplying victims for the Moloch of war. The present so-
called French Republic was the result of a Parisian outbreak,
and does not, it seems to me, represent the sentiment of the
French people. Some people are born republican, others have
republicanism thrust upon them. The American people are
pre-eminently fitted for a republican form of government. The
French people are not at least this is my humble opinion.
With the French it is difficult to separate liberty from license.
What kind of a republic is that which exiles a man because he is
a member of a certain religious order ? What kind of religious
liberty is that which puts or requires the tri-color to be put on
churches, with the motto of the men of September and of the
Champs de Mars ? The Revolution of 1789 began well in a mag-

1884.] THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 79

nificent movement for the freedom of the human race. But how
soon was all its early promise blighted, and what should have
become wholesome fruit turned, like Dead Sea apples, to bitter
ashes !

All through France the traveller is impressed with the num.
ber of religious houses. While in Paris I went to the mother-
house of the Sisters of Charity in the Rue du Bac. Here there
are six hundred of those angels of mercy, whose whole life is
spent in visiting the sick, relieving the suffering, and consoling
the dying. The whole world has been made familiar with the
generous devotion of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean
War, but hundreds of Sisters of Charity went from France and
made sacrifices as noble whose names are unknown and whose
deeds were not blazoned before the world. At Lourdes I visited
the convent of the Poor Clares, whose whole life is one of pen-
ance, mortification, and self-denial. Their food is coarse ; they
wear no shoes in summer or winter; they never sit down during
the day or lie down at night ; their convent is never heated, al-
though the weather is very cold in winter. It was edifying to
see young and delicate women living lives of heroic self-denial,
but as my eyes wandered over the unfurnished apartment I read
on the wall the motto of their order and the inspiration of their
mortified life : "It is better to live a few years of penance on earth
and enjoy for ever the happiness of heaven" In Marseilles I saw in
one of the public squares a striking statue of Belsunce, the heroic
bishop who, during the ravages of a plague which visited the
city one hundred and sixty-five years ago and swept off nearly
half of its inhabitants, spent days and nights with the sick and
dying, and finally, by public prayers and processions, obtained
from Heaven the cessation of the disease. It was of this holy
and devoted bishop that Pope wrote :

"Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,
When nature sickened and each gale was death ? "

The same spirit of generous self-sacrifice still prevails among the
bishops and clergy of France who are not a foreign or exotic
growth, be it remembered, but Frenchmen of Frenchmen. The
people know this, and are true to their priests in spite of the
attempts of the infidel press to prejudice them against their best
friends.

Upon the loftiest height of Montmartre the piety of the
French people is building a magnificent church in honor of the
Sacred Heart, in atonement for the outrages and sacrileges com-

8o THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. [Oct.

mitted during the reign of the Commune in the spring of 1871.
All France is contributing to this work, and when finished the
church of the Sacred Heart will be one of the most splendid
in Europe. At Lourdes a beautiful basilica has been erected
over the grotto where the Blessed Virgin appeared to Ber-
nadette. I was present there at midnight Mass on Christmas
Eve. Never have I seen a church more crowded with devout
worshippers. They came from miles around the peasants in
their bright, picturesque costumes, people from the neighboring
towns, visitors from more distant parts of France, together with
the inhabitants of Lourdes and a few pilgrims from other lands.
In winter not many strangers go to Lourdes, but I never visited
the grotto, day or night, without seeing people kneeling before
the shrine. In the spring, summer, and autumn the crowds are
so great that all the time of the fourteen priests and all the
capacity of the numerous hotels are taxed to minister to the
spiritual and material wants of the pilgrims. It is then and there
that the piety of the French people is seen in all its pristine
beauty. In fact, a piety so simple, so fervent, so exemplary
takes us back to the ages of faith.

When at Marseilles I climbed to the top of the high rock
upon the summit of which stands the elegant church of Notre
Dame de la Garde. From its lofty height it seems to stand as
the protector of Marseilles and the whole of fair Provence. The
first sight that greets the voyager returning from distant and
dangerous seas is the church of Notre Dame de la Garde, where
perhaps his last visit was paid before leaving home. Here the
mothers, wives, and sisters of the absent come to offer their
devout prayers for the safe return of loved ones. Here may be
seen the simple votive offerings of sailors and travellers who
have been rescued from shipwreck and other dangers of the sea ;
the crutches of the lame who have made pilgrimages to this holy
spot arid been restored to health by faith and prayer ; here, as I
heard the sweet sound of the Angelus and saw the kneeling
crowds praying before the different shrines, I knew the piety of
the French people had not changed. In the quaint old city of
Tours where they speak the best French and spread the biggest
dinners I heard Mass in the house of M. L6on Dupont, whose
saintly life gained for him the name of the Holy Man of Tours.
He died only a few years ago, and was a beautiful example of the
piety of France in these latter days, when loud-mouthed infidelity
has made the world think that the land of St. Louis, St. Vincent
de Paul, and the Cure d'Ars has lost the faith which has been

1884.] THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 81

its brightest jewel from that early time when St. Remy told
Clovis to " burn what he had revered and revere what he had
burned." The Holy Man of Tours possessed that faith which
moves mountains, and he worked miracles constantly. He
founded the devotion to the Sacred Face of our Lord, and at
the Gospel side of the altar in his little chapel is a copy of the
Divine Countenance which was left upon Veronica's handker-
chief, before which a lamp is constantly burning.

Scattered through France, in every direction, north, south,
east, and west, are sacred shrines of one kind or another, which
speak better for the piety of the French people than the most
magnificent churches of Paris. Even Protestant writers have
been struck with the 'facility of the Catholic Church in adapting
itself to the peculiar genius of various nations of the world.
Other religions thrive more in one climate and could not live in
any other. It has been truly said that Mohammedanism could
never be transplanted to the snowy regions of Russia or Nor-
way ; it needs the soft, enervating atmosphere of Asia to keep it
alive ; the veranda, the bubbling fountain, the noontide repose
are all parts of it. Puritanism is the natural growth of a country
where the sun seldom shines, and which is shut out by a barrier
of water and fog from kindly intercourse with its ^eighbors. It
could never thrive in the bright south. The merry vine-dressers
of Italy could never draw down their faces to the proper length,
and would be very unwilling to exchange their blithesome can-
zonetti for Sternhold and Hopkins' version. But the Catholic
Church, while it unites its professors in the belief of the same
inflexible creed, leaves them entirely free in all mere externals
and national peculiarities. The light-hearted Frenchman, the
fiery Italian, the serious Spaniard, the cunning Greek, the digni-
fied Armenian, the energetic Russian, the hard-headed Dutch-
man, the philosophical German, the formal and " respectable "
Englishman, the thrifty Scotchman, the careless and warm-
hearted Irishman, and the calculating, go-ahead American, are all
bound % together by the profession of the same faith, and yet
retaining their national characteristics.

Although, as we have seen, the piety of the French people
is firm and deep and strong, still there is in Paris, Lyons, Mar-
seilles, Bordeaux, and other large cities a tendency towards
scepticism on the part of some of the most gifted of the rising
generation, and France badly wants at this time such eloquent
and devoted laymen as Chateaubriand to proclaim the genius
of Christianity and to show to the world that the Christian reli-
VOL. XL. -6

82 THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. [Oct.,

gion is not only excellent because it comes from God, but that
it comes from God because it is excellent. Chateaubriand's
masterpiece, the Genius of Christianity, did more to restore the
ancient religion of France than any other single influence.
When the work was published in 1802 France had not recov-
ered from the baleful effects of the Revolution. " That beautiful
country, whose people had once held so prominent a rank
among the Catholic nations of Europe, presented but a vast
scene of ruins, the fatal consequences of that systematic war
which impious sophists had waged against religion during the
latter half of the eighteenth century. The Revolution had
swept away in its desolating course all the landmarks of the an-
cient society. Churches and altars had been overthrown ; the
priests of God had been massacred or driven into exile ; asy-
lums of virtue and learning had been profaned and laid waste ;
everything august and sacred had disappeared." It was at such
a critical period in the history of religion and civilization that
Chateaubriand, like one of his knightly ancestors, entered the
lists in defence of Christianity, and threw around it so many
charms that even the most indifferent were interested. His state-
ly eloquence, graphic description, poetical sentiment, and fasci-
nating style delighted all readers and made Napoleon observe,
" It is not the style of Racine, but of a prophet ; nature has given
Chateaubriand the sacred flame, and it breathes in his work." A
general interest was called to the ever-ancient and ever-new re-
ligion, which, says Montesquieu, " whilst it seems only to have
in view the felicity of the other life, constitutes the happiness of
this." The Genius of Christianity furnishes an incomparable pic-
ture^of the truth, beauty, and grandeur of religion, and is an ir-
resistible answer to the shallow sophistries of the so-called mod-
ern scientists, who, like the foolish man in the Bible, say there
is no God. Religion has always triumphed over its enemies,
and will continue to triumph because it comes from God ; and
God's work never fails.

A country whose religion has triumphed over the infidel and
socialistic teachings of a Voltaire, a Diderot, and a Rousseau ;
whose religion is almost the only institution not destroyed by the
Revolution of 1790, when the altars of Almighty God were pro-
faned and an infamous woman was publicly proclaimed the God-
dess of Reason amidst the wild plaudits of a frenzied mob ; whose
religion has survived the evil influence and example of the first
Napoleon ; whose religion grew stronger during the demoraliz-
ing reign of the son of Philippe Egalite ; whose religion has out-

1884.] THE PIETY OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 83

lived the second Reign of Terror, inaugurated by the Paris Com-
mune in 1871 ; a country whose religion has withstood the worst
efforts of modern infidelity, atheism, and communism, seems des-
tined ever to stand as a glorious example of unfaltering faith.
Proclaimed the eldest daughter of the church more than a thou-
sand years ago, France will probably bear that illustrious title to
the end of time.

As I stood beneath the majestic dome of the Invalides, and
looked down upon the splendid sarcophagus that contains the
mortal remains of the first, greatest, and most ambitious of the
Bonapartes, my mind reverted to the closing scene of that rest-
less life far from Paris, far from France, far from the French
people whom he claimed to love so tenderly, to the distant
island where the fierce eagle was chained and made to eat his
heart out. He, too, recalling his happy childhood, said he
wished to die in the bosom of the church, in which he had al-
ways believed, but whose teachings he had not always obeyed.
The pope whom he had imprisoned sent him an Italian priest to
hear his confession of thirty-five years of sin and blood and self-
ish ambition. The dying emperor becomes a child again, makes
an humble and contrite confession, forgives his enemies, receives
the last sacraments, and dies with all the consolations of reli-
gion. So it is with Frenchmen ever however bad they may
live, they turn to the church and look for its solace, if that great
grace is vouchsafed them, in their dying hour.

Even Voltaire, whose whole life had been one long war against
Christianity, sought in his last moments the consolation which
the Catholic Church never refuses to the worst of sinners. Find-
ing no comfort in his boasted philosophy, the dying infidel asks
for a priest. The Abbe Gauthier, vicar of St. Sulpice, hastens
to his bedside and strives to inspire him with hope in the mercy
of God. Voltaire makes his confession, retracts his infidelity,
declares that he wishes to die in the bosom of the holy Catholic
Church, and asks for the last sacraments. But he, who has so
long reviled God and ridiculed religion, is prevented by his infi-
del friends from receiving the consolations of the church in his
dying moments, and he expires in despair, crying out as the
dreaded eternity approaches, " Abandoned by God and man!"

We have seen in our own day the illustrious Littre, whose
Dictionary is a monument of literary talents and labor ; Paul Fe-
val, the novelist; Sarcy, the critic; and many another straying
son returning to the bosom of the church. Even the fiery
Gambetta turned his dying eyes to his spiritual mother.

$4 SHAKSPERE' s TRAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

France wants to-day the eloquent voice of a Montalembert to
stir the minds and the hearts of the young men to an apprecia-
tion of their glorious birthright as children of the church ; to
answer infidelity by the mouth of Tertullian and the gentle Fene-
lon, " You have nothing to fear from us, but we do not fear
you " ; to say to those who would deprive the church of her
immemorial rights, " We will not be Helots in the midst of a
free people. We are the successors of the martyrs, and we do
not tremble before the successors of Julian the Apostate. We
are the sons of the Crusaders, and we will not draw back before
the sons of Voltaire."

SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS.

THOSE who have specially studied the delicacy of Shakspere
in those of his dramas, the earliest written by him, wherein the
sportive predominated, have been pleased whenever this quality,
becoming more and more refined, approximated the tragic.
They have been prepared, therefore, for the profound pathos to
be seen and felt when he should essay to bear witness to the
sorest disappointments of mankind. It is proposed in this arti-
cle to consider his treatment of the passion of love in its ex-
tremest misfortune in the three periods, youth, manhood, and
advanced age the ardent, undoubting, unthoughtful love of
young manhood and young womanhood, as in " Romeo and
Juliet " ; the conjugal love of the full man after the freshness of
youth has departed, as in " Othello " ; and the last love, the
parental, as in " King Lear."

Shakspere was now past his own extreme youth, and his
native seriousness, deepened by adventitious circumstances of
whatever kind, must predominate in the representations that
henceforth he was to make of human life. What had been and
what then was in his married experience to intensify the melan-
choly of his spirit, if any of his contemporaries knew, they did
not transmit. Yet whoever has read what little was ever
known of this experience, especially if he has ever seen that yet
respectable-looking house on one of the most prominent streets
of Stratford-on-Avon, and afterwards walked across the fields to
the village of Shottery, and entered the low-roofed, thatched
cottage wherein, when a boy of eighteen, he was married to Anne

1884.] SHAKSPERE* s TRAGIC LOVERS. 85

Hathaway, many years his senior, must think and speculate
again of what he remembered to have thought and speculated,
especially when reading those sonnets whose complainings,
never understood, are the saddest, the most piteous to be found
in all uninspired writing.

Heretofore, yet in a business way as the lessee of theatres,
he had excited laughter for every shade of sportiveness, from
the broadest jests of clowns and wenches to the most delicate
sallies of the high-born and cultured. And now, when, though
but seven-and-twenty, he had been a married man near ten years,
he will essay to excite tears of sympathy by portraying grief in
those conditions wherein it is not to be borne, and urge to
despair and to death those whom they have beset.

The circumstances attending the inception of the loves of
Romeo and Juliet are such as to render their attachment the
more absorbing, irresistible, rapid, cage/, and impossible to
result otherwise than in quick disaster. We are not, and we
were not, to be told of the causes that had led to the hostility of
their families. For the purposes of the poet it was enough that
they existed, that they were old so old, indeed, that by this time
the wrongs and revenges of each might be regarded as equal.
It has now come, in accordance with the laws of time and des-
tiny, that these hostilities are to have an end, and that end is to
come by the sacrifice of innocent blood. This boy of the Mon-
tagues and this girl of the Capulets, too young to feel any of the
hereditary hatred of their families, each perfect in kind for the
prompting of sudden love, are the more speedily involved be-
cause of the difficulties and the dangers. It was consummate
art in the poet when he made Romeo at first fall in love with
Rosaline. This brief essay was a becoming preliminary to the
instantaneous recognition of the superior- charms of the daughter
of the Capulet, and a learning of the courtly arts by which to
make known such recognition. High art it was also to repre-
sent Juliet as having been until now without love's experience,
and therefore without power to resist its first assault.

Yet, young as they are, they recognize the risk. Even before
the meeting, when Romeo has consented to attend the masque-
rade with Benvolio and Mercutio, his

"Mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels, and expire the term
Of a despised life."

86 SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

So Juliet, appalled to find that her lover is a Montague, in-
stantaneously springs forth into womanhood and muses:

" My only love sprung from my only hate !
Too early seen unknown, and known too late !
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy."

Yet such a love finds not an end amid such discouraging
circumstances. There is no courage like that of love when it is
young and innocent. The hereditary hatred of their families
has only added another spur to their infatuation. The ardor
of the boy, his recklessness of danger, his mad pursuit of that
girl of fourteen years, into whose mind on the morning of that
very day thoughts of marriage for the first time have been put
by her own parents these are as irresistible as anything in the
careers of Antigone or Alcestis. The poet took them both at
the spring of the sentiment and the want that attracts and binds
man and woman to each other, when the prospect of possession
each by the other seems to make nugatory all preliminary risks
and dangers, and compensate for all possible disasters.

What a courtship was on that starry night, as the child, with
the first consciousness of the love of man, stood in the window of
her chamber while her new lover, unseen, stands in the garden
below !

On the side of his mother, Mary Arden, Shakspere had gentle
blood, and his inheritance of gentility had been manifested in
several of his creations. So it appears in the exquisite delicacy
of this young girl in the midst of her new feelings. Literature
must be sought in vain for a case in which there is so much all-
pervading passion in girlhood joined with equal maidenly timid-
ity and reluctance. The struggle between the frank avowal of
a love that cannot be concealed, with the fear of being regarded
too soon and too easily won, makes a case that not only the
young but those who have far outlived the times of their similar
experience are fond to contemplate.

"Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
What I have spoke : but farewell compliment !
Dost thou love me ? I know thou wilt say 'Ay,'
And I will take thy word : yet, if thou swear'st,
Thou mayst prove false ; at lovers' perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,

1884.] SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. 87

If them dost love, pronounce it faithfully :
Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
I'll frown 'and be perverse, and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo ; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light :
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware,
My true love's passion ; therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered."

How touching the girlish, maidenly remonstrance in these
words, and the pleading against a judgment which, in the ex-
quisite bashfulness of her virtue, she fears that she may nave
deserved !

After protesting against all oaths except " by thy gracious
self," and a brief, solemn dwelling upon the suddenness of their
love, she dismisses him with this prayer :

"Good-night, good-night! as sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast."

We know that, strong as is the love in that young heart, it is
held subordinate to that which a woman, however gifted, if a
Christian and a gentlewoman, feels that she must regard as en-
titled to a yet more devout and exalted service. For no man
better than Shakspere understood that the joys of love, even
those of briefest continuance, were not worth having unless they
were such as had been licensed by the laws of God and of man.

Yet such a sentiment, coming in such circumstances, must
hasten the brief season of its fulfilment. Rapidly and tumultu-
ously it comes on, as rapidly and tumultuously as it is destined
to depart. In that brief season the feuds of these two great
rival families were to be obliterated by the coalescence and the
sacrifice of those two innocent young hearts. Yet the Muse of
tragedy must have her costly sacrifice, and the young bride-
groom and his bride, like the children of the Argive mother,
meet their woful destiny and lie down to wake no more upon
earth.

In the deaths of Romeo and Juliet it is made to appear that the
justice that is infinite was satisfied for the wrong-doings of those
of whom they were the last and innocent representatives. It is
pitiful but it is instructive to see these old men, hereditary ene-

88 SHAKSPEXE'S TXAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

mies, take each other by the hand, and wail and console each for
his own and the other's dead. Montague raises a statue of pure
gold to the daughter of Capulet, and Capulet a similar to the
son of Montague. Costly as they are, they seem, and they are
acknowledged to be,

"Poor sacrifices of our enmity."

Two loves could not be more widely different than this we
have just been considering and that of Othello and Desdemona.
It is difficult to fix a limit to the admiration we feel for the
artist who has represented in such phases the distinctions be-
tween this "first and passionate love" and that of mature man-
hood. Not like the instantaneous infatuation of Romeo and
Juliet, the love of Othello and Desdemona had been of studied,
deliberate development. An inmate in the house of Brabantio,
received and entertained there partly from admiration of his
achievements, perhaps mostly from pleased contemplation of the
interest that such condescension on the part of a powerful lord
excited among the common people, the Moor had been wont to
speak, after being led thereto, of his adventures on land and sea,
without suspicion on anybody's part that a sentiment different
from the common was to spring between him and Desdemona.
Totally unlike Juliet, who was captivated by youthful beauty
and grace at the first impulse of the consciousness of sex, Desde-
mona, after the lapse of time, found her heart's affections follow-
ing in the train of her admiration for this middle-aged hero, and
then, herself young, without experience of any sort except home
existence, in disregard both of parental authority and the ex-
actions of society, became his wife. An alliance apparently so
unnatural the father; sustained by the common sentiment of
Venice, attributed to the arts of magic until the disavowal of his
daughter, when, overwhelmed with disgust as well as disap-
pointment, he withdrew his prosecution, surrendered her to the
fortune she had selected, and turned his back upon her for ever.
It was an ill-starred marriage. The Moor, though a hero, was
of a race despised by all in Venice, by none more than the high-
born family whose daughter he had espoused. In such cases no
mere individual merit can satisfy either old family pride or the
demands of society. Amidst all the admiration for this especial
Moor it had not been as much as dreamed that he would pre-
sume to ally himself with the aristocracy of the fairest of Italian
cities, the Bride of the Sea. Desdemona was yet too young to
have imbibed very much of this pride of family and society, and

1884.] SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. 89

doubtless had been disgusted with the manikins who abounded
in the circle to which she had been accustomed. Therefore she
was drawn unconsciously and irresistibly to this barbarian, who,
notwithstanding his advanced age and his tawny color, seems in
the eyes of a simple young girl of more worth than all those
whose only merits are that they are of the best blood of Venice
and can show the images of any number of ancestors, great, rich,
and illustrious.

Now, it is not allowed to appear that Desdemona had been
won solely by the recitals of the great deeds of the Moor, nor
that there was not something about him which might attract a
high-born maiden besides the record of his heroic actions and
sufferings. Othello was not only a scarred warrior, but, al-
though a barbarian, he was, after his kind, a gentleman. It does
not appear that he had so informed Desdemona ; for your true
gentleman seldom talks of his ancestry, even when it has been of
purest excellence, especially when in pursuit of ends that are as
delicate as desirable. Yet he was of the best blood of his race,
and therefore he could not have been without some of those
graces of manner that in one and another form must accompany
the walk and conversation of the well-born of every race. It
was not, therefore, a love like the infatuated of Pasiphae for the
bull, or of Leda for the swan, that had won this fair Christian girl
to the descendant of Ismael, but such love as a brave man may
reasonably excite in a fair woman who may have been looking
out for better examples than she has been able to find among her
contemporaries and her equals in social life. That is a touching
evidence of his social worth when, in discoursing with lago of
the opposition to his alliance, he says :

" Tis yet to know 1

Which, when I know that boasting is an honor,
I shall promulgate I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege, and my demerits
May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
As this that I have reach'd ; for know, lago,
But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea's worth."

It could not greatly surprise that a man able to speak thus on
such a theme would draw to him a young woman like Desde-
mona. With such a man there could not be the shadow of an

90 SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

idea in the woman who had become his wife that she had thus
made any condescension. The few words employed in this con-
nection show that but for his single love for this especial woman,
the choicest of a foreign nation, he would not have thought of
thus connecting himself outside of the race from which he was
descended a race, in his patriotic mind, the most royal of earth.
Yet to those Venetians this great warrior, with the record of a
thousand exploits such as the young men of Venice, even those
of the best families, were incapable of performing, was at last a
Moor. Oh ! this pride of the family. How many crimes, how
many abominations, how much misery are to be laid at its door !

If Desdemona had been older she doubtless had been influ-
enced by such prejudices. As it was, she yielded to the first
charm that came with such simple, natural, generous, noble,
lordly approach that resistless charm which the modest recital
of deeds of vaior and danger must exert upon a young, admiring
spirit ; and then, because she could not do otherwise, she be-
stowed herself upon the weather-beaten, scarred, almost aged
warrior.

It was a marriage, we repeat, under not propitious stars. It
was without the paternal blessing. The poet, with a delicate
foresight of naturally tragic results, took away this auspice so
benign to nuptial solemnization. The young virgin went from
her father's house without his benison, joined with a man

" Declined
Into the vale of years,"

of a race not only considered by her own as its inferior, but one
prone to jealousy, which of all frailties is most fatal to conjugal
prosperity.

Yet, if no disturber come between, with such loftiness of soul
in one and such single devotedness in the other, this wedded life
may be safe, and even felicitous ; and we may hope to see how the
softening influences of the accomplished Venetian woman may
subdue in time whatever has been left that is barbarous in the
nature of this descendant of the kings of the desert.

The character of lago is one of the most consummate of
human creations. Drawing a man the most abjectly vile of his
kind, the artist, at an early stage in his work, seemed to feel the
necessity to apologize for human nature in the person of this its
worst representative by a semblance, or a pretended semblance,
that villany so diabolic could not have been perpetrated without
at least some suspicion of provocation. lago, himself a married

1884.] SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. 91

man, husband of a woman that is of a levity not becoming a wife,
had already learned to hate the Moor with the hatred that a
mean spirit feels for the great and gifted. Yet we are spared
the worst of the shock, and we are suffered to retain our incredu
lity in the absolute diabolism of a human being by knowing that
this wretch has been persuaded that he has some cause, as a hus-
band, of resentment, or of possible resentment a possibility
springing mainly from the consciousness of his own unlimited
inferiority, and which, with a spirit so abject, is as effectual as
positive proof in dictating revenge.

And now, if the "guilty goddess of harmful deeds" ever
followed the career of conjugal life with a pursuit that was in-
satiate in pitilessness, it was here. For the highest purposes of
pathos there must be in the inception 'perfect love and fidelity.
And oh ! what bliss is there in the union of a brave man and a beau-
tiful woman when both are full of love and full of fidelity. On the
part of Desdemona, added to an absorbing love of her husband
a love won by the manfulness of his spirit, without other adven-
titious accidents, as youth, beauty, grace, ardor, and social con-
nections there was the innocence which in its own pure, sweet
atmosphere knew not and believed not either of enmity or other
form of guilt elsewhere. One may read a hundred times over
the talk between her and Emilia on the night of the murder, and
he will admire only more and more the man who thus could paint
a mortal woman, and, while keeping her mortal to the last, make
her so like the celestial. Surely female conjugal purity was
never set forth in such excellent beauty. It is her ignorance
and unbelief of evil that have made her so liable to be ruined
and destroyed.

*' Dost thou in conscience think tell me, Emilia
That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind ? " ,

The lower woman, the woman of the world, has to admit that
there are exceptional cases, that all women are not like the spot-
less who in her extremity thus interrogates. Yet she will not
believe such things to be possible. This ignorance, this incredu-
lity, this innocence have hindered her, until too late, from discov-
ering what has so perplexed and estranged' her husband ; and
when she has thus discovered, instead of indulging in resentment
for her own wrong a wrong, in her imagination, so foul that the
poorest and most abject of women are incapable of deserving it
she only utters one sorrowful appeal in behalf of the innocence of

92 SHAKSPERE' 's TRAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

all her sex, and thus makes them partners and companions in the
grief that she feels when she cries :

" O these men ! these men ! "

Yet do not these outrages subtract from her sense of conju-
gal duty and affection. The poet rightly styled love woman's
" whole existence." None but one like lago, possessed of a
devil, could have failed to respond to her appeal :

" Alas lago !
Good friend, go to him.

Here I kneel :

If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense
Delighted them in any other form ;
Or that I do not yet, and ever did,
And ever will though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me ! Unkindness may do much ;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love."

So, true to the honorable behests of her last condition, she
gives instruction that her body when dead shall be wrapped, not
in her virgin but her bridal robes, so that such witness, fragile,
unsubstantial, mute though it be, of the loyalty that was unre-
cognized and outraged in this life, might accompany her to the
grave.

Of all feminine creations of poets Desdemona is at the head.
Yet the depth of the pathos in this great drama is not in the
death of her. In the death of the innocent, even when wrought
by violence, the sorrow we feel is subdued, I might almost say
sweetened, both by remembrance of what was its most excellent
beauty and by our own ideas that, instead of being destroyed or
hurt by death, it has been translated to an estate more fitted for
its abode. The tenderest wish that we can make for persecuted
innocence is that its suffering may not be protracted, but that it
may soon be allowed to fly away to its native heaven. There is
something, we know not what, in the quick, violent death of the
innocent that, instead of repelling, attracts us, we know not how.
We associate them then with those who have attained the crown
of martyrdom which we have been taught to regard the suprem.
est of earthly felicities. So have we thought of Agnes, sharing
with Thecla, after the Immaculate, the chiefest distinction of
purity ; so of Cecilia the Blind, custodian of the Catacombs ; so
of Philomena, martyr of the Tiber, whose turbid waves bore up

1884.] SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. 93

her fair, chaste body, as, with a light above its forehead, it glided
along to the sea. The very silence and apparent painlessness in
the deaths of the young and the harmless will not admit the
anguishing sympathy we feel when the experienced, the strong,
the valiant, and the passionate are overcome. The birdling
opens its tiny beak and chirrups before the robber as blithe and
as pleading as when its parent has returned to its nest, and it
dies without a quaver and without even a fluttering of its wings.
Not so the eagle, experienced in warfare, rapine, and slaughter,
who when meeting his conqueror, battles to the last, both when
aloft and when prostrate, and death finds him rolling his fiery,,
unvanquished eyes and thrusting with his talons. Such a death
we witness with tumultuous sympathy, and our very hair stands
on end before the last, heroic, desperate struggle of one so brave.
The poet, who understood well these varying influences, de-
manded our deepest sympathy for the greatest sufferer ; and
herein he surpassed not only all other artists but himself.
Othello had never formally wooed Desdemona. A foreigner, of
a despised race, no longer a young man, never having studied
nor desired to learn the arts that specially please women, he
found himself, unexpectedly to himself, beloved of the first
young woman of Venice, and soon thereafter her husband. If
she had been wise as she was virtuous and fond she would have
been enabled to understand and to thwart the arts of her own
and her husband's enemy. In the absence of all prudential pre-
ventives, the inequalities of that alliance inevitably recurring to
his own mind, aided by exterior insidious suggestion, began to
frighten him. To a great, brave spirit fear is the most painful of
feelings, because most incompatible with the consciousness that
has made it what it is and has been heretofore its chiefest incen-
tive. It thrills us to witness the struggles of a generous and
naturally unsuspicious spirit with a subtle enemy on a field
whereon it has had no experience, yet on which are things to
fight for that are a thousand-fold more dear than all those for
which the battles of a score of years have been fought and won
elsewhere. How that generous spirit writhes amid the sense of
incompetence for the exigencies of this new warfare, and even
condescends to appeal against the injustice of their being de-
volved upon him !

" Haply, for I am black

And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have, or for I am declined
Into the vale of years."

94 SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

Herein is a momentary humiliation, a shame-faced self-con-
temning like that of the lion when involved in the toils that were
invisible as they were innumerable. Yet the pathos becomes the
more profound when, his native courage recovering its poise, he
seeks to console himself by comparison of his own with the mis-
fortunes common to the great.

" Yet, 'tis the plague of great ones ;
Prerogatived are they less than the base :
'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death ! "

^Piteous beyond degree it is to see this fearful struggle in the
bosom of a hero, and his conscious loss of manhood with the loss
of honor. When he has bidden farewell to

"The plumed troop, and the big wars,
The neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war,"

we know that he feels that this last defeat has undone the achieve-
ments of a career unrivalled in glory and is remanding him to
the lowest among the barbarians from whom he sprang. Hence-
forth the struggl* is most feeble and most vain. The vanquished
hero, shorn of all his honors, descends to the level of the basest
and most cowardly, and the arm that upon a hundred fields had
slain or scattered in flight unnumbered hosts of marshalled men
has for its last office the murder of the most innocent, the most
trusting, the most loving, and the most beloved of womankind.
No, not the last. There remains yet one more action for that
mighty arm. And now pity has reached its extremest when the
ruined man, murderer and widower, discovering his fatal mis-
take, though comparing himself with the base Judasan who

" Threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe,"

makes one brief, touching appeal for the commutation of men's
opinions by recital, not of the vast historic services that he has
rendered to the commerce of the merchant-princes of Europe, but
of a private action, where

" In Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him thus."

1884] SI/AXSPERL'S TRAGIC LOVERS. 95

And now let us consider briefly that last stage, when, having
survived the passions that were contemporary with youth, man-
hood, and constant age, the spirit of the old man leans for its
last support upon the young, whose dependence upon him
hitherto has developed what perhaps is the most powerful of
human loves. King Lear was a noted exemplar of that sort of
aged men, not very uncommon, who, in their overweening and
always impossible desire to receive from their children as much
affection as they bestow upon them, do violence to that tender
relationship and become inextricably involved in mistakes and
disasters. This is the most natural yet the most to be pitied of
the infirmities of fond old age. Whenever, as in the case of
King Lear, such desire becomes active, and the parent seeks
among his children for the purpose specially and avowedly of
rewarding those who seem to satisfy that impossible standard,
he is sure, from the very nature of things, to make a most unfor-
tunate choice. It was, therefore, not a mere fancy of Shakspere,
nor of the old legend-gatherer from whom he borrowed the sub-
ject of his drama, that this king should reject from his heart and
a share in his power Cordelia, who, among all his children, was
the only one that responded dutifully to his affection. With such
a man, who, as Regan afterwards said of him, had

" Ever but slenderly known himself,"

now lapsed into dotage, making the usual mistake of senility in
conceiting that he is wiser than ever before, unless all his chil-
dren be true to him and true to one another he is sure to be-
come the victim of those who are not. The parent who makes
such a choice, if it be abetted and ratified by the chosen, has
made the worst choice possible, because choosing at all in such
conditions is wicked and unnatural.

If such things be true in ordinary families, how much more
striking are they in the houses of mighty kings when the prize of
such a contest is investment with

" Power,

Pre-eminence, and all the large effects
That troop with majesty."

For such a prize, when the inheritance is not to devolve ac-
cording to ascertained, fixed order, rivalries for succession have
begun usually before the father has grown old. The evil-minded
have already been studying the arts to employ in possible con-
tingencies, and parted from the filial piety which the aged value

96 SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

more than all earthly possessions, even when these be kingly
crowns. Even in hereditary kingdoms the reigning monarch
and the heir-apparent seldom love each other, especially when
the elder begins to be thought to be living too long. Mournful
it is in the lives of the aged, especially if the places which they
fill are much to be desired, that those who are to occupy them
sometimes complain, if only in secret, that they linger in them so
long. There are 'few things upon this earth more to be compas-
sionated than the fond, vain yearnings of an old man for the
loves that were inspired in his former time. It rends the heart
to read, in that terrible satire of Swift, of the neglect and the
contemptibility of those upon whom had been conferred the gift
of immortality. Ludicrous as is the fate of Tithonus, yet to a
thoughtful mind it is sad to contemplate the aged lover of Au-
rora, when, after having survived the contemporaries of his
every stage, and having lost youth, virility, courage, he pleaded
to give back the boon that had been granted to his request, and
the goddess, who could not comply, gave him in derision the
metamorphose of a grasshopper. It is interesting to read, in
Cicero's De Senectute, of the domestic rule of the aged Appius
Claudius ; but more touching, it is thought, of old Cato in his
dread that, having survived Marcus, his best beloved, the day
of his own departure might be late prolonged. He is the best
representative of advanced age in whom Heaven, in its mercy,
subdues love of the world, but tempers alike the wish to remain
and the longing to depart. The saddest of all things in the lives
of the superannuated, saddest as well for them as for the young,
is that the poor remnant of what once was abundant has occa-
sionally to be purchased and sold for a consideration amounting
to the little all the buyer has to give, yet with which the seller is
not and cannot be satisfied.

The fond King Lear, wea*ry, or imagining himself to be weary,
of empire ; meaning to dispose so that he may

" Unburdened crawl toward death " ;

vainly hoping that he may avoid the general lot of kings, and
repose, during the remainder of his life, upon the love and grati-
tude of at least some of his children, makes his choice. Employ-
ing a standard most illusory, he chooses wrong. What follows
the poet has told in words that make even the young grow pale
from thinking what may befall the last days of the careers of
even the greatest of mankind. None but one who was most pro-
found in the knowledge of the human heart could thus have re-

1884.] SHAKSPERE'S TRAGIC LOVERS, 97

presented the various phases of that wretched decline. Yet, as
in the case of lago, whom he was too humane to let be without
some excuse for enormities that otherwise would have been dia-
bolical and incredible, so with these two daughters, Regan and
Goneril, " the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric
years bring with them " were such as to be widely inconsistent
with their changed relations, thus making foundation, insufficient
as it might be, for conduct not wholly inexcusable in its incep-
tion :

" GONERIL. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his

fool ?

OSWALD. Yes, madam.

GONERIL. By day and night he wrongs me; every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets us all at odds : I'll not endure it:
His knights grow^ riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle."

The monarch had not considered that these daughters must
have inherited some of the spirit that had made their father a
ruler of mankind. Then, when he had laid aside the burdens of
empire, he had not believed that he was laying aside therewith
the power of control over all who were about him. In his fond-
ness he had dreamed that his port might be expected to become
yet more royal when he had daughters who were queens, while
he, who had made them so, by express stipulation was to retain

"The name and all the Additions of a king."

Vain as such expectations were, they were most natural to a
superannuated monarch upon whom the ambitions of absolute
autocracy had palled. The poet set them down in careful se-
quence, in order to prepare for the fearful things that were to
follow upon disappointment. What these are I need not repeat :
first astonishment at the insulting conduct of Goneril ; the indig-
nant remonstrance and the turning away from her to Regan ;
the pathos of the answer to the latter when she coldly counselled
him to return to her sister and acknowledge that he had
wronged her ; the sense of humiliation in entreating from his
children the consideration due to his age and relationship ; his
prayer to be " touched with noble anger " instead of fighting with
" women's weapons " ; his awful deprecation of madness, and- that
threat of revenge that is the veriest embitterment of terror when
his instincts make sure that he will have power to fulfil it. Ap-
palling indeed is the energy with which the outraged parent
VOL. XL. 7

98 SHAKSPEKE'S TXAGIC LOVERS. [Oct.,

prosecutes his threat His going forth into the pelting storm,
baring his aged head to the blast, his suffering of hunger and
cold, all for the purpose of heaping up wrath upon the children
who had dishonored him ! Surely to no uninspired man as to
Shakspere had ever come the gift to employ the language of
grief, despair, and imprecation. Burning indeed were the words
of the son of lapetus when he complained to the elements of the
remorseless infliction of unmerited suffering. But even this pas-
sion burned not like that of old Lear when his age has been out-
raged by the chosen ones of his heart. We shrink aghast when
we hear his curses, because we know that God, next to the dis-
obedience offered to himself, abhors the dishonor put upon a
parent's head, and we foresee all the horror of the retribution.

That brief season of softness when he and the cast-out Cor-
delia are met in reconciliation and misfortune is as natural as it
is exquisitely touching :

CORDELIA. Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters ?
LEAR. No, no, no, no ! Come, let's away to prison :
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage :
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness : so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news ; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins ; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies : and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon."

In this ignoring the very existence of his ingrates there is
terror even yet more fearful than while the imprecations were
pouring from his burning tongue. A brief season, vain as an old
man's dream of the return of his youth. One more agony the
death of Cordelia ; and one more act of vengeful strength the
slaying of her assassin. It is grand to see in this revulsion the
momentary revival of the mighty power that he had been wont
to exert in the days of his prime. It was like the last act of
Samson, who, when subdued and captive and blind, summoned
the remains of his giant strength, and in his own ruin over-
whelmed his enemies.

Perhaps the most delicate and subtle tenderness of this tragedy
is that wherein is told the relations of Lear with his fool. The
fool was an indispensable minister in ancient unlimited monarch-
ies. He was needed to impart occasional relief to the surfeit

1 884,] SHAKSPERE' s TRAGIC LOVERS. 99

that comes from the constant servilities of the rest of mankind,
and allow temporary respites from the cares of unquestioned
empire. A despotic king, if only from caprice, must have some-
times the mimicry of the sight of independence' in a subject, and
rinding no other, he must adopt a poor fool and bestow upon him
the cap and bells. Whenever such a king abdicates his power
it is most natural that he retain this appendage, which, of all
others, had least to do with the cares that had made him wear)-.
With transcendent art the poet leads to the changes in the rela-
tions of the monarch and his fool. As the one declines the other
is exalted. A sort of wisdom, paroxysmal though it be, has
come to the fool in this sudden, vast degradation. How do the
jests grow into petulant complainings, injo semi-serious and
serious rebukes, into wise saws, until he has become silent, and,
like a dog, faithful to the last, is willing to die and dies for his
master ! We should not have foreseen these changes. But
when we have seen we recognize them as true to life, and we
wonder again at the universality of the genius that so fully under-
stood and so faithfully portrayed these extremes in human con-
ditions.

Sad histories these of human loves. To no period, youth,
manhood, advanced age, came relief from the malediction,

"They that love best their loves shall not enjoy."

In this and a former article has been considered the consum-
mate art of Shakspere both in the intermingling of the sportive
and the serious, and the unapproachable pathos of the latter.
We have seen the broad humor of the clown, the wild, weird of
the fool, the fantastic of the courtier, the sparkling, delicate of
the high-born, and we have seen the inconsolable, despairing grief
of the gifted and the great. In those times the men of highest
culture exclaimed against what were named irregularity and ex-
travagance. But this untaught man, untaught of all save nature,
who had come from the world remote from cities and libraries,
familiar with country sights and sounds and the varying emo-
tions that they excite not only the joyings and complainings of
the glad and the sorrowful of mankind, but the green woods and
pastures, the lowing kine, the bleating lambs, the carolling birds r
the silent, wandering moon and stars undertook to describe man's
checkered life as it is. Better than all his contemporaries, better
than all who went before and all who have come after him, he
understood that

"The spring of
Laughter is hard by the fountain of tears."

ioo CATHOLIC MISSIONS. [Oct.,

CATHOLIC MISSIONS.*

MR. A. H. ATTERIDGE, of the Society of Jesus, has lately pub-
lished in London a neat little volume called Notes on Catholic
Missions. In his introduction he says : " Most Catholics, we fear,
know very little of the mission work of the church. For the
most part they have a kind of vague impression that there is a
great deal to be done, and that something is being done for the
propagation of the faith in heathen lands, that some of the reli-
gious orders have missions in India, China, and Africa ; . . . that
the Society of the Propagation of the Faith collects money to
help the missions, and that something more in the same way is
done by the Society of the Holy Childhood " (Introductory, p. i).

Scarcely this much is known, we fear, .by some Catholics
among us. Secure of the faith, we too readily forget that we owe
that security to missionary labor, and should in our turn help
those who are not so well off.

" Want of knowledge of the missions and of interest in them
has for a necessary result a heavy loss to the missions them-
selves " (p. 2). Since the day our Lord told his apostles to "go
forth and teach all nations " the church has faithfully followed
its mission. The noblest of its clergy have done almost miracu-
lous work among the heathen, and have been crowned with
martyrdom. But within late years interest in mission work has
abated among the faithful. Mr. Atteridge says : " It is pitiful to
read year after year of the vast resources which are placed at the
disposal of the missioners of error, while the Catholic missions
are crippled by sheer want of means " (p. 2).

In England and Ireland, it appears from Canon Scott Robert-
son's statistics of British missionary contributions, there are
seventy-five missionary societies, and in iSSi the revenues of these
societies amounted to the enormous sum of 1,082,659 (or $5,-
413,293). The revenue for the Society of the Propagation of
the Faith in the same year from all sources, and from all its
branches throughout the world, amounted to 275,000 (or $i,-
381,211 60). And the year 1881 was an exceptional year, as, on
the recommendation of the Holy Father, the Jubilee alms of the
faithful were given in great part to this societ}', so that its revenue

* Notes on Catholic Missions. By A. H. Atteridge, of the Society of Jesus. Reprinted from
the Messenger of the Sacred Heart. London : St. Joseph's Library, 48 South Street, Grosvenor
Square. 1884,

1884.] CATHOLIC MISSIONS. 101

was raised fourteen per cent, in a year. And of this .275,000
France alone gave ; 180,000, the rest of the Catholic world
.95,000. Thus we see how little in proportion the Catholics of
the United States do for missionary work. In The Message C.
H. Fowler, D.D., one of the secretaries of the Missionary Society
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New York (1883), says:
" The Roman Catholics of the British Isles gave to Foreign Mis-
sions in 1879, $40,560. Protestants of the same land, $5,392,830.
Roman Catholics in the United States gave for the Foreign Mis-
sions in 1879, $15,000. Protestants of the United States the same
year gave to Foreign Missions $2,623,618." This will show how
lamentably small our contributions have been, and how little
interest is taken in this greatest of all charities.

" It is with a view to doing something, however little, to excite
interest in these missions that we proceed to put together some
facts and statistics bearing upon them, the work they have before
them, the work they are doing, and the means at their com-
mand " (p. 4). All estimates of the population of the world are
necessarily rough guesses. Mr. Atteridge, taking that given by
Keith Johnston, gives the following as an approximate division
of the great religions of the world (p. 4) :

Christians 375,000,000

Jews 7,000,000

Mohammedans 170,000,000

Buddhists . 503,000,000

Hindus 1 77,000,000

Heathen and fetich-worshippers 170,000,000

Various and unknown 48,000,000

His estimate of the number of Buddhists is very probably an ex-
aggeration.

Thus 375,000,000 are Christians and, 1,000,000,000 non-Chris-
tians. But remembering that these 375,000,000 are the outcomes
of missionary labors begun by only twelve men some centuries
ago, and that God alone knows the secrets of the future, we can
look upon the 1,000,000,000 as representing the unconverted with-
out being disheartened. But, realizing how great is the necessity
for immediate and persevering labor, we should begin at once to
be at least as zealous in aiding our missionaries as the Protestants
are in assisting theirs.

" The great mass of the heathen are to be found in Africa and
Asia the millions of Buddhists and Hindus belong to Asia ; the
Mohammedans both to Asia and Africa, but chiefly to the former,
the great mass of so-called fetich-worshippers to Africa" (p. 6).

102 CATHOLIC MISSIONS. [Oct.,

In Asia the t\vo chief countries of interest, " the keys of the
whole position from the missioner's point of view," are China and
India. Between them these two regions probably contain 700,-
000,000 of Buddhists, heathens, and Mohammedans, about half the
population of this world, and nearly three-fourths of its non-Chris-
tian population. Next in importance in Asia come missions
among the Mohammedan peoples of the Ottoman Empire in the
west.

With the discovery of America in 1492, and the circumnavi-
gation of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, very extensive fields
were opened for missions, and great numbers of missionaries
volunteered to be sent to the newly discovered countries. In
the East Indies the bishopric of Goa was established in 1520
under Franciscan missionaries, and an extraordinary impulse to
missionary labors was given by the establishment of the order of
Jesuits. St. Francis Xavier surpassed all Christian missionaries,
who had lived since the apostolic age, in the extent of his mis-
sionary travels, and in the number of converts whom he bap-
tized. At the time of his death 100 Jesuits were laboring in the
East Indies, and soon a native Catholic population of 200,000
were united under the missionaries.

A like success was effected in Peru, and along the waters of
the Amazon, in New Mexico, the Philippines, and later in Cali-
fornia. And in Japan the great numbers of converts and the
conversion of many Yiative princes promised a speedy victory for
Christianity, when a bloody persecution and internal wars broke
forth and ended, in the second half of the seventeenth century, in
what was thought to be the extirpation of Christianity.

In China in 1722 a fierce persecution broke out, which dimin-
ished the number of Christians from 800,000 to 100,000. During
this time the religious orders and congregations were either dis-
persed or placed in such difficult circumstances that they could
scarcely maintain themselves in Europe, and had to leave their
distant missions unsupplied with new laborers. One by one the
old missioners died, and thus thousands of Christians in distant
lands passed long years without ever seeing a priest. When in
our own day the reorganization of the missions began, the
vicars-apostolic were often only able to gather together a few
hundred Christians where a few years before there had been
thousands. Indeed, even yet the Catholic missions of the East
are only in process of reorganization ; the wonder is that with
such slender resources and so few laborers such great work has
been accomplished.

1884.] CATHOLIC MISSIONS. 103

The results of the missions may be seen from the following
quotation from Dr. Hunter's work, The Indian Empire (Triibner,
1882):

"The Catholics in India seem steadily to increase, and, as in former
times, the increase is chiefly in the south, especially in the missions of Pon-
dicherry and Madura. The Po'ndicherry mission has performed over 50,000
adult baptisms in the last three years. In the Madura vicariate the in-
crease is chiefly in Tinnevelli and Ramuad. The converts are mostly agri-
culturists, but are by no means confined to low castes " (quoted in Notes on
Catholic Missions, p. 9).

The Catholic missioner only admits his converts to baptism
after, they have been fully instructed, and have passed a certain
time of probation in the class of catechumens ; and the mis-
sions are poor, so that the native cannot hope for any temporal
advantage from conversion. Dr. Hunter tells us that "the
Roman Catholic priests deny themselves the comforts considered
necessary for Europeans in India. In many districts they live
the frugal and abstemious life of the natives, and their influence
reaches deep into the social life of the communities among whom
they dwell " (quoted in Notes on Catholic Missions, p. 9).

The mission of Pondicherry is one of those belonging to the
Congregation des Missions Etrangeres, a congregation originally
founded by the great Jesuit missioner, Alexander of Rhodes, for
the purpose of supplying the missions of the East. " The con-
gregation in our day has won itself a proud place in the very
front of the battle with paganism, and its bishops and priests
have poured out their blood like water in defence of the faith "
(p. 10). The statistics of this congregation for 1877 and 1878
are :

1877.

Baptisms of adult pagans .- 37.44

" " children of Christians 27,765

" " " " pagans 221,858

Total 287, 107

1878.

Baptisms of adult pagans 60,496

" l< children of Christians 26, 109

" " " " pagans 269,723

Total 356,328

Thus, in t\vo years in this one congregation only we have
nearly 100,000 adult baptisms and more than 500,000 baptisms of

104 CATHOLIC MISSIONS. [Oct.,

children, and thus the annual results of the Catholic missions
show a steady increase and we have good reason to look for
still greater results in the future.

The conditions for missionary labors are completely changed
since the time of St. Francis Xavier, but the conditions now are
quite as favorable as they were then. The missions in our day
have greater freedom of action, inasmuch as " royal privileges
have disappeared with royal protectorates." The possible pre-
texts of persecution have diminished with the decreased jealousy
of Europeans in the East. Eastern countries are better known
and more accessible. The increased means of communication
afforded by steam and electricity are a solid gain to'themis-
sioner. The missions are more completely organized. The
sources of the supply of missionary priests have increased. The
religious orders of women have come forward to do in the
mission field work which without them must be left undone.
Finally, as for the natural sources of the missions, there are two
organizations at work which would fully provide for all their
needs, if they were but properly supported by the Catholic
body " (p. 24).

The Catholic priest has nothing about him of the adventurer.
He does not come without being sent. He bears his commission
to teach and baptize, to bind and to loose. " He can trace his
authority to Rome, the centre of unity ; he derives his authority
from the vicar of Him who bade his apostles go forth and teach
all nations " (p. 27). The Holy See directs the missions through
the Congregation " De Propaganda Fide," or, as it is commonly
called, the Propaganda. At its head is a cardinal-prefect. The
Propaganda, besides watching over the interests of the missions,
defining the limits of each district, and giving to its missioners
the necessary faculties and privileges, undertakes in its college
at Rome the training of a certain number of students destined
for mission work, many of them Orientals and Africans sent to
Rome from the missions for this purpose.

" It has. at its disposal very limited resources in fact, its income is
much below that of some of the missionary societies of England (p. 28).
The various 'missions -are intrusted by the Propaganda to the various
orders and congregations of priests. The chief of each mission is usually a
vicar-apostolic, who is a bishop chosen from among the missioners at
work in the district. As soon as it can be prudently done the missioners
always endeavor to form a native clergy in their district. Native priests
are most valuable assistants in mission work, and eventually they must
become the main body of the clergy. But there is no mission which can
do without European or American missioners. There are also two other

1884.] CATHOLIC MISSIONS. 105

classes of apostolic laborers at work in most missions the catechists and
the nuns. The catechists are natives of the country, whose work it is to
help in the instruction of converts. Great care is taken in their selection,
and often the native clergy are selected from their ranks (pp. 28-30).
" Nuns of various orders are now to be found in charge of schools, orphan-
ages, and hospitals in a large number of missions ; native girls are received
as novices, and there are communities of native nuns in Asia and Africa "
(P- 30)-

The various establishments of missions will include churches
in the centres of population, chapels with resident catechists
here and there in the villages, orphanages and schools for chil-
dren, a seminary for native theological students, hospitals and
dispensaries, and other institutions to meet the especial needs of
the country. " Of the missions more than half are supplied by
France, which, as we have said, has also the honor of supplying
the largest alms for their support "(p. 34). In India, in 1882, Dr.
Hunter gives the total number of Catholics (exclusive of Burmah
and Ceylon) as 1,299,309, and the increase in almost every case is
very large since 1857.* In India the present rate of conversion
is 5,000 adults a year, which seems absurdly small ; but if the
missions go on as they have been going, we may expect the rate
of conversions to be greatly accelerated, and at any time a great
movement may bring hundreds in a month or thousands in a
year, in a single mission ; so we have great hopes of successes in
the immediate future.

In the missions of the Buddhist countries, Ceylon has a total
of 195,500 Catholics, with 978 converts in 1882 ; in Burmah there
are 24,000, with an increase of 441 adults in 1881 ; in the Malay
peninsula in 1882 there were 11,178 Catholics, with an increase of
5,178 since 1876; in Siam the same year 13,180, with an increase
of 1,780 since 1876; and Cambodia 14,800, with an increase of
3,650 since 1876.

And so the statistics of Ceylon, B u r ma^sJBjanifrxAn n a m t
Cochin China, Tonquin, the many missiot^J^Chihe, ^Thibet,
Japan, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Syria, Arabifc^/Pafeia, northern,
southern, eastern, and western Africa, the ife\ads fl^the^yndian
and Pacific Oceans, North and South Amer^a^J^yxtMit per-

^^y f\ ^ r . *^^r

severing labor has been done and is going on/^&MJwfat for the
want of means many missions are almost powerless to extend
the good they have already done. *V"

But the missionary work which should first interest us is that
among our own Indians.

* Dr. Hunter (The Indian Empire ', p. 375) quoted in Notes on Catholic Missions, p. 37.

io6 CATHOLIC MISSIONS. [Oct.,

For three centuries this work has been going on and the mis-
sionaries have in our history been noted explorers, eager not for
fame or the possession of new lands, but to bring poor pagan
souls -to the knowledge of God. " It was the Franciscans that
first explored California ; the very name of San Francisco is a
monument of their missions. A Jesuit was the first white man
that ever heard the roar of Niagara, another Jesuit was the first
to look upon the waters of the Mississippi " (p. 146). And now
in the farthest and most uninhabitable places, wherever the In-
dians are, is found the " black robe," whose whole life is filled with
his work, with nothing to comfort or cheer him but the love of
Him to whom he has so willingly given his life.

In 1870 General Grant, then President of the United States,
established what is known as the " Indian Peace Policy," the
purport of which was given in his message to Congress on the
5th of December, 1870, in the following words :

" Indian agencies being civil offices, I determined to give
all the agencies to such religious denominations as had hereto-
fore established missionaries among the Indians, and 'perhaps
some other denominations who would undertake the work on
the same terms i. e., as missionary work." Thus the govern-
ment sought to bring to its aid in civilizing the Indians the sev-
eral religious denominations of the country.

With this view it has confided the civil administration of each
agency to a particular denomination, which nominates a person
as agent, who is appointed to the office upon such recommenda-
tion. The government desires that the agent should conduct
the civil administration of his agency in harmony with the spirit-
ual work of the mission, and that he and all of his employees
should be members of the denomination to which the agency is
assigned.

This system would have operated well in a country entirely
Catholic. Hor would there be cause to complain under the
American government, with its multiplicity of denominations,
if the system- had given practical effect to the announcement
made in 1876' of ^W inauguration policy. The President then
announced -that "each agency would be placed under the charge
of that denomination that had heretofore been laboring at the
agency, and who had then won the confidence of the Indians.
Under this plan the Catholic Church would have gained more
than all other denominations, because she had in her several mis-
sions over 100,000 Catholic Indians or Indians of Catholic paren-
tage, while all the other denominations together claimed only

1 884-] CATHOLIC MISSIONS. 107

15,000; and out of the 72 agencies there were 38 at which Catho-
lics had been the first to establish themselves, and when they
alone sought to convert the Indians. But this promise has not
been carried into effect. In place of 38 agencies, to which the
Catholics were by right entitled under the policy, only 8 were as-
signed to the church, and the civil and religious administration
of the remaining 30 was confided to the different Protestant
denominations. Some of these missions so assigned had for cen-
turies been exclusively Catholic, and Catholic Indians to the
number of 80,000, who were distributed under these 30 agencies,
thus passed under Protestant control. The faith of these 80,000
Indians is, in this condition of affairs, in imminent danger.

It was to ward off the danger that thus menaced the Indians,
and to shield them from the heretical influences that now sur-
round them, that the Catholic Indian Missionary Association was
called into existence, with its bureau directly concerned in the
protection of these Indians. This organization protects, defends,
and works to promote before the government at Washington the
religious and moral welfare of the Catholic Indians, as well as
of all such as desire to become Catholics.

The work of the Catholic Indian Missionary Association has
for its object the preservation of the faith among the Indians
heretofore converted to Catholicity, and the Christianizing and
civilizing of all the Indian tribes in the United States. It is com-
posed of two distinct organizations : first, 3. bureau, executive in its
character, which -performs all the functions required by these ob-
jects ; and second, an association which by its regular contribu-
tions furnishes funds to the bureau properly to carry on its
labors.

The bureau is composed of persons designated by his grace
the Archbishop of Baltimore, and represents the church before
the government of the United States in all that relates to the
spiritual interests of the Indians. It avails itself of every occa-
sion, by protests, prayers, and arguments, to assert the rights of
the church by asking for a reassignment of the civil and religious
control of the 30 agencies to which the present policy entitles
her.

A board of control, also designated by the Archbishop of
Baltimore, has charge of all funds collected, and supervises all
expenditures made by the bureau. Such expenditures are also
subject to review by the Archbishop of Baltimore.

It is estimated that the total number of Indians in the United
States is from 250,000 to 300,000, of whom 106,000 are either

loS CATHOLIC MISSIONS. [Oct.,

Catholics or descended from Catholics. Some 15,000 are Pro-
testants, while 180,000 are pagan. All the Catholics and a
greater proportion of the pagan Indians have expressed a desire
to have priests visit them, and to have Sisters of Charity establish
themselves among them for their instruction and guidance.
These Indians are located upon 200 different reservations, sepa-
rated from each other at distances of several hundred miles and
covering areas of many thousand square miles. The reserva-
tions are set aside by the government for the exclusive use of the
Indians and the whites are expressly forbidden to settle thereon.
On these reservations are established some 72 agencies, which are
under the immediate superintendence of agents who have abso-
lute control over all the Indians of the agency, their schools and
their funds, as well as over such whites as the government may
employ for their instruction.

The Rev. J. B. Brouillet, director of the Catholic Indian
Missionary Association, concludes his pamphlet (from which I
have taken the statistics of the Indian missions) by a review of
the work done. He says :

" The organization has received the apostolic benediction of His Holi-
ness Pius IX., who, July 16, 1876, granted an annual plenary indulgence to
all who became members of the association and labored to advance its
interests. . . . His Holiness Leo XIII. has also deigned to bless this work,
and by an indult of May 30, 1879, has granted to all members of the asso-
ciation a plenary indulgence, to be gained three times a year. The organi-
zation thus blessed and encouraged by the highest authority on earth, and
sustained by the zeal of our bishops and clergy and by the piety of the
faithful, has obtained as a reward of five years' labor results that merit our
deepest gratitude.

"Through these endeavors the church has succeeded in maintaining 13
Indian boarding-schools, 5 day-schools, I hospital and i model farm. More
than 400 Indian children are annually instructed in these boarding-schools,
and then trained to the practice of a Christian life as well as to civilized
habits. In the meantime the entire population of the agencies where the
schools are, embracing some 20,000 souls, learn from the lessons here
taught habits of industry and a cultivation of Christian virtues.

" We can say, thanks to the work of the Catholic Indian Missions, the
20,000 Indians who go to make up the agencies assigned to the church are
in great part supplied with the means to secure and promote their religious
interests and their civilization." .

And he goes on to say :

" But a grave responsibility still remains the succor of 80,000 Catholic
Indian souls who have been placed by the government under Protestant
administration. The repeated demands and petitions of the 40,000 pagan
Sioux, calling for priests and Catholic schools, should be heeded, while

1884.] CATHOLIC MISSIONS. 109

from 25,000 to 50,000 Indians in the Territory of Alaska, all of whom are
either pagan or schismatics, demand our earnest attention and zealous
labors."

The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions being thus estab-
lished and cemented by ten years of valuable and laborious work,
justly commends itself as a proper subject of endowment by
some of the wealthy Catholics of our country, and cannot be
regarded otherwise than as one of the noblest charities to which
a portion of their means could possibly be applied.

"This is asked for its proteges in the name of the Great Father above,
and for the sake of his poor, despised, and injured children of the aboriginal
race." *

" Contributions, however small, will be gladly received and promptly
acknowledged."

The contributions should be addressed to " The Bureau of
Catholic Indian Missions," No. 1101 G Street, N. W., Washing-
ton, District of Columbia.

Mr. Atteridge, in the last chapter of his book, makes many
suggestions as to how we can help the missions. He tells us
that until now the chief help has been given by France, not
only in alms but in supplying laborers for the work. That now
the church in France is encountering great difficulties, that the
danger of its help being diminished makes it of the greatest im-
portance that the loss should be made good from other sources.
There would be far greater readiness to take part in this good
work if people only realized its importance and knew how much
good was being done even with scanty resources.

Now, let us ask ourselves honestly what we ourselves can do
in this matter. If the question be answered in earnest, our
reply must be that we can and ought to do a great deal ; our
Lord's own words telling us what we should chiefly ask for :
" Then he said to his disciples, ' The harvest indeed is great, but
the laborers are few ; pray ye therefore to the Lord of the
harvest, that he send forth laborers unto his harvest.' ' This is
the first need of the missions, and we must pray for more men to
reap the fields that are ripe for the harvest.

Then we must join almsgiving to prayer. There are few
who cannot give a little, say one cent a month. If every Catho-
lic in the United States gave one cent a month, the yearly total
would be $600,000. The vast amounts collected in England for
the Protestant missionary societies are largely put together by

* Articles lately published by the bureau in the St. Louis Republican.

i io CATHOLIC MISSIONS. [Oct.,

widespread collections of small sums. We could do much if we
would work on the lines of the organization supplied by the
Society of the Propagation of the Faith, the idea of which is
the collection of a trifling subscription each week from a large
number of members. Besides this there is the Association of the
Holy Childhood. But Mr. Atteridge does not tell us the exact
manner of giving our small contributions. I have told you
where even the smallest sum for the Indian Missions will be
most gladly received, and for the Foreign Missions every parish
priest will receive and forward to the Society of the Propagation
of the Faith any contribution that may be given.

Mr. Atteridge closes his work, Notes on Catholic Missions, with
words taken from a sermon preached by the Cardinal Arch-
bishop of Westminster, in answer to objections made to sugges-
tions on missions :

"I can conceive that some may say, 'We need everything at home.
We have thousands and tens of thousands without education. Half the
population of London never go to church, perhaps have never been bap-
tized ; or, if they were, they live as if they had never been. Here is our
heathen world. Here is our missionary work. Why then send missiona-
ries into other lands? ' The answer is : If you wish to put out a fire you
have only to stifle it. Stifle the zeal of the church, and you extinguish it.
Keep down the love of God and of your neighbor, and it will soon die out.
This answer would be sufficient, but we have an ampler reply. Our divine
Lord has promised 'Give, and it shall be given to you ' ; and therefore if I
do not know how to find means to build a school, I would not refuse to
send alms to the heathen. Be assured that the same Lord who is Almighty
is also generous. He is able and willing to give us all we want. It is an
axiom of faith that the church was never yet made poor by giving its last
farthing for the salvation of souls " {Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, vol.
ii. pp. 372, 373).

The aim of this article being to bring home to the minds of
Catholics an ever-pressing demand upon their generous charity,
it would hardly be appropriate to criticise Mr. Atteridge's work,
which has afforded so good an occasion for the inculcation of an
old lesson over again ; but it may not be amiss to call the atten-
tion of your readers to his racy style, his compact and business-
like method of arrangement, his skilful use of modern works and
easy method of summarizing, which will make a diligent perusal
of his book well repay the careful student, whilst a cursory glance
is equally pleasing and not without fruit. Mr. Atteridge wields
evidently a practised pen, his own book is a compilation of many
others in its matter, in manner it is closely himself the manner
of abrupt yet easy transition, short sentences, rapid sketching,

1 884.] KA THARINE. 1 1 1

familiar handling of names and numbers that would seem un-
couth to the tyro. He speaks of the Nez Perces, the Ralispel,
Sgojelpi, Snackeisti as familiarly and easily as we would of
blacks and whites. .

We think the Catholics of England and America will be
grateful to him for this contribution to their fund of information,
and we trust his hints may lead to speedy and great results. We
Catholics need united action everywhere ; there is lacking a
spirit of unity among us, without which great works are never
accomplished.

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE first week of Katharine's visit was nearly over before
she received any further news from home than was contained in
the cheerful, chatty letter her father wrote her on the day of
his return. He mentioned in it that he had felt the fatigue of
the journey so much that he was staying indoors for the day ; but
the statement was apparently made only by way of explaining
the length and promptness of his letter, which he had illustrated
by a rough but effective pen-and-ink sketch of himself and her
mother, seated at table, with lugubrious faces turned toward her
empty place. Katharine had enjoyed reading it aloud, and bor-
rowed no trouble either from it or from the comment Mr. Ger-
main made upon it after she had finished.

" Your father is the same old sixpence," he said "a real chip
of the Danforth block, always ready for a laugh or a joke, and
always with a sober face following quick upon a merry one. I
didn't more than half like his looks when he was here ; a little
worn and anxious, isn't he? "

" I think he is thinner than he was," said Katharine. " At
least, I heard mother say so lately. To me both of them always
look the same fixed facts of nature, like the sun and moon,
which never seem to change."

" What a bad comparison," said Anna, " for a person who was
looking in the almanac not half an hour ago to see when the
moon would be full for our evening sail on the lake ! "

" Those changes are only a part of the general invariability

ii2 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

of things," retorted Kitty. " George thinks we might drive over
to-morrow afternoon and have a family picnic in the grove and
go boating afterward. And Mr. Asbell approves, Cousin Mary,
for I asked him. He suggested the carry-all as a proper convey-
ance for the rest of us, but offered as a special favor to take you
in his buggy, in order that I might not be too much crowded."

She was enjoying her visit greatly. The weather was perfec-
tion, the soft, hazy August days being sometimes followed by
showery nights which cooled the air, but themselves stretching
in long, sunny expanses filled with the unaccustomed pleasures
of country life. Her Cousin George, the only boy in the large
family, a handsome, awkward lad nearly a year younger and a
head taller than herself, had conceived a shy, cousinly admiration
for her dark eyes which amused and pleased her by its novelty.
She already knew how to drive, having often played charioteer
for her father ; but George had begun to initiate her into the
bolder delights of riding, and had promised her a lesson with the
oars when time should be found for a picnic excursion to a little
lake a few miles off, which was said to earn its name of Silver by
the clear beauty of its waters. She was a prime favorite, too,
with all the little ones, becoming with them once more the same
frank tomboy she had been at seven, and delighting them in the
long twilights, or perched in the hay-loft when the midday sun
was too hot for out-door frolics, by strange and marvellous fairy-
tales. And she was growing fond, as was her fashion when-
ever she encountered what she called " goodness," of her Cousin
Mary, the eldest of the flock a shy, soft-spoken, motherly girl of
twenty-four, but looking younger, who seemed, in spite of her
long engagement, to be still balancing in her mind the rival
claims upon her affections and her duty. It was she, as it turned
out, who had suggested to Anna the possibility of this final year
of freedom before assuming cares which the elder sister seemed
in no hurry to relinquish. The younger children clung to her as
to a veritable mother, and lisping Lucy announced as plainly as
she was able her fixed intention of following " thithter Mary "
if ever she went to live at " Mithter Athbell'th houth."

" I don't know as I ought to leave them at all," Mary said to
her cousin in a moment of confidence. " Mother was ill for a
year or two before she died, and I had all the care then and ever
since, and I have grown used to it. But Jonas we have been
engaged since he was twenty and I eighteen, and I must say he
has been very patient until lately. But Anna doesn't seem to
get on well with children. She is so clever, you know ; and

1 884.] KA THARINE. 1 1 3

then she has always been away a good deal, and she had such a
notion of being a teacher, or a writer, or something different
from just a housekeeper. And Martha, who is more like me, is
only fifteen. I really hardly know what I ought to do some-
times. One comfort is that I 'shall not be very far away, what-
ever happens."

The proposed excursion came off on Saturday and was pro-
longed so far into the evening that a telegram which had come
for Katharine about five. o'clock was delivered too late to give
her time to catch the last train north. She had been in unusually
high spirits, but they sank the moment she heard of the arrival
of the message. Life had been too uneventful at home for her to
become familiar with that sort of summons she had, in fact,
never yet seen one but her thoughts, even before she knew its
import, had flown at once to her father with the swift, foreboding
instinct of affection. It had been worded with brutal directness
by her childless Uncle Horace, and she dropped it out of her
hand and turned with a face like death to Mary, who opened her
arms quickly, thinking she was about to faint. Anna picked up
the paper and read it aloud :

" We tJnnk your fatJier is dying. Come."

"Humph! "said Mr. Germain, under his breath, "why do
people take sledge-hammers to kill flies ? " Then taking out his
watch, " It is too late to start to-night, my child," he said,
answering the question he saw in the girl's eyes as he approached
her ; " the last train went up at ten, and there are only two on
Sunday. We can get you off by five to-morrow. Put her to
bed at once, Mary. She looks ready to drop. And don't be too
much alarmed, my dear," he went on, taking Katharine's cold
hand. " While there is life there is hope, and these telegrams
always say too much or too little. I will go up with you in the
morning."

Katharine was in too vigorous health and too little nervous lo
faint, but the shock had nevertheless been so severe as to make
speech well-nigh impossible to her. She yielded without a word
to Mary's kindly cares, and left her without remonstrance to
make all the preparations for her early start. When these were
ended her cousin passed into the adjoining chamber, where she
found Anna busied in transferring the contents of wardrobe and
bureau to her own trunk.

" You will go at once, then ? " Mary asked.

" Yes," said Anna ; " my father thinks it would be better, even
if there should have to be any change in our plans afterward.
VOL. XL. 8

114 KA THARINE. [Oct.,

Mrs. Danforth was alone there with a servant when Kitty came,
and t may be of some use."

" I was afraid there was some bad news coming," said Mar} 7 ,
sitting down on the side of the bed with her candle in her hand.
" While I was in Kitty's room this morning a bird flew in at tlue
window, and then turned and fluttered out again."

" Oh ! nonsense, Mary. How can you be so superstitious ?
You are always having warnings and dreaming dreams. You
are as bad as Granny Jones at the Corners."

" Granny Jones is a good deal wiser than some of the people
that laugh at her. And you can't deny that there is something in
my warnings. Look at this one, now ! And though you all joked
me out of burning the salt when it was spilled last winter, didn't
my father have that lawsuit afterwards with old Deacon Potter ?
I saw the new moon over my left shoulder, too, this month."

"And weren't you born with a caul?" said Anna, with a faint
but perceptible scoff in her voice, " and wasn't it pulled off the
wrong way ? And don't you see winding-sheets in ,the candles
and hear death-watches in the walls ? Oh ! what an old woman
you will make, Mary."

" It is all very well to laugh," said Mary good-naturedly,
" but it seems to me that the old signs and omens are at least no
more ridiculous than that fad about table-turning and spirit-rap-
ping that you brought back with you from Uncle Carew's. If
you are going to start so early you'd better go to bed now and
let me finish your packing. You will have to be up by four in
order to have breakfast and get to the station at five."

It was noon the next day when Katharine reached home. She
had fallen asleep after midnight, and when she woke youth and
hope reasserted their power over her, and she was able to throw
off her depression in great measure. She had often thought of
her own death, trying sometimes to fancy what it would be like,
and her probable feelings should she find herself consciously face
to face with it; but that sentiment of stability and permanence
which most children have in connection with their parents had
been so strong in her that, after the first shock of fear and grief
was over, she was really incapable of grasping the idea of a life
from which either one or other of them should have departed.
All the way home her thoughts were busy with the sick-bed and
the cares with which she would surround it ; she was grieving
over the shadow of estrangement which had come between her
father and herself and been thrown off so lately, taking all the
blame of it on her own shoulders, and imagining the thousand

1884.] KATHARINE. 115

caressing ways in which she would obliterate the traces of it
from his memory. As to bitterer forebodings, it was not so
much that she resisted them as that they had taken no actual
hold upon her mind.

Mr. Germain, having accompanied the two girls, had thought
it unnecessary to telegraph the hour of their arrival, so that
there was no one to meet them at the depot. They drove to the
house, and Katharine, not waiting for the others, sprang hastily
from the carriage and ran up the steps. The door stood partly
open, as if to secure a current of air, and as she entered an un-
familiar, painful sound the loud, heavy,- monotonously recurrent
breathing of apoplexy smote her ear and brought with it the
first sense of approaching, irrevocable loss. She had not wept
the night before, but now she broke into a storm of sobs and
tears which brought her mother from the sick-room to the top
of the stairs. Her face was white and drawn with grief and
watching, and her usually quiet, self-contained voice had a strain-
ed, unnatural pitch. She took her daughter in her arms as she
said : " Hush, Kitty ! He was asking for you yet this morning,
but he has not spoken now since nine o'clock. Why did you not
come last night?"

But Katharine could not answer, save by the backward ges-
ture with which she indicated her companions. She had drawn
away from her mother's embrace and passed on into the sick-
room, where several people were collected in groups that photo-
graphed themselves upon her memory, although at the moment
she seemed conscious only of the pinched, contracted face upon
the pillow, with its eyes closed and sunk far back in their sockets,
its hollow jaws from which the false teeth had been taken, and
a strange resemblance to her grandmother that she had never
thought of before. The minister had been kneeling by the bed-
side, but he rose now and gave place to Katharine. Aunt Anne
Warren stood at the head, her face flushed and her full, red-
lipped mouth drawn more to one side than usual, and Uncle
Horace was looking out of the window, apparently lost in con-
templation of the grape-arbor. Two or three of the church
trustees, who seemed to have come in with the minister after
morning service, were standing with their heads together near
the mantelpiece. Katharine remembered it all afterward,, and
recalled even the suppressed tone in which one of them asked
whether any one had seen or heard of Brother Deyo since yester-
day morning. Her senses, indeed, were at once sharpened and
dulled by the strain upon her, for at the moment she seemed to

ii6 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

herself to see nothing but her father, and to hear nothing but the
hard, difficult breath as it passed between his parched and open
lips. She sank down on her knees beside him and put her hand
on his, which lay on the outside of the light covering. It was
burning hot, but it was motionless. His eyes remained closed
when she laid her face on the pillow, and her sobs, violent, irre-
pressible, which seemed to tear her very heart, elicited no sign
that they reached his ear. She said nothing, the words that
express emotion being now, as ever, hard for her to utter^ and in
the presence of strangers seeming impossible. But her soul
cried within her for one'last token of recognition.

Presently her mother came behind her, and, stooping, whis-
pered in her ear a request that she would try to control herself
and give place to the doctor. It was his second visit since morn-
ing, and Katharine heard him saying that although there could
be no hope of improvement, nor even of recovered conscious-
ness, yet death might not arrive for several hours. She had re-
treated from the bedside and stood in the doorway leading to
an adjoining room, her head leaning against the jamb, her whole
frame shaking with the passion of her grief. She cried out sud-
denly, in a voice that struck her own ear strangely, so agonized
and piercing was it:

" He will not die without speaking to me ! I cannot have
it I don't believe it. Oh! will nobody go for another doctor?"

" There would be no use," said the physician, answering, not
Katharine, but the quieter interrogation made by Mr. Germain,
who was also standing by the bedside. " There was very little
hope from the first, but since his stroke this morning the entire
medical faculty could do nothing for him. Still, if the family
wish for a consultation "

" No," said Mrs. Danforth, toward whom he had turned with
a rising inflection and lifted eyebrows ; " I know it would be
useless." And she went toward her daughter, speaking to her
again in the tense whisper which betrayed her nervous exalta-
tion. " Try to be quiet, Kitty," she said, her features working
and her fingers twitching restlessly under the pressure she was
putting on herself. "Have I not thought of all that? The
room is full of strangers."

But Katharine broke away from the hand laid upon her arm.
" Oh ! " she cried, " if no one will do anything I will go for
a doctor myself. He shall not die like this!" And she ran
down the stairs before she could be hindered, and rushed into
the street, her head bare and her face streaming with tears. She

1 8S,i.] KATHARINE. 117

had gone only a few steps when her way was barred by two
gentlemen who were coming slowly in the opposite direction.
The elder caught her by the hand as she was flying past him
on the mad errand which had no definite aim, for she had
thought of no special physician.

" It is Kitty Danforth," he said to his companion. " What is
the matter, my child ? Where are you going? "

The girl looked up and recognized the kind eyes.

"O Mr. Norton!" she cried, " my father is dying, and Dr.
Purcell says he can do nothing for him, and they are going to
let him die without calling any one else. Oh ! won't you go for
some one?"

" I will go back home and fetch my uncle," said the younger
man. " He will come, if I ask him, and no one in this town
could be as good. You would better go in with her, father ;
she seems half beside herself."

Poor Katharine ! Her first wild revolt against the inevitable
availed her nothing. There was another kind and sympathizing
face to remain up to the last beside the sick man but that was
all. Dr. Norton came, but he could only confirm the verdict of
the family physician. The slow hours went by, the heavy, ster-
torous breathing marking off the moments, ceasing sometimes al-
together for so many that all seemed over, then going on again,
perceptibly slower and fainter after every pause. Yet the inter-
val before death arrived was so long that there came a brief space
in which Katharine found herself at last alone with her father.
She called him then, for the first time, by his name ; begging for
a last pressure from the contracted but still burning fingers, to
assure her that he was not unconscious of her presence, her
sorrow, and her love. As she thus cried aloud the shrivelled
eyelids lifted once and showed the glazed eyeballs, covered by the
films of approaching death. But there was no other sign. And
then the room filled up again ; the night-lamp was lighted and
threw dreary shadows in the corners; the sick man's breast
heaved more and more faintly, the breath stopped for longer
and longer intervals, and at last, standing at the foot of the bed,
having yielded her place to her mother, who sat with one hand
on her husband's and the other covering her face that she might
not see him pass away, Katharine, whose eyes never left him and
whose tears had never ceased to flow, beheld the little spasm,
the drawing-up of the limbs so long motionless, the whole bitter,
painful, humiliating spectacle of helpless humanity sinking into
nothingness.

1 1 8 KA THARINE. [Oct. ,

For that is what it seemed to her. As the end came, and
even her mother broke into a loud cry, and her aunt into wild,
hysterical lamentations, her own emotion died into a passionless
calm. Mr. Norton, kneeling down, began at once in his high-
pitched voice a prayer, not for the dead but for the living, asking
resignation and patience for them, and especially that the loss
might be sanctified to the daughter, who was yet so far from the
fold of the Good Shepherd. The words smote upon her ear
like a mockery. Her grief seemed spent, and herself as dead to
all appeals as the poor body beside which she had thrown her-
self. For the moment death appeared to her the absolute end of
all things. Extinction, hopeless, utter, was what the sight she
had just witnessed for the first time had signified to her. " I
had a father," she was saying to herself, "but I have none. He
has gone like the flame of a candle into absolute night."

As the prayer ended she heard her mother's voice calling her,
and, rising from the bed, she went and knelt down beside her.
The veil of reserve was for once broken, and the poor woman
was bewailing aloud the husband of her youth.

" Twenty-five years," she said, her voice tremulous and
broken, but not even now rising to a cry, " we have lived to-
gether and there has never passed a bitter word between us.
And in all those years he has never spent one evening away
from me, except when business called him or he was at church.
Katharine!" and she put her arms out to her child, at once em-
bracing her and holding her off, that she might look into her
eyes, " you have been our sole anxiety. Oh ! will you not now
promise me to give your heart to God and prepare to meet us
both hereafter ? "

Katharine was silent, turning on her mother a pair of steady
eyes which yet seemed not to see her, so stony and withdrawn
into herself was their regard. The minister, who had called in
again after evening church to make inquiries, only to find that all
was over, approached the pair and addressed to her some ex-
hortations that were, perhaps, injudicious. They drew at last a
response which seemed to pierce the mother's heart n>t less
keenly than the blow which had just fallen on it.

" Don't ask me, mother," she said. " I have tried, and I can-
not. I have no belief, no faith in Christianity at all."

1 884.] KA THARINE. 1 1 9

CHAPTER XIV.

" TROUBLES and pleasures, I would rather they all came on me
at once, without a warning," Katharine had said only a week be-
fore the day which found her father lying in his coffin. Misfor-
tune seemed to have taken her at her word. While yet the hush
of death was in the house, and friends and neighbors were passing
in and out with quiet steps and whispered utterance, lest they
should disturb the widow and the orphan, the busy world outside
was less considerate. Even on Saturday Mr. Warren had been
called from the sick-chamber to consult with the foreman of the
mill, who came to say that the junior partner had also been ab-
sent all day from the office, where an unusual number of notes
had been presented, and that his residence, whither he had sent
to make inquiries, appeared to be closed. Meanwhile the cash-
box was empty, he could draw no money from the bank without
the firm signature, and the men wanted their wages. Mr. Dan-
forth had been taken suddenly ill on his way home from the
office on Friday, at the close of the first day he had been able to
devote to business since his return, and at the time when this
message arrived his recovery was already doubtful. His brother-
in-law, unwilling to disturb him, drew his own check for the amount
necessary for the men, told Williams to reassure the holders of
the notes by saying that Mr. Deyo's absence, which had doubt-
less been arranged with Mr. Danforth on Fnday, would termi-
nate as soon as word could be sent him of the latter's condition,
and dismissed him. Then came death, and that the mill should
remain closed until after the funeral was only natural. But
when that passed without Mr. Deyo's return, and no news' as to his
whereabouts or that of his family seemed forthcoming from any
quarter, suspicions were aroused which did not respect even the
house from which the dead had just been carried. Mrs. Dan-
forth 's privacy was, indeed, jealously guarded for the present,
but Mr. Warren and Mr. Germain were deep in consultation
with creditors whose claims, which would apparently sweep
away whatever property her husband might have left, if, indeed,
they could be satisfied in that manner, could not much longer be
kept from her knowledge. The inquiries that were set on foot
speedily resulted in eliciting the fact that the junior partner had
been for some time engaged in private speculations which had
turned out unfortunately. During Mr. Danforth's recent absence
he had pledged the firm name, not only to meet his liabilities,

120 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

which came due only on the previous Saturday, but to raise
funds with which he had probably lined his pockets before de-
camping, as their disposition could not be otherwise accounted
for. The whole loss would fall on the estate of Mr. Danforth,
his partner having recently converted all his own private pro-
perty into cash. Had the former lived all might possibly have
been righted, the mill property being valuable, and confidence in
his probity being so general that not a word was now uttered in
his condemnation even by the most grasping and anxious of the
creditors.

" It is all the work of that scoundrel Peter Deyo," one of them
had said in taking his leave " a sanctimonious rascal that I never
could endure, and that I often wondered how Danforth could get
along with. Still, I did not myself believe him capable of the
particular sort of villany he has been up to."

" Let us get out of the house," Mr. Warren said to Mr. Ger-
main as they still stood on the stoop after this man's departure ;
" the atmosphere in-doors is stifling and this news is sickening."

" It means absolute poverty, I suppose, for Eliza and her
daughter?" asked the latter, with a troubled face.

" Not quite so bad as that, I think. I mentioned the Pearl
Street houses just now partly, I am afraid, to get rid of that
loud-mouthed Dobbins as soon as possible but I doubt whether
they can be touched in any case. One of tttera, I know, was
Eliza's by right of inheritance, and I have an impression that
something else was secared to her at the time James went into this
partnership, in consideration of her signing away her right of dower
in another piece of property that he wanted to turn into money.
John Danforth was his brother's legal adviser while he lived, and
he was always a long-headed fellow. He drew up old Richard
Richards' will and prevailed on him to leave his property to his
wife, who had earned half and saved the whole of it, when the
curmudgeon wanted to give her only her thirds and the rest to
his own family. Eliza benefited by her death to some extent.
He prepared Danforth's will also before the partnership was en-
tered into, and I was asked if I would act as joint executor with
Eliza. We had some talk about it in the office that day, I re-
member. My brother-in-law wanted simply to provide for pay-
ing- his just debts and then leave everything else to his wife in
trust for the child. He was absolutely clear of the world then,
and John was trying to talk him into securing something to his
wife by deed before risking everything on an uncertainty. I
don't know, though, whether it was done, and if it was I doubt

1884.] KA THA RINE. 1 2 1

if ever he told her about it. He was apt to be close-mouthed at
home on business matters. Then, too, he may have made some
different arrangement since. It is a bad job in any case."

" You feel quite persuaded, I suppose, that he knew nothing
of what was about to happen ? "

" On the contrary, I think it was probably the shock of finding
something wrong when he went down to the mill on Friday that
brought about his death. Williams told me the next day that he
had overheard some high words between them in the office the
afternoon before, but I thought little of it. James had a peppery
temper of his own, and I knew that he had been dissatisfied for
some time with Deyo's ways of doing business. But he was as
honest as the sun, and not given to suspecting others of what he
would have been incapable of himself. Certain things that Dob-
bins has been saying just now, if they are exactly true, ought to
have raised doubts in his mind that Deyo was violating his obli-
gations by entering into private transactions. The cat probably
got out of the bag that last afternoon, and his anger was too
much for him."

Mr. Warren's surmises were very near the truth. His share
of the legitimate profits arising from the business the manufac-
turing of linseed oil, and the cakes made from the pressed seed,
which was sold as fodder for cattle had for some time past
seemed insufficient to Mr. Deyo, who, after a brief widowhood,
had espoused a new wife with an ambition to make a greater
show in the world than prudence would have counselled. The
business was sound but not extensive ; Mr. Danforth had put in
most of the capital at the start, while his partner, who had been
accustomed to it in England, had chiefly contributed his experi-
ence. Mr. Danforth, simple in his own tastes, given to no extra-
vagances, unless his large gifts to his church might be so ac-
counted, and married to a wife naturally inclined to economy
and careful living, had been gradually accumulating property,
investing something every year with sagacity and safety, and
congratulating himself on the provision he was making for his
daughter. Mr. Deyo, to do him justice, had contemplated no
further dishonesty than was implied in his resolve to break the
terms of his agreement and speculate with his own savings.
Even up to the last, when the disastrous results of these specu-
lations had made the steep incline from probity to rascality still
steeper and more slippery, and he had signed the firm name, as
he had the right to do in legitimate transactions, to cover his pri-
vate losses, he did so with the intention of owning up to his part-

122 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

ner, throwing himself on his mercy, and trying by strict economy
to retrieve the past. The possibility of a still greater and final
dishonesty was, indeed, latent in his mind, and when he made his
disclosures on Friday he did not avow tl\e loans he had just ef-
fected, waiting until he had made sure, as he said to himself, that
Mr. Danforth would listen to reason and consent to silence.
But the latter was wounded in a tender point his commercial
conscience was sound to the core, and his scorn and anger, fatal
to his own life, put out the last sparks also of the other's integrity.
He simply carried out then certain intentions, never yet fairly
avowed, but forming in that underhand, subtle way common to
men who juggle with their consciences and lie to the last, even to
themselves, and fled, salving the wounds of his self-respect with
such a quietus as was afforded by the reflection that his partner
would tide over it in time. Time, however, was precisely what had
failed him. So far as was at present evident, the whole visible
results of his life of industry and honesty would be swept away
and his wife and child left destitute.

Such was the additional stroke of misfortune to be aimed at
Mrs. Danforth while she was yet bleeding from the first, and
Horace Warren, little as he was given to sentimental weakness,
shrank from inflicting it.

" I must get my wife home," he said to Mr. Germain as they
approached the house again ; " here she will do nothing but
fall into hysterics, which are as much of a nuisance to Eliza as
they are to other people. I wish you would break the news to
her. Try to find out if she knows anything about a deed in her
favor. I saw lawyer Ingham at the funeral, and he told me he
would bring up the will and some other papers to-morrow morn-
ing. I hope something of the sort may be found among them."

The tidings, however, seemed to affect Mrs. Danforth less
than might have been expected. She knew little of business, had
never borne the burden of pecuniary responsibility nor been
called on to take independent action. That she would be poorer
than her husband had supposed was all that appeared to strike
her at first, and all she seemed to feel was a sort of vicarious
sympathy for his wasted efforts.

" Poor James !" she said, "to have worked so hard and so
long, and to so little purpose." Then, after a pause, " I never
liked that Deyo. When he used to get up in the experience
meetings and tell what a rascal he had been and would be yet
but for the grace ofxGod, I always used to think but there!
there's nothing gained by hard words. That is what James

1884.] KATHARINE. 123

meant, then, when he told me with his last conscious breath to
pay up everything 1 . I thought he must be wandering, for there
were no debts so far as I knew."

"He did tell you so?"

" Yes, on Saturday morning. He had been in such agony
with cramps all night that all he could do was groan, and when
they stopped he fell right off into a stupor. The doctor thought
he never would come out of it, but he did, and was trying hard
to speak for some little time before he could get out a word.
Then he said, ' Eliza the notes pay all.' He never said another
syllable except to call for Kitty."

Then, a sudden apprehension seizing her, " Can I pay every-
thing, do you think? Will there be enough? Are the debts
heavy ? "

"I don't know," said Mr. Germain ; "some of the claims are
rather heavy, I believe. Still, there will be the usual delay to
pay them in, and Warren thinks the property will sell well. In
any case he tells me you have something of your own."

" It can't be much. There is mother's house, and Aunt Jane
left me hers and five hundred dollars a year, but only for my
life. We talked it over with her when she made her will. She
wanted to give it to me out and out, but James said he could
provide for us himself, and that it would look better to let it go
back to her husband's folks. She wouldn't quite do that, for
she did not like them, so it was arranged that I should have the
use of it first."

" But is that all ? Warren thought some property had been
deeded to you some years back."

" Not that I ever heard of. What difference would that
make?"

" Only that if the claims should cover all the rest of the estate,
or even go beyond it, there would still be something left for you
and Kitty. Your private means would not be liable for your
husband's debts."

Mrs. Danforth remained silent, but her face took on a new
shade of thoughtful anxiety.

The best and the worst aspect of affairs came alike speedily to
the surface. Against the dead man personally there were, as
the widow had supposed, no claims whatever. The business
would be carried on by Mr. Warren for the benefit of the credi
tors during the legal delay before the estate could be settled, un-
less it could be advantageously disposed of beforehand. But the
liabilities of the firm would demand the sacrifice of everything,

124 KATHARINE. [Oct.,

and might probably not be wholly satisfied even then. Still, it
was thought that the loss to the creditors would not be very
great in any case.

On the other hand, there was, as had been conjectured, a
deed conveying to Mrs. Danforth, but in trust for her daughter,
a building in the business quarter of the city which produced a
fair rent. This, however, both she and Katharine absolutely re-
fused to touch, the former insisting, moreover, on selling her own
house at once, in order to satisfy the claims of a widow who had
begged the privilege, some years before, of putting her little
property in Mr. Danforth's hands. She had drawn a higher rate
of interest from his compassion than she would from the best
bond and mortgage, but she made a great merit now of her con-
fidence in his integrity.

" I trusted Brother Danforth," she said, with many tears and
loud complaints, " because I thought he was safer than the bank ;
and now to think I may have to lose by him after all ! And other
people, too, in the same box. The Lord knows whom one can
trust nowadays."

Katharine was with her mother when this woman came.

" Oh! " she cried, with a keen, impatient anguish in her voice,
" can't we do something, mother? Let us give up everything. I
can go to work and try to earn our living. Don't let anybody
talk like that about my father."

" And reason good," said the woman. " You that have been
kept in school all these years ought to know how to do some-
thing by this time."

The two, indeed, were bent on paying, if not to the utmost
farthing, at least to the utmost extent within their power. In
vain Mr. Warren pointed out to them that it was to guard
against such a contingency as had actually occurred that this
provision had been made, and that, as it had been done at a
time when Mr. Danforth had been perfectly free, they could
profit by it with easy consciences. The widow was unper-
suadable.

" I knew my husband," she said. " He would turn in his
grave if he thought that anybody should lose by his fault. It
was this he had in his mind when he told me to pay all. We
will not touch a copper of the rent, and if it is necessary Katha-
rine will sell it the day she comes of age. We will go to Aunt
Jane's house I have given my tenant warning and we will live
on what she left me. Anna Germain will be with us, and her
board will help us out."

1884.] ST. JANUARIUS. 125

" But you forget," said Mr. Warren, " that if you should die
Kitty will be homeless and penniless."

" I will not die," said the poor woman, " or if I do it will be
of worry because there were debts I did not pay as far as I was
able. And Kitty is her father's child and mine. There isn't ti
drop of dishonest blood in her body."

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST.
JANUARIUS.

NARRATIVE OF FREDERICK HURTER (Continued).
PART VI.

To such positive evidence nothing may be opposed with success but
equally positive and contrary evidence, proven facts, and downright argu-
ments. Mere denials, commonplace raillery, explain nothing, weaken no-
thing, and throw no light whatever. It is true that the Baron Bielefeld,
during his stay in Naples in times past, stated : " Our apothecaries also know
how to prepare a similar substance which will liquefy in the same manner."
But how comes it that no attempt has ever been made in Berlin to repro-
duce this extraordinary phenomenon ? Another German gave the following
ingenious explanation : " There was, according to his version, two ostensoria,
one containing blood dried up, the other liquid blood ; and while the
ceremony was going on the former was juggled away by the priests." Any
person having only once seen how the thing takes place would con-
sider this just as miraculous in its character, or would at least think that he
must be a deep adept in sorcery who could so readily substitute, in the
presence of a great crowd of persons, one ostensorium for another, without
any one of the entire number being able to perceive him. The Frenchman
Serces has hit upon an explanation, even more far-fetched, of the lique-
faction of the blood, by attributing it to the vicinity of Vesuvius and the
Solfatara. But what would become of the inhabitants of Pozzuoli and
Resina if the burning emanations from those volcanic sources could pro-
duce such effects even in the cathedral of Naples ? As he felt that he was
putting forward an impossibility, he disposed of the matter in an easy way
by the mere additional assertion that the fact occurred in a retired place, in
the presence of a superstitious populace and far removed from the pene-
trating gaze of enlightened men, and at a time not long previously deter-
mined. This, at least, may be termed lying nobly, for in this falsehood
there is not the least admixture of truth. An Englishman has attributed to
the priests the authorship of the miracle of the saint. " The priests of the

126 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Oct.,

treasury of St. Januarius," he explains, " have a wonderful knowledge of
chemistry." Thus, for want of a satisfactory explanation, they prefer to
bring forward the most unreasonable suppositions rather than admit frankly
their inability to account for the fact and to acknowledge that the matter is
altogether extraordinary and inexplicable. They are altogether in advance
of that period of reserved and honest doubt such as was expressed by the
Hessian counsellor, Henry Kornmann, in his Latin work on The Miracles
of the Dead. " Although the matter be generally known," he says, " I
should nevertheless like to collect the testimony of persons who have been
present, and who have, with a good eyesight, examined everything."

Among modern travellers Keyssler at least expresses himself with
moderation, and in his account there is not to be found the silly pleasantry
with which so many others have thought it necessary to season their narra-
tives. As he does not give the date of his sojourn in Naples, it cannot be
ascertained if he has himself seen. the liquefaction of the blood, or if he has
merely described it from hearsay and conjecture. I incline to the latter
supposition, for this is what he says about it : " The substance which is in
the vial is of a reddish brown, and resembles Peruvian balsam, which also
liquefies easily. The day on which the miracle is to take place the blood
is placed in front of a great number of burning wax-lights " (this is not so ;
there are but very few, and, in the case of all of them, the flame is at an
elevation much above that of the vase) ; " a glass case, in which is the vial
that contains the blood, is held to the lips, and afterwards to the foreheads,
of persons who draw near in crowds to kiss it " (but this always when it
has already become liquefied; from which it follows that the inference
drawn by Keyssler falls to the ground of itself ) ; " and on this occasion
the priest turns it upside down, and over and over again, more than a thou-
sand times" (twenty times is about the right number, at least before the
liquefaction), " so that the lowest part of the substance is constantly being
moved from its position. The warmth of his hand " (which exerts no
influence, as I have been convinced, and have already shown), " the smoke
of the wax-lights " (which cannot produce the slightest effect), "the emana-
tions exhaled by the multitude of spectators in a torrid season" (we must
bear in mind here what Fergola states in regard to the relation between the
temperature and the time which precedes the liquefaction), " and, finally,
the warmth of the breaths proceeding from the mouths of those who kiss the
vial" (after the liquefaction has already taken place), " not to mention many
other circumstances " (which it would have been far better for him to have
told), " would suffice to melt any other substance that had been liquid
once." Keyssler adds in a note: "In the year 1773 the celebrated
chemist, Neumann, of Berlin, discovered the secret of producing easily, and
as often as he chose, a liquefaction of blood similar to that of the relic of
St. Januarius." (It would be very interesting for those who believe, as well
as those who do not, to see an experiment of this discovery performed
under circumstances identically similar to those which occur at Naples.)

I884.J BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 127

" It would be proper," adds Keyssler, " to grant to heretics and incredulous
persons abundant facility to draw near and closely scrutinize the circum-
stances of the miracle " (this is in reality granted to them without any re-
striction), " but, as it is, they can only take things for granted when the
priest cries aloud, // miracolo e fatto', and when the Te Deum is intoned in
a burst of joy."

Kotzebue sees in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius great
proof of the silly superstition of the Neapolitans ; he is, however, honest
enough not to account for this superstition by facts invented at pleasure.
" It is generally believed," he says, " that the liquefaction of the reddish
substance is brought about by the warmth of the hand of the priest; but
this is a mistake. The little vial which holds what is said to be the blood
is enclosed in a larger glass vase, so that there is a vacant intervening space
between the two. The warmth of the hand could then with difficulty pene-
trate to the vial, and at all events it would be a most uncertain means to
rely upon. Persons well informed " (not in regard to the point at issue
here, but of those who, in oinni re scibili et quibusdam aliis, are called
enlightened persons) ''" have assured me that the miracle is brought about by
chemical agency only, and this accounts for its being frequently so long to
take place. But it can never fail to be operated, if the vial be only vigo-
rously shaken." (It is never shaken ; it is merely turned over and over
again in a gentle manner.) " Few persons, and even but few priests, are in
the secret, and among the latter there are reasonable men who fully and
firmly believe in the miracle."

Eliza of Recke thought to exercise her poor intellect on the subject,
but her laudable intention was set aside on account of the weakness of her
nerves. She could not stand the atmosphere of the church, and was com-
pelled to withdraw. Still, she consoled herself easily "at not having seen
an experiment of which the secret is easy to guess." Whereupon her com-
panion, the Aulic counsellor, Boettiger, puts forward, in a note appended to
the narrative of the above lady's travels, an assertion the importance of
which most assuredly he could not have fully understood. "The great
miracle, in this miracle," he says, " is that, trie secret being known to so
many, persons who must participate in it " (how does the distinguished
Aulic counsellor get this information ?), " it has never, for so many centu-
ries, been betrayed by any one of them." It is then, after all, a miracle ; and
certainly this one, though the Aulic counsellor does not seem to suspect it,
is, beyond a doubt, the greatest and most difficult to believe in.

The Prussian state counsellor Rehfues, who is known by several works
which he has written, and in particular by one entitled The Truth about
the Matter of Hcrmesianism, treats of the same subject in his Tableau de
Naples, and gets out of the difficulty by having recourse to the most in-
sipid and worn-out pleasantry. "It is well known," he says, "that this
miracle is repeated every year a certain number of times, and many persons
have endeavored to account for it by a natural process. Nevertheless, as it

128 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Oct.,

might be supposed, no one has succeeded beforehand, for when heavenly
power determines to perform a miracle it combines matters so that it cannot
be explained by the first sceptic who happens to come along. No doubt
there are a great number of curious persons who, not being able to explain
it, are yet unwilling to believe in it, and it has often seemed to us that the
best kind of miracles are those related by the Siamese of their saint, Pra
Ariaharia, because from their very nature they exclude all deep and close
study." Then he adds : " I will not seek to give explanations of the means
by which the miracle is effected, for it is a miracle only because there is no
way known of explaining it. Suffice it to mention that in Naples there are
many persons, not by any means of the lower orders of society, who fully
and firmly believe in it." He elsewhere says : " It may well happen that the
women are in collusion with the priests." How great a service would he
have rendered to the cause of truth had he only remotely indicated in
what this connivance consists and .what object is gained by it ! " There are
few miracles," he adds, " that have been of any utility to the world. This
one may be ranked among the number of the useless ones ; and it is diffi-
cult to understand why the saint does not display his feelings of tenderness
to his pious Neapolitans by rather giving them a tenfold harvest." Then
again he goes on to say : " The frequency of the liquefaction of the blood
of St. Januarius at Naples is well known, but no one knows how it is man-
aged, except the small number of those who are the instruments of Heaven
in producing the miracle. I have myself seen the changes which the vial
undergoes in the hands of the priest, and I can think but of one explana-
tion, which I believe has never been offered by any one. Might not that
solid reddish brown mass be ice, of which the artificial preparation is as
well known at Naples as at Archangel? It certainly dissolves in the hands
of the priest, particularly when he holds the vial " (which he does not
touch) " and prays devoutly over it. But the most convenient solution,
after all, is to believe in it." It would have been more convenient, or at
least easier, for Mr. Rehfues to have immediately gone to work to imitate
the phenomenon with ice, and to have then proclaimed his discovery to the
entire world. But it frequently happens that the most subtle minds do not
hit upon the simplest things.

The French Protestant Misson, who lived in the seventeenth century,
positively states, in the account of his travels, that he has twice witnessed
" this pretended miracle." He gives us our choice between viewing it as
a real miracle or " the most palpable trick." " Nevertheless," he says,
" there is as much importance attributed to this as to anything else in the
Catholic Church, and Pascal ranks it amons: the sisrns of the true religion."

' O O O

But in his capacity of a man of learning, in order not to lay himself open
to the dishonorable suspicion of placing any faith in it, he quotes a passage
of Horace (the Fifth Satire of the First Book), in which allusion is made to
the pagan priests who sought to persuade the people that, in a certain temple,
incense would melt away on the altar without the use of fire. Less than a

1884.] BLOOD OF ST. JANUARWS. 129

century afterwards Dupaty relates " that he has seen the liquefaction, but
that it is brought about altogether by natural means." He adds at the
close : " Since some time the miracle has fallen into discredit ; there is
ground for believing that it will soon cease. Probably there will soon be
but one miracle in the world the world itself."

We have yet a few false narratives or vulgar pleasantries of English
travellers to quote from. Addison styles the thing " a gross farce." Mid-
dleton tells the following story to his readers : " While a couple of Masses
are being celebrated in the church all the other priests are busy at all sorts
of manoeuvres around the vial, which is suspended in such a manner that,
while a portion of the substance contained begins to melt, owing to the
warmth of his hands or some other cause, it falls in drops to the bottom of
another vial which is empty." Dr. Moore is not more truthful when he
states (in his View of Society and Manners in Italy, Letter 64) that the
priest has hard work to warm the vial by holding his hand to it. This is an
impossibility, for he cannot get in contact with it. A more modern English
traveller, who has published, under the name of Eustace, a work entitled A
Classical Tour through Italy, does not attempt to explain it; but, though a
Catholic, he very unceremoniously settles the question. " Into the truth of
the supposition," he says, "little inquiry is made; and in this respect the
Neapolitans seem to have adopted the maxim of the ancient Germans :
' Sanctius ac reverentius de Diis credere quam scire ' (It is more holy and
more reverent to believe things that appertain to the gods than to know
them.) Tac. de Mor. Germ. 24."

PART VII.

If now we place in opposite contrast, on the one side, all the narratives,
beginning with that of the Neapolitan doctor, Matthoeus Silvaticus, in the
fifteenth century, down to that given recently by the English naturalist,
Waterton ; and, on the other, all the allegations, subtleties, and strokes of
wit of various travellers, from Misson down to the most modern tourists,
what result will we obtain ? In the former we.find an unbroken series of
perfectly concordant testimony, accurate information, observations prudently
and deliberately conducted, and grave and dignified diction ; in the latter,
on the contrary, judgments based on hearsay and expressed with most
Incredible assurance, unwarranted suspicions, an impudent misrepresenta-
tion of facts which take place under the eyes of thousands of spectators, and
frequently vulgar pleasantry instead of the serious explanations which we
have a right to expect. The least severe language that can be held in
regard to them is the words of Scripture : " And their testimony was not
agreeing " (Mark xiv. 56).

Any person willing to examine without prejudice and form conscien-
tious judgments must admit that there are some things which cannot be
explained. Since the church does not exclude from her communion those
VOL. XL. 9

130 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Oct.,

who either will not or cannot admit that a miracle is permanently operated
with the blood of St. Januarius, she evidently allows entire liberty in the
matter of believing or not its reality. It would seem, moreover, that men
of even moderate fairness of feeling should prefer to pass this question by,
rather than, in order to avoid unpleasant concessions, have recourse to an
argument tending to represent a class of other men, who are worthy of all
manner of regard, as having been, since a long succession of years, nothing
better than a band of impostors without conscience. When the Neapolitan
thanks St. Januarius for having, by his intercession, averted the imminent
danger with which his country was threatened during the eruption of Mount
Vesuvius on the 2oth of December, 1631 ; while the Protestant, on the con-
trary, attributes the safety of the city to the fortuitous circumstance that the
lava took another direction, and that the fury of the volcano subsided of
itself, each one has reasons to put forward for defending his views of the
matter. But when the latter, in order not to avow his inability to explain
that which is admitted by the former without hesitation, seeks to get out of
the difficulty by having recourse to puerilities and falsehood, the ground
sinks from beneath his feet and he falls below those who asserted that the
casting out of devils was effected by an alliance with Beelzebub, the prince
of devils. In any event superstitious incredulity has nothing to exalt it
over superstitious credulity, unless it be the emphatic boasting of its
language.

After having seen with my own eyes, after having consulted so many
narratives worthy of belief, by which my own observations are confirmed, I
cannot but subscribe to the conclusions which Sabbatino submits at the end
of a dissertation on the blood of St. Januarius. " I am well aware," he
says, " that many strangers, even Catholics, doubt the miracle, or do not
believe in it even after having seen it. But after having accompanied seve-
ral of them to the chapel of the Treasury, and having obtained for them the
facility of scrutinizing everything very closely, I found them convinced that
there was no longer any room to doubt, and that the prodigy could not in
any way be attributed to natural causes. More than one has, then, declared
to me that the liquefaction of the blood was, at least, a marvellous thing ;
not one of those who had the opportunity of witnessing it near has been
able to find a reason for remaining in doubt. Solger has, then, said in his
philosophical conversations a very true thing, although thereat some per-
sons may shrug up their shoulders that it requires greater strength of
mind, setting aside chicanery and low argument, to believe a miracle than to
plainly and simply deny what surpasses the ordinary rules of understanding.

PART VIII.

After observations, repeated and conscientious (which latter character-
istic those who deny through a mere spirit of contradiction are least dis-
posed to pardon), that compel me to view the matter in the light of a mira-

1884.] BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 131

cle, or, if it be preferred, an extraordinary phenomenon, I have become con-
firmed in my opinion by reading the treatise of the Abbe of Lucca, entitled,
Sofra una celebre controversia dibattuta in Inghilterra negli anni 1831 e 1832,
intorno alia liquefazione del sangue -di San Gennaro, vcscovo e mar tire. I
learnt from it, to my great satisfaction, that thirteen years ago Weedall, an
English priest, had been an ocular witness of the liquefaction at the same
time of the year that I had, and that he has drawn up a very nearly analo-
gous argument on the miracle, whether it be considered as an imposture or a
real phenomenon. This article, which appeared in the Catholic Magazine
and Review of Birmingham, gave rise to a very sharp discussion, in which
his adversaries entrenched themselves behind untenable hypotheses. Mr.
Weedall had it in his power to observe everything as commodiously as I ;
he relates all the circumstances as I have done ; no more than I did he rest
satisfied with having seen the evening ceremony in the church of St. Clara ;
but he also suspended his judgment until he had seen it again the following
morning in the cathedral. Just as I he kept close to the priest, and in like
manner was convinced that, from the manner in which the former held the
vial, the heat of the body could not exercise any action on the substance it
contained, no matter what might be its nature. " It would be easier," he
says, " to light a candle by passing one's hand over the candlestick which
holds it than to liquefy a solid substance by means of contact such as oc-
curs in this case." In this respect I am altogether of his opinion.

A stranger alleged to Mr. Weedall " that the most learned and respect-
able Neapolitans, and the archbishop himself (who was at that time old
Cardinal Rufifo), did not probably believe in the miracle." In reply he
made the same remarks that I did. I do not make as much account as he
does of the people who follow the procession, nor of the visit which the
king makes to the blood of St. Januarius for, after all, it might be urged
that it is a mere matter of etiquette ; but the same cannot be said of the
head of one of the first families of Naples, whom I found by chance pray-
ing in the chapel at a moment when he could not suppose that he would be
seen. I might also name a prince, eminent noj: only for what is vulgarly
termed information, but also for profound learning, who declared to me
most emphatically that the thing appeared to him inexplicable on natural
grounds. A learned canon of the cathedral, who may fairly claim to be
ranked among the most learned and honorable men of Naples, said to Mr.
Weedall: "I will tell you just what I think. I am not credulous, and I
examine everything. Miracles are often spoken of which are said to have
happened here or there. In general I do not believe them readily. But in
the matter of the blood of St. Januarius it is impossible for me to have any
doubt. I consider the liquefaction to be a miraculous occurrence. Can it
be reasonably supposed that a secret connivance exists between us ? You
know our position. We are two separate corporations, having distinct
chapels, rights and privileges altogether different. I am not allowed to
enter the Treasury, and the chapel of the Treasury has no business in our

132 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Oct.,

chapter. The miracle takes place sometimes in our church, sometimes in
the chapel; and this has been going on for many centuries, in the midst of
numerous political revolutions in which the interests and opinions of citi-
zens have often been in conflict. It is out of the question that we can come
to an understanding to carry out a guilty deception, and that in times past
so great a number of our predecessors can have agreed together to or-
ganize and keep it up. When I am interrogated on the subject I have but
one answer to make : Come and see ! Do you likewise come and see, not
once only, but every morning while the octave lasts. Examine attentively,
and you will be satisfied not only that the liquefaction really takes place,
but that often an increase in the volume may be discovered, which, in my
opinion, is the most remarkable peculiarity of the phenomenon."

PART IX.

When, after refraining alike from excessive credulity or incredulity, the
mind has reached, upon attentive examination, the conviction that there is
in all this something which neither human science nor human reason can
explain, the question might naturally occur, What good purpose does the
miracle serve? This qutstion may be put with so much the less scruple
that it is possible, after conscientious reflection, to answer it satisfactorily.
Observe the Neapolitan, his vivacity, his mobility, and the strong hold
which his imagination has upon him ! Under all the circumstances under
which you see him his demeanor, his gestures, his manner of expressing him-
self, all reveal in him an impetuous boiling of the blood, a longing and crav-
'ing for extraordinary emotions. With such a people plain teaching would
not suffice for a long time ; they require something which, reaching their
conscience, not by hearing but by sight, may remind them of their depend-
ence on the Supreme Power above. They need the energetic action of a supe-
rior force to detach them from an earth that, like an enchantress, spreads
before them the most seductive attractions, to cry out to them in a loud and
clear voice : There is above thee a power which holds thy destinies in its
hands, which can load thee with its blessings or bow thee down under its
scourge. The hidden and mysterious character of this power is too far
beyond the reach of the Neapolitan, who is governed less by mental specu-
lations than by what falls under the cognizance of the senses, and does not
effect on him the same immediate action that it would on men of a more in-
tellectual stamp. Hence this event, which recurs every year, tells him in a
language far more intelligible to him : This hidden power, on which de-
pends thy happiness or thy misery, draws near to thee in the person of St.
Januarius, who is thy protector before it ; what thus takes place under thy
eyes, at different periods of the year, is proof to thee that God thinks of
thee and also warns thee not to forget him.

To conclude, a friend of mine one day received from one of the commonest
lazzaroni a reply on this subject quite sufficient to both stop all drivelling

1884.] BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 133

and to silence the attacks of the proudest philosopher. He asked him,
without having any other object than merely to hear what manner of reply
the man would make, why the miracle was repeated every year. The laz-
zaroni replied to him, in a tone which showed that he knew that he was
about to get the better of him : " Why did God create heaven and earth ?
Why did he call you into existence ? " This illiterate man's natural good
sense had supplied him with the shortest formula which faith has to oppose
to incredulity enveloped in doubt.

PART x.

The preceding had been already prepared for the press when I read,
in the 2d of January number of the Catholic, what the English naturalist, C.
Waterton, has written on this same subject. I could not but be most agree-
ably surprised at noticing that he saw things just as I had, and that the re-
sult of his observations has been to lead him to the same conviction. He
also relates that " the canon turned over and over again, under his eyes, the
ostensorium in which the vials are contained, for the purpose of showing that
the blood was not liquid, and that on .this occasion he merely held it with
the ends of his fingers." He also says of those women said to be descended
from the family of the saint or from his nurse, that they address ardent
prayers to Heaven, making all the while the most indescribable gestures.
'* Strangers," he adds, " who are either little or not at all familiar with the
dialect of Naples, and who do not partake of the enthusiasm which the oc-
casion calls forth, have asserted that these women abuse and pour out in-
vectives on the saint because his blood does not liquefy as quickly as was
expected. I was quite near to them when they were praying, and I heard
neither invectives nor imprecations, but only words bearing the impress of
a pious enthusiasm." He, as well as I, scrutinized searchingly, and at
various times, how matters were going on. He has besides seen with his
own eyes that " the blood formed a solid mass and remained wholly im-
movable." He attests that the poorest man could, equally as well as the
king's mother (who happened to be then in the church), see the relic as
near as possible. He also has seen the blood Several times in a liquid state,
and he concludes his narrative with the following words : ''All my experi-
ments in times past were forgotten in the presence of this phenomenon, and
I here express my entire conviction that the liquefaction of the blood of St.
^anuarius is most undoubtedly produced by a miraculous agency"

TO BE CONTINUED.

134 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

DE DEO UNO SECUNDUM NATURAM : Praelectiones Scholastico-Dogmaticae
quas in Collegio SS. Cordis ad Woodstock habebat ^Emilius M. de
Augustinis, SJ. Neo-Eboraci : apud Benziger Fratres. 1884.

This is a course of lectures given at Woodstock by Father de Augustinis.
Coming from such a seat of learning and from a theologian already so well
known, it cannot but meet with the most respectful consideration and at-
tention. The work is divided into five parts, the first of which treats of
the Existence, the second of the Essence, the third of the Science, the
fourth of the Will, and the fifth of the Power and Providence of God. It
includes discussions at once of the most profound and the most momentous
character, and nothing is wanting in that clearness which of course is the
primary requisite for a work which is to serve as an introduction to the
study of theology. It is, moreover, remarkable for the copious extracts
from the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, and especially from St. Thomas,
to whom, of course, it has now become a duty for all to have recourse. The
chief efforts of Father de Augustinis have been directed to the exposition
and defence of those points in which the theology of the Society comes into
conflict with that of the Thomists, and which in this treatise are many and
have a decisive bearing on that other question the nature of grace. Such are
the discussions on the knowledge which God has of future things, whether
conditional or absolute, and on the medium in which he knows them, on
scientia media, and on predestination and its cause. The article De modo
quo Deus cognoscit contingentia absolute futura contains the best expositioh
of the different opinions and the fullest historical account of the action of
the Sovereign Pontiffs with reference to the controversy de aiixiliis with
which we are acquainted ; and the thesis is proved with a fulness of learn-
ing and a completeness which will give it a permanent value. We do not
feel called upon to pass any judgment on the merits of the controversy.
The strongest desire we have in turning over these pages, and in seeing the
stores of learning with which they are filled, is that those who study them
may make them so thoroughly their own as to be able to spread " the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God " throughout the length and breadth
of this land.

On one point we must, with the greatest respect, give expression to our
inability to agree with Father de Augustinis. The question whether faith
and science are compatible in the same person on the same subject is one,
of course, on which there is room for difference of opinion. Great theolo-
gians are ranged on either side ; but to the present writer the evidence for
the negative seems so clear that he has no difficulty in holding it as cer-
tain. But Father de Augustinis defends the thesis that all Catholics, whether
ignorant or learned, are bound to believe the existence of God on divine
faith, from which it follows as a consequence that faith and science are
compatible in the same persons on the same subject. We cannot object t6
his defending this thesis ; but we think that we have the right to object to

1 884.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 1 3 5

the imputation which is implicitly made against the orthodoxy of the
opposite opinion when Father de Augustinis makes the supposition that the
Council of the Vatican defined his thesis : " Veritas quam tuemur definita
videtur in Concilio Vaticano." We see no more reason to think that the
fathers of the Vatican Council had the intention of denning the thesis of
Father de Augustinis than for thinking that the apostles in writing the
Apostles' Creed, or the fathers at Nice in writing the Nicene Creed, had the
intention of defining the same thesis. And it is as easy to solve the difficulty
which arises from the use of the words in the Vatican Council as it has
been for the use of the words in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. More-
over, in the definition the fathers have abstained from using the word.
The definition is: "Si quis unum verum Deum Creatorem et Dominum
omnium rerum negaverit : anathema sit," thereby showing their scope and
aim to have been the condemnation of atheists, and not even implicitly
of a well-established Catholic school.

WHICH is THE TRUE CHURCH? or, A Few Plain Reasons for joining the
Roman Catholic Communion. By C. F. B. A. New edition. London :
Burns & Gates; New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.
1884.

The works of the author of this pamphlet are already so well known
for their accurate scholarship and the wide range of reading of which they
give evidence that it is unnecessary to say more about the present publi-
cation than that it is a new edition of the work which appeared a few years
ago, with an enlarged appendix and additional notes. The appendix includes
some valuable extracts from recent Protestant publications on the present
religious and moral condition of Germany. We wonder how any one, with
this evidence before his eyes of its fruits, can fail to see that Protest-
antism is not the " tree which is planted by the waters, that spreadeth out
its root towards moisture," but (slightly to modify the sacred text) a briar
" which is rejected and very near to a curse, whose end is to be burnt." In
view of the recent Wycliffe and Luther celebrations the note on the
early printed Catholic versions of the Bible is of great interest and im-
portance. We cannot too heartily commend Mr. Allnatt's works. His
method of adducing evidence from independent writers is calculated to
have great weight and to prove of great service to a large class in our
times that is, the reading class as distinguished, from the studious class ;
those who, while they read much and because they read much, are not
able to form a judgment of their own, but who are influenced by the
authority of those whom they look upon not merely as learned and edu-
cated, but also as not occupying the position of special pleaders or as
holding a brief. But there is no one, however real a student he may be,
who will not find in these works many things of interest and profit.

THE FATE OF MANSFIELD HUMPHREYS. With the Episode of Mr. Wash-
ington Adams in England, and an Apology. By Richard Grant White.
Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884.

It is a somewhat notable fact that, almost simultaneously, three stories
have been published by American writers in each of which the hero, an Ame-
rican, wooes and marries a high-born Englishwoman, and becomes so enam-
ored of English life and society, and so sick of the life and society of his own

136 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

country, that he settles down in England and forswears America for ever-
more. The stories we allude to are Mr. Henry James' Lady Barbcrzna,
the Marquis Biddle-Cope's Grey of Grey bury, and the volume under notice,
The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys, by Mr. Richard Grant White. This re-
markable trilogy may probably be the efflorescence of what is known as the
" international " school of American fiction. At any rate, Mr. Grant White's
book is surely the corona of the species. We cannot imagine how the
evolution of " internationalism " (whose protoplasm we may take to have
been the awe with which the red man first beheld the stove-pipe hats and
tooth- picks of the perfect representatives of civilization) can any further
go. Indeed, the book is a fearful and wonderful curiosity.

According to the " international " school, the American is a person with
closely-cropped hair, a pinched face, and boots with pointed toes. He
manages to get into the house of an English nobleman, and there applies
himself to the task of persuading all who hear him that the true American
must be a well-descended aristocrat (his grandfather having been a dissent-
ing minister), who knows how to use his napkin, and to leave a room prop-
erly, and to speak with a purer English accent than any English nobleman
that likes to take his bet in short, an Englishman whose family happened
to take a trip in the Mayflower and to spend a few generations on foreign soil.
All other Americans he shows to be shams, and he assures his rroble friends
that it is just as difficult to get into good society in America as it is in
England assures them to-such an extent that a baronet's wife exclaims,
" Dear me ! dear me ! Then you have exclusive circles in America, too? ''
Whereupon he impressively replies : "So exclusive that people may, and
do in cases numberless, live in the same neighborhood and even next-door
to each other for years, and never speak, and hardly know each other's
names. So exclusive that often the richer of these neighbors would be
very glad to obtain, by a considerable sacrifice, the entrance to the enter-
tainments of the poorer." In fact, he proves his case so overwhelmingly that
his speech is interrupted as he goes along by a chorus of ladies of title ex-
claiming : " Dear, dear ! Quite like w'at it is at 'ome ; and I thought it was
so different." The true American then proceeds to win the affections of an
earl's daughter or cousin, as the case may be, and, after some difficulty
(usually nominal and confined to a certification of his stocks and securi-
ties), obtains her hand in marriage. The climax is that, having swindled
his wife, on the strength of his representations above mentioned, into going
with him to the United States, he agrees with her that all he said about
American aristocracy and social life was humbug, that America is not fit
for a lady to live in ; and he brings her back to England, where he becomes
a true son of the soil, finding " a new home in the old home of his fathers."
It must be conceded that the international or shall we call him the An-
glo-Saxon? American is an interesting phenomenon, and we would be
wrong not to study him while he is among us. Jean Paul Richter says,
" One commits most follies among people one does not respect." Jean
Paul is wrong : he had not seen the international American among the
people he worships.

Mr. Grant White's book begins with a dedication to "the Right Hon-
orable Evelyn Countess Stanhope, Sevenoaks, Chevening, Kent," which
would be worth reproducing had we space ; and it ends with an "Apology "

1 884.] NE IV PUBLICA TIONS. 1 3 /

of seventy-six pages of closely-printed small type an entirely unique
document.

His hero, Mansfield Humphreys, is a proselytizer of unusual tho-
roughness. Persuaded that in the English mind there exists only one
kind of American he of the stage he resolves to remove that idea at any
hazard. He receives an invitation to the house of the Earl of Toppingham,
and seizes the opportunity to play off an instructive practical joke. He
will riot go himself, but he will personate Mr. Washington Adams, " a
friend from the other side." Mr. Washington Adams, got up like the
traditional Yankee, seated among the ladies on Lord Toppingham's terrace,
chews a quid of tobacco, ejects (or pretends to eject) it on a flower-bed,
picks his teeth with his tobacco-knife, whittles a stick, tries to fire off his
revolver, does a lot of other similar things, and at length, to the intense
relief of everybody (and having unaccountably escaped being kicked off
the premises), takes his departure. Then enters Mr. Mansfield Humphreys
in his proper person and explains the joke and its moral. Tableau !
Humphreys falls in love with Margaret Duffield, a ward of Lord Topping-
ham, and in course of time marries her and takes her to Boston. Society
there does not please them, and, to prove the instability of all things
American, Humphreys loses all his fortune, which consisted of railway
stock. A relative of his wife's comes to the rescue by dying, and this
ideal American goes back to England, apparently to live on his wife's
money for the rest of his days.

One of the amusing episodes in the book is the coaching of Lord Top-
pingham, who is about to make an American tour, by Mansfield Hum-
phreys, who is afraid his friend will attract too much attention if he looks
and behaves like a gentleman. The earl is advised to wear a suit of
clothes out of one of the factories where they cut clothes by machinery ;
he is to change his dark crimson scarf for something plainer ; to take off
two of his rings ; to cut his hair a little shorter and " have it lie a little
closer, with less of easy negligence " he " may continue to part it in the
middle, but it would be better to part it on the side" ; he is to cut off his
whiskers and wear only a mustache, or, "best of all," to "grow what our
Western friends call chin-whiskers." Fortunately his "pointed-toed shoes
will do," though "they wouldn't have done eight or ten years ago"; but
he is not to carry his small, close-packed umbrella. "As to your manner,"
concludes his friend, " a little less of suavity woald help to insure you against
detection. Unless you're in a friend's house I wouldn't say ' Thanks ' quite
so often. Chiefly, however, I suggest that you should, if possible, drop or
greatly modify a certain courteous and considerate way you have of treat-
ing people, and at the same time assuming that they should do just as you
wish." We copy this for the benefit of future generations, that it may be
on record as the portrait of the American American according to the
Anglo-Saxon American, anno 1884.

But it is in his "Apology for his Book " that Mr. Grant White really
spreads himself out. No description can convey an idea of this amazing
production, with its copious footnotes, references, quotations from corre-
spondence, anecdotes, assertions, contradictions, wrigglings, posturings,
and writhings. What the author intends by it it is hard to discover, but
long pondering reveals its drift. The keynote is the same as, that of the

138 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

whole book. Mr. Grant White seeks to prove that the only true " Ameri-
cans " are the New-Englanders and the Virginians, and that, indeed, these
are not "Americans," but " merely a people who are, and who for two
hundred and fifty years have been, Europeanizing America." These peo-
ple he seeks to show are just like English lords and ladies ; nothing of their
original traits or habits has been lost. In fact, among his own acquaint-
ance " he could specify more than twenty who have been and are con-
stantly (not to mention hundreds who might be) taken as a matter of
course, without words or thought, as England-born by intelligent and ob-
servant persons, themselves England born and bred. One of these, a gen-
tleman now well in years, who has been engaged in trade all his life, who
has never been outside Sandy Hook, who has had very little intercourse
with even those of our British cousins who come here, and in that little
has been so unfortunate that he dislikes them, is spoken to always by
those whom he does meet with the quiet assumption that he and they are
countrymen, as well as of English race, and this when they have had for
days the opportunity of observing and talking with him." To pitch the
charming thesis in the proper indignant key we will quote one of Mr.
White's fair correspondents, who writes :

"... Degradation of your countrymen is good ! Emigrants and their children are no
countrymen of mine ; and it is time the American (so-called) should have his place defined. All
over the Continent last summer I saw young people just one remove from Ireland and Germany,
rich, ignorant, loud, vulgar, passing among the people around me, side by side with my daugh-
ter, for Americans ! "

The confusion of ideas all through is very fine. Mr. White never uses
the word " American " except between quotation-marks ; he repudiates the
title ; yet his chief apparent concern is to prove that only the likes of him
have a genuine right to the title. He has a most delightful way of over-prov-
ing his case. In showing that his " Americans " are exactly like the English
he quotes anecdotes to prove that American hostesses are able to say much
sharper things to guests who have committed a breach of good manners
than ever were dreamed of by English hostesses. He has an overwhelming
array of testimony establishing that distinguished Englishmen can be very
vulgar, and that things are permitted at English tables which would not be
tolerated for a moment here. He quotes Punch to prove that it is com-
mon with English dukes to talk thus: "An't yer goin' to have some
puddin', Miss Richards? It's so jolly "; and some other equally reliable^au-
thority to prove that the English nobility always drop the " h " in the word
home.

To shorten a review that has already grown too long, the fact is that
Mr. Grant White is the victim of a grand and somewhat pathetic delusion.
He imagines that if Americans like him (whose grandfather, as he tells us
himself, was a dissenting minister) were restored to their proper place in
England, " the home of their fathers," they would be recognized as the
equals of dukes and earls and good matches for their daughters. England is
the tabernacle of privilege. While in every other country in Europe the
waves of democracy have made appreciable breaches in the barriers of
caste, in England alone have these barriers remained rigid. In England aris-
tocracy is established as in a stronghold ; and at this very hour, while a
popular agitation is surging around the walls of its citadel, the House

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 139

of Lords, aristocracy laughs, secure, knowing that the " hierarchic senti-
ment " has eaten deep 4 into the hearts of the English people, while their
democratic fit is but a passing affection of the head. Between the couple
of hundred great families who own half the soil of England and hold the
hereditary privilege to legislate, and the baronets of ancient creation who
with their connections form the rear-guard of the privileged class, there
are countless degrees of precedence rigid and well defined. In England's
'' great middle class," from the baronets of recent creation down to the pro-
fessional and rich mercantile classes, there are multitudes of grades, each
envying or contemning the other with an amusing implacability of rival-
ship. If Mr. "Grant White were an Englishman and not an American he
would be reckoned as a member of the lower middle class, and would pro-
bably have never seen the inside of a peeress' drawing-room (for he is not
a millionaire with a daughter to be "trown in " with the millions into the
family of some impecunious peer, and but few relations to be testimonies
of the mesalliance he vaunts the " moderate means " of his " Americans " as
one of the badges of their respectability). That he has been admitted to
the houses he proudly mentions, like Sevenoaks, is due just to the fact
that he is not an Englishman. It is not because " every American is ac-
corded the brevet-rank of gentleman." Being a gentleman has nothing to
do with it. There are millions of gentlemen in England who cannot show
their noses within that charmed circle by which Mr. Grant White has
been made so unhappy in being permitted to penetrate. It is simply
because he is an American and consequently a curiosity, and his footing,
little as he may dream it, is just the same as that of his own Mr. Wash-
ington Adams, or that of any actor or professor who is now and then ac-
corded a peeress' hospitality with a view of being a source of amusement
or entertainment to her guests. We should dearly like to be present
when Mr. Grant White, presuming, like his Mansfield Humphreys, on
that footing, would propose for the hand of his hostess' daughter.

In remarking on these things we pass no opinion whatsoever on English
social standards. That is the Englishman's affair, and none of our busi-
ness. What we wish to point out is that the American who denies his own
country and looks for exaltation elsewhere only succeeds in making a
humiliating spectacle of himself. Our society is happily founded on a very
different basis from that of the old feudal systems of Europe. It rests on
the principle that a man's a man and free to work out his own individuality.
To earn consideration in such a society is a truly great distinction
greater than any that can come by birth or privilege. Having earned such
consideration, a man will perforce be esteemed everywhere. But of what
consideration can Americans like the heroes of Mr. Grant White, Mr.
Henry James, and the Marquis Biddle-Cope be in any country who aban-
don their civil duties, and in absolutely no contingency whatsoever are to
be counted on as of the least use to the country that gave them birth ?
The Englishman does not care a fig for the opinion of the American or the
Turk, but he values as the apple of his eye the opinion of his own country-
men, and according to that opinion is he esteemed abroad.

DRIFTING LEAVES. By M. E. Henry. New York : The Catholic Publica-
tion Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates. 1884.

The poem which probably touches the highest mark in this volume is

1 40 NE w PUB Lie A TfONS. [Oct.,

"Ashore," which both contains a beautiful and original conceit and ex-
presses a devotion of striking fervor and humility. Not all of the pieces
reach this standard either of language or conception. But some Of them
come near it, and most of them are pervaded by a devotional sentiment
which is strong and true without losing a certain individuality that marks
the whole collection and is well manifested in the poem referred to.
" Magdalen " is strong and picturesque in spite of its weaknesses, and of
even such a false note as is suggested rather than struck in the speech
of the soldier Phelon as he drives his spear into the Sacred Heart. The
weaknesses of the book are such as beset a first effort ; they will vanish
with practice and do not affect the fact that the production gives promise
of high things. It would be hard to speak too highly of the tasteful way
the publishers have brought out this sumptuous little volume.

HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. By Anton Gindeley, Professor of
German History at the University of Prague. Translated by Andrew
Ten Brook, formerly Professor of Mental Philosophy in the University
of Michigan. Two volumes. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1884.

Herr Gindeley's History of the Thirty Years War would be much better
without the heavy preface and explanation that precedes it. The transla-
tor, '' philosopher and friend," of Herr Gindeley's scholarly work, which
has been very successful in Germany, where the Thirty Years' War is con-
stantly served up in various styles, and the people who read never seem to
grow tired of it the translator, or rather the interpreter, of Herr Gindeley
tells us the things we are to believe in many pages before we touch the
text of the author. The translation is not always clear or careful, and al-
though foot-notes might spoil the appearance of the handsome book issued
by the publishers, the reader would feel easier in his mind if he could verify
for himself some of Herr Gindeley's laborious statements. Herr Gindeley
has striven hard to be impartial, but so little does the translator appear
to have learned of the condition of Europe before and at the period of the
Thirty Years' War that we read Herr Gindeley's work, through his specta-
cles, with little confidence. If the Catholic reader has digested some re-
liable volume on the Thirty Years' War, he may read this without any
positive disadvantage.

THE GAME OF MYTHOLOGY. By Laura Wheaton Abbot Cooke. Cincin-
nati : Peter G. Thomson.

The object of this publication is twofold : first, to serve as an introduc-
tion to that which is an essential part of a liberal education, but to treat
the subject in such a way as not to expose the minds of the young to the
corrupting influences which we regret are too often involved in this study;
and, secondly, to do this in the easiest and most attractive manner possible.
In our judgment these praiseworthy objects have been attained. On each
of the cards there is a life of one of the gods or heroes of the classical
mythology, written in an interesting, pleasing, and simple style; those
features having been seized upon which are best calculated to impress the
minds of the young and at the same time to further the object in view.
We might, perhaps, be tempted to modify some of these little histories,
were it not that the closer the subject is studied the more difficult, and
we may say impossible, does it become to arrive at a trustworthy and

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 141

consistent scheme. Each poet, almost, had his own system, and it is im-
possible to bring them into agreement. The author has been satisfied
with gleaning from the usual sources, and in doing so has taken the best
course. But why write Tuche for Tyche, Haides for Hades, Psuche for
Psyche? It is not for us to disclose the secrets of the game. Those of our
readers who have played the game of Authors or that of Painters will
know its general character. We have great pleasure in calling attention
to this work.

READING AND THE MIND, WITH SOMETHING TO READ. By I. F. X.
O'Conor, S.J. i2mo, 49 pp. New York : Benziger Bros. 1884.

This is a pamphlet which a large class of young men will find very
useful. Mr. I. F. X. O'Conor, of Georgetown University, aims at answering
in a series of short essays the question so often asked with earnest inten-
tion, " What shall I read ? " In short, he undertakes to map out a course
of reading which would at least start the young explorer intelligently on
his way into the mighty world of literature. Set courses of reading are,
as a rule, to be mistrusted by students who have the benefit of compe-
tent personal advice, for what is good for one to read may often be only a
waste and vexation of spirit for another. But Mr. O'Conor does not for-
get this fact ; and at a time when it is a work that is produced from day
to day by half-educated men, a flash chronicle of small beer and old-wives'
gossip, when it is that prodigious weed of the literary garden, the cheap
newspaper, that absorbs the reading time of the people, men and women,
boys and girls, every book is a blessing .that can help against the influence
of the deadly intellectual drug. Mr. O'Conor's essays show a nice criti-
cal feeling and a wise discrimination as to the end he has in view. Among
the authorities on English literature that he recommends for study we
are somewhat surprised to note that Taine is given no place. The proof-
reading has been done in a very slovenly manner.

ST. MARTIN'S DAY, AND OTHER POEMS. By M. C. Burke. New York :
Valentine & Co. 1884.

There is something very refreshing to the jaded reviewer in a volume of
poems like St. Martins Day. For once we have a poet who is not a frantic
aper of '' grand old masters," nor a setter-up as a grand old master on his
own account, but an honest poet whose songs gush from the heart,

" As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears to the eyelids start."

Mrs. Burke's muse is artless, but we have waded through many a vol-
ume by professed sons and daughters of art in which the amount of genu-
ine poetic feeling compares with that in the present modest little book as
one grain does with a bushel. If we might generalize from such a very
particular case we might exclaim of the relative amount of poetry and art
or rather artifice in the volumes of verse of nowadays, what Prince Hal
exclaimed of Falstaffs hotel-bill :

" O monstrous ! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack."

Mrs. Burke in most of her poems writes as a wife and a mother who has
found life, with all its cares and duties, not a delusion but an ever-growing

142 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

beauty and happiness. Is not the spectacle of a woman like this a poem
in. itself? We wish we had space, and we could quote " Little Shoes " certain
that many a mother would cut the lines out and treasure them in her scrap-
book. There is sometimes a bold and beautiful idea enshrined in these
poems, such as the comparison between Ireland and America in the lines
suggested by the sight " on Good Friday morning of a very old Irishman
leading a little child up to the altar-steps to kiss the cross " :

" Erin, 'twould seem as if

That aged Christian thou,
Leading this youthful land before
The crois of Christ to bow."

The very artlessness of Mrs. Burke's muse seems to lend itself with
peculiar quaintness to the recital of old legends. They sound as if it were
thus the aged anchorite or the shanacus of the fireside, with the far-away
look in his gray-blue Celtic e) r es, might have related them. " St. Martin's
Day " is very pure and tender, both as a description and a legend, and is
almost perfect as a piece of versified narrative.

TOLD IN THE GLOAMING ; or, Our Novena and How we Made It. By
Josephine Hannan, author of Leo, From Darkness to Light, Sister
Agatha, etc. i6mo, 228 pages. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. 1884.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

A pair of little toddlers in a convent-school, too small to study, are in
charge of a sister who is commissioned to amuse them during the long
morning and evening intervals when the other children are at their books.
It is the beginning of the novena for the Feast Qf the Immaculate Con-
ception, and the sister hits upon a novel way of keeping the novena and
at the same time fulfilling her mission with the little ones. When they
have said the novena each evening she tells them a story, " just long
enough for half an hour." Thus nine short stories are told, and it is these
stories and a few more that are collected in the volume under the happy
caption, Told in the Gloaming, We can say that the stories have as
Avholesome and sweet a fragrance as new-mown hay on a May morning,
and together they make a volume which will be welcomed by every con-
vent and by every mother and elder sister who has got little ones to enter-
tain and edify. The names of the stories are : " The Angelus Bell," " A
Legend of Normandy," "The Gift the Christ-Child Brought,' 1 " Miss Swip-
pie, " " The Loss of the Hesperus" " The Rescue of the Armistace,"
" Up the Tamar in a Steamboat and Down a Tin-Mine in a Basket,"
" Voices from the West," " A Ten-Miles Gallop and What Came of It," "An
Adventure on Lough Swilly," and "Barcelona."

LIGHT FROM THE LOWLY 5 or, Lives of Persons who sanctified themselves
in humble positions. By the Rev. Francis Butifia, S.J. Translated
from the Spanish by the Rev. W. McDonald, D.D. Illustrated. Two
volumes. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son. (For sale by the Catholic Publi-
cation Society Co.)

The worldly-minded will find in these volumes much of that "foolish-
ness " of which St. Paul speaks, but those who take pleasure in pious read-
ing will here find much to edify and instruct. These biographies prove

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 143

that the race of saints from lowly life (for it is of servants, dressmakers,
farmers, millers, bakers, shoemakers, etc., we here read) did not expire with
the apostles.

The work is divided into twelve series, so as to spread the reading of it
over the twelve months. The translator's style is simple and direct, and
well fits the work for the reading of those who should be most interested
in it, namely, those who win their bread by the labor of their hands. It is
to this class the author addresses himself thus :

" Courage, then, Christian workman ! for you can be a saint, and a great saint, if you co-
operate with the graces the Lord will pour out on your soul according to the measure of your
correspondence. . . . Only in Catholicity does labor find its true grandeur, for in it, and only
in it, does labor serve the real Christian as a means to satisfy the debts contracted with the
divine justice, and as a merit to gain eternal glory. Every drop of sweat you lose in your Chris-
tian labor will be converted in heaven into a pearl to adorn your eternal crown. Love, then,
with holy pride the profession to which God has called you ; labor to discharge its duties as
the Almighty expects from you, and you will reach a degree of sanctity much higher than you
dream of."

To working men and women we can heartily commend these volumes,
as furnishing incentives to noble living. They should also be in parish
libraries.

THE ART OF THINKING WELL. By Rev. James Balmes, author of Letters to
a Sceptic, Translated from the Spanish by Rev/ William McDonald,
D.D. Preceded by a life of the author. I2ino, 392 pp. Dublin: M. H.
Gill& Son. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

This is Father Balmes' invaluable manual lucidly translated by the
Rev. William McDonald, D.D., and issued in a tasteful and convenient
edition by the Messrs. Gill, of Dublin. Never has the science of meta-
physics been applied so practically or with so much keenness as Dr.
Balmes has applied it. Every one will think better and work better after
having tasted of these fruits of a philosopher's life-study, the clear and di-
rect maxims of this truly wise book. An exhaustive life of .the Jearned
and reverend author precedes the work.

PORTRAITS OFFICIELS DES SOUVERAINS PONTIFES, DEPUIS SAINT PIERRE
JUSQU'A LON XIII. Reproduction par la Chromolithographie des Me-
dallions en Mosaique de Saint-Paul Hors les Murs, a Rome. Precedec
d'une Lettre-Preface, fiveque de Nancy etde Toul, etaccompagnee d'une
Biographic de chaque Pape. Par Le Chanoine Louis Pallard, Recteur
emerite des Quatre-nations, Docteur en Theologie, etc., etc. Paris :
Lithographic, Testu et Massin; Typographic, E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie.
1884. Livraison-specimen.

We have received a specimen number of a work which promises to be a
remarkably beautiful monument of Catholic piety, and of which the title
is set forth above.

In the church of St. Paul Outside-the-walls, at Rome, there is an in-
comparable and magnificent collection of portraits of the two hundred and
sixty-three pontiffs who occupied the chair of St. Peter from that apostle
himself to his present Holiness inclusive. These portraits are executed in
mosaic, and, in the form of large medallions, are ranged along the great
frieze of the basilica. This work was begun under the pontificate of Pius
IX. by the artists of the celebrated school of mosaic of the Vatican, the por-

144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 1 884.

traits being made after the most authentic documents and the pictures of
the great masters. The work is at once an historical document of incontest-
able value and one of the most unique artistic monuments in the world
unique because of its beauty of design and splendor of coloring, as much as
on account of the immense difficulties attending a work of such size in
mosaic.

In the preface of the publication above named the editor, Canon Pal-
lard, D.D., an ecclesiastic distinguished in theology and literature, says :

" We have thought that a work offering an exact reproduction of these two hundred and
sixty three portraits would appeal not only to the sentiment of the religious world, but also to
the curiosity of savants and artists.

" By special permission we have been able to have these portraits copied by competent
artists. They have furnished us with perfect reproductions of these hitherto unpublished origi-
nals, and chromo-lithography has enabled us to obtain all the purity and all the delicate shading
of the mosaic."

From the specimen copy received by us we can say without hesitation
that Canon Pallard's language is not too strong. We have seldom seen
a nobler triumph of chromo-lithography than the eight medallions repro-
duced from the illuminated mosaic accompanying this first number.

This important publication will be complete in thirty-three large quarto
monthly numbers, each number containing the portraits of eight popes
disposed in groups of four, with settings of varied design, on detached
sheets. A short biography of each pontiff accompanies the work ; the text
has been previously examined by the Archbishop of Paris.

We may add that the work is dedicated to His Holiness Leo XIII., who
has given it his blessing.

THE MEISTERSCHAFT SYSTEM. A Short and Practical Method of Acquir-
ing Complete Fluency of Speech in the Spanish Language. By Dr.
Richard S. Rosenthal, late Director of the " Akademie fur fremde
Sprachen " in Berlin and Leipsic, etc. In fifteen parts. I2mo, 473 pp.
Boston : Estes & Lauriat. 1884.

We have already shown, in reviewing the French portion of the work,
our reasons for believing the Meisterschaft System to be the best yet de-
vised for the first stages in learning a foreign tongue. The student is at
once introduced to the language itself; he learns to speak in it, not in the
way favored by some systems, but so that he is learning as he goes on
that it is a language, a vehicle for conveying his ideas clearly, that he is
using, and not a parrot's jargon. Dr. Rosenthal, it appears, has applied the
Meisterschaft system for English-speaking students to German, French,
and Spanish. It is to be hoped he will complete the quartette and apply it
also to Italian.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XL. NOVEMBER, 1884. No. 236.

SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS.

No. I.

PRELIMINARY EVOLUTION NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS COSMOGONY.

PRELIMINARY.

THERE are many questions in respect to the Holy Scriptures
and their teaching which are matters of general discussion at
the present time. Those who have inquisitive minds and at the
same time a great reverence for the word of God are often at
a loss to determine just what this word of God really does re-
quire them to hold or to reject in these matters of discussion and
inquiry. They wish to know how far they are bound to a fixed
and undoubting assent to certain propositions as first principles
and dogmas, prior to all investigation ; and how far they are free
to doubt, to search for a solution of their doubts, and to form
opinions, adhere to theories, adopt views whether relating to his-
tory, science, or the interpretation of the Scriptures, which are
different from those which have been current and common, but
which appear to them reasonable and probable.

Cardinal Newman has lately published an essay intended to
instruct inquirers on the subject of Inspiration, and to give them
an explanation of the rule of Catholic faith in regard to that fun-
damental doctrine. From this admirable exposition we take our
point of departure in writing what is to follow in respect to cer-
tain particular matters which present some difficulties and occa-

146 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Nov.,

sion some perplexities to the class of individuals just now desig-
nated. Those who wish to. profit by our effort should read care-
fully this essay of the cardinal, together with his Postscript in ex-
planation of its meaning. We do not intend to repeat or enlarge
upon what is contained in his text, but to make an excursion into
that domain of free inquiry which he points out as lying beyond
the limits of obligatory doctrine carefully surveyed and deline-
ated in his essay. The special point mooted by Professor (now
Bishop) Healy does not, however, fall within the line of thought
on which we are entering.

Before proceeding further let us be permitted to make a few
preliminary observations.

In the first place, we beg our readers not to take for granted
that the writer holds or advocates all the opinions which he may
defend as compatible with Catholic belief. Our principal in-
tention is not to state or argue our own opinion in respect to any
particular question which we bring forward, but to show, in re-
gard to some of those upon which we may touch, that they are
as yet not decided by authority and are open to discussion, so that
Catholics may lawfully hold in regard to them different opinions.

Again, we must caution every reader who may need such a
warning that he is not to suppose that liberty of opinion in rela-
tion to matters not determined by the rule of faith implies abso-
lute freedom from every kind of rational and moral obligation
binding the mind and the conscience. One cannot be exempted
from the natural law. And this obliges him to form his judg-
ments and opinions in a prudent manner. If he act otherwise he
acts foolishly, and, in matters of importance, he may even, sin
grievously. It is one part of prudence to pay great respect to
the judgment of the wise and learned, especially to the concur-
rent judgment of the wisest and most learned. Those who are
not competent to form a prudent judgment in any one branch of
knowledge by their own ^private study and thought have no
other safe rule of guidance. In all matters which are connected
with faith and morals the natural law requires of all, especially
the unlearned, a great deference for that human authority in the
church which is analogous to the authority of competent judges
in the several branches of human art and knowledge. One will
act, therefore, foolishly and wrongly who merely takes care to
avoid opinions formally condemned under censure by ecclesi-
astical authority, but eagerly and hastily picks up any current
jnotion or theory which seems to him plausible. A prudent and
conscientious person will be careful to seek for truly probable

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 147

motives of assent to any such theory, and to satisfy himself that
competent judges have declared that it is tenable without pre-
judice to Catholic faith. And, moreover, he will love and seek
for the truth for its own sake, and not be on the alert to assert
his independence to the fullest extent, or to conform himself as
much as possible to the way of thinking of the unbelieving world.
Once more : although there are some matters lying outside of
the domain of defined ecclesiastical doctrine which we may be
sure will never be brought within the same by new decrees,
yet there are others in regard to which it is possible, perhaps
even likely, that some future decisions may be pronounced by
the supreme tribunal of the church. Whenever we have positive
certitude and real knowledge in regard to any object whatever,
we may rest in it securely without any fear of being disturbed
by the authority of the church. But a Catholic must exercise
his liberty of opinion respecting matters which have some rela-
tion to faith and morals, and which are objects of only probable
reasoning, hypothesis, or conjecture, in a certain qualified and
conditional manner. That is, he must give his assent to any
given theory with a tacit understanding that he holds his
mind in readiness to submit absolutely to any decision which
may be hereafter made by the infallible authority of the
church. This oversight of a perpetual and unerring tribunal, so
far from being a disadvantage, is a great advantage to investiga-
tion and reasonable, prudent speculation. The tentative efforts
which are made to increase knowledge and gain clearer insight
into the truth and reality of things can be made with less fear of
running into serious and dangerous errors, because there is a
restraining, warning, and directing authority which can speak
whenever it is needful. And when any opinion has been openly
and publicly advocated by a number of respectable authors and
embraced by a considerable number of adherents for some
notable time, if the supreme tribunal does not speak, its silence
is a tacit permission to hold and teach such an opinion, which
gives ample security to the conscience. Before this stage is
reached some risk of mistakes and errors must be run, by men
who are fallible, in treating of matters which do not admit of
demonstration or certain historical evidence. The only way to
avoid this risk is to refrain from advancing anything which has
in it any originality or novelty. This was not the way of the
Fathers and Doctors of the church in past ages. It is not the way
in which any progress can be made. It is not the best way, or
the way which the church requires or counsels those of her chil-

148 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Nov.,

dren to select who are competent leaders and guides in sacred or
secular science and history. Novelty is not necessarily a mark
of error when it is opposed to an antiquity of merely human tra-
ditions and opinions. This is said to forestall objections against
the tenability of some interpretations of parts of the canonical
books which we may bring forward, on the ground that they
differ from anciently and commonly received notions.

Finally, we desire to explain that in drawing the line between
faith and opinion we intend to use the term faith and its cognate
words and phrases in a general sense, including all that a Catholic
is bound to hold through obedience to the infallible teaching of
the church, disregarding distinctions which are made by theolo-
gians between the several classes of Catholic verities.

Lest this prologue may alarm some timorous readers, we beg
to assure them that we do not intend to be very temerarious.
And lest others may expect too much, we hasten to disavow the
pretension of making any thorough and complete essay on the
Scr.iptural questions in which the curious are interested. It is
only a certain class of them those, namely, which concern mixed
matters in which science and theology are more or less brought
into contact with each other which we have in view. Some, but
not all, .of these questions we propose to touch upon, without
promising to discuss them thoroughly. And as for the novelty
of some interpretations of Holy Scripture with which we may
make our readers acquainted, let us say that this is only a relative
novelty. Hypotheses, opinions, reasonings, and criticisms may
strike the minds of those who are accustomed to read Catholic
books and periodicals written in the English language as novel
and strange, whereas the same have been for some time past
ventilated and discussed by Catholic writers on the Continent of
Europe. A great deal of the best and most valuable writing of
the time, in Europe, is found in periodicals. We shall avail our-
selves of their contents to a considerable extent. English and
American Catholic periodicals are of late beginning to follow
suit. Bishop Clifford is one who has led the way in exploring a
route diverging from the beaten track, and Professor Mivart is
another ; both of them, we need not say, docile as welt as intelli-
gent and learned sons of our holy mother the church. The Lon-
don Tablet has lately admitted some lively discussions, /r0 and con,
respecting one of the questions mooted in several European peri-
odicals i. e., the universality of the deluge and, of course, it can-
not be supposed that we are going to hold ourselves aloof from
such interesting topics in this country. A translation of a book

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. ?49

written by Francis Lenormant on the Origins of History has al-
ready obtained considerable circulation among ourselves. We
are free to say that this author, lately deceased, although in in-
tention and for the substance of. doctrine an orthodox Catholic,
has shown a great deal of hardihood in speculation and needs to
be read with caution. It need not surprise us if, in the course
of such free and animated discussion of difficult and delicate
topics, other writers, with similarly good intentions, should oc-
casionally stray over the line and get upon unsafe ground. And,
again, we must expect that in tentative theorizing there will be
fanciful hypotheses advanced which are merely ingenious but
not really probable, so that they are no better than intellectual
soap-bubbles. To a great extent these extravagances are gotten
rid of, in time, by means of discussion alone. Like soap-bubbles,
they dissipate themselves by their own tenuity.

There is no occasion for Catholics to be timorous and alarmed.
With Protestants everything is unsettled and afloat. Their
whole religious fabric is like an undermined iceberg, which for
a while rears its lofty head above the sea, but in a moment top-
ples over and goes down. The majestic structure of the Catho-
lic faith is built up and secured in all its essential and principal
parts, so that it can never be impaired or shaken. The canon
and the inspiration of the Holy Scripture with all its sacred books
and all their parts are irrevocably determined. Dogmas and
doctrines are fixed and unchangeable. Yet there is in the Holy
Scripture, as there is in the visible universe and in the intellec-
tual world, a vast amount of truth which God has disclosed in a
more or less obscure manner, and left open to the continual in-
vestigation of the human mind. The ultimate result of this in-
vestigation is always the illustration and confirmation of the
faith! And although among scientists, especially those who are
of an inferior order or who stray into speculations beyond the
scope of tneir own proper branches, there are often sceptics
and positive opposers of the divine revelation, genuine science
of the highest order is the true ally of religion. A kind of
scientism, which prevails most during the early and imperfect
stages of any given sciences, seems to cast a shadow over the
truths of revelation and endangers, impairs, or destroys faith in
the wavering and unwary sciolists of human knowledge. We
are convinced, however, that, by a somewhat long and circui-
tous route, human science is travelling on its own lines and by
its own methods to a meeting with the sacred science of divine
revelation, at a point from which a clearer and more extensive

150 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Nov.,

view of the whole universe of truth will open upon the minds of
men than they have ever in the past been able to enjoy.

After so much, perhaps too much, of prefatory remark, we
will begin now upon the task in hand. How far we may pro-
ceed with it, and how many questions we may take up, we can-
not just now foresee. At the outset it is to matter connected
with cosmogony and chronology to which we turn our attention.

Beginning at the point furthest removed from the present
time, and at the first origin of the sensible world, we find a
theory proposed by Laplace, known as

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

We presuppose in those of our readers who are likely to be
interested in our present essay a knowledge of this theory.
Any who wish to refresh their memory on the subject may con-
sult the small but masterly treatise on astronomy by Mr.
Searle, of Cambridge, or some similar work. We need not de*lay
long on this theory. It is one which, for the want of sufficient
data, has not been and cannot be demonstrated. It is quite gen-
erally regarded as a plausible, or even probable, hypothesis.* It
does not come into collision in the slightest degree with any
doctrine pertaining to faith, but is purely a matter for rational
and scientific speculation. This is so plain and so universally
admitted that we dismiss the topic without further remark.

Next in logical order seems to come

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

When this theory is pushed to an extreme it is heretical and
irreconcilable with some of the fundamental truths of both re-
vealed and natural religion. This extreme is found in the asser-
tion that the complete specific nature of man has been evolved
through a series of changes from primordial matter. Those who
leave intact the spiritual nature of the human soul, and the doc-
trine of its immediate creation as a rational and immortal princi-
ple which is the form of the body, do not transgress against;
faith by their theories concerning irrational animals and other
genera and species. In respect to these things it is to science
and philosophy that they must render a reason for their asser-
tions and conjectures. Prof. Mivart has written so much and
so well upon this subject that it suffices to refer the curious
reader to his books and articles for information.

J* We believe that of late it is beginning to lose ground. \

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 151

COSMOGONY,

in so far as it is one of the inductive sciences, and apart from
conjectural theories and speculations, is based upon the substan-
tial and certain parts of geology and astronomy. Aside from
any consideration of the chronology of the Adamic race of men
on the earth and their history, the only theological bearing of
its chronology is upon the Mosaic account of creation in the
beginning of the book of Genesis. The discussion of the topics
contained under this general theme viz., of the age of the
world and the chronology of its changes divides itself into two
heads. One is purely scientific. The other is theological. The
first relates principally to the value of geology as a science ;
the second, to the interpretation of Genesis, considered exe-
getically and according to tradition and the exposition of com-
mentators in the Jewish and Christian churches. As to the
first, we have no doubt that geology is a real and genuine
science, in so far as the grand facts, principles, and conclusions
are concerned which a consent of competent authorities pro-
poses to the world as positively certain. There are mere proba-
bilities, there are theories, there are tentative hypotheses, con-
nected with the science, about which eminent geologists differ
and dispute. Some defenders of revelation make a pretext of
the variations of theoretical geology to put in a plea in bar
against it. In the words of a recent writer :

*' They say that these geological systems are a Babel of confusion ; that
geologists must first come to an agreement with each other before they are
entitled to a hearing. Now, this plea in bar is convenient, but less just
than is pretended by those who make it; for, from the discussions which
still subsist on a great number of points, certain lines are progressively
disengaged, in geology as well as in the other sciences, in which all serious
and competent minds concur. So far as the science becomes constructed
on these general lines, and afterwards on more secondary ones, it is not
permissible to rule it out of court, and speak of it as a formless and dark
chaos of contradictory systems."

These are the words of M. de Foville, a professor of the Semi-
nary of S. Sulpice, in Paris, writing in the Revue des Questions
Scientifiques a periodical of the highest class, edited under the
direction of the " Scientific Society of Brussels." * The writers
alluded to are few in number at the present time. Some 'of them
are men who are learned and distinguished in their own branches
of knowledge. They can make an ingenious argument against

* Number for January, 1883. art. " La Bible et La Science."

152 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Nov.,

geology, but we do not think it even plausible, unless for those
who have a very superficial acquaintance with the subject.
Holding, as they do, the opinion that Moses, inspired by God,
teaches that the universe was created some six or seven thou-
sand years ago, in six literal days, according to a precise chrono-
logical order given in the first chapter of Genesis, they reject,
ft priori, the cosmogony of geologists and astronomers. Never-
theless Catholic theologians who follow this line do not venture
to assert that their interpretation is imposed by authority, and
are obliged to confess that we are at liberty to reject it. It is
nothing more than a mere human gloss on the text of Scripture,
like that other ancient gloss, long since obsolete, which fastened
on the sacred text the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.

It is admitted now on all hands that it was a great mistake
on the part of zealous Catholic and Protestant adherents to. the
old-fashioned astronomy to suppose that there is any system of
astronomy revealed by the divine wisdom. The authority of
the Holy Scriptures cannot be cited for or against the Ptolemaic
or Copernican systems. The theory of the natural laws govern-
ing the heavenly bodies is wholly within the sphere of natural
science.

We say the same of the theory of cosmogony in respect to
the science of geology. The age of the world, the laws of the
formation of its strata, their succession and periods, the chrono-
logy of the terrestrial fauna and flora, are matters of pure and
free scientific observation and investigation. There is no fore-
gone conclusion which is established & priori and available as a
plea in bar against any theory which assigns to the earth an
antiquity of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. This
is now the tenet held in common by the great majority of learned
Catholics and Protestants, and generally taught in the chairs
and in the text-books of professors. Of the opposite tenet, main-
tained by some few, the author quoted above, in his article,
which is based on a work published in Germany by Dr. Schaefer,
speaks as something worthy of no serious attention. He says :

"Among the different systems which have enjoyed a certain vogue,
M. Schaefer concedes only a summary mention to such as reject the geo-
logical periods either before the chaos of Genesis or after the deluge.
These theories, he says with reason, ought to be definitively erased from
the order of the day."

It is quite enough for the vindication of the liberty of theoriz-
ing in cosmogony to assert that there is no clear and certain

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 153

revelation in Genesis fixing the date and the chronological order
of the creation of the earth and its flora and fauna. It is not
necessary to propose and prove any definite and positive theory
harmonizing the brief texts in which the account of creation
which we have received through Moses is contained with the
scientific data and conclusions of geologists. If the whole ques-
tion in regard to the faith and God's teaching through Moses can
be lifted above the sphere of all theorizing it will become much
clearer, simpler, and more firmly settled. In our opinion this
has been very well done by Dr. Schaefer and M. de Foville, and
we will therefore be content to quote their language :

"The scope of the Bible is solely our religious instruction, and, both in
its moral precepts and its dogmas, it is absolutely true and at all times in-
telligible. On the other hand, notwithstanding some retrograde move-
ments, a continuity of advancing progress belongs to the nature of the
sciences, and no one of their phases can be defined as that of the absolute
and ultimate truth."

" We cannot too firmly insist upon the difference between what has
been revealed by God concerning the creation and the physical process of
the creation. For the knowledge of this latter we are sent back to the book
of nature ; the former is given to us in view of our eternal salvation. Rev-
elation is not below but above science. Its point of departure is the one
where all science founded on experience stops and sound philosophy begins
its ascent, rising above created things and leading us upward even to God."

"The Scripture scarcely ever considers the second causes whose nature
and connection are the object of scientific inquiries. It is very far from
denying any of the natural causes and laws, but it busies itself with them
only for the sake of linking them to the supreme cause to wit, the al-
mighty will of the Creator."

" Revelation, in fine, limits itself to giving us instructiorjxespecting the
origin, the end, and the reason of things, in order to explain to man his
place in the world and his duties toward his Creator. Science, on the con-
trary, searches into the how of things and their mode of development under
the agency of natural laws and forces. Its scope is the introduction of man
into the knowledge of all the kingdoms of the creation. A hostile attitude
between these two powers is not at all necessary or desirable. Science can,
on the one hand, learn from revelation what are the first principles of the
universe, and, on the other hand, // will sometimes rectify certain notions
which we may have been tempted to deduce from our sacred books by a too nar-
row interpretation of their figurative expressions." *

This last clause brings us face to face with the question pure
and simple of the exegesis and interpretation of the text of Gene-
sis in that part of it which is called the Hexameron. The notion
that the world was created a few thousand years ago in six lite-
ral days is it a notion clearly and unequivocally affirmed in that

* Citations from Dr. Schaefer by M. de Foville. See reference above.

154 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Nov.,

text, so that it does not fairly admit of any other reasonable in-
terpretation, or is it a notion only deduced from the text by a too
narrow interpretation ?

Those who regard this notion as a clearly-revealed truth
which we can hold with certainty by divine faith accuse us of
doing violence to the text from a scientific bias, and of forcing on
it a non-natural sense in order to make it harmonize with geology.
Some infidels make the same accusation. It is claimed that, put-
ting geology aside and looking at the text as a document whose
meaning is to be discerned by an application of ordinary exe-
getical rules, its obvious, plain, literal sense is the one which they
adopt and defend, and ought therefore to be regarded as the
sense intended by Moses ; or by the Holy Spirit teaching us
through Moses. We may answer that Dr. Schaefer, who is pro-
fessor of Scripture at Munster ; M. de Foville, who is a profes-
sor of theology ; Cardinal Wiseman, Pianciani, Le Hir, Valroger,
'Hurter, and many other distinguished Catholic scholars, think
differently. But as their opinion may be ascribed to a scientific
bias, we invoke rather the names of St. Augustine and St.
Thomas. St. Augustine, it is well known, interpreted the six
days in a figurative sense, and understood the order of the suc-
cessive works assigned to each day to be an ideal and not a
chronological order. St. Thomas says that the interpretation of
St. Basil and other Fathers who are in favor of the chronological
sense is " more simple and seems to agree better with the surface
of the language of the text," but that the interpretation of St.
Augustine is " more rational, more ingenious, defends better the
Scripture from the raillery of infidels, and is more acceptable to
himself." *

St. Thomas distinguishes carefully the dogma of creation,
which pertains to the faith, from the order of the works, which is
only accidentally connected with it.

We are, therefore, justified in considering all theories of in-
terpretation which seek to make an exposition and development
of that part of the text which relates to the order of creation, and
to explain the meaning of the six days, as belonging to the cate-
gory of gloss and commentary, and falling under the rule given
above. The terms " day," " morning," and " evening," and the
clauses in which these terms appear, do not of themselves pro-
claim which one of the various senses they admit of is the one
intended by the writer of the document. The idealistic exposi-
tor understands them figuratively, as denoting a logical and ideal

* St. Thomas, Distinct, xii. art. 2 and 3 ; Sumtn. 77ieof., ia, q. 74, art. 2; and De Pot., q. 4, a. 2.

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 155

division of the works of God according to the divine concepts
which are manifested to the inspired writer and included under a
sixfold enumeration. This is a human gloss whose value is mea-
sured by the reasons assigned for its adoption. The advocate of
a purely historical and chronological sense understands the same
terms as denoting literally periods of time in which the works of
creation succeed each other in regular order. This is another
gloss. The one who interprets the six days as periods of twenty-
four hours each infers that such days were intended by the sacred
writer, which is a further gloss. But these terms can bear a
more general and extended sense, and are frequently employed
in such a manner. We often speak of the morning of life and
the evening of our period of earthly existence. The present day
often means the age in which we live. The seventy weeks of
Daniel are weeks of years. The Hebrew word for day is more
indeterminate than the terms by which it is translated into the
Greek, Latin, and modern languages. There are exegetical rea-
sons, besides the reasons which are derived from science, which
support the more general and extended sense assigned to it in
the Mosaic document by many commentators. There is, there-
fore, a way open for more than one theory, according to a chro-
nological and historical method of interpretation, making six long
periods of time, during which the cosmogony proceeded from
the initial chaos through its successive epochs until the creation
of Adam and Eve. Some of these theories draw the most inge-
nious parallels between the order deduced by inference from the
text of Scripture and that which is inferred from data of geologi-
cal science by scientists. Others, again, abstain from such efforts
and confine themselves to the exhibition of a more general and
vague conformity between Scripture and science. All these
theories in their turn, so far as they relate to Scripture, must be
relegated to the category of gloss and commentary.

We think that we have sufficiently justified our position that
the whole question in regard to the faith and God's teaching
through Moses can be lifted above the sphere of all theorizing.
We have no need to be anxious about the success of the endea-
vors which are made to establish a concordance between a human
gloss and commentary on the sacred text and theoretical cosmo-
gony deduced from scientific data. Science can never disturb
the serene domain of faith. Geology cannot be ruled out of
court by an appeal to divine revelation. The faith stands firm
on its own foundations, immovable and unchangeable. All genu-
ine and certain science is a solid and unattackable structure.

1 56 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [ Nov. ,

The outlying domains bordering- on their enclosed territory lie
open always to exploration and survey, which has been, is now,
and will be to the end of time a pleasant and useful occupation of
the human mind.

FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCH-
WOMAN.*

" NOTHING," wrote M. de Tocqueville to Mme. Swetchine,
" has struck me more forcibly in my long experience of public
life than the influence which women have always exercised in
that department an influence which is all the greater from be-
ing indirect."

He goes on to say that he has frequently observed the good
effects of this influence in the case of mediocre and indolent men
who have been stirred up to a sense of public duty by their
wives. " But," he adds, with a certain sadness, " I must confess
that I have far more frequently seen a man, endowed by nature
with generosity, disinterestedness, and greatness of soul, gradu-
ally become, under the pressure of home influence, a cowardly,
vulgar-minded, selfish antbitieux, who ends by viewing the affairs
of the country simply as a means of rendering his own private
life pleasanter and more easy."

M. de Tocqueville asks how this change was effected, and he
replies : " By daily contact with an honest woman, a faithful wife
and good mother of a family, but one in whom the high notion
of .public duty in its energetic and elevated sense has always
been, I don't say deficient, but utterly wanting."
. This judgment, like so many delivered by the same keen,
philosophical observer, has a prophetic character about it which
the present state of society in his country brings vividly to light.
" The high notion of public duty " has come to be so utterly
ignored by the average Frenchman of to-day that he looks on at
the dislocation of society, the violation of its liberties, and the
destruction of its most venerable bulwarks with the disinterested
apathy of a mollusk who has no concern in these matters; he
shrugs his shoulders and says, " Que voulez-vous? "

If this indifference to la cliose publique can be traced in a large

* Eliane. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated from the French by Lady Georgiana
Fullerton. Boston : Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 188-?.

1 884] FRENCHWOMEN FOR TRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 157

measure to the influence of her women, as M. de Tocqueville
was of opinion it could, France holds a heavy brief against them.

" Dieu propose et la femme dispose " is the characteristically
profane dictum in which the .popular voice proclaims the
supreme authority of la femme in all mundane affairs ; and this
sovereignty of hers is so well established and so widely recog-
nized that it would be as futile to prove as it would be vain to
deny it. France, more than any other country in the world, has
lived under petticoat government. If, in view of present results,
any hostile person is tempted to exclaim, " And signs on it ! " we
would remind him that this government was most triumphant
when the glory and prosperity of the grande nation were at their
apogee. In those meridian days woman ruled the kingdom
through the king, but from time immemorial she has ranked as
one of the governing forces of society ; her control has made
itself felt in every department of life, moral, intellectual, and
economical.

If we go on to inquire how she came by this despotic sove-
reignty we raise a question that involves many others. Does
the secret lie in the superiority of the women of France or in
the inferiority of the men ? Are Frenchwomen endowed at
their birth with some imperial sway which constitutes them des-
pots by right divine? And are Frenchmen, on the other hand,
slaves to the manner born, defective in the faculty of self-govern-
ment, more sympathetic, more susceptible of those subtle, mag-
netic, penetrating influences which make up the armory and
regalia of female empire ?

Mme. de Girardin used to say that she despaired of France,
because it was the only country in the world where the men
were better than the women. It would have been interesting
to know in what precise sense the spirituelle Sophie Gay em-
ployed the comparative " better." Did she mean that they were
more kind-hearted, more truthful, stronger in principle, more
faithful in friendships and in love, or to sum up all betterness
in one word more impersonal, more capable of that impersonal
life which is the fullest definition as well as the truest test alike
of goodness and of greatness? Interpreted in this sense, the
most ardent admirer of Frenchwomen will scarcely venture to
dispute the justice of the verdict.

This incapacity for the impersonal life, attributed in a more
or less degree to the women of every country, is nowhere so
distinctly manifest as in the Frenchwoman of the present day. It
is the flaw in the diamond, the one blemish in a brilliant and sym-

158 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

pathetic individuality, but one which, like an organic defect,
stunts the richest growth of her moral nature and the most
fruitful development of her mental activity.

The " high notion of public duty " which might stimulate
a mediocre and indolent man to serve his country can find no
place in the motives and considerations of women who lack the
capacity for even apprehending the impersonal ; and this defi-
ciency, partly moral, partly intellectual, suffices in a great mea-
sure to explain the attitude of the men in the present crisis
through which France is passing.

The men of civilized communities are, up to a certain point,
what their mothers make them. This is more especially true in
France, where the authority of the mother is invested with a
prestige unparalleled in any other country. The reverence with
which a Frenchman surrounds " ma mere," his chivalrous allegi-
ance to her, the caressing tenderness of his manner, just touched
with that delicate gallantry that is never altogether absent from
a Frenchman in his intercourse with the other sex, lend a special
grace and poetry to the relation of mother and son, and consti-
tute it one of those bonds that honor and beautify our common
nature.

So paramount is the authority of these mothers, so un-
bounded their influence over their sons, that if the mothers of
France were all Cornelias the French would be a nation of
Gracchi. If even one youthful Cornelia we're to be found
amongst them at this moment there is no calculating what
might come of it before long. But the treasure is not likely to
be hidden in this generation. Those Cornelias and Veturias of
the old Romans, even before motherhood came to enlarge their
hearts, must have had patriotic souls capable of high ambitions
for their country as well as for their sons; they were large-souled
creatures cast in that heroic antique mould.

In France the mother is what the woman was a concrete
being, self-concentrated, passionately personal, revolving in a
ciccle of strictly personal aims and interests. From within this
circle she surveys the national life and that wider life of hu-
manity beyond with its struggles and defeats, its convulsive
strivings after good and evil, its triumphs and pathetic failures,
its sin and sorrow and views them all either as foreign affairs
in which she has no call to meddle, or as so many personal op-
portunities to be used or rejected, welcomed or shirked, exactly
in proportion as they may affect herself and that expanded plu-
ral self, la famille^ which to a good Frenchwoman is the final

1 884.] FRENCHWOMEN FOR TRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 1 59

cause of all events. The men formed by this concrete person-
ality have inevitably taken their shape from it. Just as a con-
quered race develop certain traits of resemblance to their con-
querors, more or less, according" .as the conquest is more com-
plete, so do the men of every country acquire the moral tem-
perament of the women to whom they are in subjection. In
France the subjection has been so complete that the process of
imitation has gone on till it has become one of absorption, and
the men have merged their own individuality in that of their con-
querors. These latter, like the jealous fairy in the tale, have
metamorphosed \hegrande nation into a woman. The conquered
race have ceased to be men. They have let the fairy dwarf
them to her measures and transform them into counterparts and
fac-similes of herself. They care only for the things she cares
for, they strive only for the objects of her ambition, they follow
her lead in all things. They have no longer a cause she having
none they have only interests, and their interests are hers.
She views the affairs of the country " simply as a means of ren-
dering private life pleasanter and easier " ; so do they.

This deteriorating action which M. de Tocqueville beheld in-
dividuals undergoing a generation ago has been gradually spread-
ing over the whole country, until the entire manhood of France
has become womanized and endowed with the attributes of a
dangerous, unmanageable woman an unstable thing, tossed from
one extreme to the other; a thing of impulse unrestrained by
principle, unbalanced, undisciplined; rising one moment to sub-
lime heights of generosity, falling the next into paroxysms of
savage violence and cruelty ; an angel and a devil in one.

The whole civilized world has been more or less under the
spell of the fairy who has worked this metamorphosis ; her wiles,
her witcheries, her goodness, and her badness form an enigma
that we are never tired of observing and investigating. French-
women are like the French Revolution inexhaustibly fascinating.
When any one proposes to give us some new view of the magic
mirror or the chamber of horrors we jump at the offer as if it
were our first opportunity of a glimpse at either. Our eagerness
and curiosity are all the keener when the guide commands our
confidence and comes with the prestige and authority of a tried
and trusted witness. When the guide is Mrs. Augustus Craven
we crowd round her with the attention of children who are going
to be treated to a " true story." We know that her story will be
essentially true, that her sentiment will be genuine, her verdicts
just, her pictures of life and society drawn, not from hearsay, but

160 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

direct from the original. This primary quality of literary as
well as moral excellence would suffice in itself to explain her
wide popularity with such varied and often antagonistic audi-
ences; for so hungry are we for truth that we must have even
our fiction true fiction being, in reality, only truth presented to
us through the imagination, a narrative of facts and experiences
that have occurred or might occur in lives outside our own,
or even beyond our ken, but which, being consistent with the
characteristics of human nature and human life and the condi-
tions of society, are thereby artistically true.

The want of this truthfulness, which is a common sin with
many good writers, explains why some excellent books prove
a failure, while others, without apparently possessing greater
claims to success, succeed. The child's query at the beginning
of the nursery tale, " Is it a true story?" gives expression to the
instinctive craving of the human mind. From childhood to old
age we keep on asking, " Is it true ? " and we withhold our deep-
est sympathy until the answer comes, " Yes, it is true."

-TMrs. Craven's stories are true. She knows French society
so thoroughly that it would be difficult to find in the range of
modern writers one better authorized to depict it ; and perhaps
no severer stricture could be pronounced on that society thfin
the fact that when this accomplished Frenchwoman seeks a hero-
ine that is, an ideal type of womanhood for her novels she'
goes abroad to look for her. At best, when the frame of her
story requires the concession, she lets the heroine be born in
France ; but, like a mother hurrying away her infant from the
wicked fairy lying in wait to molest it, she carries her out of
France, educates her in a foreign land, imbues her with foreign
ideas, and then presents her to us a beautiful type of maidenhood,
no longer French except in name and perhaps in that grace
which is the inalienable birthright of a Frenchwoman.

Eliane is such a type ; but it is not of her chiefly that we are
going to speak, interesting as she is, in this story to which she
has lent her name : it is of her surroundings and associates, the
frame that sets off the central figure.

The scene is laid in the Fatibourg St. Germain, in the very
heart of that impregnable stronghold of dynastic loyalties and
family traditions, of caste and stately conventionalities, from
whose precincts the outer barbarian is jealously excluded, within
whose magic ring the great human family either obtains right
of citizenship as " de notre monde," or is ostracized as " pas de
notre monde." The Marquise de Liminges the most finished

1884.] FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCHWOMAN, 161

and powerful study of the book may be taken as a faithful
representative type of the society and the system which Mrs.
Craven portrays to us. Let her describe the marquise:

" She was a woman for whom it was impossible not to feel the most
profound respect. Left a widow while still young, she devoted herself un-
reservedly to her two children, whose fortune she managed no less wisely
than their education. She was one of those women, who are to be met
with in France more frequently than elsewhere, capable of governing a
kingdom, and for whom the cleverest man of business would prove no
more than a match in the management of her property and the investing
of her money. She was, moreover, noble, just, generous, and boundless in
her charity to the poor, and at the same time too clear-signted to be duped
or exploitee by anybody. Her household, both in Paris and in the country,
was generally cited as a model for the way it was governed."

The price her family had to pay for being managed by this
epitome of perfections was blind, unquestioning surrender of
their will to hers. Her faith in her own infallibility was un-
shaken, and she exacted the same faith from others. Her son
and daughter were the objects of her whole devotion, and all
she asked in return were that they should become her things,
give up their souls and bodies into her keeping, and allow her
to manage their lives and shape their destinies without obtrud-
ing their tastes, their opinions, or their feelings into her well-
. ordered schemes and decisions. She looked upon these two
children as a deposit entrusted to her, that she would have to
account for one day, but which, meantime, had no more right
to question what she did with it than the family diamonds had
to turn round and ask her why she locked them up in a safe
or had them reset.

The supreme preoccupation of this excellent mother's life
was, of course, how to marry her son and her daughter. Blanche
was the first to be disposed of. The marquise manages this
important affair with her characteristic energy and business-
like decision, and Mrs. Craven describes the transaction with the
realistic touch of a skilled artist, and with a delicate humor
which is the more effective from being, perhaps, partly uncon-
scious. Mile, de Liminges is going to the soir6e where she is
to meet for the first time the gentleman who is to marry her :

"The carriage was announced, and the marquise, after casting on her
daughter a glance of scrutiny something like that which an officer throws
at the recruit whom he is taking on parade for the first time, gave the sig-
nal to set out, and Blanche followed her."

Eliane, the orphan niece of the marquise, who has lately
arrived from England, is bewildered by the prosaic view that

VOL. XL. 1 1

1 62 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

her cousin takes of the affair, and waits at home in a maze of
curiosity and astonishment to hear how the meeting went off,
and if anything so tender and so sacred as life-long marriage is
to follow in hot haste on the heels of this business-like inter-
view.

Blanche, on her return, flies at once to Eliane's room ; she is
quite free from any sentimental excitement, and, before beginning
her story, deliberately takes off her white opera-cloak.

"'Well,' said Blanche seriously and with the greatest coolness, 'it
seems quite certain that before very long I shall be Mme. de Monleon.
That is all.'

" ' Comment ? That is all ! But what more could you possibly have to
tell me ? And how was it settled all at once on the spot ? '

"'Oh ! it is not settled like when a thing is done ; but it comes to the
same thing.'

" ' And you are glad ? '

" ' Yes, certainly I am glad. I should have been very sorry if it had
fallen through.' "

Ehane is confounded ; after a moment's silence she says :

" ' You know, Blanche, how I love you, and how happy I should be if it
were really true ; but I want at least to be sure that you are happy."

" ' Well, then, I am, Eliane. Je vous le jure'

" 'And yet you look very grave.'

" Blanche burst out laughing and looked once more like her ordinary
self; but, again becoming serious, 'Grave?' she said. 'There is rea-
son to be grave, after all, is there not? When one is young, and in a
sense a child, as I am, "one would hesitate at the last moment and be
frightened, if one had not a great trust in God. But he will help me,' she
said, lifting her blue eyes to the great ivory crucifix on the wall. ' He
will help me, for what I want is to be always a good and virtuous wife and
a true Christian.' "

Eliane is comforted by this touch of pure religious sentiment
which supplies the place of poetry and human feeling in the
momentous change that her cousin contemplates so coolly, and
she proceeds to ask all about what happened at the meeting :

" ' Was he there when you arrived ? '

" ' Yes, he dined at Mme. de Crecy's with several others ; but mamma told
me that I should easily know him, because he would be the only person
.present whom I had never seen.' "

" At this explanation Eliane, in spite of herself, made a little gesture of
surprise ; but Blanche did not notice it, and went on :

" ' And so it was : all the persons present were acquaintances of ours,
except one who was talking in the window to M. de Kerdrey. I noticed
that he turned round the moment we were announced. Presently he drew
near, and Mme. de Crecy presented him to mamma. They exchanged a
few words, and meantime I was able to have a good look at him.'

1884.] FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 163

"'And what is he like? I mean what does he look like?' said
Eliane, rather hesitating.

"' He has a beard and curly black hair; he is tall and rather stout, and
has perhaps rather too high a color ; I should have preferred if he were a
little paler. But, taking him all in all, he is good-looking.'

" ' So much the better, ' said Eliane.

'"He looked well at me, too,' continued Blanche, 'and after a while
he came over to the table where I was turning over an album of photo-
graphs. He said, " That is M. Thiers." I replied that he was not handsome.
I scarcely dared look up at him, but the sound of his voice was pleasant.
After this I went back to mamma, who was preparing to leave. When we
were going out he was near the door, Mamma held out her hand to him,
and he bowed to me, and that was all. But when we were in the carnage
mamma told me that he had said to Mme. de Crecy that, from all he had
heard of me and my family, he was resolved to make me an offer of mar-
riage, unless he found my face disagreeable.'

" ' I imagine,' said Eliane, ' that he has been reassured on that point this
evening ? '

" ' I think so. At least Mme. de Crecy said that, from the way he looked
at me, she felt no doubt but that in the course of the morning to-morrow
mamma might expect to see her arrive here, charged with the official de-
mand. So you see the thing does look as if it were settled.'

" After a pause Eliane said :

" ' Well, but when are you to make acquaintance with each other I
mean really ?'

" ' Oh ! afterwards,' replied Blanche unhesitatingly.

" ' How afterwards ? After your marriage ? '

"'No, before; only when everything is settled. My trousseau will
take at least two months to get ready, and meantime he will come here
every day and send me a bouquet every morning.'

" 'And if, by chance, on coming to know him better, you did not like
him ? '

'"Oh! that is not at all likely ; he. looks very good.'

"'Well, but suppose '

'" Oh ! if he were to become really, really quite antipathetic to me '

" ' Yes, if you found out that he was not intelligent, or that he had no
heart, or that he had not your, tastes ? '

"' Oh ! as to my tastes, I don't quite yet know what they are. I don't
hold much to them, and they would easily give way to my husband's. It
will be my duty to please him. But for all that I trust entirely to mamma ;
she is so wise, so clear-sighted, and she loves me so much that she would never
have thought of this young man for me without first being sure that he
was neither bad-hearted nor ill-conducted, so I can't see why he should be
antipathetic to me.'

"' Still, if, after all, that were to happen,' persisted Eliane, 'what would
you do ? '

" ' What would I do ? I would tell mamma in time, and she would break
off the marriage. But that is not at all. likely."

Blanche's trust in her mother's infallibility was amply reward-
ed. Not merely did things run smooth during the interval de-

164 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

voted to the trousseau, and to what, for want of any fitter term,
we must call the courtship, but she and her husband, like the
king and queen in the story-books, lived happily for ever after.

With this satisfactory abridgment we may dismiss the happy
couple, just remarking that M. de Monl^on was one of those
well-principled, gentleman-like mediocrities, who might, perhaps,
have become a useful public servant, if he had fallen into the
hands of a wife with a " high sense of public duty." But Blanche is
not the woman to wake patriotic ambition in her husband. She
will not care to put him into Parliament, or even into the Conseil
Municipal ; she will let him alone, as those ladies did their lords
at Rheims the other day when four hundred and thirty votes
were returned out of an electoral population of twenty-two thou-
sand. Blanche will be quite happy seeing her lord " eating the
lotos day by day." She will never tease him to buckle to the
fight against la canaille, as her aristocratic little mouth will have
no scruple in calling the wicked radicals ; but she will be a per-
fect little wife, loyal and loving, and a perfect mother, doing her
duty irreproachably in that narrow personal sphere in which her
life will continue to revolve ; she will have her bonnes ceuvres, and
be very zealous in getting up bazaars and lotteries ; the white
cornettes of the Sisters of Charity will flutter in and out of the cha-
teau, like doves bearing the message of peace and plenty to the
poor in the village, where madame's name will be in benediction
as " un ange de bontt" ; she will perform every social function
and devout courtesy of her station with propriety and punctual
grace.

From the simply personal point of view Mme. de Liminges
may be said to have managed admirably for her son-in-law as
well as her daughter; and if marriages could always be arranged
between contracting parties so well suited as these two, there
would be little to say against the French system. But, unluck-
ily, the course of love-to-order does not always run so smooth.
It sometimes happens rarely, but often enough to prove the falli-
bility of the rule when it comes into collision with the perversity
of a stubborn will that one or other of the parties rebels and
flatly refuses to be marriedj that, despite all precautions and pre-
servatives, the tyrant Love steps in, bends his bow, shoots, and
the discipline of a life breaks down.

This is what happened with Raynald de Liminges, the brother
of Blanche. Raynald, with the same beautiful training as his sister,
and with her beautiful example before his eyes, falls in love with-
out so much as asking his mother's leave. The extenuating

1884.] FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 165

circumstances would have been great in the eyes of any one but
the mother, who, indeed, was herself chiefly to blame for the
catastrophe. She throws her son into the closest intimacy with
his cousin, Eliane a girl whom no man with eyes in his head and
a heart in his breast could see day after day in the unaffected
grace and charm of home-life without losing his heart, to; but so
blinded is the marquise by faith in her own right of dominion
over her son that it never occurs to her he could be tempted to
such an act of insubordination.

Eliane is one of those ideal characters that will find a niche in
Mrs. Craven's gallery of living statues beside Fleurange, with
whom she has more points of resemblance than her French blood
and foreign breeding. Eliane has inherited from her English
grandfather, as well as imbibed in her English education, an in
dependence of mind and manners which makes her feel an alien
in the Faubourg St. Germain, with its "arranged " marriages and
its rigid code of proprieties and prohibitions ; she is bewildered
by the artificial atmosphere, as it seems to her, of her native
home, and by the negative theories and obstructive laws that
obtain there. Her aunt is all motherly kindness and Blanche all
sisterly affection, but the three have as much understanding in
common as a couple of parrots and a Scotch terrier. No one in
the family understands her except Raynald, but from him she
gets sympathy enough to make up for the lack of it in others ;
they ride and walk together, and hold delightful converse on
every subject, occasionally venturing on such burning ground as
love and the loveless marriages that are made in France, and
always finding themselves in perfect accord. Any one must have
seen how this was going to end ; but, as Eliane's dot was not
large enough to constitute her in the eyes of the marquise "an
affair that might arrange itself," that estimable lady saw nothing.

Fresh from her successful campaign in the interests of her
daughter, she was already embarked on another for Raynald.
She had, in fact, like a skilful commander, been carrying on the
two together. She had taken all renseignements about Constance,
the granddaughter and heiress of the Due and Duchesse de
Longvilliers, and had satisfied herself that this was the very wife
for Raynald. A direct but diplomatically guarded overture
had been made to the duchesse, who bit at the bait with flatter-
ing empressement and accepted an invitation to Erlon. The
young people were to meet, and the affair would " arrange itself "
with that promptitude which attended all the arrangements of
the marquise. The young lady was handsome and accom-

1 66 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

plished, as well as arcJii-millionnaire y so that there need be no
anxiety as to her suiting.

While the mother dreamed this pleasant dream behind her
green damask curtains the undutiful son was preparing a terri-
ble awakening for her. She had made up her mind to tell him
of her choice for him, and was writing in her boudoir one morn-
ing when he knocked at the door.

'"Raynald, you come just at the right moment! ' she cried in a joyous
tone. ' I was going to send for you. I want to have a serious talk with
you.'

'"And I, too, mother, have something important to say to you,' replied
her son.

" The marquise was startled. Raynald's voice betrayed a good deal of
emotion. She looked at him in silence.

"He took her hand and kissed it without speaking. His heart was
beating fast, and he wished to speak calmly.

'"Well, Raynald,' said the marquise, drawing her hand through his hair,
' what is it ? What can you have so serious to say to me ? '

" ' Mother, it is serious. The happiness of my life is at stake. But
don't be afraid ; there is nothing to be anxious or alarmed about.'

" ' To the point, Raynald, I beg of you.'

" ' Well, then,' he went on, speaking rapidly, ' I am six-and-twenty. I am
tired of this restless, idle life that I have been leading. I find Erlon en-
chanting,-and I wish to stay here. In fact, I wish to get married.'

'' ' Speak out, then, child that you are ! There is no need for so going
round about it to tell me that you want to fulfil the desire of my heart.'

" ' Thank you, mother, thank you ! ' exclaimed Raynald with emotion,
again kissing the hand he held in his. 'And you are willing, quite will-
ing? For she whom I love and have chosen you yourself love and have
chosen as a daughter ! '

" The marquise drew away her hand quickly.

" ' Whom you love ? Whom you have chosen ? Chosen f you, Raynald,
unknown to your mother? But whom are you talking about? It cannot
be'

" 'Eliane.'

"'Eliane!' repeated his mother, aghast. If the chateau had fallen
down on her with a crash the shock could hardly have been greater. Ray-
nald poured forth the story of his love in a torrent of passionate words
that seemed to escape from him without any effort of his will, while his
mother listened in dumb amazement. This sudden uprising of an obstacle
to a plan maturely considered and settled in her mind was like some shock
breaking up the natural order of the universe : to oppose her will was to
revolt against the forces of nature. For one moment the loving mother
and exemplary Christian hated Eliane as if she were some deadly, nox-
ious thing that had come across her son's pathway to destroy him.
She had too strong a will, however, to be carried away even momentarily
by passion. This rebellion of Raynald's was too monstrous and unnatural
to last ; moreover, it was not in nature that his will could long hold out

1884.] FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 167

against hers. Her plan of action was decided on in a moment. She would
temporize and gain time; she would disarm the rebel by feigning readiness
to treat with him. Admitting the full truth of all he says of Eliane, her
goodness, her virtues, her incomparable charm, she adds that a marriage
with her is none the less impossible.

" ' Impossible ? ' repeats Raynald.

" ' She is your first cousin, and, though not altogether devoid of fortune,
there is such a disproportion between her position and yours in this re-
spect that '

" Raynald made a gesture of impatience and stood up. His mother
stopped short in sheer amazement.

"'Admitting all this,' he said, with an effort to keep the bitterness out
of his voice, ' admitting these great obstacles, does all that I have said count
for nothing with you ? '

" The marquise, now greatly moved, rose in her turn, and, laying her hand
on her son's shoulder, compelled him to look at her.

"'And do my counsels, my approbation, my wishes count for nothing
with you ? ' she demanded. ' Have I been such a bad mother that in the
most serious affair of your life you should set aside all respect.for me ?'

Raynald is overcome by her reproaches, and ends by assur-
ing 1 her that, though his heart were to break, he will never dis-
obey her.

The marquise takes note of this promise, and, having adroitly
drawn from Raynald that he has not told Eliane of his love for
her, she makes him understand that he is bound in honor to con-
tinue this reserve until she, his mother, has brought her mind to
consent to his wishes. Raynald gives a reluctant promise to this
effect, but, as he goes away, shuts the door somewhat sharply
the only exhibition of temper he has permitted himself.

The marquise holds up her hands and exclaims in bitterness
of soul :

" Ah ! what ingrates children are."

The scene, the situation altogether, has something in it so ex-
quisitely humorous that it is hard for American or English read-
ers to take the pathos of it au strieux. The idea of a man of six-
and-twenty, an earl to boot, wealthy, independent, and intelli-
gent, giving up his first love at the bidding of his mother, with-
out more ado than when, as a baby, he gave up some play-
thing at the bidding of his nurse, just slamming the door by way
of asserting his manhood, presents a climax of bathos puzzling
to the un-French mind. That mental medium will, indeed, find
it difficult to realize at all such a type of motherhood as Mine,
de Liminges a woman who is described as pious, highly con-
scientious, sensible, idolizing her son, yet deliberately sacrificing
his happiness, with a cruelty at once cold-blooded and passionate,

168 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

to a vulgar greed for money. For it must be noted that the fact
of Eliane being Rajnald's first cousin does not enter this pious
mother's head as an obstacle worth serious consideration.

Eliane's loveliness and goodness, which Raynald counts far
above rubies, are set aside as so much dross by the virtuous
mother, whose notion of happiness for her son consists in adding
million to million and acre to acre for him. A curious variety of
the high-born, devout, and devoted parent; significant, too, of
the general temper of the society she represents. Contempt for
money, both in theory and practice, has always been considered
an essentially aristocratic sentiment ; but here we see a grande
dame, with the bluest blood of the Faubourg St. Germain in her
veins, rating money so high that she sets it above all better
things for her son, and would force it upon him with a brutal
greed hardly admissible in the most base-born plebeian.

The owner of the precious drug, meantime, Constance de
Longvilliers, has arrived at the castle, fully aware of the motive
of her visit. She sees Raynald and takes cognizance of the fine
old place, and decides at once that he will do. Conscious of her
own value in the matrimonial market, it naturally does not occur
to the handsome heiress to doubt but that she will do.

But Raynald is proof against her fortune, her beauty, and her
siren voice. The moment he discovers the truth he determines
to undeceive the young lady an awkward operation for any
man, but he gets out of it like a gentleman. He goes heroically
to his mother and tells her he will not marry this young lady
with the millions, and that, as it is impossible for him now to
remain near Eliane without betraying his love for her, he means
to go away.

" ' I will go,' he continued ; ' it will be a long farewell this time longer,
perhaps, than you foresee. O mother!' he cried in agitation, and falling
on his knees before her, 'think of it, I implore you ! It is for the last time
that I entreat you. My whole life, my soul, are in your hands at this
moment!' "

But Raynald might as well have been praying to a piece of
granite. His mother remains inexorable ; and so they part.
He leaves the castle there and then, and goes forth, wounded,
angry, and desperate, to fight out the battle of his pure and
chivalrous love with such auxiliaries as the world has in store
for him ; and she, the mother, lets him go without an effort to
hold him back, without a misgiving as to the ultimate triumph
of her despotic will over his boyish passion.

We may be tempted to exclaim that this is not human nature;

1884.] FRENCHWOMEN PORTRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 169

but we must believe that it is Faubourg- St. Germain nature,
since Mrs. Craven presents it to us as such. She is incapable of
misleading us, either voluntarily through insincerity or involun-
tarily through inadequate knowledge. The scene is full of dra-
matic power and of a truthfulness beyond the reach of art. Mrs.
Craven is too conscientious a psychologist to use false tests or
to present to us characters decked up in borrowed feathers,
otherwise she might easily have invented an extenuating circum-
stance for Mme. de Liminges, in whom, with an artist's natural
partiality for a piece of successful workmanship, she has con-
centrated our chief interest. The temptation to do this must
have been great, but she resisted it ; she knows what we expect
from her genuine pictures and a true story and she gives us
both. If we exclaim that the marquise is a kind of moral monster,
Mrs. Craven will, perhaps, reply in defence of her psychology,
if not of her marquise, that the world swarms with moral mon-
sters ; that hatred is, after all, nothing but love turned against its
centre ; and that nothing so goads love to cruelty as the sight of
its own cruelty, and that, moreover, such cruelty is compatible
with certain kinds of morality and virtue.

Mme. de Sevign6 had some ancestress of Mme.de Liminges in
her mind when she wrote one day to Mme. de Grignan : " II y'a
des femmes qu'il faudrait assommer ; entendez-vous bien ce que
je vous dis la? Oui, il faudrait les assommer . . . ce sont des
monstres, mais des monstres qui parlent, qui ont de 1'esprit, qui
ont un front d'airain, qui sont au-dessus de tout reproche"

Mrs. Craven is in too full sympathy with her age to stand
aloof and cry V& ! v& / upon it, or even to denounce its mon-
sters as only fit to be killed. She states her case for them merci-
fully, and makes the best of them with large-hearted tolerance.

But we feel, nevertheless, that she is not at ease in the society
which produces this particular type of monster. She would
have been more at home with Mme. de Sevignein \\\Q grand sticle.
In those days France exemplified Lamartine's maxim : " A great
nation should be occupied with great things." Mme. de S6vigne,
while filling volumes of her incomparable letters with the gossip
of town and court, sets on every page gems of wit and wisdom,
sound thoughts on religion, politics, and philosophy. Philo-
sophy was the rage of the day. Mme. de Grignan raves about
Descartes, and finds his metaphysics " so delicious and amusing "
that the alarmed mother cries out: "Mais cest une Cartdsienne
a briiler ! " The Cart6sienne makes epigrams that sour old
Larochefoucauld pretends to be jealous of, and Mme. de Sevign6,

170 FRENCHWOMEN PORTRAYED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

terrified that her daughter's little smattering of knowledge is
going to turn her into a pretentious blue-stocking, reminds her
that this little surface-success means nothing at all. " Ma fille, il
faut fare si Pott vent paraitre," she keeps reminding her, condens-
ing into a sentence, with the concision of a deep thinker, that
denunciation of cant and pretension and sham that Carlyle
hammered out into volumes.

The women of France reached the climax of their splendor at
this period. Never since have they presented to the world such a
glittering constellation as that which shed its lustre on the court
of the Grand Monarque. Other stars have risen since then and
shone with beautiful radiance ; but it has been a different kind of
illumination. The granddaughters of these elegant and frivolous
Carttsiennes continued their speculations on things mundane and
divine, and their busy court intrigues, until the Revolution came
and swept away the old order of things and them along with it.
Grandes dames went up to the scaffold and died with the faith of
martyrs and the dramatic grace of heroines, or else they escaped
into exile. When they returned to France they were surprised
not to find what they had left there. They expected to have
their chateaux restored to them and condign punishment inflicted
on those who had plundered them. Exile had taught them to
suffer, but it had taught them little else. They had not learned
to look beyond themselves, to see further than their own share
in the national cataclysm. The Revolution had worked nothing
but ruin and disaster to them, robbing them of their possessions
and prerogatives, and leaving them nothing but a grievance in-
stead. They grappled the grievance to their soul with hoops of
steel, and they have made the most .of it ever since.

France had risen to herculean heights in her stretch after
liberty, and when the struggle was over she sank back exhausted
and a prey to that chill disenchantment which follows a recoil
from a delusive ideal. She had wrought herself up to believe
that after the Revolution there would come the millennium ; in-
stead of the millennium there came an interval of weariness, dis-
temper, and depression, the inevitable reaction of violent and
convulsive effort.

The women were too tired to do anything but read and
amuse themselves. " Se reposer et se distraire " this was the
remedy they prescribed for themselves and for the nation, and
they threw themselves into amusement, bals victimes and similar
diversions, with a reckless self-abandonment characteristic of the
period and the people.

1 8 84.] FRENCH WOMEN FOR TRA YED BY A FRENCH wo MA N. 171

Under the Empire things changed without improving.
Women of genius and beauty, queens of the right-divine dynas-
ty whose social influence was a power to be conciliated, were
amongst the royalties against whom Napoleon waged brutal
war throughout his reign, while the princesses of his own
family were not types of " gracious womanhood " calculated
to raise its prestige in the national regard.

When Queen Marie Amelie came with the halo of virtue en-
circling her crown, the people found a touch of their old loyalty
to do it reverence, " deeming her uncrowned womanhood the
truly royal thing." The women of France now entered on a
new and honorable reign. The sceptre of the grande dame
passed into the hands of the femme comme-il-faut, and she wielded
it with credit to herself and advantage to society. Domestic
virtues, dignity of living, simplicity of attire, became the domi-
nant note sounded from the court.

With the Second Empire all this was changed again. The
mot d'ordre from the Tuileries was dictated by political economy ;
the pursuit of material prosperity led to a pagan efflorescence of
luxury which vulgarized the mind and lowered the moral stand-
ard of the nation. The mission imposed on women was commer-
cial rather than social, its aim was to promote the interests of
trade by personal expenditure ; and the women of the Empire
fulfilled it so zealously that extravagance in dress rose to a pitch
never before attained by the general community in any country.

"Ah! ma sceur," said a fashionable milliner to a Sister of
Charity who was enumerating the kind deeds of an august bene-
factress, " the French are ungrateful ; we forget all that, and we
forget also that it was she who invented la nonveautt, that has
done so much for trade. I remember when my rich customers
would wear a velvet bonnet two winters running ! No one
could do that under the Empire."

The r6le of women under the Republic is more difficult to
define. It would be easier to define what it ought to be than
what it actually is. Ladies certainly cannot wear a bonnet two
winters running, although there is no recognized centre from
which the prohibition comes. The social opportunities of re-
publican society are represented by the cinq tieures of a comtdi-
enne and the reunions of a political adventuress.

Women of a different class, bereft of a legitimate field for the
exercise of their latent activities, have found an outlet in gam-
bling. Modern progress, with its eccentric developments and
perilous emancipations, has produced no more curious spectacle

172 FRENCHWOMEN FOR TRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

than that acted at the pastry-cook's on the Place de la Bourse
when honorable matrons of the noble faubourg, assembled in
noisy conclave, kept telephoning to the temple of Mammon
opposite : " Vendez Turcs ! Achetez Suez ! " etc., giving, in fact,
a mimic representation of the scene going on in the pandemo-
nium close by ; the play exactly the same, only the actors differ-
ent. To this corruption and decline the women of France have
been led by the growing passion for money and the utter absorp-
tion of their faculties in the personal.

No wonder the sister of Alexandrine de la Ferronnays should
despair of finding an ideal lady in a society which could gene-
rate such phenomena ! In compelling us to admire whatsoever
still survives there of those things that are lovely, and true, and
brave, and of good report, she achieves no mean triumph of sym-
pathy and of art, but she fails to enlist our admiration for the
archetypal woman of her story.

We feel, indeed, quite sure that the Marquise de Liminges
never put her foot in that now historic pastry-cook's and never
turned her boudoir into a bureau d' agent de change ; but we
must remember she was delivered from temptation by a fortune
equal to the proudest demands of her position. Had it been
otherwise -who shall say that the practical marquise, " for whom
the sharpest man of business was no more than a match," might
not have tried her luck at a game of " Turks " and " Suez " ?

Mme. de Liminges, with her worship of money to the ex-
clusion of all nobler things, stifling the mother in her to the
point of forcing a rich wife upon her already rich son, and crush-
ing his young love under her heel with no more compunction
than if it were a dead flower, represents a state of society from
which any excess that lust of gold can lead men into may be ex-
pected.

Throughout Mrs. Craven's novel every Frenchwoman
Eliane must be claimed as English shows a total absence of the
finer human sympathies ; they are actuated solely by material
considerations, devoid of all poetic sentiment, unmoved by any
passion except love of money ; but the perfection of their man-
ners is unsurpassable. They are always and under all circum-
stances thoroughbred to the finger-tips.

Constance de Longvilliers, having decided that Raynald
would " do," is stung to the quick by his rejection of her, and
she and her grandparents take flight from the castle in sudden
disgust and mortification, leaving the baffled marquise full of
rage at the failure of her scheme. But the way these angry

1 884.] FRENCH WOMEN FOR TRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. 1 73

ladies control their feelings, and smile and kiss and exchange
parting courtesies, is truly admirable. Plebeians, if they had the
soul of a crusader in their breasts, could not have behaved, under
the circumstances, as did these patricians. Nobody had slept
all night; everybody was angry, disappointed, and humiliated,
but each felt she had a part to play, and called up all her ener-
gies to play it well.

" Not a word was spoken on the subject of the marriage manque ; both
parties felt it imperative to dissemble the disappointment that had befallen
them, and all were de trop bonne compagnie not to play their part to the end
with perfect ease."

So the chatelaine and her company meet in the hall at Erlon,
and nothing can exceed the graciousness of the regrets expressed
by the departing guests, unless it be the calm urbanity of the
speeding hostess.

From first to last life is a comedy in which these ladies have
a rdle to sustain, and they carry their acting to such perfection
that it becomes difficult at times to detect the real from the
make-believe. As to the marquise, the strength of her art is
quite overpowering. The- proud mother hears of her son's mar-
riage with an Italian bohtfmienne, and she never winces; she
quietly keeps her room for the day, and reappears at dinner-time
just as usual and apologizes for her absence, which has been
caused " solely by a severe headache." It is a positive relief
when at last nature vindicates her rights by a stroke of paraly-
sis, and the superfine acting ends in a natural break-down. But
even in this extremity the marquise's cry still is, No surrender !
She recalls the son whose young life she has wrecked, but, far
from asking his forgiveness, she traces with her left hand the
words, " Ta mere te pardonne ! "

This climax gives the finishing touch to a study of great in-
terest and power. Raynald returns, and the marquise, after
having made herself and everybody else miserable for a spell,
makes them all happy, and has her reward in being surrounded
for the remainder of her days by her loving and dutiful children.

It would be unfair to dismiss the women of France with this
satire, and ungrateful, as well as unjust, to present Mme. de
Liminges as a universal type of her countrywomen. If we were
guilty of this injustice the mothers of France would stand forth
to contradict and to confound us. Those mothers are at this mo-
ment the chief bulwark of the nation against that cruel attack
upon its moral life which has been aptly called " la loi du mal-

1 74 FRENCHWOMEN FOR TRA YED BY A FRENCHWOMAN. [Nov.,

heur" They are fighting the good fight with the energy of
the Machabean mother.

Side by side with this valiant force of motherhood we have an-
other. After the mothers come the sisters the brave, sweet Sis-
ters of St. Vincent de Paul. Here, leaving the natural for the super-
natural with an Man peculiar to herself, la femme franqaise reaches
the impersonal in its most glorious and fertile development. Hu-
manity becomes her kindred and the wide world her country ; her
home is on the battle-field wherever the fight is going against the
weak ; she stands to her post through earthquakes and pestilence,
in " the wind that breaketh the rocks to pieces " as when " the
gentle air is blowing " ; nothing daunts, nothing disheartens her;
through monarchies and empires, revolutions and republics,
" ma sceur " pursues the calm, brave tenor of her way. The
rulers- of the hour may malign her mission, outrage her faith,
blaspheme her God ; they may drive her from the shelter of her
convent " ma sceur " takes no heed of it ; she knows neither
rancour nor surrender nor defeat; she never flags in her service
of love ; her hand keeps on the wheel, pushing it with her might,
pushing on the world to its appointed purpose, strengthening
and widening by individual sacrifice and the free consecration of
her liberty that basis of universal love on which society, so long
torn to pieces by antagonism and doubt, must finally be built up
again ; wiser than the wise men of her generation, who would
substitute the gospel of hate for the gospel of love, she is perpe-
tually calling the world to its own rescue, crying out to it to
come and multiply the loaves for the famishing multitude, strain-
ing heart and soul to thin the ranks of ignorance and hunger
those two mortal foes that are broadening the breach between
the brethren.

There are six and-thirty thousand of these women in France,
silent and beautiful lives, wasting themselves for others, striving
for peace ; striving to make men better and so to make them hap-
pier; striving against despair; making a barrier with their obedi-
ent self-devotion against the false enthusiasms and subversive
heroisms that are upsetting the balance everywhere ; striving by
humility and love to stem the stream of vanity that makes for
unbelief, the stream of hate that makes for murder; preaching
the true evangel of sweetness and light ; holding up the torch of
hope to those who are cowering in the dark places ; pleading for
the wrong-doers when they cannot right the wrong ; striving to
reconcile to life those whom its apparent cruelty is driving to
madness and revolt. The ruling authorities turn them out of

1884.] Two TRANSLATIONS OF THE "DIES IR&" 175

the hospitals and put hired servants in their places ; pestilence
breaks out, and the panic-stricken authorities call them back, and
they come, docile as a dog to his master's whistle. When some
admiring philanthropist inquired at the mother-house how many
sisters had died of cholera during the last outbreak of the pesti-
lence, the superior laughed ; she had no idea. " Nobody had ever
reckoned. The sisters always die of something ; it makes no dif-
ference what ; no record is kept of the malady, only of the death."
While France recruits this legion of angel-women in her
midst let no one despair of her ; she cannot die with this germ
of imperishable life in her breast.

TWO TRANSLATIONS OF THE " DIES IR^E."

DIES IR^E.

DAY of Vengeance, day of Fire,
When the Ages shall expire,
Whereof rang the Prophet's lyre !

Oh ! what Horror is before ;
When God sits in judgment o'er
The World that shall exist no more.

Hark! the trumpet's awful thunder
Bursts the bonds of death asunder ;
Lo ! the Dead rise up in wonder.

Death and Nature stand aghast,
As the Legions of the Past
Rise to meet their doom at last.

Forth is brought the blazoned scroll ;
From that dread Recording-roll
Shall be sentenced every soul.

Lo ! the Judge ascends the Throne :
All that's hidden is made known ;
Vengeance then demands its own !

Wretched me ! how shall I dare
Hope for friend, or offer prayer,
When the Saints are trembling there?

176 Two TRANSLATIONS OF THE "DIES IR&" [Nov.,

King of Majesty supreme,
Fount of Pity's cleansing stream,
Spare me, and my soul redeem !

Thou for all my sins hast died ;
In Thy Passion I confide,
O Thou who wast Crucified !

For me Thou hast suffered pain,
For me on the Cross wast slain ;
Shall Thy sacrifice be vain ?

Ere Thy righteous wrath consume,
While for Mercy still is room,
Save me from that day of doom.

Groaning with the guilt of years,
Flushed my face with sinful tears,
Calm, O God, the suppliant's fears.

Thou hast pardoned Magdalene,
And the dying thief made clean ;
On Thee, too, in Hope I lean.

My tongue can but feebly plead ;
Lord ! Thou knowest what I need,
From Hell's bondage to be freed.

Snatch me from the Guilty band ;
Place me on Thy great Right-hand,
Where the Saints of Ages stand.

While the Accursed, whelmed in shame,
Writhe amidst the torturing flame, -
Call me Blessed, in Thy name.

Prostrate here, O Lord, I pray ;

My heart in the dust I lay ;

Save me, in that Final Day !

Chorus :

When, O Lord, bowed down and weeping,
From the dust where he is sleeping,
Guilty man is called before Thee,
Spare him, save him, we implore Thee !

Response :

Holy Jesus, kindly heed :
Grant the mercy that they need !

All: Amen.

1884.] Two TRANSLATIONS OF THE "DIES IR&." 177

II.

- DIES IR/E.

THAT day of wrath, of God's dread ire,
Shall wrap the Universe in fire,
Foretold by Seer and Psalmist's lyre.

II.

What terror will the soul consume
When the Almighty Judge shall come
To give decree of bliss or doom 1

HI.

The last trump's peals with wondrous sound
Throughout the sepulchres resound
To gather all the throne around.

IV.

Nature and Death amazed will stand

When that innumerable band

Shall rise to answer God's command.

Then shall the Book of Heaven be brought,

Of all men's deeds omitting naught,

And judgment on the World be wrought.

VI.

Then, when the Judge His seat has ta'en,
All that was hidden shall be plain ;
No guilt shall unavenged remain.

VII.

What then shall I, unhappy, say,
To whom for succor shall I pray,
When scarce the just shall live that day ?

VIII.

King of tremendous majesty,

Who the redeemed dost rescue free,

Save me, O Fount of Piety !

VOL. XL. 12

178 Two TRANSLATIONS OF THE "DIES IR&" [Nov.,

IX.

Forget not, Blessed Jesus, then,

For me Thou sharedst the lot of men ;

Nor lose me in that day again.

Me Thou ail-wearily hast sought ;

Me, by Thy Passion, Thou hast bought :

Let not such sacrifice prove naught.

Avenging Judge, though just Thou be,
The gift of pardon grant to me
Before that Day of Destiny !

XII.

While like a guilty one I groan,
While in my face my crime is shown,
Spare, O my God, a suppliant one !

XIII.

Thou who from sin didst Mary free,
Who heardst the thief in agony
Thou, too, a hope hast given me.

XIV.

No prayers of mine can pardon earn,
But Thou, by grace, the doom must turn,
Lest in eternal fire I burn.

XV.

Among Thy sheep grant me to stand,
Removed from all the guilty band,
Established at Thine own right hand.

XVI.

While on the damned Thy judgments rest,
In flames of hell their guilt confessed,
Lord, call me home among the blest.

xvn.

Humble and prostrate, Lord, I pray ;
My heart in ashes here I lay ;
Oh ! save my soul in that great day.

Amen ! Amen !

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 179

SOLITARY ISLAND.

PART SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

NEW FACES,

THE attic chamber of Madame De Ponsonby Lynch's fash-
ionable boarding-house had one window with a view of all the
back windows of the neighboring block in its panes and a strip
of exceedingly plain sky above. On clear days the North River
was in sight, but at other times you might turn your eyes in all
directions and you could get nothing more beautiful to relieve
the aching sight, unless when night came and stars or moon threw
their mystic glamour over the scene. Moonlight falling on the
staring backs of tenement-houses is not a thrilling sight ; but
shimmering through the, attic window, faintly lighting up its
meagre furniture, mixing lights and shadows fancifully until the
narrow space becomes a stately castle-hallthen the moonlight
is a blessing. It had that effect in this particular attic, and, al-
though the air was cold enough to show your breath floating on
it, where the light fell it looked warm, and almost persuaded Paul
Rossiter, like the candle in Colonel Sellers' patent stove, that he
was warm and had not sense enough to know it. The room
might have been furnished furnished comfortably for all you
could see in the dim light. A spectral bed with a white coverlet
loomed silent and gigantic in one corner, a chair and desk lit-
tered with papers in another, and a stove sat reproachfully in the
middle place, colder than the moonlight, and darkly pensive. It
had an apologetic air about it, as if feeling it absurd that it should
be there at all on a cold night when a stove has most to say and
do in this world, and be as silent and moody as Othello with his
occupation gone. There was one picture on the wall, otherwise
bare. Some clothes hung on a rack stretched across the door.
These and the moonlight were all Paul Rossiter's possessions, and
he surveyed them cheerfully while blowing his cold fingers and
drumming his cold feet on the floor. He was writing, and wri-
ting was food and heat to him that is, when his manuscripts were
exchangeable into silver. Unfortunately they did not always
have that property. A sudden and imperative knock at the door.

i8o SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

startled him, and he became quiet, the knock continuing for some
time, and he continuing immovable.

" Open the door, b'y," said a rough, deep, middle-aged voice
outside. " I know ye're in sure the key's in the door. It's me,
Peter, and I have something to tell ye."

A long silence succeeded this outburst. Paul did not move,
but he was laughing quietly to himself.

" Well, all right, if ye say so," said the voice, " but it's mean of
ye, to be sure." Steps were heard retreating, then they stopped
and finally returned. " Wouldn't ye like to go an' see the ' Green
Bushes ' ? I've tickets for three, an' we'll have the oysters afther
at Barney's. Saturday night, ye know, b'y."

But the boy was still immovable, although he shook with deep
laughter at every new sentence, and perhaps regretted not be-
ing able to accept an invitation so suggestive oysters and the
theatre.

" No admission to Pether ! " said the voice in a mock soliloquy.
" Then as sure's me name's Carter I'll expose ye. D'ye think I
don't know why yer keepin' me out, hey ?"

Paul suddenly ceased laughing and listened, rigidly upright.

" D'ye think I don't know ye've no fire, or "

There was a sudden crash of furniture within, of hurrying
feet and a door unlocking, and in an instant the voice, or Peter
Carter, as he called himself, was violently pulled into the room.
The lamp which he carried went out in the roughness of the
encounter.

" Do you wish to blazon me all through the house ? " said Paul
hotly ; " do you"

"There was no other way ofgettin' in," said Peter; "and then
ye needn't be so proud. Not a soul but knows the poor young man
in the attic is as poor as the poetry he writes, an' freezes as often
as he composes ! Not that they respect ye any the less, for if ye
were rich as Croesus a poet's a hybrid thing in New York. Let
me light the lamp."

Peter, having performed that operation successfully, relit his
pipe and sat down in the glare of light, composed and happy. He
was a short, stout, bow-legged man of fifty, with a bullet-head and
a moon-like face. His hair, short and gray, stood straight as quills
upon the fretful porcupine, his under-lip protruded, his mouth
was very homely, a scar half-way between tip and bridge of his
pug-nose gave that feature of his face an ugly prominence, but his
eyes were large and blue and sharp-looking, and would have been
handsome but for the smoky eye-ball. Peter's general appear-

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 181

ance was that of a red-faced, hearty farmer given to social cour-
tesies and rolling in happiness. He was round-limbed and round-
bodied, rolled in his walk like a sailor, and, as we shall see later
on, was fond of a good song, a good story, and a good glass of
punch. He took his seat, smiling at the angry yet half-amused
face which Paul had turned on him.

" Be George, Paul ! " said he, with a malevolent grin, " but ye're
the very spit of a poet, with yer long, yellow hair, and yer blue
eyes an' melancholy face ! An't ye, b'y ? It's nice to look at ye,
it is. An' sure it's not mad ye are ? Ye mightn't have let me in
if ye didn't want to ! I don't ask to come inter yer ould freezin'
room when I have wan meself twice as good an' warm. I'll go
now, if ye say so."

He made a pretended start and flourish with his legs, but did
not move, and, his jovial leer failing to charm the frown from the
young man's face, he grew indignant.

" Well, stay mad, if ye are so ! What the divil do I care fer
you er yer madness ? D'ye s'pose I owe anything to you er to
the likes o' ye ? Not a snap o' me finger, ye half-starved verse-
moulder."

Paul laughed at this outburst, and Peter himself joined in it
and roared for a minute after Paul ceased, so proud was he to
have succeeded in removing the displeasure of his young friend.

" But it's too bad, Peter," said the poet deprecatingly, " that
you should let the whole house know I had no wood "

" Ah, bother, man ! What d'ye care for the whole house, er
the whole block, er the whole city ? Sure they know it already.
And it's yer own fault that ye haven't wood and candles ! Plenty
o' money, b'y, in this ould sheepskin o' mine ! Call on Peter any
time yer in want o' fifty dollars, an' it's yours. Plenty o' money
all over the world, plenty to eat at Madame Lynch's.

" ' Never think of to-morrow,
With a smile banish sorrow.' "

And Peter, jumping up, executed a remnant of a jig through the
room, tumbling breathless into his chair afterwards.

" I was thinking," said Paul gravely, " that I would borrow a
little from you " Peter looked suddenly indifferent " and if you
could let me have five dollars to buy some wood and necessaries
I wouldn't mind."

" Wood and necessaries," mocked Peter gaily " nice things
fer a young man like you, with strong muscles an' warm blood,
to be thinkin' of. I tell ye yer twice as healthy in a room like

182 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

this than if ye had a stove blazin' up to heaven. And candles
hurt the eyes ! Ye shouldn't read after daylight, or use the eyes
at all. See, now ! Doctor Brown says that the man who uses
his eyes "

" That isn't the point," Paul interrupted. " I asked you for
five dollars."

" Doctor Brown says that the man "

" No, no ; stick to the point, Peter : will you lend me the five
dollars ? "

j" Lend ye five dollars ? " said Peter, with a surly air. " Ye're
mighty anxious to run in debt, an't ye? An' I'd look well
lendin' a man money that can't pay Madame Lynch his board. I
have enough to do to support meself. Go and write for the news-
papers something plain an' sensible on the Know-nothings or or
Ireland there's a grand subject fer ye an' leave off readin' an'
writin' stuff! There's a pattern fer ye on the first floor the
young lawyer, only been in the city a year, and is spoken of for
Assemblyman already. He looks like ye, every wan says. May
be yer related ? "

Paul sat eyeing his companion with amused disdain. He was
accustomed to the little contradictions of his rough character,
and had asked for the money only for the purpose of putting his
wordy generosity to shame. Peter was not at all uncharitable,
although somewhat stingy at times, but this defect arose rather
from a constitutional want of money and the consequent neces-
sity of hoarding his little than from any inherent niggardliness.
As he turned the subject of conversation when Paul seemed ear-
nest in his demand for help, the young man was not unwilling
to let it pass.

" I heard that assertion made about that lawyer's likeness to
me," said he, " but I have never seen him. I fear you are fooling
me about him. Now let us see how much of a resemblance there
is between us. 1 have yellow hair, blue eyes, light complexion ;
what has he ?"

" Brown hair, brown eyes, and light complexion," said Peter
hesitatingly.

" I wear a moustache, and my nose is Grecian as well as my
face."

" He wears a full, short beard, and his nose is straight, if that's
what you call Grecian, Paul."

" Where's the resemblance, then ? "

" I don't know; I don't think there's any. When you come
to particulars you have us all. I had him down for the ( Green

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 183

Bushes ' and the oysters. I thought you might like to know him.
Be George, Paul ! he might get ye a lift on some paper, for he's
a rising man, makes speeches that take down the ward meet-
ings. You'd like to know him, you would. He's a Catholic of
the strict kind, I think. Sure I know ye wouldn't like that, but
a little of yer company, yer poetry, and my punch 'ud soon cure
him of pious leanings. God help us all, but it's leanin' all the
other way I am since I left the ould sod for New York an' its
vile whiskey. I feel mighty dhry, Paul, hey, b'y? Don't be
puttin' such a long face on ye at this hour o' the night! My, but
it's the mild, purty face, anyhow. If some good girl gets it in
her eye, sure it'll never leave it again."

" Is it the eye which the lover's image rests in ?" said Paul.

" Metaphorically speaking, of course. I was loved meself
wanst. See now, I, Peter Carter, was wanst loved by a female,
and sure I am she loves me still."

" She has your image still in her eye, I suppose. What a fate !
A living photograph of the modern Falstaff in her liquid eye ! She
wears the willow still, I'll be bound."

"Ay does she," said Peter, with a grunt of satisfaction, "an'
shall wear it to her grave, for all o' me. But come, is it to the
'Green Bushes' we're going to see the lovely Celeste pout bad
English from Killarney to the back woods, and murder probability
by the hour, then to eat the pearls of the American ocean?"

He smacked his lips and laughed at himself afterwards.

"Come on," said Paul suddenly, " I'm ready."

Peter bounded off his chair and seized the lamp.

" The lawyer has this Saturday night to himself," said lie. " I'll
go down and invite him, or will you?"

" Will I ? " said Paul. " You idiot ! I invite a total stranger !
Where's your etiquette or common sense? "

"Just so," said Peter meditatively. "Til see him meself."

He went down the stairs with a slow step and a sober air, as if
the task of inviting the strange lawyer was not a pleasant one ;
and Paul, watching him until the light had faded to the first floor,
saw him stand hesitatingly there, then retreat and return a few
times, and finally go slowly to his own room.

" O thou mass of contradiction ! " he soliloquized, leaning over
the stairway. " Thus Madame Celeste and the American pearl
fade from before my vision."

He had not been over-anxious to enjoy either, and returned
to his cold room to resume his writing, and blow his fingers, and
stamp his feet, and draw inspiration from the moonlight, which

1 84 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

shone more brilliantly as the night strengthened. A twenty-cent
piece lying on the table gave him a new thought.

" The Fraulein will not come to-night," he said, " and I sup-
pose I might as well invest in wood and tallow as let it lie there."

He donned his overcoat and went out hastily. Down on the
first floor he met Peter just coming out of the lawyer's room, his
face aglow with pleasure. He seized Paul suddenly and with a
jerk landed him inside the door.

" Here's the twin," said he. " Be George ! I've fixed it all, an'
I'll leave it to your own mothers if ye aren't as like as sun an'
moon. Wallace, this is Rossiter, an' I'm Carter, an' we'll raise
That's right, Paul ; make yourself at home."

The two gentlemen thus roughly brought together smiled
and acknowledged the introduction. Then their eyes curiously
sought each other because of the report of their physical resem-
blance. Paul saw a tall, elegant man of singularly easy and grace-
ful manner, having an intellectual face half-covered by a beard.
He judged that Florian might be somewhat reserved in his dis-
position, and perhaps phlegmatic and cold, but there was no mis-
taking the high purpose of the man nor the breadth of his cha-
racter. The poet liked the politician at the first glance. And
Florian, now metamorphosed into a metropolitan young man, was
glad to meet with a face so very different from those he had
already seen since his arrival. He thought he recognized the
poet, and was flattered that people saw a resemblance to Paul
Rossiter in himself.

Peter meanwhile, in the full triumph of having brought this
meeting about, w'as amusing himself through the room with the
inspection of every article in it, and freely commented on objects
worthy of his notice. The furnishing of Florian 's apartment
was luxurious and appealed to the eye wonderfully. The lead-
ing color was a soft shade of green, fading into black or rising
into white, with bits of statuary here and there, and a few water-
scenes upon the wall. Peter had seen the room before, but had
not been favored with a close inspection, and was making the
most of his present opportunity. " Here we are," said he reck-
lessly, "transported from a garret to a palace" Paul stared
"and all on account of the resemblance between a poet and a
politician ! Paul, it's pretty complete, isn't it? It must be a nice
thing to be a politician to afford such luxuries, and not poor
devils like you and rne, writin* bad poetry and editorials hey,
b'y ? Don't ye feel proud of it?'' said he, turning to Florian.
. " Very," said Florian, " since you think so highly of it."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 185

" There's only wan thing lackin'," said Peter " it's rather
dhry." And he twirled his thumbs and laughed at his own au-
dacity. Florian laughed, too, and went to a closet where the
moisture usually gathered " an arrangement to save the fur-
niture," he said gravely.

Peter was suddenly offended.

" We don't dhrink, Paul nor I," said he moodily. " Don't be
takin' up a poor old fellow's gay words so seriously. Don't ye
know a man has two meanin's for everything he says? Ye're a
politician an' ought to know that, I'm sure. An' if ye don't it's
not speakin' well for ye."

Florian, considerably surprised and mortified, was putting
back the bottles on the shelf when Peter anticipated the move-
ment by saying:

" Of course, if ye have them out now, ye may as well let them
stay, an' we'll get thirsty, may be, looking at them. It's not often
we dhrink, Paul or I, but brains will run out, you see, and, like
plants, need moisture and sunlight now an' then."

Florian began at once to understand his visitor, and without
further ceremony placed wine and brandy convenient to Peter's
elbow.

" Shall I help you to some wine ? " he said politely.

" Wine ? " said Peter, with a cough. " Ah, bother, man !
what d'ye think I'm made of? Well, yes, I think I will, if ye
say so," he added, seeing that Florian had poured it out quietly.
" I dunno, though. Had I better, Paul ? Paul the pensive and
poetical, with his long face and yellow hair ! I don't think I
will. I won't ! It's late, an' it isn't good to be dhrinkin' before
goin' to bed ! "

Florian, amused, assisted Paul to some wine, and drank with-
out saying more to Peter, who sat with his thumbs crossed and a
gloomy expression on his spongy face.

" I am glad to have met you," said Florian. " Press of busi-
ness only prevented me from introducing myself long ago. I
heard so often of our peculiar resemblance that I was curious to
see you, and no doubt you had similar feelings."

" Yes, indeed," said Paul ; " and I often thought it strange we
should have been a month in the same house without meeting."

" There's a wide distance between the garret and the best
parlor," Peter broke in ; " an' seein' yez haven't the politeness to
ask the old fellow, I'll take on me own account a mouthful o' the
tears of Erin. I hold a middle place," he added, as he held up
his glass to the light and eyed it moistly. " I'm the ground, as it

i86 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

were, on which ye two meet and exchange views of each other.
Well, here's to your future joys an' sorrows ; may the wan
strangle the other m ! "

The last sound was the expression of Peter's satisfaction as
the fiery liquid, swelling in his throat, bulged his round eyes out-
ward ; he shook his legs once or twice and then burst into a roar
of laughter. His rough good-humor and oddities went very far
to put the young men on an instant and happy level of con-
fidence. It was impossible to sit so near a fire and not get warmed,
and in a very short time all stiffness was gone and they were
talking with the freedom and assurance of old friends. Mean-
while Peter fell asleep beside the tears of Erin.

" Since our friend is gone the way of slumber," said Florian,
" would you mind taking a walk before bed-time ? "

" With all my heart," Paul answered. " Let Peter stay just
where he is till we return. He's an odd old fellow, isn't he ?
And yet so kindly and jolly that you will forget annoying oddi-
ties and faults for the sake of his company."

" I have met him often enough," Florian said as they reached
the street, " but never paid much attention to him nor he to me
until to-night. I shall know him better in the future."

"I met him when I first ^ame here, scribbling, like myself, for
a living. We are of the same craft and took to each other on
that account ; and he has been of use to me in such matters as in-
troductions to editors and publishers."

Paul did not add that no good had as yet come of these intro-
ductions, for Peter usually spoiled any incipient favor by his
own after-rashness and headlong determination to push by main
force his young friend to the topmost round of fortune's ladder.

They had an animated talk from the boarding-house to the
Battery, and came quite unexpectedly on the open space looking
out on the bay so suddenly that an abrupt pause in the flow of talk
passed unobserved, and in an instant the minds of both were far
away from each other and the scene. Whatever Paul's thoughts
might have been, Florian at least found himself looking with in-
ward eye over the St. Lawrence on such a night as this with feel-
ings of sorrow for the " might-have-been." The waters of the
bay were tumbling about in rude, irregular fashion, like boys at
play, and across them floated spectral vessels and dark shadows.
At this hour the same moon was shining on a waste of ice and
snow in Clayburg. The lights twinkled from the snow-covered
houses, and far away the islands stood dark and ghostly. Scott
was there in his loneliness, reading in his cabin, or spearing pick-

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 187

erel by the light of a red fire ; and Ruth, the dear girl ah ! well,
it was a little foolish, perhaps, to rankle the old sore for the sake
of reminiscence.

They returned home still talking, and parted at Florian's
door. " I am not here one-third of my time," said he to Paul
as he bade him good-night. "My library is exceptionally good,
and if you will take advantage of it the premises are yours
every day while I am absent."

Paul, thanking him warmly, accepted the kindness. On the
second floor he met Peter with a lamp in his hand and a handful
of coppers.

" Ye asked me for five dollars, b'y," said Peter sleepily ;
" would ye moind takin* it in coppers ? "

With a laugh Paul ran up to his attic and left Peter to himself.

CHAPTER II.
THE POET IN A GOLDEN CLIME WAS BORN.

THE kindly offer of Florian to his poet-friend that he should
make use of his library at all times, in which offer he veiled
delicately his desire to make the attic less miserable, was eagerly
accepted by Paul Rossiter. In Florian's room he now passed
the greatest part of his leisure time, finding among the thou-
sand volumes scattered there his greatest pleasures. It sur-
prised and pained him to see that very little distinction was made
with regard to the orthodoxy of writers in the selection of
books. Infidelity and Protestantism were well represented on the
shelves, and volumes whose poisonous properties seemed almost
to destroy their own pages with virulence and bigotry were
common. He spoke of it wonderingly to Florian.

" Well," said Florian, " I found, on coming here and plunging
into politics, that it would be useful to be acquainted with all
literature as well as the Catholic purely, and that our enemies
had a side to the argument which might be worth knowing. So
I bought everything that came in my way, and read it merely for
the sake of knowing personally the strong and weak points of an
opponent. I can tell you it is a great help, and particularly in
politics and society."

" But wouldn't you be afraid a little to handle such poisons?
Our faith, after all, is as much an object of temptation as our
purity, and must be well guarded. Nothing so easy to lose, no-
thing so hard to recover, as faith."

1 88 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

" If this is the best argument the enemies of our faith have,"
waving his hand towards the book-case, " I shall never lose it.
Of course I would not recommend the reading of such books to
every one, but in political life it is almost a necessity to know
these things if you expect to rise."

" And you expect, of course," laughed Paul.

"Some day," said Florian, " I shall be well, never mind
what, but you shall write my epic, and, like Achilles, I shall go
down to posterity embalmed in verses immortal."

Paul was hardly satisfied with his reasons for reading so many
dangerous books. He began to consider him as not so strict a
Catholic as Peter had described him, and wondered, after the
shivering which seized himself when reading a blasphemous para-
graph of Heine, whether any soul, young and unspiritual, could
bear such a shock and many like them without serious injury.

Among the pictures which hung on the walls was one that
brought a sudden surge of feeling to the poet's heart. It bore
his soul away from the luxurious room to scenes where life went
on as in the patriarchal time before books were invented,
and when man lived in daily and open intercourse with nature.
Florian kn\v something of water-colors, and had painted a
sketch of Clayburg bay and the distant islands under the first
burst of a spring morning. A boat was putting off from the
shore. A young man stood at the bow arranging some ropes,
while in the stern were two girls in yachting costume, whose
sweet faces seemed to be looking smilingly into one's own. The
dark-haired, dark-eyed witch in white was waving a handkerchief
coquettishly at an unseen observer ; her companion, with her hands
clasped over one knee, was looking dreamily in the same direc-
tion. With this face the poet was captivated, and recognized in
it a more animated description of a face which, hanging over the
book-case, had already won his heart and began to trouble his
dreams. He mused over it often and wove fancies at night con-
cerning the maid dangerous fancies, for it was possible that this
face holding so prominent a position in the room was the beloved
of Florian.

Musing, writing, and reading were the pleasant sunshine of
Paul's life, and in this room the sunshine fell brightest. Often
his musings were interrupted by the quick opening of a door
and the rush of childish feet, and his neck was hugged by a
curious specimen of an infant before he was well aware of her
presence.

" Ach ! " was the first exclamation, " is this the Fraulein ? "

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 189

" Yaw, Herr Paul," was the invariable reply, " das is me, de
Fraulein."

" Stand back and let me look at you," said the poet ; " let me
see how mother has arranged you this morning."

The child was a rather handsome eight-year-old, blue-eyed
and yellow-haired, and most wonderfully arrayed in a mixed
German and American costume. Her short hair was braided
perpendicularly and ornamented with white bows of preposter-
ous size, while a blue velvet dress, white pantalets, and blue slip-
pers with agonizing red rosettes completed the dress.

" That will do, Fraulein," he said gravely ; " I think now you
look like the president's daughter." And as this was the highest
criticism he could pass on her, the Fraulein was made happy for
the moment.

" How is the mother," was the next question " the good mo-
ther that brought the Fraulein from heaven to Germany, and
from there to America on the ship ? "

" Veil," said the Fraulein briefly, " mit prayers to gif for Herr
Paul unt all his frents."

" That is right," said the poet, holding up a twenty-cent piece.
" Take this, Fraulein, for her goodness, and see that the good
mother has everything needful. Now sing."

At this command the Fraulein opened her mouth and emitted
a series of sounds so sweet and powerful that one looked in as-
tonishment at the small, grotesque figure for an explanation.
The Fraulein did the whole with no concern save for Herr Paul,
whose mobile face showed very plainly whether she was doing
well or ill, and on every occasion her efforts were gauged by the
poet's expression. The child sang in German, French, and En-
glish as Paul bade her, and with all the simplicity of a pupil and
an innocent who looked for no praise save from her master.

" Very good, Fraulein ; that will do for to-day." And she van-
ished down the stairs. Through the same performance she went
daily for Paul, received her money, and retired unconscious that
the poet went without light, wood, and many another necessary
for the purpose of keeping her sick mother and herself in some
kind of comfort.

" It's not a bad investment, however," Paul thought. " Such
a voice as that will one day be a gold-mine."

The singing of the Fraulein usually brought a card from
Madame De Ponsonby Lynch, with a request for an interview,
generally granted. It was the same old story board to be paid
for and no money on hand. Madame was a large woman phy-

190 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

sically, and, as far as a fashionable disposition would allow, large-
hearted. She liked the yellow-haired poet, and was not at all
anxious that he should pay her weekly dues. But Paul, though
airy in his disposition, was retiring in his present circumstances
and could not be forced into a ttJte-a-te'te with a female while his
clothes looked so very poorly ; therefore madame pretended a
feeling of nervousness that he would run away without m.aking
payment for the attic, and was favored in consequence with
many ceremonious visits and many insights into Paul's character
and circumstances which he never dreamed of giving her. He
regarded her, in his innocent way, as a stout, hard-fisted old lady
with a soft spot in her heart, which periodically he was bound
to find ; and congratulated himself on finding it regularly and
succeeding thereby in keeping poor shelter over his unlucky
head. Then Frances, her daughter, had a very sweet face and a
bright disposition, and was not unwilling, with all his poverty,
to talk literature occasionally and let him play on her piano
when strangers were not present. The boarding-house was ex-
tremely select. Paul wondered that he ever had the audacity
to apply for the garret at a place where presumably a garret
bed-room would not exist, but in the first setting out on a lite-
rary life he had thought the time would be short until his means
would more than match the best parlor in the house.

"O Mr. Rossiter!" was madame's first cry, and a very
severe one, when he entered in response to one of the usual invi-
tations, " here I have waited another three days over the time
for your board; and yet I have to send you my card and ask for
another interview."

" And I am always so willing to give it," said Paul reverently,
" for I have nothing else to give."

"Well, well, well!" And she tapped her pencil on the desk,
and put on her eye-glasses to examine the account for the twen-
tieth time.

" I have taught all the gentlemen so to remember the right
day that it seems hard to fail with you. Four weeks, Mr. Rossi-
ter, and twenty dollars due."

The poet's face grew longer at mention of so large a sum.

" I'm sure I did my best," said he. " But these people don't
appreciate genius. If you were the publisher, now, madame, I
would have no hesitation. You understand me, I think, and you
would make others understand me. But in these hard, matter-of-
fact days poets will starve somewhat easier than in Queen Anne's
time. I think of giving it up and going back to the country."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 191

" It would be best," said madame, " but then there is no hurry.
If you could oblige me with what is owing "

Paul shook his head mournfully.

" How can you expect it," said he, " when a man gets but
five dollars for the labor of weeks? If I chose to write poetry
of the band-box kind ten minutes' work, you know or write son-
nets on the editor's generosity, then I might earn a little. But I
never will prostitute genius that way, not even to pay my debts."

" Is it prostituting genius to pay your debts? " said madame.

" Perhaps not," Paul answered ; " but fancy an eagle running
with the hens after a grain of corn."

Madame laughed and Paul felt ashamed of himself.

" I might shovel coal," said he, "and be dependent on no one
save hospital charity, or wear my life out in a shop as clerk.
But I only ask time, madame, only time ; and as I paid you in the
past, so shall I pay you in the future. I need time."

" Money is so scarce," began madame, who liked to hear him
plead.

" I have always heard the rich say that. Now, I think it plen-
tiful, and it is. And how regularly you must get your money
from your wealthy lawyers, and doctors, and statesmen. O
madame ! do you stand in such need of a paltry twenty dollars
that you call money scarce ? And what would you do with your
attic if I went? Poets are scarcer than dollars, you know. And
when shall you have the distinction of harboring a poet in your
attic again ?"

The matter ended, of course, as Paul knew it would, and he
went away smiling, yet sad, to wonder at the prospects of get-
ting the twenty dollars. Peter was parading the third-floor
corridor in visible impatience.

" I was lookin' for ye, b'y. See what I have for ye ! Smelt,
the publisher of the Tom-Cat, wants a poem of three hundred
lines "

" Why do you bring me such commissions ? " said Paul,
flushing. " Smelt and his tribe of writers should be at the bot-
tom of the bay ! "
" But see"

" I won't see ! Write them yourself."

" Well, all right ; only I can't, ye know ! And then money
is good under all circumstances where it's needed, and poethry
is harmless even in the Tom-Cat. If I knew ye wouldn't do it,
sure I could have got ye a twenty, ay, a fifty-dollar piece from
Corcoran. He was speakin' to me this very mornin' about ye

1 92 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

writin' an article on the battle of Waterloo, an' I, having the
commission o' Smelt under me arm one hundred and fifty dol-
lars for three hundred lines told him it was no use runnin' after
ye any more ; that Smelt was willin' "

Paul groaned in despair.

" You told Corcoran that Paul Rossiter was become one of
the Smelt tribe ! May perdition light on you, Peter (God for-
give me !), that thus my good name should be destroyed ! "

He seized his hat and rushed down to the street, Peter fol-
lowing at a distance and expostulating to the empty air. Cor-
coran was soon found and listened in coolness and mistrust to
Paul's denial of any connection with the Tom-Cat.

" Of course it is not for me to throw obstacles in your way,"
said he.- " Money is money wherever it is made, and you have
a right to choose your market. But we could not think of em-
ploying any one who could prostitute himself to such a service.
I am very sorry that the commission has been given out. I
should have been happy to let you have it."

" Is there nothing else at present ? " said Paul laughingly.
" A bill or two would not burden my mind at the present mo-
ment."

" Nothing," said the publisher frigidly, and Paul sadly recog-
nized that one of the best of his many feeble sources of revenue
was lost to him. " Nor can I say at what time we would be
likely to have work for you."

" O Peter, Peter!" murmured the poet, as with a jaunty,
careless air he left the publisher and sought another in haste.
He' had a weird romance just fashioned out of his fanciful brain,
and was anxious to dispose of it. It had been gotten up with all
a poet's care, and he was sure that some one would think it worth
twenty dollars.

" Very nice indeed, and very creditable," was the publisher's
comment, " but hardly suitable for our columns. Now, if the
idea itself were taken and stripped of the gevv-gaws of lan-
guage " Paul winced visibly " it might do."

" Would he do it ? " he thought. " Would he condescend to
suit his cloth to so vulgar a measure ? " He sat .down with pen
and paper, and in a few hours had all its beauty shorn away, and
his story, deformed and ugly, was soon standing under the cold
wind of outside criticism. What perverted tastes ! It suited,
and he went home twenty dollars richer and able to pay half his
board-bill. Passing through one of the poor streets and thence
into a dusty lane where congregated the miserable poor, he

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 193

came upon the scene of a recent destruction of furniture. A
drunken fellow had made a wild display of muscle on his own
property and had thrown the remains into the street. Among
them sat a neat little woman weeping, while on the remaining
chair was a consumptive boy of fifteen, pale, wan, and mourn-
ful, a handsome lad with hair curling close to his head, and de-
spair and sorrow written over his poor face and dulling his heavy
eyes. A keen pain darted through the poet's heart.

" Death is hard enough," he thought, "without adding such
misery to it."

He talked a moment to the sick boy, who, seeing the hand-
some youth was interested, kindly told him their sad story.
Father was good mostly, but now and then drink got the better
of him, and this was the usual result. He would be sorry for it
next day and would soon mend matters.

" It will take a long time to mend these," said Paul, pointing
to the broken furniture ; and then he saw that the boy had
painted the picture too brightly, for he grew silent and a shade
of deeper despair settled on his face.

" You are not well," he said quietly ; " I am sorry for you."

" I will never be well, sir, and the sooner I go the better,
don't you think ? "

" Not at all," said the poet, laughing, and yet he was sick to
see so much hopelessness in one so young. " Life is pleasant,
even to the sick, and the world is full of the best people, if you
happen to meet them. Take this" and a ten dollar bill was
slipped into the boy's hand " and never give up, never be any
sadder than you can help. Out of your very misfortune God will
raise you up joys that could not come in any other way. Don't
you see? This will buy you better furniture; and you shall
hear from me again."

He did not wait to be thanked or look back as he walked
away.

At the next grocery he bought wine, delicacies, and some
papers at a news-stand, and sent all to the sick boy.

" If only to be happy for one day," said he, " wi
near him; if only to know that there is one soul wy
misery and thinks of him dying! Madame De Poj
temporarily and I must freeze thank God ! with th<
strength to stand the freezing."

He went home with tears in his eyes for the sorro^
of the boy, and as he went a new resolve took shape in his mind.
Five dollars a week was too much to pay when one could live
VOL. XL. 13

194 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

more cheaply, if at the expense of his position in the estima-
tion of the boarders and of madame. There were lunch-houses
where the poor congregated. He was poor, and why not con-
gregate also in the same places ? he said humorously. The
Fraulein was a heavy expense to him, while such incidents as
that of the morning were distressing to his purse and were in-
creasing. He went in to see madame on his arrival.

" I am living too high for my means," said he. " and I must
economize. Here are five dollars on my account, the rest to be
forthcoming shortly ; but you must not look for it too anxiously.
If you could give me the attic for a certain sum, and let me
board elsewhere, I think it would do very well."

Madame looked grave and seemed on the point of refusing,
when Frances came in with a rush and " mamma " on her lips,
but stopped, apologized, and was withdrawing.

"Come and plead for me," said Paul, who was a great favor-
ite with the girl and knew it. " 1 have asked a favor and your
mother is going to say ' no.' '

" Just imagine, Frances," said madame calmly, " Mr. Rossiter
wishes to retain his room and board elsewhere. How can we
permit it? "

" Why not, mamma?" said she. " I know it is the rule to do
differently, and that you have never broken through it yet, but
then "

Not having any reason to offer, she stopped short and looked
at Paul to continue. She was a simple-hearted girl, with re-
markably bright, soft eyes, and her character clearly pictured in
her frank, sweet face, which Paul in his weaker moments often
Allowed to weave itself into his fancies with the face of the girl
who sat in the yacht dreaming. He was young, however, and
faces of this kind were apt to haunt him.

" But then," added he, " what will you do without your
poet? "

" Has he ever been of any earthly use to us ? " said madame,
with unusual severity. " Have we ever seen anything from his
muse to justify his reputation ? "

" I have," said Frances " just the sweetest things ! " But
Paul was suddenly downcast even under this criticism ; for ma-
dame looked portentous, and "just the sweetest" was not the
kind of poetry he looked upon as worthy of his genius.

"Well, I am not disposed to be too hard," said madame;
but if you ask favors, Mr. Rossiter, you must expect to grant
them in turn."

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 195

" Certainly," said he, " that is not to be doubted."

" I shall permit you to retain the room, then, but I shall ask
a favor of you soon a reasonable one, mind which I expect to
have granted immediately."

Mr. Rossiter was missed thenceforward from the table, and,
in addition to cold, want of light, and stinted means, he had now
to undergo the daily martyrdom of a cheap lunch in cheap quar-
ters and among the cheapest sort of a crowd. The sight of a
boy's sad face, however, would have made even real hardships
delightful. Nor did his numerous poor ever suspect how much
this free-hearted, gentle, handsome young fellow suffered for
their sake. Peter remorsefully saw how matters stood and an-
noyed his friend by shouting " mea culpa" and beating his
breast whenever they chanced to meet. He could see no better
way of atoning for his disastrous interference than by going in
person to Corcoran.

" See, now," said the journalist when he had broached the
matter, " the b'y could make three times more writin' for the
Tom-Cat than for respectable dimmyjohns like yerself. An'
rather than do it he is eatin' Dutch sassage an' black bread in
Bowery cellars mornin', noon, an' night, until there won't be a
shred of his imagination but what'll be soured from it. I took
him the papers from Smelt, a commission worth a hundred and
fifty, an' says he, ' To the divil with you an' the Tom-Cat? says he ;
' you should be in the bottom of the bay,' says he. Now, it isn't
for a great, rich, stingy boccagh like you to be hard on an innocent
lad that's got more brains in his little finger, Corcoran, than the
whole tribe of black-hearted publishers has in their heads. Oh !
I know ye ; ye can't fool Peter

" See here, Carter," said Corcoran roughly, " what do you
want ? If Rossiter has been harmed in any way we are willing
to repair the injury, but let him come himself and settle it. We
don't waste our time in hearing abuse from such as you."

" I didn't abuse you," said Peter stoutly. " Did I abuse you ?"
he added, with a look of child-like amazement. Corcoran
laughed a hard, irritating laugh.

"All right, if you say so," said Peter, bridling, "and don't
think I care ten pins for you and your fire-eatin' gang. Yez are
a brood o' vipers a brood, Corcoran."

He walked to the door, stopped long enough to say, " Why,
man, yer a whole brood yerself," and with this parting shot
plunged into the street.

" O God help me!" groaned the wretched Peter as an hour

196 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

afterwards he realized how completely he had muddled the
affair and sunk Paul deeper in the publisher's displeasure.

CHAPTER III.
THE NEW LIFE AND THE NEW MAN.

A FEW months of companionship placed the poet and the poli-
tician on a footing of intimacy, and insensibly began those con-
fidences between the friends which make such an intimacy so
delightful the readiness to ask advice and assistance in present
difficulties, and to receive them ; the relating of future hopes and
aspirations with the view of receiving the confirmation of the
other's approval ; and the youthful speculation on questions and
matters which men never speak of to outsiders, except in a jok-
ing fashion. They never went beyond New York, strangely
enough, in all their confidences, and neither was possessed of a
single fact as yet in the other's past life ; so that the story of the
water-color on the wall was yet untold, and the fate of the yacht-
ing party remained a painful mystery to Paul and induced many
a poetic fancy and many a poetic effusion from his sentimental
brain. They had their opinions of each other also as time deep-
ened their intimacy. Florian had always prided himself on his
ability to read character, and, in truth, he had something to be
proud of, although he made mistakes often enough. He looked
on Paul as a young man of natural poetic talent, perhaps genius,
with strong, delicate sentiments and a fondness for the ideal a
man who would make a good friend, but not a very useful one,
since he was of that sort which expects every one to be useful to
them, and who indeed do reflect a glory on their helpers. That
idea of utility was getting to be a very powerful one with him
unconsciously. As to the past life of Paul he never thought but
once, and his conclusion was that the youth had come up as a
flower, cared for tenderly, without much experience, doomed to
make no impression on the world except to add to its momen-
tary beauty. He had no past, in fact, that could have left any
bitter traces on his soul. All this went to show just how very
little Florian really knew of his friend.

; Paul thought Florian a genius of a high order and looked up
to him. A man with a powerful array of statistics in his head ;
who could get up at a moment's notice, and, cool, self-possessed,

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 197

clear-headed, talk sound sense for an hour; whose aim was
already the Presidency, if he never said as much, and who was
beginning in the right way to reach it; who was clearly a gentle-
man of the very highest order, inasmuch as adherence to princi-
ple and religion was added to outward courtesy of a superior
kind, who was a man among men. It pleased the poet to discover
that Florian had a past of which he did not like to speak, and
of which there were many traces in his character. When he
looked at the yachting picture Paul saw two expressions in his
face that were eloquent of a misery somewhat softened by time.
When his gaze rested on the portrait on the book-case he saw
the same look of pain succeeded by one of resignation, and even
of hope. How quickly and justly the youth formed his conclu-
sions ! There was a resemblance in Florian to the girl who stood
in the yacht waving her handkerchief, and probably she was a rela-
tive whom some misfortune had snatched from him for ever.
But as to the other, who had no resemblance to him, she was
perhaps his affianced, and circumstances which he hoped to over-
come kept them apart. Paul laughed a little at his own infer-
ences and the pain which the last one in particular gave him.

While they were gradually drawing more closely together
the private affairs of each never troubled the other. Florian
knew of the garret, but did not think it his business to interfere
on the score of affection, and, moreover, he was not so ready at
the present hour to think of others as formerly. Politics natu-
rally more than most professions generates this selfishness. He
had acquired his share already. And Paul, knowing the extrem-
ity of his own circumstances, felt that to relate them even to his
friend was only asking for an assistance which he did not abso-
lutely need. One evening Florian came forth in evening cos-
tume, which Paul, not having any of his own, always admired.

" There is to be a mass-meeting to-night in O'Connell's behalf,"
said he ; " would you like to come? I am the speaker."

" And I suppose England will receive the usual Irish cook-
ing," said Paul, with some contempt. " I am English by
descent."

" What a misfortune ! " Though gravely said, Paul knew
that he was laughing. " Will it do England any harm if she is
shown her own misdeeds and made to atone for them ? Besides,
it has become a political necessity in this country to propitiate
the mere Irish. We have them solidly on our side and we
must keep them there. Come and see how we do it."

" I thought you were Irish," said Paul, half surprised.

198 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

" By descent," said Florian, laughing again ; " but that does
not make me a sympathizer the more. Justice is the point, and
if I were a Hottentot the commonest sense of humanity or politi-
cal necessity would make me red hot against Britishers at the
present hour. Come, friend, and see us pull the lion's tail."

They went off together, and Florian would have secured
his friend a seat on the platform, but the poet objected.

" I wish to see you as well as hear you," said he, "and I can
tell what the rabble think the better."

What the rabble thought of the rising political star was seen
easily without going among them. A number of colorless dig-
nitaries sat on -the platform, men whose names had once been
the war-cry of election time, who now, their usefulness long past,
were used as dummies to propitiate the Irish Demos without
risk to the actual party-leaders. How little they counted with
the crowd was visible from its indifference to their presence and
their short speeches, and the sudden thrill of awakening enthu-
siasm which struck them as with a lightning-flash when Florian
came forward. His handsome presence and cool manner before
the multitude and the dignitaries sent a shiver of envious de-
light through Paul's veins. Florian was sure of himself; he
never in such a scene appeared without making a mark which
raised his name higher in the party honor-list, and he was about
to score a success which would dim earlier triumphs. His
popularity expressed itself in the thunderous applause with
which the audience greeted the first words of that strong, melo-
dious, catching voice. Then the speech began. It was the
usual arraignment of England and panegyric of O'Connell, but
arraignment and panegyric were alike of so unusual a power
and brilliancy that Paul sat amazed and stunned. Was this the
grave, steady lawyer whom he had left but a little while before
at the entrance to the platform, whom he had known for months
as an every-day man and never dreamed of as possessed of
this awful, sublime power of eloquence? Was it really Florian
Wallace this physical giant whose eye beamed and grew like
the rising sun and scorched like a lava stream, whose lip and
cheek paled and flushed with every passing feeling, and whose
words, like arrows shooting everywhere, drew from this mass of
men tears, sobs, moans, curses, laughter, and applause ? They
were an excitable crowd indeed, but the melting pathos of that
voice drew the silent tears from Paul himself, and its scorn, hate,
mirth, denunciation roused the same feelings in his own bosom,
though he made no display of them.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 199

" This man is a demi-god," he thought, and felt half ashamed,
half proud of the intimacy allowed him in the past.

When the meeting was over Paul waited while the audience
dispersed, and listened amusedly to the comments passed on the
speaker. It was clear that Florian's name would be as familiar
to that audience as the curses which they lavished on the hated
Saxon. A number of the more excitable remained until they
were able to reach the platform, where the honorable committee
stood discussing matters and preparing for departure. The
hand-shaking which Florian then endured, the hustling and
good-natured boorishness of the crowd, amply made up, Paul
thought, for the success of the oration. One boisterous consti-
tuent slapped him on the back with his left hand as he wrung
his fingers out of shape with the right. " It's to Congress ye'll
go, not to the Assembly," said he, " for the right stuff's in ye, me
boy ! "

Paul stared as he saw the thorough good-humor and delight
with which his friend endured the crowd, and he listened to the
generous wit scattered so lavishly that it seemed like throwing
pearls before swine. Behind him some stout individual was
struggling with might and main to recover property which
had dropped on the floor, and as he had the audacity to
poke and thump the poet freely with head and elbows, he
received from Paul a withering and threatening look of inter-
rogation.

" Bad luck to ye! " said a well-known voice, " is it the . coun-
sellor's speech ye're trampin' on? O Paul ! is it yer sweet face,
b'y? And did ye ever hear the like o' that speech since the
day you were born ? See, now, I don't think O'Connell himself,
great as he is and he's the greatest speaker in the world, past,
present, or to come I don't think that the Kerry counsellor
could do better. What d'ye say ? I'm "going to report it for
the Trumpeter, an* I must ask ye to help me get in the first part, for
I wasn't here but the last five minutes, ye see, and only got in the
peroration, mind. Now, that's what ye ought to be doin', in-
stead of writin' poor poethry, gettin' five dollars and old Cor-
coran's thanks for yer trouble, an' bringing on dyspepsia and a
thousand other ills from the black grub ye're livin' on "

Paul dashed madly from the crowd and away through the
hall to the street. Peter was becoming a pest with his plans
and advices. When Florian came out, and they were walking
home through the quiet streets, Paul said :

" It's a pity that Coriolanus had never the advantage of see-

200 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

ing you among the mob before he stood to solicit votes for the
consulship."

" I am glad you feel disgusted," said Florian, smiling, much
to the poet's surprise, since he had not thought his tones ex-
pressed any disgust, "for it is the measure of my success with
that very mob. You are quite an aristocrat, Paul, and force me
to believe, since you are but one of a kind, that the people of
these States will some time drift into aristocracy. You saw I
liked the flattery of the mob."

" And that disgusted me more. The dirt of some of those
you shook hands with ugh ! And prosperous dirt, too ! If
they were poor there would be some excuse."

" And they are poor," said Florian " tenement-livers, poi-
soned as to air, food, and water by the wealthy gentlemen you
are so willing to shake hands with because they take a bath
every day and would never slap you on the back. Why, a bet-
ter fellow than Larry Waters Alderman Larry never was
seen ! He is the soul of good fellowship, treats an honest man
like a brother if he comes under his roof, is the terror and de-
light of h'is own \yard, and a man of great influence. That
would be enough to make his slap and his grasp tolerable, if
nothing else would."

"Influence! influence!" moaned the poet. "Everything goes
down before that. I begin to suspect your sincerity, Florian.
Tell me, were you sincere in your speech to-night, or was it
this influence you had in view and was this your incense to the
god?"

Florian laughed a pleasant laugh of amusement.

" Now, Paul, you are really going .too far," said he. " Mo-
tives are always mixed in this life. I did have in view this in-
fluence, and it stimulated me wonderfully, I assure you ; but
nevertheless I was sincere in what I said, and just, too, I hope."

" I should hope not," said Paul impetuously, " otherwise I
would never respect my descent again."

At which involuntary compliment to himself the politician
was silent, but pleased beyond measure.

" I have never heard an orator in a set oration until to-night,
and I am amazed to know you possessed the gift to move an au-
dience to such excesses of feeling. When did you get it, and
where? "

" I was never really aware of it until I came to New York.
Occasion developed it."

" What a godlike power it is," said Paul, looking at his

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 201

friend as if a new light shone on him, " and what a delight and
yet what a terror to know you possess it ! It is as if a magician
could do that which imperilled his life in the doing and which
would make the world stare. Oh ! you must have been sincere,
or you never could have done it never."

" How you harp on the sincerity ! " said Florian, with one of
the laughs which the poet never liked to hear from him. They
gave him a hard aspect and drove away those tender lines that
more than anything else distinguished his face in Paul's eyes
from the faces of the every-day world and gave it a place in the
poet's radiant gallery of ideals.

"And whither, O orator! is all this tending?" asked Paul
with a trace of sarcasm in his smile. " Which is the bright par-
ticular star? Where is 'the height that lies for ever in the
light'?"

" I shall run for the Assembly first and from that mount into
Congress," answered Florian prosily.

" Oh, what an anti-climax! And after Congress what?"

" Congress is a great arena," said the politician. " A man
may do mighty things there."

" And supposing the mighty things done," said Paul smiling,
" what then ? ' Angels would be gods,' you know. When sub-
limi feriam sidera vertice when shall my exalted head strike the
stars ? You will run for governor, of course ? "

" Well, I suppose so."

" And then, ho for the presidential chair itself! Eh ?"

" It would take an army of missionaries and a campaign of
twenty years to put any Catholic there," said Florian, with a
deep and heartfelt sigh.

" So there is a limit to your ambition," said Paul, with sar-
castic good-humor. " You are not an abyss for earthly honors
to fall into when the governorship can fill your desires. Ah !
Florian, I have found your weakness. You may be great but
you will not be the Napoleon of your profession. You will
never change your religion to suit the demands of the world."

" Sometimes I wish I could," said Florian, and was sorry the
next moment for his hastiness. Paul took it as a jest, however.

" That's natural," said he, " and here we are at home."

Peter was parading the hall before Florian's room when they
entered, and Frances Lynch was clinging to his arm listening to
a jerky description of the meeting and the electrical effect of
Florian's speech. Her sweet face was all aglow with delight,
and quite unmindful was she of the comical leer in Peter's

202 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

bulging eyes as he looked again and again on that vision of
beauty.

" But wait till ye see it in print," said Peter. " If words had
life, be George they'd burn the page."

" How lucky, how fortunate you are," said she sadly, "that
you can attend to hear such eloquence."

" Ah, what nonsense ! " said Peter, trying to comfort her.
"What good would it do ye, girl ? Ye wouldn't understand a
word he was sayin'. I wasn't in meself but the last five min-
utes."

" You horrid old thing ! " said she, dropping his arm. " And
was your description merely an effort of the imagination? "

" Paul says I have a fine imagination," was the characteristic
reply, and the laugh which the young men gave banished the
girl and brought Peter forward smiling.

" I've been waitin' to congratulate ye," said he to Florian.
" Twas a fine effort, b'y, an' I'll"

" But you were not there more than five minutes," said Flo-
rian.

" What o* that, man? Can't ye tell the whole puddin' by tast-
in' the top? Hut, tut ! Don't be top presumptuous, if ye are a
politician an' the whole world is speakin' o' ye. I suppose yer
ready to wet the oration all round."

"Was it so very dry?" said Paul slyly, while his friend
laughed.

" What do ye know about it, ye starved poet ? Did ye run
all the length of Broadway to hear it, an' fall under an omnibus
an' two carts crossin' the street ? D'ye know anything of how
an orator moistens the reporters that come after his speech and
rectify its little mistakes? "

"No, I don't," Paul answered a little roughly, "but I pity
the orator who undertakes to moisten you. Well, good-night,
friends ; I am for bed."

They pressed him to remain, but he went on to his room un-
heeding, and Peter came in alone to bore the tirecl orator and
drink his tears of Erin.

" Did ye write it out in full ? " said Peter, after his face began
to bloom and swell like a fast-maturing pumpkin. " Not a note
have I, and the thing must be in print for Thursday at the latest."

" I have it all here," said Florian, throwing him the manu-
script.

" That's fine, that's grand all the labor saved, and nothin' to
do but drink till mornin'. I have somethin' to talk to ye about

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 203

that's been troublin' me since I knew ye, an' I hope ye'll pardon
me for any impertinence. Ye're a young man of great abilities,
an' yer of Irish blood, though, God forgive yer parents ! they
didn't leave much o' the looks of it about ye; an' sure it's the
old sod that needs more o' yer services than this Yankee land,
that 'ud spit upon the Catholics simply because they're Catho-
lics. Ye never can get very high because o' the same Catholi-
city. Now, I was thinkin' if ye'd give yer splendid talents to
the Irish cause, throw up yer politics an' law an' all sich foolin',
an' go heart and soul into the fight, what splendid results we'd
see before a year. England could no more stand you and O'Con-
nell together than the snow stands a thaw, be George ! She'd go
down to hell, where she ought to have gone long ago, the black,
bloody, man-eatin* England ; an' this country's not much better
that's fine brandy, b'y. See what it is now to be a lawyer, an'
have a good practice an' to stick to it. Never give up the ship,
Flory ; stick to the law an' good brandy. We need good Catho-
lic lawyers all over the States to show the heretics what we're
made of."

Peter wandered on ad nauseam until he had finished the bottle
and was become so maudliaas to be unintelligible. Florian had
listened at first with keen relish of the old fellow's blunders, ad-
vices, and contradictions, but as the brandy began to thicken
his tongue he fell into a reverie from which he did not awaken
until the bottle was emptied and Peter was vociferously calling
for more, thumping on the table and shouting snatches of ancient
melody in a harsh, grating tone.

" Don't I pay for it ?" said Peter. " Plenty of money, b'y, with
Peter. Bring on the ardent, the tears of Erin ; to h with En-
gland ! More, more, more ! The people all wept for Francis Mc-
Cann. Faith, Frances is a sweet child,.an' when her eyes look
up to you more, more, more ! "

And the lamp danced from the table into Florian's lap from
the violence with which Peter's fist was brought down.

Florian felt that his carelessness had put him into an awkward
position. He assumed his sternest demeanor.

" Are you aware, sir, of your ungentlemanly conduct ?
Are"

"Am I aware, sir, of your conduct?" bawled Peter, and, his
head being down, the great dusky eye-balls rolled fierce and bull-
like towards his enemy. "Young man, bring on the brandy ;
don't attempt to interfere with Peter. Plenty o' money, b'y !
Hurrah for Limerick and the blarney-stone ! "

204 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Nov.,

There was no help for it, since Peter's violence increased with
every moment. He jumped up, kicked the chair over, spat on
his hands, and danced, sparring about the dignified and puzzled
Florian with the springiness and agility of an india-rubber toy.
Taking advantage of a favorable opportunity, Florian opened the
door and tripped him through it, and, as Peter fell, closed and
bolted the door after him. Of his after-fate no one knew for
several days.

The politician was decidedly weary after his effort of that
evening, and a feeling of utter dejection had been stealing over
him. He threw himself in his chair and gave himself up to
dozing and thinking. Always on these occasions his. mind went
back to the noble river of his boyhood ; for straight before him,
and the tears filled his eyes as he looked, was that solitary re-
minder of all that was so dear to him Linda, as in her best and
brightest days, waving her love to him, and quiet Ruth dreaming.

Paul was right ^in judging that Florian's hopes still centred
on the girl whose picture hung over the book-case. Politics and
the women he had met were as yet unable to disturb the
gentle sway of her who for truth's sake had put aside her love
for him, and, though in error as to her creed, was not one whit
less devoted to principle than he, a Catholic, sharing in the pos-
session of all truth. Sometimes the thought intruded on him
that it would have been as well to have dropped that condition
of their love, and to have married her first and converted her
afterwards ; but, apart from its unfairness to her, he had laid down
the principle that mixed marriages were hurtful, and he would
not what ? Suppose now that there was an opportunity of re-
newing their former relations, and Ruth was yet obstinate in her
belief, would he not be unwise to lose what ? Florian saw that he
was stumbling against the rocks of conscience, and looked up at
those sweet faces in the yacht, while the tears came into his eyes
and his heart gave a great throb of pain. One was dead O
Linda ! and the other worse than dead to him unless what ?

He sat a long time and thought no more. He was afraid to
give utterance to his wishes, only it seemed to him that he was
marching along in a dreadful solitude, and multitudes were
shouting praises to him and calling him king, and crowns fell on
his head, and at his feet lay the kingdoms of the world and the
glories of them ; but always he was alone with the sad, over-
powering consciousness that Linda was dead and Ruth sepa-
rated from him by interminable distances, yet always in* view
with her mournful face turned upon him. He must tramp that

1884.] FRA Y JUNIPERO SERKA. 205

way alone, unless He did not like to speak that condition.
Disgusted with himself and weary, he took down two volumes
which a literary friend had sent him to read. The authors were
strange and new to him, although their names had been faintly
echoed through the American literary world. One was a poet,
the other a philosopher, and he was soon interested in the con-
tents of the books.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA.

THE restoration of historic buildings purely for the sake of the
associations connected with them is a rare occurrence on this
continent. A work of the kind has, however, been undertaken
on the shores of the Pacific, and on the 28th of August the cen-
tenary of Father Serra, the first president of the New California
missions, was solemnly celebrated in the restored and solitary
church where his body had been laid one hundred years before.
The day was set apart as a public holiday by special act of the
Legislature, and all classes of the Californian population joined
in rendering homage to the merits of the humble friar whose
reputation has survived all the changes of a century, even in this
land of rapid change. The Indians whose conversion he labored
for have almost passed away. The Spanish monarchy has given
place to Mexican republican rule, and that in turn to the institu-
tions of the United States, but still the name of Junipero Serra
is honored to-day among the cosmopolitan population of Cali-
fornia, as it was a hundred years ago by the Indians who then
formed almost its only inhabitants. That one who was neither
soldier, statesman, nor distinguished scholar, who passed the
greater part of his life far away from the abodes of civilized men
and finally laid it down in an almost unknown Indian hamlet in
the remotest province of Spanish America, should have his
memory thus celebrated is a strange fact, and a sketch of Father
Serra's career is well worthy of attention to the modern reader.

Miguel Joseph Serra was born in the island of Majorca in
the closing year of the Spanish War of Succession. Shut out by
their situation from the turmoil of Spanish politics, the Major-
cans even to-day retain much of the simple faith and manners
of the old followers of Don Jaime the Conqueror. Palma, the

206 t FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

capital of the island, counts no less than forty churches and
chapels, and the Protestantism of the sixteenth century and the
infidelity of the eighteenth have alike failed to affect the fervent
Catholicity of the natives of the Balearic Isles. Serra's parents
were simple, hard-working farmers of very limited means ; but as
the boy showed fondness for study, they managed to give him
a Latin education. The numerous monasteries, indeed, offered
more ample educational resources than would be readily believed
by many modern educationists. Young Serra made such pro-
gress that his father sent him to Palma to pursue his studies in
the university there. The boy had always been of a religious turn
of mind, and shortly after commencing his university studies he
determined to join the Franciscan Order. His delicate health
and small stature were obstacles to his reception in so strict an
order for some time, but finally the guardian yielded to the boy's
importunity and enrolled him among the novices of the convent
in Palma. His health rapidly improved after his reception into
the order an event which he in after-years attributed to a spe-
cial blessing of Heaven, and he always spoke with enthusiasm of
the day of his formal reception among the Franciscans. The
lives of the saints of the order were a favorite study of his dur-
ing his novitiate, and even then he formed plans for preaching
the faith among infidel nations. The rule of the order, however,
called him to a long course of study, and for the time put all
other thoughts out of his mind. His progress was rapid. Be-
fore being ordained he was appointed professor of philosophy
in the Franciscan college and received the degree of doctor of
divinity from the university.

After his ordination Father Serra continued his career as a
professor in the university itself while still living in his convent
and strictly discharging the usual duties of a Franciscan. His
reputation stood high as a pulpit orator throughout the island.
Silent and somewhat reserved in ordinary life, he scarcely mixed
in society outside his convent, but all the pent-up enthusiasm of
his nature broke out when he entered the pulpit. It was a com-
mon practice for him during his Lenten discourses to apply
the lash so violently to his shoulders as to terrify his auditors,
and his energy in preaching and mission work was almost bound-
less. Like the great founder of his order, he invariably made
his mission journeys on foot, and never allowed his work to
exempt him from the austerities prescribed by the Franciscan
rule in food or lodging. Several years had thus passed away
when the thought of devoting himself to the conversion of some

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 207

infidel people a thought which had first suggested itself during
his novitiate rose again in his mind. After due deliberation he
applied to the heads of the Spanish Franciscans for permission to
join the missions among the still unconverted Indian tribes of
Mexico. Palon, his biographer, joined in the application, which
was granted in the Lent of 1749 while Father Serra was holding
a mission in his native town. A number of Franciscans were
about to start from Cadiz during the summer, and the Majorcan
missioners were invited to join them. Three of their country-
men subsequently offered themselves for the same work, one of
whom, Juan Crespi, at a later period shared with Serra and Palon
the honor of founding the missions of California.

The journey from Europe to Mexico was a far more serious
undertaking a hundred years ago than we can easily realize in
our days of rapid steam travel. Navigation was incredibly
slow, and its hardships, even on a voyage made under favorable
circumstances, were such as no steerage-passengers of our time
are called on to face. The vessels rarely exceeded three or four
hundred tons burden, and the passengers were cooped up in the
narrow space and fed on salt provisions and biscuit the whole
voyage, not unfrequently, too, with a limited supply of water,
and that anything but fresh. As a natural consequence ship-
fevers and scurvy were of common occurrence on most voyages,
while shipwreck was by no means a rare accident at any season.
The delays in sailing were something astounding. The regu-
lar treasure-fleet usually sailed once a year from Mexico to
Cadiz, but it was often delayed for two or three months by
various accidents, and a few months' delay was looked on as
not worth noticing. On the Pacific a single galleon made a yearly
trip from Manila to Acapulco, and another made the voyage
from Callao to Valparaiso. Such were the only representatives
of regular packet-lines in the Spanish monarchy, and, apart from
them, intending travellers might have to wait months for a chance
to cross the ocean in some trading vessel. Even the journey from
Majorca to the main-land was a serious undertaking. An English
trader happened to be lying in the port of Palma when Father
Serra received permission to start, and was about to sail for Ma-
laga in a couple of weeks. He and his companion secured pas-
sage on her, as no ship could be had for Cadiz. Though the
trip to Majorca is now usually made in ten or twelve hours, the
English packet which carried the two Franciscans occupied no
less than fifteen days on its voyage of five hundred miles. After
five days in Malaga a fishing-boat was found to convey them the

208 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

rest of the way to Cadiz, which they thus reached in little short
of a month from the time of leaving Palma. This may give us
an idea of what travel was during the last century, and what was
the meaning of foreign missions for the Franciscans and Jesuits
of that time.

A characteristic incident varied the monotony of the voyage
to Malaga. The captain of the vessel was fanatically anti-Catho-
lic, and he lost no time in verbally assailing the popish friars.
That neither of the passengers spoke English, and the captain
was equally ignorant of Spanish, was no obstacle to his Protestant
zeal. He plied Father Serra with texts from the Authorized Ver-
sion in broken Portuguese, of which language he had a smatter-
ing ; and though the latter felt the uselessness of a controversy
under such conditions, he could not refuse to reply to the on-
slaughts of the skipper-theologian. The latter, finding himself
worsted in argument, threatened to solve the point by throwing
his passengers overboard, and once actually put a knife to Father
Serra's throat in the heat of discussion. For a while the latter
thought he would find martyrdom sooner than he had expected,
but the polemical captain cooled off after a remonstrance from
Palon, and allowed his passengers to land unhurt. It is charac-
teristic of Serra that on the conclusion of his stormy passage he
passed immediately to sing Compline in the church of the convent
where he stopped in Malaga, and attended all the offices, during
the five days he and his companion remained there, as punctually
as though he were in his own community.

The voyage from Cadiz to Mexico occupied over three months
including a stay in Puerto Rico, where the vessel had to put in
for water. The supply ran short a month out from Spain, and
during the next two weeks a quart of water a day was the only
allowance made to each passenger for all purposes. Father Serra
occupied his time in hearing confessions and instructing the crew
and passengers, as occasion offered, and when complaints were
made of the intolerable thirst by his companions he answered that
he had found a remedy in eating little and speaking less. His en-
durance was extraordinary. On reaching Puerto Rico the vessel
stopped there a couple of weeks, in the leisurely fashion of the
sailors of those days, and the Franciscans went to lodge in a large
hermitage near the walls. The day that they landed the sacris-
tan in charge asked Sena to recite the Rosary in the church for
the public, an.d when it was concluded he announced that the
newly-landed friars would immediately commence a mission for
the population of the city. The entire fortnight of rest was thus

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 209

occupied, and on its conclusion the vessel resumed its voyage to
Vera Cruz, where it arrived after weathering a violent storm, and
landed the Franciscans on the American continent.

Vera Cruz has ever been known as one of the pestilential spots
of the world, and the new-comers quickly experienced the ef-
fects of its climate. Father Palon was stricken down with fever
almost immediately and only recovered after a long illness. The
others hastened to set out for Mexico in the usual conveyances,
but Father Serra and a companion begged to be allowed to make
the journey on foot. Poverty in the most absolute sense had
been the distinguishing mark of the Franciscans from the days of
their saintly founder, and to live as far as possible in the condi-
tion of the poorest of mankind was the constant aim of Serra's
life. He had escaped the fever, and, seeing no absolute necessity
for travelling otherwise than on foot, he obtained permission to
make the journey up the long road to Mexico in the same fashion
as St. Francis had travelled through half Europe. In his coarse
habit, with sandals only on his feet, and depending for food on
the charity of the people along the road, he and his companion
travelled the three hundred miles to Mexico on foot through the
tropical lowlands and up the steep side of the mountains that
girdle the table-land of Mexico. The stings of the venomous in-
sects that infest the tropical forests produced such effects on his
bare feet that the skin almost wholly peeled off, and to the end of
his life he suffered from their effects ; but he held on his way with-
out a murmur, and on the first day of the new year he reached
the capital of Mexico. Making their way to the church of the
Franciscan college, they quietly joined in the morning office
which was going on, and only when the prayers had been all
finished did the footsore travellers present themselves to the
guardian or seek rest after their toilsome journey.

The stay of the travellers in Mexico was a short one. It
was chiefly for the missions among the yet unconverted Indians
that they had crossed the Atlantic, and a field of labor was
already awaiting them among the mountains of the Sierra Gorda.
Though Mexico had been under the Spanish rule for over two
centuries, a large number of Indian tribes still retained their
paganism and, wandering habits in the remoter districts. The
more civilized Aztecs had been thoroughly converted, but the
wild tribes who had never been subjects of the empire of Monte-
zuma still occupied a large part of the country. The Indian
question was as much a problem to the Spanish viceroys in
New Spain as it is to-day in the United States, and the difficulty
VOL. XL. 14

210 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

of dealing with it was far greater owing to the limited resources
of the country. To civilize the still barbarous tribes was a lead-
ing principle with the more enlightened viceroys, and for that
purpose the system, of gathering the wandering Indians into fixed
settlements, and accustoming them to cultivate the ground for
their support, was the established policy of the government.
But though it was comparatively easy to collect the savages
round posts, it needed something higher than a police force to
make them adopt the ways of civilized life. With sound judg-
ment the viceroys applied to the different religious orders for
missioners to undertake the task. In 1744 the Fames, of the
mountains to the north of Queretaro, had been entrusted to the
spiritual care of the Franciscans, who had founded five missions
around the military post of Jalpan which had been established
by the viceroy. Two priests were assigned to each mission, and
at first their efforts had been successful in converting a large
number of natives. Fever, however, was a terrible scourge, and
in a few weeks four of the Franciscans were carried off and four
more obliged to return to Mexico broken down in health. Their
successors, who came from different colleges, were only able to
remain a few months at their posts, and thus the work of instruc-
tion was almost entirely interrupted. The arrival of Father
Serra and his companions offered a promise of establishing the
Sierra Gorda missions on a better foundation, and, at their own
request, eight of them volunteered for the dangerous task.
Father Serra was placed in charge of the mission of Santiago,
adjoining the post of Jalpan, and thither he proceeded, as usual
on foot, a few months after his landing in the New World.

He found nearly everything to be done in Jalpan. Nearly
four thousand savages had been baptized during former years
in the five missions, but they were ignorant of the principal
doctrines of Christianity, and in a great measure retained their
old life, wandering through the mountains in search of wild fruit
and game, and seldom or never entering a church, much less
approaching the sacraments. The first step of Serra was to
learn thoroughly their language, as the preceding missioners
had been only able to instruct them by the help of interpreters,
and few of the Indians understood Spanish. Having made him-
self familiar with the Fame, he translated the ordinary prayers
and catechism into it and commenced the work of daily instruc-
tion. Morning and evening the church-bell summoned all the
grown inhabitants to public prayers, followed by a short instruc-
tion in the doctrines of tr.e church ; and the middle of the day

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 211

was employed in a similar manner with the children. Those
who were preparing for baptism or the other sacraments re-
ceived special instructions, and the utmost care was taken to
secure due decorum among the uncivilized congregation. On
the occasion of quarrels the padre constituted himself peace-
maker ; and the regular celebration, with appropriate ceremonies,
of the different feasts of the church was carefully practised, both
as a means of exciting the attention of the savages and of bringing
home to their minds the various doctrines of Christianity. Mid-
night Mass at Christmas, the Procession of the Blessed Sacra-
ment at Corpus Christi, the offices of Holy Week in their ful-
ness, and the Way of the Cross (in which Father Serra himself
carried a heavy wooden cross at the head of the throng) on
every Friday in Lent were so many practical lessons of Chris-
tianity for the rude minds of the Indians whose value it would
be hard to over-estimate. The necessity of providing for the
support of his flock, if he would retain them near the settlement,
was also an important part of Serra's work, as of all the Francis-
can missioners. The crown allowed him a salary of three hun-
dred dollars a year, and, as his own expenses were trifling, the
larger portion of this sum, as well as the alms which he received
from Mexico for intentions at Mass and other objects, was em-
ployed in buying tools, cattle, and seeds for the use of the In-
dians. To induce the new converts, who had been always accus-
tomed to the laziness of savage life, to adopt the habit of daily
work was a difficult one. When the padre, as he was always
styled, had finished his morning instruction, he put himself at the
head of a troop of laborers and went to work as a ploughman
or gardener among them, encouraging the active, exciting the
lazy, and instructing all in the use of the different farm-tools.
The harvest was divided among the tribe, with special shares
for the laborers, but due attention to the wants of all. After a few
years the work of instructing and directing the labors of culti-
vation was entrusted to the more intelligent and industrious In-
dians, who acted as overseers, and many of the others were
encouraged to cultivate spots of ground on their own account.
The mission lent them tools and oxen, and they were encouraged
to purchase similar articles for themselves out of the profits of
their crops. Those who had anything for sale were encouraged
to visit the Spanish settlements for the purpose of trading ; and
in this, as in the other elementary ways of civilized life, the mis-
sioners watched over the steps of their pupils and cautioned them
against any impositions that might be attempted. The women and

212 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

children were not allowed to remain in idleness, and weaving,
knitting and sewing, mat and hat making, and other domestic
tasks, were assigned to them according to their strength. The
passage from barbarism to a civilized life proceeded rapidly under
the devoted care of Father Serra and his brethren. In a few
years the mission was not only self-supporting, but several thou-
sand bushels of corn were stored in the public granary against
any unforeseen failure. A church of stone, a hundred and forty
feet long and thirty wide, with sacristy, side-chapels, a high altar,
and all the decorations of a first-class parish church, was erected
by the labor of the Indians, who were instructed in the various
building trades by mechanics brought for the purpose at the ex-
pense of the missioners. Father Serra's career in Jalpan extended
over nine years, and such was the impulse he had given to the
work of civilization, and so well was it carried on by his suc-
cessors, that ten years later the Franciscans were able to deliver
up their charge to the secular clergy, as no longer distinguished
from the rest of the civilized Christian population of the rest of
the land. Rarely has the transition from barbarism to civili-
zation been so thoroughly accomplished in so short a time ;
but then it is equally rare to find such unselfish and intelligent
.zeal in any cause as that of the Spanish Franciscans of the Sierra
Gorda.

Father Serra's mission ended in 1759. His superiors recalled
him for a more perilous work in the northeast, where it was
proposed to found a mission among the savage Apaches. A
post had been established on the San Saba River, and four
priests accompanied it and established missions in the neighbor-
hood. An irruption of the wild Comanches destroyed the mis-
sions, and one of the priests, Father Terreros, was killed at his
post and another wounded. Successors were needed for the
dangerous post, and the head of the College of San Fernando
bethought him of Father Serra. So well was his readiness to
obey the slightest wish of his superiors known that he was not
even asked in the usual way whether he was willing to go. The
guardian simply recalled him and informed him of the task for
which he was needed, and Father Serra joyfully accepted it.
He had toiled among his Indians as if he had no other end in
life than their conversion ; but now, when success had crowned
his efforts and he might have fairly expected to pass his life
among those to whom he had been so long pastor and teacher,
he abandoned all at the call of obedience and prepared for a
new and strange post of danger. The policy of the government,

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 213

however, interfered with the plans of the Franciscans. The
restoration of the San Saba mission was postponed from year to
year at the instance of the viceroy, and Father Serra had to
remain in Mexico. The provincial was apparently desirous of
having him at hand in case the obstacles raised by the govern-
ment to his expedition should disappear; and thus nearly eight
years passed before he was again permitted to devote himself to
his chosen work of converting the Indians. It is true his time
was well occupied. Besides acting as master of novices during
three years in the college, he was constantly employed in giving
missions to the population of the capital and the surrounding
dioceses. On foot, according to his all but invariable custom, he
travelled through the greater part of Central Mexico, from the
Mexican Gulf to Mazatlan, preaching in the various cities at the
invitation of the bishops. It was calculated that his journeys
during this period (in spite of his swollen leg, which never was
fully cured after his walk from Vera Cruz) exceeded six thou-
sand miles. In the capital his reputation as a preacher and con-
fessor stood very high, but he made no personal acquaintances
outside his convent, and it was said that, except as a matter of
duty, he never visited any house during his whole stay in
Mexico.

A new field for Indian conversions was at length opened for
him in 1767. The suppression of the Jesuits had left (among
many others) their missions in Lower California vacant, and the
Franciscans were requested by the viceroy, in obedience to the
royal decrees, to take their place in the barren peninsula. The
fate of their predecessors, whose heroic self-devotion to the re-
motest tribes of New Spain was thus rewarded by exile, was a
forcible reminder of how little earthly recompense was to be ex-
pected for mission work, even from a Catholic sovereign. The
Franciscans, however, were as ready to face the risk of royal
suspicion as the scalping-knife of the savages, and they accepted
the charge of the Californian missions. Father Serra was ap-
pointed president of the sixteen priests who were sent to fill the
place of the banished Jesuits ; and as the remoteness of Califor-
nia made communication even with Mexico extremely difficult,
he was invested with very full powers for the spiritual govern-
ment of the land placed under his care. Setting out in July,
1767, the Franciscans' reached San Bias after forty days' journey,
only to find that nothing was ready to transport them to Cali-
fornia. The easy-going system of the Spanish authorities was
only building the ships to convey them, and, as a matter of fact,

214 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

six months passed before they were ready for sea. In spite of
his anxiety to be among his Indians, Father Serra took the disap-
pointment with unruffled patience, and at once set about giving
a series of missions in all the towns around as far as to Mazallan,
in which he and his companions employed themselves until the
vessel was ready.

On his arrival in California Serra divided his companions
among the various missions and fixed his own station in Loretto,
on the shore of the gulf. His residence in Lower California,
however, was destined to be short. Galvez, who, as visitor-
general of the king, with powers superior to those of the vice-
roy, was making a tour of inspection of the frontiers, arrived in
California in July and informed Father Serra of his intention to
found posts in Upper California at San Diego and Monterey.
These two ports had been once or twice visited by Spanish ships,
but beyond them Upper California was wholly unexplored. A
voyage to that unknown coast with the ships of the time must
have been little if any less dangerous than the Polar expedi-
tions of our own days. Nevertheless, in spite of his advanced
years, Father Serra at once offered to accompany the expedition
in person, and to provide from his companions enough priests to
found as many missions in the unknown land as Galvez might
think fit. It was arranged that three should be founded along
the coast, and five Franciscans, with the president, were at once
selected for the task.

The expedition to plant Christianity in Upper California was
divided into two parts. Three vessels with a company of twenty-
five soldiers were sent from La Paz, at the southern extremity of
Lower California, while Portala, the governor of that province,
proceeded overland from the most northerly mission of the pe-
ninsula. The land expedition was accompanied by a herd of two
hundred cattle collected from the various missions, and consisted,
besides the governor, of twenty-five Spanish soldiers and a number
of Californian Indians. Father Serra accompanied this last divi-
sion, while Galvez remained in La Paz to superintend the despatch
of the vessels to San Diego. The first sailed in January, 1769, with
Father Parron on board, and was followed five weeks later by the
Sa n A nton io with two other Franciscans. The third vessel only
sailed in June, and Father Murguia, who was to sail in her, was
so ill that he had to be left behind. Short as the voyage appears
to us now, it was full of peril in those days. The San Antonio
was the first to reach San Diego, which she did after fifty-one
days' sailing ; and the San Carlos, which had left in January, was

1884.] FRA Y JUNIPERO SERRA. 215

over three months in making the voyage ; while the third vessel
was never heard of afterwards, and in all probability went down
at sea. The San Carlos, indeed, narrowly escaped a similar, or
even worse, fate. A pestilent fever broke out among her crew
and carried off all the sailors except two, as well as most of the
soldiers on board. Had her voyage been prolonged a few days
she would have added another to the list of missing vessels ; and,
as it was, it was only by a providential accident that she found
her consort still in San Diego. Orders had been given to each
commander to wait twenty days in that port, and then, if the
other did not appear, to sail for Monterey. The San Antonio had
just completed the prescribed time when the plague-stricken San
Carlos was sighted off the port. The evil did not stop with her
arrival, as the contagion spread to the crew of the other vessel,
eight of whom died before the land expedition arrived, and nine
more during her return to San Bias. It is well to bear such in-
cidents, common to the navigation of the last century, in mind,
if we would realize the nature of the task which Father Serra
took on himself when he undertook to plant the first missions in
Upper California.

The first division of the overland expedition had wintered at
Vellicata, about ninety miles beyond the most northerly of the
former Jesuit establishments. As Father Serra had gone to La
Paz, in the extreme south of the peninsula, he had to traverse its
whole length of nearly a thousand miles of barren country before
starting into the unknown land which he had undertaken to civil-
ize. Faithful to his old habits, he devoted himself on the way to
visiting and regulating the various missions of the peninsula, and
he at length reached Vellicata utterly worn out with fatigue.
The old inflammation of the leg which he had contracted on his
first journey in Mexico, and which he had never been cured of,
became so violent that his colleagues and the governor despaired
of his life and urged him to remain in Lower California. But
nothing could turn him from his resolution of proceeding on-
wards on a work to which he felt himself called by Heaven, and
he declared his willingness to die in the wilderness sooner than
turn back. In despite of his illness he found strength to found a
new mission at Vellicata, and the appearance of a band of savages
in the neighborhood, the first heathens he had met in California,
seemed for a while to make him forget his pain in the joy caused
by the hope of their speedy conversion. No sooner, however, had
he resumed his journey than the inflammation increased to such
an extent that on the second day he was unable even to stand.

216 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

In this extremity he begged the aid of a muleteer as a physician,
and requested him to treat him as he would a crippled horse.
After some hesitation at such a request the muleteer consented
and applied a plaster of grease and herbs. This extraordinary
remedy proved eminently successful, and the following morning
the inflammation had so far abated that the patient was able to
mount a mule and resume his journey with the expedition. The
whole party reached San Diego after a seven weeks' march
across the desert, and there found the two vessels before men-
tioned already anchored. A few days afterwards the mission was
founded with due solemnity. A large cross was carried in pro-
cession and set up with appropriate ceremonies by Father Serra.
A few huts were built for the reception of the eight soldiers who
formed the garrison, as well as of the invalids from the ships ; a
temporary chapel was built of reeds and branches ; and thus the
first European settlement was made in California.

Very different indeed was the spirit of this the last of the Span-
ish conquests in America from that which had instigated the fol-
lowers of Cortez and Pizarro. It was neither the pursuit of gold
nor hunger for fertile lands though both, indeed, were to be found
in California that brought the Spaniards to its shores. The little
garrisons of San Diego and Monterey were of entirely secondary
importance in the eyes even of the government, and colonization
was scarcely deemed worthy of consideration at such a distance
from Europe. The conversion and civilization of the barbarous
tribes without any desire of self-aggrandizement was the princi-
pal motive of the expedition, and anything like violence to the
natives was jealously guarded against throughout the whole his-
tory of the Franciscan missions. So far from extorting tribute
from the Indians, the new-comers not only brought the means
of subsistence for themselves for several years from Mexico, but
they freely shared them with the poverty-stricken natives. We
have seen already how resolutely Father Serra adhered to his
rule of personal poverty and his utter indifference to any human
ambition ; and such as he was, to a great extent also his compan-
ions were. That a body of men should of their own free-will
choose to live on the coarsest food, to lodge in hovels and wear
the poorest dress consistent with decency, during their entire lives,
and should expose themselves to dangers and toils of every kind
many thousand miles from their families, friends, and native land,
seems almost incredible, to a mind unacquainted with the spirit
and history of the Catholic Church ; yet every contemporary re-
cord shows that such was the character of Father Serra and his

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 217

companions. It need not be thought that the soldiers and mechan-
ics who accompanied them were equally disinterested. Many of
the latter gave serious trouble to the missions by their miscon-
duct, and several even deserted to take up their dwelling among
the savages ; but, nevertheless, the influence of the Franciscans
was eminently successful in preventing any deeds of violence on
a large scale. Kindness, not force, was the means they had de-
termined to employ, and which they did employ persistently.
When the San Diego savages attacked the mission a few weeks
after its foundation, and were driven off by the soldiers, the
wounded assailants were carefully nursed by the Spaniards ; and
a few years later, when another band had burned the mission and
murdered its pastor, and the leaders had been subsequently cap-
tured, they were, after a few months' detention, set free at the
prayers of Father Serra.

No sooner had the members of the expedition been reunited in
San Diego than it was resolved to despatch a party in search of
Monterey. That port had been visited by Viscaino in 1603, but
since that time no Spanish ship had touched there, and a good deal
of uncertainty existed as to its exact location. It was impossible
to pursue the sea-voyage in search of it, on account of the want of
sailors to man the San Carlos, and Portala, the governor of Cali-
fornia, determined to make the expedition overland. Eight sol-
diers were left in San Diego to guard the ship and the invalids,
as well as the two missioners who remained in charge of the es-
tablishment. The remaining force of seventy-five men, includ-
ing a number of Christian Indians from Lower California, started
north m search of Monterey Bay.

The departure of Portala left Father Serra almost unprotected,
and, with the usual fickleness of savages, the natives, who had at
first been friendly, began to grow troublesome. They attempted
to steal the sails from the ship, and various other articles, which
made it necessary to place two soldiers on board as a guard.
Four soldiers only remained at the mission encampment with the
sick and the two Franciscans, and the smallness of their number
encouraged the natives to attack them on the I5th of August.
One of the fathers was wounded, and a boy who used to act as
sacristan killed at Father Serra's feet ; but the soldiers succeeded
in driving off the assailants, who in a few days returned as if no-
thing had happened. Those who had been wounded by the soldiers
even came to beg medical aid, which was freely afforded them by
the surgeon attached to the mission. One cannot help recalling
how different was the action of the early conquerors of America

218 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

on similar occasions, when this incident is recorded as a perfectly
natural proceeding by Father Serra's colleague in the Californian
mission.

The expedition to Monterey had meantime been advancing
northward, but, in some unaccountable manner, though they
reached the shores of its bay they failed to recognize it. In con-
sequence they advanced some eighty miles further until their
progress was barred by the Bay of San Francisco, which had been
hitherto unknown to the civilized world. The open roadstead of
Monterey lost all importance compared with the mighty bay to
the north, and it was at once baptized with the name of the great
founder of the Franciscan Order. A characteristic remark of
Galvez had, in fact, assigned it that name before its discovery.
The three projected missions had been officially designated as
San Diego, San Carlos, and San Buenaventura, and Serra urged
that one, at least, should bear the name of the head of the order,
Francis of Assisi. Galvez was unwilling to alter the names al-
ready fixed, and half-jestingly declared that, if St. Francis wished
for a mission under his own name, he should make them find his
port, and they would found one there. To the Franciscans the
discovery of the great bay the new Mediterranean, as Father
Crespi styles it in his diary appeared a providential answer to
the visitor-general's challenge, and the bay, and the city which
has arisen on its shores, have since borne the name of the hum-
ble saint of Assisi.

The joy of the new discovery, however, was dampened by the
impossibility of founding for the time any settlement on its
shores. As Monterey had not been found, it was necessary to
return to San Diego, where the party arrived in the beginning of
1770. The governor was much discouraged on finding that no
news had arrived from Mexico during his absence, and he finally
determined to abandon the whole settlement and return to civil-
ized lands. This was a cruel blow to Serra, who vigorously re-
monstrated against giving up the establishment which had been
founded in San Diego with so much labor ; but the governor was
resolute, declaring it impossible to support the mission at such
a distance from the Spanish settlements. Finding it impossible
to alter his mind, Father Serra declared his own intention of
remaining, even if his companions should abandon him, in the
hope that aid would be sent at some future time. Father Crespi
agreed to remain with him, and the two Franciscans, it was set-
tled, were to remain among the savages as the only represen-
tatives of Christianity in California. Portala fixed the igth of

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 219

March, the feast of St. Joseph, as the last of his stay, and, in case
a vessel should not appear by that time, he made preparations for
setting out with his whole force immediately afterwards. Strange
to say, on the very day of the feast the San Antonio appeared in
the offing, though she did not enter the port, owing to head-
winds and sea-fogs, for two days afterwards. Her arrival in San
Diego, as it was afterwards found, was only the result of an acci-
dent. She had been ordered to sail directly to Monterey, where
the authorities at San Bias supposed Portala would be found at
the time. The loss of an anchor at sea induced the captain to
put into San Diego when he had already sailed a considerable
distance north of it, and his arrival alone prevented the abandon-
ment of the whole settlement. It need not excite surprise that
the Franciscans regarded the occurrence as a special favor of
Providence due to the protection of St. Joseph, under whose
patronage the settlement of California had been formally placed
at its commencement. All thought of abandoning San Diego
was at once banished, and a second expedition was prepared in
search of Monterey. Father Serra embarked on the San Antonio,
which reached Monterey in seven weeks, while Father Crespi
accompanied the land expedition. The port this time was easily
recognized, and on Whitsunday, 1770, the mission of San Carlos
was solemnly founded on the shores of Monterey. The tidings
of the foundation were at once forwarded to Mexico, where they
excited public rejoicings for the extension of the Spanish rule
so many hundred miles beyond its former frontiers. The Fran-
ciscan college of San Fernando agreed to send two priests to
found five missions in Upper California in addition to those al-
ready established, and all danger of abandoning the settlements
was for ever removed.

In the meantime Father Serra set to work at his task of bring-
ing the Indians around Monterey into tfie Catholic Church. It
must not be thought that the exploration of new lands, the
foundation of colonies, and the excitement of voyages make up
the work of a mission-life in the true meaning of the word.
These are but its accessories in reality, and the real work which
Father Serra had devoted his life to, and to which everything else
was directed, was of a very different kind. The men of whom
he desired to make a Christian people were not to be won by
learned disputes or appeals to an enlightened conscience. They
were in the mental condition of children, and their minds had to
be developed as slowly and carefully as those of infants before
they became capable of understanding, much less accepting, the

22O FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

doctrines of the Christian faith. To bring them around himself
and his companions, and gradually to awaken an interest in their
minds in the doings of the fathers, was the first task. As their
language was acquired and they picked up a few words of Span-
ish short explanations of the principal Christian doctrines were
given to one or another of the more intelligent ; and such expla-
nations it was often necessary to repeat over and over again, as
savages have much of the want of thought and fickleness of
children. When they had become somewhat accustomed to re-
maining around the mission, daily instructions on a systematic
plan were given to such as could be induced to attend them, and
thus slowly but surely the work of instruction went on. It was
not until December that the first baptism was administered to an
Indian, and during the next three years only a hundred and sixty-
five Indians, young and old, were formally received into the
church in Monterey. Later on the numbers increased rapidly,
and at Father Serra's death over a thousand had been bap-
tized in Monterey and five times that number in all California ;
but the small number of baptisms in the early years is ample
proof that thorough instruction was regarded as an indispensable
preliminary to the formal reception of the natives into the church.
Very different was such a task from professing philosophy in the
University of Palma or preaching to the polished society of
Mexico, but yet it had been deliberately chosen by Father Serra
as his life's work, and in sickness and health he toiled at it with
tireless energy through the often weary years of waiting on the
Californian shore.

The ten Franciscans from Mexico arrived at Monterey in
1771, and two new missions were founded, one twenty-four
leagues south of Monterey, under the name of St. Anthony of
Padua, and the other about the same distance north of San
Diego, under the title of San Gabriel. The sites of both were
more favorable than those of the first foundations, and, in fact,
the latter were both subsequently removed to some distance from
the presidios near which they had been at first established.
Small as were the numbers of the soldiers in the posts, they
were found to be a serious obstacle to the conversion of the In-
dians. Strict discipline could not be maintained among small
detachments of troops in a land so remote from the whole civil-
ized world, and the Franciscans found no small part of their trou-
bles to arise from the lawlessness of their supposed protectors.
At San Diego on one occasion ten men deserted in a body, pre-
ferring a lawless life among the Indians to the restraints of mili-

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA, 221

tary service, and it was only by the representations of Father
Paterna that they were induced to return. At San Gabriel,
where the natives had shown more friendly dispositions than at
any of the missions, they were for a time scared away by the mis-
conduct of a corporal, who killed an Indian in a quarrel. The
officers too often showed a good deal of the arrogance of a half-
educated ship-captain among his crew in their dealings with
Serra and his companions. They felt aggrieved at the protec-
tion which the latter furnished to the Indians, and, on a small
scale, the quarrels of church and state which were so common
during the century in Catholic Europe were repeated in the Cali-
fornian missions. Captain Fages, the commander of the troops,
refused to establish the projected mission of San Buenaventura,
on the coast of Santa Barbara, which had been designated by
Galvez at the sailing of the first expedition. He did not confine
himself to this in thwarting Serra's cherished work, but in nume-
rous ways showed his impatience of the independence claimed
by the Franciscans of his control. The more disorderly sol-
diers were sent to the missions as guards, in spite of remon-
strances from the padres, and the letters of the latter were
opened by the suspicious commander on various occasions. It
needed all Father Serra's tact to prevent more serious trouble
with the imperious captain, whose jealousy of his little, brief
authority on the shores of the Pacific was scarcely less than
that of a German emperor during the investiture quarrels of the
middle ages.

Scarcity of supplies was another trouble with all the missions
during those early years. The cultivation of the soil had been
an early care of Father Serra, but the first plantation at San
Diego was destroyed by an overflow of the little river on whose
banks it had been made, and the second year's crop, planted on
higher ground, failed from drought. It was only by slow ex-
perience that the peculiarities of the climate and soil could be
learned, and meanwhile almost all the articles of common neces-
sity had to be brought from Mexico. At several of the missions
the pine-nuts of the Indians and the milk of the cows formed the
only food of both priests and soldiers ; and though game was
plenty, it was risky to let the soldiers scatter in pursuit of it. In
the year of the foundation of San Antonio Captain Fages spent
several months hunting bears in the present county of San Luis,
and supplied the mission and post of Monterey with meat in that
manner. It was only by slow degrees that the object of Father
Serra of making the Californian missions self-supporting was at-

222 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

tained, and meantime keen want was often felt in the new settle-
ments.

The year 1772 was marked by a new exploration of San Fran-
cisco Bay, which, like the former one, was accompanied and chro-
nicled by Father Crespi. The latter was an old college friend of
Father Serra, and had accompanied him, like Father Palon, from
Majorca to Mexico, and subsequently had been his colleague in
the Sierra Gorda missions. The eastern shore of the bay was
explored and accurately described as far as the estuary of the
San Joaquin River, but no mission could as yet be founded there
for want of the required escort. The instructions from the home
government absolutely forbade the foundation of new missions
without an escort of five or six soldiers, and Fages was unable
or unwilling to spare such from his little garrisons at San Diego
and Monterey. San Luis, however, which was within easy reach
of the new establishment at San Antonio, received a mission in 1772,
which was founded by Serra in person in Captain Fages' recent
hunting-grounds. From San Luis he travelled to San Gabriel,
and thence to San Diego, where the Californian packet-boats had
remained on account of bad weather that year. They had
brought the news of a new viceroy in Mexico, and, after delibe-
ration with his colleagues, Father Serra decided to undertake a
voyage to the capital to lay the condition of California properly
before the Spanish authorities.

This visit was a most timely one for the interests of Cali-
fornia. On landing at Tepic, Serra learned that the peninsula of
Lower California had been ceded to the Dominicans, and that the
twenty-four Franciscan priests lately employed in it were, for the
most part, to return to Mexico. Father Palon had, however,
ample powers to change their destination, and on hearing the
state of the new missions he and seven of his companions deter-
mined to devote themselves to their advancement. The journey
up to Mexico, however, nearly proved fatal to Father Serra, who
was twice stricken with fever on his way, and was on the point
of receiving the last sacraments during the last attack. He re-
covered, however, and reached the capital weak, emaciated, and
worn down, but full of energy and amply informed of the con-
dition of the new settlements. The viceroy, Bucareli, was a
man of high character, and he was most favorably impressed by
Father Serra. It had been seriously proposed by some of the
officials to suppress the naval station at San Bias, on the Pacific,
on the grounds of expense. Such a step would have been fatal
to the new establishments in California, which would have been

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 223

practically all but cut off from communication with the outer
world. The officers would have been only too glad to get away
from their irksome posts, and little opposition was to be expected
from them. Father Serra's representations, however, made such
an impression on the viceroy that not only was the establish-
ment at San Bias maintained, but orders were given to open
a communication overland between the furthest posts in Ari-
zona and the new missions. An exploring expedition was also
fitted out to examine the northern coasts, under the command of
Captain Perez. Having thus satisfactorily arranged the business
of his province, Serra lost no time in Mexico, though he was
urged to remain for much-needed rest and medical treatment.
Bidding an eternal farewell to his old community in San Fer-
nando, he started once more for San Bias, and sailed thence on
the newly-built frigate which had been commissioned to explore
the northern coasts.

The return of their president was joyful news to the Francis-
cans in California, who had meanwhile been carrying on the mis-
sion work with considerable success. The commander, Fages,
was now replaced by Captain Rivera, and it was hoped that the
long-desired mission of San Buenaventura might be established
at last. Rivera, however, was as little inclined to exert himself
in the matter as his predecessor, whom he took a special pleasure
in mortifying at his departure. It is worth mentioning that, in
spite of the annoyances which Fages had given to the Francis-
cans, Father Serra had the generosity to write a strong recom-
mendation in his favor to the new viceroy, who consequently pro-
moted him on his return to Mexico. Rivera also quarrelled with
Captain Anza, who had come from Sonora by the overland route
at the same time that Serra was on his way from San Bias. In
fact, there was some suspicion that the commander's reason was
affected, and, in any case, he was, after some time, transferred to
Lower California, and Neve, the governor of that province, or-
dered to remove to Monterey as head of both Californias.

The prosperity of the missions was interrupted the next year
by an outbreak of the Indians at San Diego. One of the Francis-
cans, Father Jayme, was murdered with two other Spaniards,
and the buildings were reduced to ashes. Rivera made an ex-
pedition against the offenders, who belonged to the still pagan
rancherias, and captured several of the ringleaders. At the ur-
gent request of Father Serra, however, they were pardoned by
the viceroy after some months' imprisonment. " Protect the liv-
ing as the apple of your eye, but let the dead rest with God," was

224 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

his exhortation to the commander, and the character which his
leniency impressed on the government was never wholly effaced
in subsequent policy. In its treatment of the natives Spanish
California stands in the front rank among the settlements of
Europeans on this North American continent.

On receiving the news of Father Jayme's death Father Serra
set out as soon as possible for San Diego, and found there that
peace had been fully restored. In fact, the rising was a mere ef-
fect of fickleness among the savages, such as was constantly to be
expected on new missions, and the president at once set about
rebuilding the ruined mission. The commander, however, inter-
posed and ordered all those engaged in the work to return to the
post. No entreaties could change his resolution. It was not un-
til the viceroy, Bucareli, sent peremptory orders to that effect
from Mexico that the governor finally permitted the rebuilding
of the ruined mission. Father Serra had no sooner completed
this task than he proceeded to establish another at San Juan
Capistrano, north of San Diego. In spite of Rivera's prophecies
of evil the natives proved most friendly, and the mission in after-
times was among the most prosperous in California. Father
Serra was struck by the abundance of wild grapes in its neigh-
borhood, and he caused a vineyard to be planted near the church.
The new vines throve well, and in a few years they were able to
supply wine in abundance.

In the meanwhile Captain Anza had returned from Sonora
with a party of over two hundred settlers for California. Some
were left at Monterey, but the larger number were intended for
San Francisco, where it was intended to establish a military post
as well as an Indian mission. Anza was badly received by the
jealous Rivera, and, moreover, got a severe attack of fever at Mon-
terey, which obliged him to depute the task of founding the new
post to his lieutenant, Moraga a name which still is preserved in
the topography of California. The presidio, or military post, was
definitely established on the i/th of September, 1776, the feast of
the Stigmata of St. Francis, and a few days afterwards the mis-
sion for the Indians was founded a few miles away by Father
Palon, Serra's life-long friend, who had come from Lower Califor-
nia two years before. St. Francis at last had a local habitation
and name among the California missions, to the great delight
of his spiritual children. Even their brightest hopes, however,
could not anticipate the future which awaited the little gathering
of reed-covered huts and the church of branches in which Father
Palon commenced his labors on the site of the future city.

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 225

Rivera had taken no part in the foundation of San Francisco,
but a letter from the viceroy came to stimulate his flagging en-
ergy, and he at once offered to help in founding a second mission
at the southern end of the bay. The wide valley of Santa Clara
is a far more attractive spot than the wind-swept hills of San
Francisco, and the mission of that name was founded there in the
beginning of 1777. A pueblo of Spaniards, the first in California,
was founded near this mission the following year, and has since
grown into the city of San Jose. Affairs in the south had de-
tained Father Serra's attention for several months ; but on the
earliest opportunity he hastened to visit the new establishments.
The site of San Francisco especially struck him, and he' was loud
in his admiration of Father Palon's work ; as he said, it now
only needed the long-talked-of establishments on the Santa Bar-
bara Channel to complete the chain of missions from the Bay of
San Francisco to the Gulf of California.

It was not to be granted to him to see the fulfilment of his
hopes. Though the success of the Franciscan missions had been
unquestioned, they were regarded with jealous eyes by a large
number of the Spanish officials. The home government, indeed,
was friendly, and was, moreover, anxious to promote the settle-
ment of California with a European population. To facilitate that
object Sonora, Arizona, California, and the other northern pro-
vinces were separated from the viceroyalty of Mexico and formed
into an independent government. Teodoro de Croix, an active
officer, was appointed captain-general of the new government, with
powers equal to those of a viceroy. Unfortunately, the new cap-
tain-general was imbued with the fashionable liberalism of the
eighteenth century, and intermeddling in religious matters ap-
peared to him an important part of government. The system of
gathering the Indians around the missions and breaking them
gradually into habits of industry did not suit his ideas. In the
usual spirit of a doctrinaire liberal he resolved that for the future
the Franciscans should strictly confine themselves to instructing
the natives in their own camps, but should make no attempt to
congregate them around the missions. Two missions on this plan
were founded in Arizona, where De Croix hoped to build up a
prosperous colony. The missions of the Santa Barbara Channel
were to be on the same plan, but the heads of the College of San
Fernando declined to furnish missioners except on the same
terms as for the other missions. Father Serra received no notice
of this change of system from the governor, and he had already
founded the mission of San Buenaventura when he received in-
VOL. XL. 15

226 FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. [Nov.,

structions from his superiors in Mexico to suspend any new foun-
dations. The Arizona missions had been destroyed by the na-
tives in a sudden outbreak, and the Franciscans were unwilling
to take any part in repeating similar experiments. De Croix ad-
hered to his theories, and thus the work of founding new missions
was for a time suspended in California. San Buenaventura was
Father Serra's last foundation, though for years he kept eagerly
waiting for permission to continue his cherished work.

They were not, indeed, years of idleness for the now old mis-
sioner. The work of conversion had been steadily going on
in all the missions, and the Christian population now amounted
to several thousands. In Monterey more than a thousand In-
dians were baptized, and a still larger number in San Diego, while
the other missions were increasing even more rapidly for their
shorter age. In Monterey Serra continued to discharge the
regular duties of the mission to the last while attending with un-
ceasing watchfulness to the administration of the other missions.
A special brief from the Holy See had conferred on him the
faculty of administering confirmation during a period of ten
years. Nearly four of them had already expired when the pat-
ent reached Monterey, and, in spite of his infirmities, he at once
commenced a new series of journeys to impart the benefits of his
commission to the different missions. Even in a purely spiritual
function of the kind, however, the jealousy of the captain-general
found room for interference. The brief had been duly attested
in Mexico and transmitted to Monterey, but De Croix called on
Serra to submit it to him before acting on it. To confirm an In-
dian without his permission seemed to the captain-general an un-
pardonable infringement on the rights of the civil power, and for
many months the zealous missioner was forced to leave his powers
in abeyance until the punctiliousness of De Croix was satisfied.
In the meantime increasing weakness warned Serra that his own
time on earth was drawing to a close, and when permission was
finally accorded he hastened to visit all the missions in succession,
so that, if possible, none of the new Christians should be left with-
out the benefit of confirmation. His old colleague, Father Juan
Crespi, the discoverer of the Bay of San Francisco and long his
assistant in Monterey, died in 1782, and Serra wept long and
deeply over his loss, but still he toiled on. He anxiously looked
for a change in the policy of government which would allow him
to resume his cherished work of founding new missions ; but as
year after year passed without bringing the hoped-for intelligence
he accepted the idea that his work was nearly done. A new

1884.] FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA. 227

church was to be dedicated in Santa Clara in 1784, and, as his
faculties for confirming expired in that year, he left Monterey,
for a visit to the northern missions, in April of that year, for
the double purpose of administering confirmation and consecrat-
ing the new church. The builder of the latter, Father Murguia,
had been a colleague of his in the Sierra Gorda thirty-four years
before, and a strong affection existed between him and Father
Serra. While the latter was in San Francisco administering con-
firmation he received the news of Father Murguia's sudden ill-
ness, and in a few days later that of his death. The consecration
of the new church was unspeakably mournful for the venerable
president, but still he held to his work unflinchingly. Some of
the Indian converts were unable to attend the mission, and Serra
visited their rancherias to confirm those prepared for it, after
which he resumed his journey to Monterey. His special faculties
for confirming expired on the i6th of July, and the same day
the vessel from San Bias anchored in Monterey and brought him
the unwelcome news that no missioners could be spared for Cali-
fornia. This intelligence he accepted as a sign that his work was
nearly done, and, while writing as usual to all the missions in-
structions for their guidance, he asked the priests of the nearer
ones to pay him a last visit. Father Palon, his early friend, at
once hastened down from San Francisco and found Father Serra
nearly broken down in strength, but still teaching his converts
and reciting the public prayers in the church in a voice as strong
as ever. On the following days he gave instructions for the dis-
tribution of the supplies that had come from San Bias to the vari-
ous missions, and even employed himself in cutting up and dis-
tributing blankets and clothing among the Indians. On the 26th
of August he made a general confession to Father Palon and
remained most of the day entirely absorbed in prayers. The
next day he asked for the viaticum and insisted on going to the
church to receive it. Father Palon urged him to remain in his
room, but in vain, and on reaching the church he knelt and sud-
denly intoned the Tantum Ergo in a voice as clear as in his full-
est health. Having finished his prayers, he returned to his room
and passed the whole day in prayer. The Indians began to
throng into the room of the dying man, who spoke kindly to
them from time to time and passed the night either sitting or en
his knees. The following day the captain of the frigate in the
harbor came to visit him, and Father Serra received him with
the same cheerfulness as if in perfect health. After a while he
suddenly relapsed into ^silence and whispered to Father. Palon,.

228 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

" I feel a great fear ; read me the prayers for the dying, and loud."
Father Palon complied, and the dying man responded, and at the
conclusion he joyfully exclaimed, " Thank God ! all fear is gone ;
let us go out." He rose and walked out with the officers, after
which he returned and lay down. Father Palon returned in a
short time to see if he slept, and found that his soul had passed
away from earth. The following day, amid the lamentations of
the whole community of Monterey, his body was laid near that
of his old friend Father Crespi.

It is common to represent the last century as a period when
religion had almost lost all sway over men's minds in Catholic
Europe. How far was such from being the case in truth may
be gathered from the life of Junipero Serra.

DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD.

IT was the beginning of last March. The steamer on which
a great part of the journey was to be made had arrived at Cin-
cinnati the Wednesday before from below, and now, late on Sat-
urday night, the gang-planks were hauled in from the wharf-boat,
all the fastenings cast loose, and, as her head swung slowly
around into the channel on her way down the river again to
New Orleans, the black faces of the stevedores ashore became
indistinct in the glare of the torches that lit up the darkness of
the landing.

The day had been intensely cold in Cincinnati, and the ex-
citement created by the recent flood had not yet died out. The
stranger who went down into the wholesale quarter would still
be shown, as he carefully picked his footing along the icy, slip-
pery sidewalks below Third Street, the different " water-marks "
indicating the highest points severally reached by the freshets of
other famous years. It is, by the way, one of the inconsistencies
of human nature, which instinctively loves comfort and prosper-
ity, that men boast of their ill-luck, and even love to magnify it.
A Cincinnatian found an especially wilful delight in proving to
you that the flood of 1884 was the greatest of all, and had sur-
passed, in the amount of damage done, anything before on re-
cord. When the proud citizen indicated the marks scratched
or painted in years before on business houses at the corner of
Second ^Street, and showed you the new mark for 1884, some

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 229

inches higher than the others, he actually swelled with vanity.
None but an unkind man could have failed to be enthusiastic
with him over the fact that 1884 had beaten all preceding years.

There was no moon, and the snow-covered streets and hill-
sides of Cincinnati on the right and Covington on the left
served to make the muddy water of the Ohio River seem only the
more chilly and cheerless. It was a night and an hour not likely
to tempt one to remain on deck. Even the well-lit cabin looked
inhospitable. For the passengers held together in very small
groups or kept aloof entirely from one another. The only lively
person amid all the serious-looking people who were locking and
unlocking state-room doors was a lady " of a certain age," as
staid old writers would have said. Needless to explain she was
not married, but she had a married man in charge her brother-
and his wife and three children. Amid all the details of storing
cargo and clearing from the wharf, which captain, mates, and
clerks had to attend to, she had determinedly snatched bits of
hurried, eager talk with each, and now, having satisfied herself
that she was on the right boat with all her charge, she was send-
ing her charge to bed and seeing that they went " right to
sleep."

The night was bitter cold. It is unnecessary to say how low
the mercury had cuddled down in its narrow tube, for we suffer
with cold and heat against the scientific protests of the best of
thermometers. The icicles hung along the " ginger-bread " edg-
ing of the upper decks, and, in spite of a glowing fire in the
great stoves of the cabin, the heaviest of blankets and spreads
were welcome.

Daylight broke on a desolate scene. The waters of the
" beautiful river," as its Catholic missionary-discoverers named
it, were spread out over double their ordinary width. To the
right, still partly under water, lay Lawrenceburg, Indiana, which
but recently, for the second time in two years, had been sub-
merged, with scarcely anything but the church-spires left above
the waves to keep up the courage of its citizens who had fled to
the hills. Indiana and Kentucky now, so far as they were not
under water, were under snow. Away up above the steamer's
decks, in the ample, square glass house built for his use, the pilot
stood, with his thick overcoat-collar up to his ears, turning the
big wheel from right to left and back again, as he guided the
great steamer, with its valuable cargo and its hundred passen-
gers, through the now deep channel.

In the history of the early Catholic explorers of the interior

230 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD, [Nov.,

of North America the region along- this river has much interest.
More than two hundred years ago Father Hennepin, a member
of that family of the order of Friars Minor known as Recollects,
made a voyage down the Ohio, from far above this, to where the
city of Louisville now is. Every shore of these rivers of the
West saw Catholic priests, intent on " preaching the Gospel to
every creature," long before any Protestant had penetrated thus
far. There were Irish priests, too, among these adventurous
seekers of souls ; some of them chaplains to the French military
posts that were established along the line from Quebec to New
Orleans. Among these was Father Whelan, whose name is still
preserved in the corrupt spelling of Wheeling, W. Va.

An Eastern man will hardly fail to notice a great difference
between the appearance of things here and at the East. Of
course this is more or less a coal-mining country, or a country
where the soft, bituminous coal, which makes a deal of smoke
and soot, is used. But, allowing for that, the Ohio River
towns are most certainly, with a few exceptions, a dilapidated
contrast to Eastern thrift and neatness. Nearly everything
along here that pleases the cultivated eye is pretty sure to be
due to nature rather than to man.

But the Ohio River* itself has many picturesque qualities.
Standing behind the pilot and his wheel, there is presented, with
every turn of the steamer's head through the winding river,
some new combination of land and water, of hillside and nestling
valley, that has a soothing effect. The formation of its shores
has been a favorite study for the geologist. Often for miles
there are on both sides unbroken series of round hills " bluffs "
in the river dialect coming quite close up to the river's bank,
and leaving between them small areas of flat, low lands that are
apt to be under water at least once a year. This is a good place
to remark that the term bluff is applied on the lower Missis-
sippi River to the banks of the river whenever they are sufficient-
ly high, or to the nearest high ground back from the river. But
the round and often conical bluffs so frequent on the Ohio are
rarely seen on the lower Mississippi.

Social life on a Mississippi River steamer is somewhat similar
to what it used to be on ocean-steamers when it took eleven or
twelve days to cross the Atlantic, and before the cold British
stare was imported into the United States by our New York and
New England aristocracy, to be carried abroad by them again.
Americans of the West and South for the most part still retain
the republican affability that once belonged to Americans in

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 231

general. There is no pleasanter man to meet on a journey than
a Southwesterner of average intelligence and education. He
does not pose, does not speak or be silent for effect. He is
simply and admirably natural, and, therefore, companionable.
What the ladies of the same region are may be guessed from
what the men are. By the time the boat reached Louisville,
after two nights aboard, the ladies had made up their minds as to
each other. In the meanwhile several lively euchre and whist
parties had brought a good many of the gentlemen together, and
even those who clustered in the lazy-chairs about the great stove
near the captain's office, listlessly trying to read novels or old
newspapers, soon fell to discussing politics, crops, or business, or
to telling laughter-raising stories.

Two days down the Ohio brought us to its mouth at Cairo.
Poor Cairo lay nearly half under water, and as the broad Ohio
spread out on one side of the narrow, triangular tongue of low
land on which the city is built, and the vast Mississippi on the
other, the view in all directions was decidedly damp. But there
was already a perceptible increase in the temperature, and wher-
ever the waters did allow any land to be seen there was no snow
and there were some vague signs of approaching spring. It was
night as the steamer got into the flow of the Mississippi. The
shores in all directions were covered with tall forests which seem
to rise out of the water, so low are the lands.

" Snags " and " sawyers " are important among the dangers
of Western river-navigation. A snag is a mass of entangled tim-
bers drift-wood and the like which, after floating down the
current, become fixed in position somewhere in the channel be-
cause some of the wood has been driven head-first into the sandy
bottom. This nucleus of drift-wood soon gathers all the floating
material that comes within reach, until a small island of vagrant
stuff is formed right across the pathway oT steamers. A "saw-
yer " is a large tree, torn up by the roots during a freshet and
carried either from the Alleghany Mountains down the Ohio or
the Rocky Mountains down the Missouri, to be floated for a time
along the surface of the Mississippi, and then, becoming water-
logged in a shallow place, its trunk pointing down-stream
usually, is well able to make a bad hole in any incautious craft
that runs against it. According to the evidence before a United
States Senate committee in 1883, there were that year in the
Mississippi River between St. Louis and Cairo alone more than
five thousand wrecks of river-craft of all sorts, and, according to
the report in July, 1883, of the United States engineering steamer

232 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

Patrol, there were below Cairo fifty-three snags dangerous to
navigation. It is not difficult, then, to appreciate the responsibili-
ties of a Mississippi River pilot.

A thought very apt to come to the mind on one's first sight
of all this lower river-country is: How could any one venture to
risk the investment of his life's labor on land which appears to
be in constant danger of becoming water ? For the uninitiated
would hardly notice, until his attention were called to it, that
these bottom-lands are more or less protected from ordinary
rises of the water by the levees. At a high stage of water, how-
ever, the levee looks like an uncertain and very narrow strip of
mud, a few feet, or perhaps a few inches only, higher than the
plantations or the woods that extend indefinitely inward.

But what a change has been wrought by one night's journey !
Yesterday was winter. This morning the birds are twittering
about the cottonwoods on shore and are looking early for their
worms, and for seeds too, the little rogues ! in the ploughed
fields over in Missouri. The air is soft and warm, and the sun-
light out of a clear sky is shadowed on the surface of the river
near the banks by the trees, already in full leaf.

A sudden bend of the river to the left, and the steamer bears
down towards a point of historic interest Fort Pillow, on the
Tennessee shore. But the Mississippi is doing its best to oblite-
rate this place of painful or glorious memory, according to the
side one took in the fratricidal war, if he took any side. Fort
Pillow, an earthwork constructed by the Confederates, stood on
the high ground which still bears the name, and commanded
the channel for some distance north ; but the channel is gaining
on Fort Pillow, and from that point down for several miles the
high bank is toppling over into the river. This, however, will
probably create a new bar that will in turn throw the channel
back again towards the Arkansas side.

In fact, there can be little dependence on the channel of the
Mississippi anywhere below the mouth of the Ohio. Unlike its
upper course, and unlike the Ohio, it has no long lines of bluffs,
no high ground for any considerable distance, on either side.
Here and there, though rarely, is a short stretch of the bank
that rises from twenty to sixty feet or more above the surface of
the water ; but frequently this happens to be in a re-entrant bend
of the river, and it is always of alluvial soil, so that, as at Fort
Pillow and Memphis, the river is yearly washing it away. The
only respectable ridge or chain of hills close to the Mississippi
is the one, on the east side of the river, that begins near Vicks-

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 233

burg- and reaches to the neighborhood of New Orleans. But
this ridge runs for a good part of its course several miles inland,
and, therefore, is at but few points of any use as a protection.

Southern plantation-life was now in full sight. Every two
or three miles, and especially on the eastern bank, with strips of
open forest in the intervals, were large tracts of low, flat land,
ploughed and set ready for the coming cotton-crop. Along the
river-road there was at each plantation a row of negro quar-
ters, the women folk and the coal-black youngsters and babies
gathered about door-steps or sitting on fences, making all man-
ner of signals and salutes to the passing steamer. On deck the
breeze caused by the rapid movement of the boat, though not
cold, was fresh and strong.

At the starboard side of the " Texas," as the upper deck on
these river-steamers is called, sat a grizzly old man, a Tennes-
sean, who had been a river-pilot in that heroic period of our his
tory which we are becoming accustomed to speak of as " before
the war." Every bend and reach and striking feature of the
mighty river and its banks was as familiar to him as are the
lamp-posts on his beat to a city policeman. The distance-card
furnished to passengers indicated all the landings on the two
rivers between Cincinnati and New Orleans, and as, according to
the card, we should have now been somewhere about" Napoleon,
Ark.," once notorious as the hardest town on the Mississippi
River, I ventured to ask the old man how soon we should be
there. " Napoleon ? " he replied, in a very sad sort of way, as if
he had long ago known the place with delight, " Napoleon is
right down thar, beneath ye. Why, we are passing right over
Napoleon now. Do you see that thar clump of cottonwoods
yonder? Well, that grows right above vvhar the United States
custom-house used to be." The truth is that Napoleon, which I
had heard of often in my boyhood days, though not often since,
has been washed out of existence. The once busy, thriving, bust-
ling, pushing, wicked little city was wiped away by the Missis-
sippi River, which now flows on over where the city stood. Is it
any wonder the Indians paid a kind of worship to this terrible
Father of Waters ?

From the mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico both
banks of the Mississippi were this spring, as often before, the
scenes of wild ruin. Hundreds of square miles of fertile, care-
fully-tilled lands lay for weeks under water, checking work to
be done and undoing work already done. Towns and villages
were unapproachable by steamboats from the river and by rail-

234 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

road cars from the interior. Families had to pass many days of
doubt and fear in the upper stories of their houses, barely able,
even if they had money laid by, to supply themselves with food.
How many thousands lost all they had will never be rightly
known. But the aggregate loss to business in general along the
Mississippi River, without taking into account the amount of sick-
ness engendered, must have been very great.

Now, the river that works all this destruction is not merely a
Southern highway of travel and trade. It is also a ditch for the
drainage of Northern lands. The whole country north of the
Ohio and Missouri rivers, between the Alleghany Mountains and
the Rocky Mountains, sends its surplus waters down this great
drain. It is a great mistake, then, to contend, as many Northern
journals do, that the call for Federal help is unwarranted or that
it is founded on exaggerated claims. Outside of the reciprocal
interest which the States of the republic ought to have in each
other's welfare, and outside of the constitutional duty of Con-
gress to legislate for the care of all navigable waters, there is
here an equitable claim for damage done by one part of the re-
public to another. Some Northern papers sneer at all attempts
to confine the Mississippi River by levees. They say that there
can be no sure relief; that the rich lands of Kentucky, Arkansas,
Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, lying along the river-edge,
must be left to their fate, as the mighty volume of water which
the Northern States send down every spring is too strong for the
levees. It is true these levies, as now constructed, are ridicu-
lously insufficient, but it is silly logic which argues from the
abuse of a system.

The Ohio River and the northern half of the Mississippi are,
no doubt, shut in by bluffs which set some bounds to the chan-
nels of these rivers, but the lower Mississippi flows through flats
which are certain to be submerged, partially at least, by the
yearly rush of this drainage from the North, unless Congress,
putting aside sectional prejudices, gives the necessary relief.
Yet the Mississippi River is no more terrible or invincible than
the North Sea, and the little kingdom of Holland has been able
to hold that sea back, and no one has yet been found to sneer at
the Dutch dikes. To be sure it will take a great deal of money
to build substantial levees in place of the flimsy, funny little tow-
paths which the Federal government has not been ashamed to
tolerate. But this money ought to be paid, much or little, out of
the Federal treasury until Southern agriculturists can lie down
at night with some certainty that they will not awake to see

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 235

their lands flooded by the surface-drainage of Northern States,
and themselves in their houses cut off from all communication
beyond.

The sun was now decidedly warm, and, what with the sun and
the fresh breeze, that offered a tonic to the heat, complexions were
beginning- to be browned. Some of the lady passengers already
wore thick veils, and others dexterously manoeuvred umbrellas
against both sun and wind. Interesting groups formed in the
shelter of any projection above the " Texas." There was even a
" dude " aboard, and a young man whom the passengers styled a
"half-dude," though neither of these youths anywise approached
the queer specimens that bear these names in New York. In
fact, Western and Southern people have rather hastily adopted
the word "dude," though the thing it is intended to describe has
really not yet reached either the West or the South, apparently.
The Western and Southern "dude" is usually a rather manly
though still callow young fellow, who, being more or less good-
looking, and therefore conceited, goes through the usual chrysalis
period of his kind, to develop, under favorable circumstances, into
a sensible man at last. Anyhow, our Dude was of the Western
species, a fine, strapping young fellow from Cincinnati, with a
good head and an intelligent face, from which you felt that the
conceited frown would vanish in time ; while the Half-Dude,
though not so tall, and apparently somewhat older, and not so
exacting in his pretensions, was even more likely to recover
good sense. Besides, the other passengers remembered, in
their favor, that these two persons were in love; and what
man in love will pass public scrutiny unscathed ? They were in
love, it seemed, with two young ladies who were twin sisters,
little things dressed in black, of trim figure and very large, black
eyes genuine brunettes of the white-skinned type, travelling
under the chaperonnage of their widowed mother, who looked
young enough to be their older sister. The Dude let us use
the word as a pseudonym for want of a handier and his lady-
love were playing at making a long sea-voyage together. He
lay stretched upon a steamship-chair and read to her by the hour.

Up in the pilot-house the Lady of a Certain Age had taken her
station. This daring old maid went ashore at every landing, no
matter what the chance of getting upon dry land. Each of the
two sober-sided pilots who took turns in steering the boat
through the devious channel learned to know this dauntless fe-
male from Michigan. Her questions were rapidly put, but she
never waited for an answer, or heard one if it was given. But the

236 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

universal favorite was a keen yet benevolent-faced old physician,
who was from a well-known city in southern Indiana. He was
a strict Presbyterian, but his successful services to the ailing
were eminently catholic.

Nearly all the Arkansas bank of the river was under water
from south of the former site of Napoleon. At Arkansas City, a
considerable railroad point, passengers intending to go into the
interior were unable to land, and had to continue the voyage
down the river in the hope of reaching their destination by some
other route,

Friday, within less than a week's journey from Cincinnati,
Memphis came in sight ; and here the action of the flood was
painfully apparent, especially in the upper suburb, much of which
was washed away altogether. About one o'clock the boat drew
into the leve'e. That leisurely class of citizens, the colored popu-
lation, had a large committee of reception there for us, to wel-
come us to Tennessee, some to black our shoes for " a nickel,
boss," and some to offer us the accommodation of rickety rock-
away carriages. Have you ever seen a Southern colored hack-
man and his turnout? The driver himself has no conscience,
but he has any amount of good-nature, while his animal seems to
be all conscience, but lacking in all the characteristics of an ordi-
nary good horse. Most of us went up the hill into town afoot.
The Dude, the Half-Dude, with the two young ladies and the fu-
ture Mother-in-Law, rode " in a chaise."

Memphis is a bright little city, though no one seems to be able
to visit it for the first time without thoughts of the yellow fever
which scourged it so severely for several successive years. It
has five Catholic churches, one of them belonging to the Domini-
can friars and another to the Franciscan friars. Its Catholicity
is of the vigorous sort, too, for it has four parochial primary
schools, carried on by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Domi-
nic, Ursuline nuns, and an American order of Southern origin,
the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, founded by Bishop David, of
Bardstown, Kentucky, in the early part of this century. The
very best test that can, in fact, be applied to the Catholicity of
any city in the United States is, not the number and beauty of
its churches, but the number and efficiency of its parochial
schools. Children of Catholic parents, brought up under the pre-
sent system of public schools, with their avowed non-sectarianism
that is, indifference to religious dogma are, as a rule, blighted
in faith. Children brought up in Catholic schools, even though
these schools may be inferior which they seldom are are apt to

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 237

keep the faith, and, if they have any intellect worth cultivating,
will afterwards, at the proper time, supplement for themselves the
shortcomings of their teachers.

Anyhow, a Catholic (eels proud of his religion when Memphis
first appears to him, for it was here in 1873, and in subsequent
years as well, that the divine charity of the Catholic religion was
shown in the deaths of numbers of priests and sisters attending
the fever-stricken of all religions. A Catholic priest, or a Catho-
lic sister of any order, can always depend on being treated with
respect in Memphis.

The Dude had brought an amateur photographic apparatus
with him aboard the steamer, and while we were admiring the
beautiful palm-trees, live-oaks, and other semi-tropical trees that
were all aleaf in full summer glory in the public square, we were
astonished to notice that the Half- Dude, the young ladies, and the
future Mother-in-Law were there also, some distance in front of us,
and that they had struck a picturesque attitude, with a green back-
ground, not ourselves but a clump of palms at the foot of which
a squirrel sat rubbing his nose in wonder at the group. The
Dude himself, some yards still further away, had run his interest-
ing head under the curtain of his small camera, and held his arm
stretched out as a caution to his little clique of worshippers to
stand firm.

The commercial importance of Memphis has long ago re-
covered from the damage done by the yellow fever. Its popula-
tion, in 1880 a little over 35,000, is now estimated at about 60,000.
An excellent system of sewerage has been put into operation
since the pestilence of 1879, ano ^ every resource of sanitary science
has been made use of since that awful year in the city's history to
prevent any recurrence of disaster. Very strict quarantine regu-
lations, too, are now enforced against New Orleans at the first
rumor that the fever has made its appearance there. There is
good reason to believe that the confidence which Memphians now
have in the security of their city against its former foe is jus-
tified by the wisdom of their precautions.

The beams of the setting sun played across the wake of the
boat as she ploughed along down the middle of the channel that
evening after leaving Memphis. It was amusing to watch the
swells that followed in the boat's wake, as they spread from
shore to shore, for in every rolling wave the fish were sport-
ing with all the playfulness of porpoises. Though no fish of
fine species or fine flesh would be caught in the muddy wa-
ters of these great rivers, that finny monster of the Mississippi

238 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

called the " buffalo" furnishes as solid eating as either sturgeon
or halibut.

One of the striking sights was Terrene, Mississippi. The
levee in front of the little town lay completely under water,
which was deep enough everywhere to make it necessary for all
movement out of doors to be made by boat only. As our steamer
approached the wharf-boat one could imagine himself in primitive
Venice, or perhaps in Venezuela, as he saw the small craft, log-
canoes most of them, shooting out around the corners and bear-
ing down towards the wharf-boat for news and provisions. In
fact, the worst of the damage done by the flood was to be seen
below Memphis. The history of it will probably never be gath-
ered into readable shape, but will be told in fragments for years
to come in farm houses, cotton-gins, sugar-mills, country taverns,
and negro-cabins innumerable, within from five to ten miles on
either side of the Mississippi from Cairo to the Gulf of Mexico.
As an example of many minor incidents, we passed on the shore
of the State of Mississippi a small, two-story frame house entirely
surrounded by deep water, which reached to above the second
story. The family, consisting of a man and three children, a dog
and some fowls, were high and dry on a newly-constructed plat-
form of rough boards, hastily put together, attached to the gable
roof of the house near one of the chimneys. The man and the
children were making excited gestures to our steamer to keep
off, for fear the waves might wash them away.

Sunday morning we awoke early to find ourselves alongside
the wharf at the historic city of Vicksburg, which rose, with its
steep streets and its houses and church-spires partly hidden in a
rich foliage, up the high bluff on which it is built. Though our
captain and mates were very satisfactory in other respects, it was
impossible to learn from them whether the steamer would remain
five minutes or five hours at any place where she put in. The
good intentions of the church-going minority of the passengers
were, therefore, defeated this morning. But we all took the risk
of going ashore and climbing the streets where shot and shell
and musket-ball screamed and hissed and whizzed over the luck-
less inhabitants twenty-one years ago until that memorable
Fourth of July, when, the day after the Union victory at Gettys-
burg, the Confederate general in command surrendered the city
to the Union forces. That siege will never be forgotten by
Vicksburg, for the new channel, or cut-off, which Grant con-
structed across the narrow neck of land around which the river
bends in front of the city, though it proved a failure for the pur-

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 239

poses of the siege, has been scoured out since by successive floods
until it has become the ordinary channel, leaving merely a shal-
low rivulet in front of Vicksburg's wharves, except at an unusual-
ly high stage of water.

About noon we dropped down-stream a mile or more to the
new landing, brought into use on account of Grant's cut-off, and
there the steamer remained until near dusk, taking aboard thou-
sands of sacks of cotton-seed oil-cake. In place of a wharf-boat
here was the aged and decrepit ruin of what was once the hand-
somest and fastest steamer on the Mississippi. A walk up and
down the broad staircases and through the ample cabins, now
all falling into a dry rot and covered with dust or festooned with
spider-webs, brought the usual forcible Sunday sermon to mind
that all things decay and perish.

Along the crest of the high ridge that rose parallel with the
river were grassy projections which the veteran military eye was
not long in discerning as the remains of the Confederate earth-
works. The day was very warm and there was no shade on the
face of the steep ridge, but the hundred and twenty passengers
were soon climbing the heights in groups. The ladies were as
enthusiastic as the men, perhaps, as they listened, with an absent-
minded preference for the wild flowers which grew in abundance,
to the wise criticisms of the male folk of their particular group
on the advantages and disadvantages from a military standpoint
of the various contours of the ground. At the crest of the ridge
the defences of the extreme Confederate right during the siege,
with their many angles and winding covered-ways, were reached,
and an active little boy soon dug up a minie-bullet, which set all
the rest hunting for relics. The outlines of the Confederate
works are still, after twenty-one years' storms and rains, quite
distinct, and there is no difficulty in following them around with-
out a guide.

Near the wharf-boat, in front of his queer, patched-up cabin,
where his careful wife was attending to household duties, a
venerable negro, a sort of black Bardwell Slote, treated us to a
discourse on practical politics. He was a genuine philosopher of
the cynical school. " I des tell ye, gemmens," said he, " dars no
rale politics w'at doan res' on bread and buttah. I done lib yer,
des yer, w'en my old marster, w'at's dead long time now, was a
cunnel up da in de Confedrit lines. Well, do I hab any mo' po'k
an' co'n den I done user to hab den ? Doan yo' belieb it ! O'
co'se I'm a free man now. W'at's dat? Gemmens, 'scuse me,
but de ole lady's done call me, an' w'en she sen' for de boss ye

240 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

bettah belieb dars gwine to be no sorter 'ticulah hesubtation."
And the white-wooled, wrinkled, black-skinned philosopher dis-
appeared in haste toward the direction from which the impatient
call had come.

Monday early, " on St. Patrick's Day in the morning," we
awoke to find the steamer " tied up " at Natchez. It was the
1 7th of March, the day that ranks next to the 4th of July in the
genuine enthusiasm that its recurrence arouses in millions of
men, women, and children all over the United States. Had we
been inclined to forget the day, the sturdy men ashore, sons of
the ever-faithful isle, who, with green baldrics across their shoul-
ders, were moving, singly and in groups, to the chosen place of as-
sembly, would have been enough to remind us. Even the bare-
footed little negro boys standing in a row along the edge of the
wharf-boat, showing the whites of their eyes as they looked up to
the steamer, were whistling " St. Patrick's Day," as if it were the
most natural thing in the world to do. A trim little fruit-boat,
with a tawny-faced crew of " Diegos " from New Orleans or the
West Indies, flaunted a green flag with the harp of Erin at its
masthead, as if this river were Cork Harbor and these Span-
ish-Americans were broths of boys from the Cove. The idea
of St. Patrick's Day was contagious. The Lady of a Certain
Age was the first to be taken with it, and, though she was ap-
parently of Down-East stock, she made herself useful at once
with a long piece of green ribbon, which she cut up and dis-
tributed among all the passengers, who gallantly donned the
colors. When we went ashore the people of Natchez must have
thought we were an excursion of Land-Leaguers, if not of Fe-
nians.

Natchez is the most picturesque city on the lower Mississippi.
The best part of the city is built on very high ground, from
ninety to a hundred and twenty feet above the level of the river.
There is an inclined-plane railroad leading up the hill from the
steamboat-landing, similar to those in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and
Hoboken. But the main avenue of approach to the city is up a
wide street running parallel with the river. Ev,ery conveyance at
the landing was soon hired. There was not much choice between
the dilapidated hacks. Up-hill we toiled behind an aged animal
which was almost as stiff in its joints as the springs of our car-
riage. The fragrance of flowers greeted us on every side. The
old-fashioned houses were almost hidden from view by the dense
foliage of live-oaks, oleanders, persimmons, pecans, and magno-
lias. The profusion and variety of beautiful and sweet-smelling

1884.] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 241

flowers were a surprise to the ladies, just from the regions of
frost and snow.

Our colored driver's boy uncovered his head on our passing
the cathedral, and the father explained that, while not a Catholic
himself, his wife was, and so, he was glad to say, were all his
children. He spoke of the sincere admiration which the people
of Natchez had for Archbishop Elder, of Cincinnati, who was for
years the bishop of Natchez. It must have been an act of great
self-denial on this prelate's part to give up his work in this quiet
city for the troubled see of Cincinnati. The parish schools at-
tached to St. Mary's Cathedral, the only Catholic church in
Natchez, are in the hands of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart
for the boys and of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth for the
girls. In addition to these is a separate school for colored chil-
dren.

The Catholic Church has a great work to do among the
colored people of the South. Before the war there was but little
Catholicity in the slave States outside of parts of Maryland,
Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana. The colored people, where
not under Catholic influences, were, so far as religion is concerned,
wholly neglected. Yet they are instinctively a religious people.
Though they are generally Protestants in name and read the Pro-
testant Bible those of them who have been allowed to learn
reading at all with a grotesque understanding of the words, they
have really been left in a state of nature as to religion and
morals.

From Natchez down the main care of the inhabitants of both
banks of the river was the levees. There were several great cre-
vasses and there were fears of others. Whole regiments of ne-
groes were from time to time to be seen resting on their arms
spades and shovels listlessly watching the passing steamers or
engaged in horse-play, and certainly not hard at work. At B&ton
Rouge the Louisiana Military Institute, which had W. T. Sher-
man for its president until the approach of civil war forced him
to return North to win fame and glory enough for any soldier,
was as bright and attractive in appearance as ever. Cotton had
now for a space given way to sugar, and between the orange-
groves, which grew close to the Iev6e, the sugar-mills on each side
could be seen to be not more than a mile apart from one another.

At New Orleans, where we arrived Wednesday noon, ten days
after leaving Cincinnati, we parted company with our fellow-pas-
sengers, and from some of them with much regret. New Orleans
is familiar ground, but it is interesting to strangers nevertheless.
VOL. XL.- 16

242 DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. [Nov.,

In the opinion of its own citizens there is no place that can com-
pare with it. A New Orleans man away from home and home-
sick sighs for Canal Street. It is a mixture, as are its people, of
English-speaking- America and of eighteenth-century France. But
it is becoming Americanized and modernized. It is not nearly
so French as Montreal, though what French it has is of a differ-
ent stamp from that of the more sturdy, steady Canadian city.
The New Orleans Creole is more like the Gascon, the Montreal
Canadian like the Norman or Breton.

There were doubts expressed as to the possibility of getting
from Algiers, opposite to New Orleans, to Texas by railroad, as the
flood had swept in above, through Davis' crevasse, and was rapidly
pouring in over the flat plantations along the western shore of
the river. But the railroad accepted us as passengers, and we
made the venture. The train moved with deliberation but with
some speed out of Algiers, when there came a warning toot for
the brakes, and then a full stop. For the three hours following',
at a speed no faster than a slow horse's walk, we moved west,
deeper and deeper into the water, until the ripples washed the
steps of the cars and threatened to enter the fire-box and leave
us in the midst of the wide stretch of w r ater that now surrounded
the train on all sides. Once more on dry land the train sped on,
and the famished passengers were consoled, though their appe-
tites were whetted, by handbills that were circulated through the
cars, announcing that at Morgan City every sort of refreshment
could be had at three o'clock. The handbills described the rail-
road restaurant at that point as something that any one not hav-
ing been at Morgan City before would have thought to differ
from Delmonico's in no respect except in being cheaper. Alas !
Morgan City's elegant restaurant had no bread that was not
stale, had no " Berwick Bay oysters," no milk, no coffee, no tea.
The men could endure it for themselves, but they were justly in-
dignant to think that a railroad company could manage no better
than to force women and children to go hungry from six in the
morning till seven at night.

But during the afternoon some forgot their hunger in the
interest aroused by the sight of the huge alligators, which lolled
on fallen trees, or floated lazily about among the thick water
vegetation of the cypress swamps, within a stone's throw of the
car-windows. The trees draped in hanging moss gave a gloomy
aspect to the surroundings. At nightfall Vermillionville was
reached, the one oasis of brightness and comfort in this dreary
line of Louisiana railroad travel. A hotel with a small flower.

1 834-] DOWN THE RIVER TO TEXAS DURING THE FLOOD. 243

garden between it and the track cheered the hungry travellers.
There was plenty to eat, and of good quality, well cooked, and
well served by waiters who pressed us to eat and to call for
more a fact !

During the night the train crossed the Sabine River, the divi-
sion-line in by-gone days between New France and New Spain,
and now the boundary between Louisiana and Texas. Half-past
seven in the morning brought us to Houston a great railroad
centre and a keen rival of Galveston. From Houston the train
flies over the vast unfenced prairie, sending herds of long-horned
Texans scampering off. To the left what seems a small forest
is merely the timber skirting Buffalo Bayou, by which Houston
hopes some day to share with Galveston the vast maritime com-
merce expected for Texas in the future.

After three hours' ride the breeze becomes distinctly salty, and
there is barely time to descry ships' masts near by, and perhaps,
on the far horizon, a line of black smoke from a steamer, when
the train enters on the long causeway over which all travel be-
tween Galveston and the mainland is done. The train goes slow-
ly over these two miles of piling, but the time appears short, as
there is much to interest the eye. The West Bay, over which
the causeway is built, is flecked with white and brown-sailed
craft. Where the water widens into Galveston Bay the flags of
all nations wave from the peaks of stately ships laden with valu-
able cargoes.

The everlasting colored brother, who, alone of all Americans,
seems to have caught the true dolce far niente spirit, sits on a
precariously narrow projection of a pile bobbing for eels or try-
ing to decoy an unwary crab. The train enters the depot, and,
twelve days after leaving frost and snow, you are still at home in
the United States, but in the metropolis of Texas, with a summer
air and flowers blooming to receive you.

244 A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. [Nov.,

A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC.

THE following remarks appear in an article in the Month
(London) for July, 1884, entitled "An Englishman's Impressions
of America " :

" There is another element of American character respecting which I
have often asked myself whether it was on the whole prejudicial to Catho-
licity or not. The independence and self-reliance of American character is
in many respects an admirable trait. There is so much self-respect in every
class. The class of ' roughs,' which in England is a very large one, scarcely
exists at all. Ruffians there are enough and to spare in the big cities,
thieves and bullies and men who live by violence and dishonesty. But
one never encounters the boys and young men who are ready to insult the
passer-by just for the fun of the thing, and who are the curse of some parts
of London on a Sunday evening. It is one of the best traits in America
that there is not that barbarous spirit of lawlessness which now and then
breaks out in Europe. When there is a riot in America it is a display of
popular indignation against some real abuse. It is a protest of the law-
makers against those who have, in their opinion, set aside and violated the
law. The Cincinnati riots were an expression of the wrath of the people
against the judicial corruption or inefficiency which allowed murderers to
escape unpunished. But while there is no lawlessness, this is because the
Jaws are the people's laws. It is the uncrowned king respecting his own
sceptre.

" Now, the church's laws have a different origin. Though in one sense
Jhey are the people's laws, yet they are imposed at the same time from
above, by an authority which cannot be called in question by its subjects.
American notions respecting law have to be set aside when applied to
ecclesiastical law. The American view of obedience to civil law is that the
Jaw is the people's law, framed by the people's representatives for the peo-
ple's good, and therefore I, as a sensible, self-respecting man, must obey it
whether I like it or not. I am free to criticise the law and get it abolished,
if I can ; but according to the Constitution of the United States (which I
regard as the most perfect of all constitutions) I am bound to submit to
the will of the majority of the people, and I do so as a self-respecting Ameri-
can citizen. But can I apply the same sort of argument to matters ecclesi-
astical? Is it a safe attitude, in respect to the church's laws, to criticise
them and to wish to get them abolished? Are they wylaws in at all the
same sense in which the laws of my country are my laws, framed by me
through those who represent me in Congress or in State Legislature ?

" Hence arises a tendency to resent, in the church's legislation, her
attitude of independence of, and irresponsibility to, her members. The
American is not used to it. It is altogether a foreign notion to the Ameri-
can mind. In the civil order law is the voice of those subject to the law, and
they can change it when they see fit. In the spiritual order law is in no

1884.] A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 245

way dependent on the voice of those subject to the law, and they cannot
change a tittle of it at their pleasure. This makes it much more difficult
for them to submit; their independence of mind has a tendency to force its
way into a sphere where independence is inadmissible."

We certainly should have preferred to have passed the article
from which the above is an extract entirely unnoticed, had not a
non-Catholic religious newspaper made it the basis of certain
animadversions upon the Catholic Church in the United States.
This fact but deepened our own conviction and that of one of
the rulers of the church of God in this country, as expressed to
us, that, if attention were publicly called to it, it was calculated
to do harm. It is to be regretted that persons, well-meaning
ones too, will visit a country differing in many respects from
their own, and, after a stay that may be counted by days or by
weeks, take upon themselves the task of giving public counsel
and warning. The desire to publish what one has actually seen
and heard on one's travels is not unnatural ; but whence arises
the desire, after a hurried tour, to deliver public judgment on
the whole mind of a strange people, and on such perplexing
points, too, as those where politics and religion come into con-
tact? We were recently struck and arrested by a sentence in a
spiritual writer which runs as follows : " Nous ne pouvons nous
de"faire de notre propre suffisance." Perhaps this explains the
appearance of our latest critic of the great republic and of
American Catholicity.

If the critic's views are correct what is the logical result?
Firstly, that the American government is uncatholic in its princi-
ples, and, secondly, that the Catholic religion is essentially an anti-
American institution. If the spirit' of a thoroughgoing Ameri-
can is incompatible with a " safe attitude in respect to the
church's laws," then to distrust the American spirit, to escape
it, to resist it as far as safe, becomes the duty of the thorough-
going Catholic. We must not love this government. We must
all tend towards the reactionary side of politics. The Catholic
religion, as a faith and as an organization, can have no sympathy
with our free institutions. If the writer in the Month is right the
civil and political order of America is at war with our religion;
and one cause of the wholesale apostasy (according to him)
quietly but certainly taking place is the Constitution of the
United States. It therefore becomes the duty of the bishops,
as soon as prudent, to condemn the essential principles of our
American republic, and for the whole Catholic people to under-
take to bring in some other form of government as soon as

246 A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. [Nov.,

practicable. The encouragement of alien and unpatriotic ten-
dencies becomes a duty. If a layman in public life has ideas
in harmony with the tone of this writer he must retire from
all participation in public affairs or become a chronic irrecon-
cilable sometimes called among us a "sore-head." Such senti-
ments in a private citizen will drive him into the big army of
sluggards who grumble and croak about corruption in politics
and do nothing to remedy it. If a priest, his preaching and
writing and general public conduct will display a religion whose
vital principles are alien to our civil institutions ; his influence
on his people will, if truly Catholic, act upon their minds as a
disinfectant of American ideas. How we shall bear ourselves in
the era of social politics just dawning, when the law-making
power must deal radically with the relations between men and
money, between moneyed men and mere men, between corpora-
tion and operative, producer and middleman, it is easy to guess.
It will not be enough to avoid fanaticism and search a solu-
tion in fundamental ethical principles. No. According to this
writer's views we must be all on the strong side ; if only to pre-
vent the people from falling into the delusions incident to free
politics, the Catholic Church and people must ever train with
the party of power always for the side of the purse or the rod,
always for the palace and never for the hovel. At the very best
(and here we fancy the writer himself would accept our interpre-
tation of his meaning) we are to look on this whole matter of free
institutions in America as an experiment, a dangerous experi-
ment; the duty of Catholics in political affairs is to stand off
rather than to take part, for a hearty co-operation might com-
promise the Catholic name in a failure more or less probable.
Meantime foreign Catholic publicists may increase the chances
of a respectable flotsam and jetsam for the church, when the final
wreck does come, by canvassing the country for subscribers for
sound Catholic foreign periodicals.

Such would be the practical effect if the writer's views were
based on actual facts. But they are the merest delusions.
Where and from whom did he learn of this defective temper?
Was it from bishops and priests ? Recent public utterances from
distinguished representatives of both orders of the clergy breathe
anything but despondency at our present state. Was it among
his own brethren of the Society of Jesus? They have been fore-
most in training our youth, and have ever taught them to love
and cherish the freedom of their country. The greatest Jesuit
America ever has had John Carroll, first archbishop of Balti-

1884.] A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 247

more helped to rock the very cradle of American liberty. The
article contains much warning- concerning the effects of city life
on our people ; and this part of it, even though exaggerated, is
more reasonable. But from a perverted view of church autho-
rity we have suffered nothing worthy of mention these two or
three generations that is to say, since the nearly forgotten
church-trustee troubles, and not very much then. Many years of
experience throughout every part of the United States, scores of
" tours " longer in duration and more widely extended and more
leisurely than the writer's, an intimate personal acquaintance
with bishops, priests, and people, an habitual and incessant con-
tact with every class of Catholic Americans these are our own
means of information ; we set them against the writer's single
literary excursion. And we declare that the supremacy of ecclesi-
astical law is not a temptation among our people ; we affirm this
to be the common sentiment of the American clergy. Perhaps
it would be otherwise if ecclesiastical law were made a topic for
public debate by the terms of a concordat, or by a law enforcing
tithes or requiring \\\Q placet of the governor or president for the
publication of pontifical documents, or giving him the nomination
of bishops and parish priests, or requiring the clergy to depend on
a party vote for their salary. But as matters actually stand in this
country, the church deals directly with her children. Her laws
have the tenderness of a mother's love, unprofaned by the threat
of the policeman's club to enforce them, and our people love the
church all the better for it. Indeed, love of the church is about
the last virtue a fallen Catholic ever gives up. We are in that
state of things (and we deem it a happy one) where there is the
least possible admixture of the human element in the church's
dealing with the people. The burden she lays on them is the
light one of Christ himself. Self-denial, regular, frequent wor-
ship of God, humble confession of one's sins these are what
make our religion difficult to flesh and blood in America or else-
where. But these are not the law of the church ; they are di-
vine law. The law of abstinence on Fridays and during Lent, of
the hearing of Mass on Sundays, of the yearly confession and
Easter communion these and such as these are the most irk-
some ecclesiastical laws, and they do but designate the times
and other circumstances for performing the divine law. Indeed,
these laws and other such laws are hardly felt as of the church's
making at all. They are the immemorial and universal methods
of all who love the savor of heavenly things, of all bent on ob-
taining the friendship of God. " Criticising (church) laws," ques-

248 A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. [Nov.,

tions as to who made this or that law, and by what right, have
little to do with the temper of Catholic minds in the United
States. The authority of the church is a matter set at rest.
Men lose the faith among us, as they do anywhere, when brutal-
ized by sensual vice, or corrupted by the lotfe of money, or car-
ried away by the pride of unbelief in eternal punishment, in the
immortality of the soul, in the existence of a deity, and not be-
cause they are not permitted to participate in church law-
making. The Catholic American who drops off from the church
does so because her laws assert the sovereignty of God over his
life. And even when he passes into the ranks of infidels and ag-
nostics he still echoes the vyords he hears even them utter: if
there is any God or any way of bringing him down among men,
the Catholic Church is the true religion. We challenge any-
body to show eight millions of Catholics more loyal to the au-
thority of holy church in the whole world than the Catholics
of America.

There is, however, a class of persons among us to whom the
status of the church in America is a sore perplexity. They are
immigrants from the south of Europe. They come from coun-
tries where governments miscalled paternal still exist, or where
the evil spirit has managed to set the aspirations of the people
and the maxims of the Gospel at variance. They can for the
most part neither understand the church nor the state among us.
The American idea of civil liberty is that man is free by the gift
of God's creation, who made him in the divine image and would
rule him by the instinct of the divine Spirit. The idea of hu-
man freedom among the class we mention is a false one ; it is the
license of unbridled sensuality or the humble gratitude of the
manumitted slave. Such a frame of mind unfits one to be a good
American citizen. These are the ones who make up Our little
clique of Communists, who by turns annoy and amuse the
American public. And, alas ! they are the only class of Catholics
who readily give up the Catholic name; the bulk of them never
go to Mass from the day they land, and they often send their
children to Protestant mission-schools. But this class of Catho-
lics took us by surprise, and we hope to be soon in a condition
to save even them. They need a conversion of a certain kind,
and when they get it they become as good Catholics as we have
among us.

It is plain, meantime, that America is no place for immigrants
whose Catholicity has been nurtured by a paternal civil govern-
ment. It is no place for Catholics whose souls have been tainted

1884.] A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 249

by the false liberalism of southern Europe. Nations where in
church, state, and family the only praise has been for the one
virtue of obedience do not furnish America with the best type
of foreign-born citizens, or the church in America with practical
Catholics. On the- other hand, the immigrants who make the
very best Catholics are those whose inmost souls have craved
civil liberty in their own countries and have struggled their
lives long to obtain civil and political rights. Their church
has been with them at home and encouraged their aspirations,
and even furnished them leaders from among the priests and
bishops ; such are the Irish and their children, such the Ger-
mans of this generation and their children. Those, however,
who come from a Catholic state where civil and religious affairs
are so closely allied as to be indistinguishable to the common
man (or were so governed before recent revolutions), and where
state and church are under the domination of a body of aristo-
crats some of whom are lords temporal and some lords spiritual
such Catholics are not robust enough for our free atmosphere.
They are either too delicately nurtured in their spiritual life for
our workaday world or too headlong in their race for liberty to
be controlled by our gentle restraints. There is a servile faith
as well as a servile fear, a satanic independence and a bovine
obedience all equally unsuitable for both church and state in
the United States. On the other hand, the deep loyalty of the
Irish and their children all over the world to their spiritual
rulers is one of the modern glories of the true faith. Yet from
the dawn of reason they have loathed their civil rulers with every
noble impulse of their souls, every fibre of their bodies. The
Germans who come to us from Bismarck's dominions are men
and women of unflinching fidelity to the church's authority, and
yet criticism, protest, agitation is the one " attitude " of Catho-
lic Germany in reference to their civil rulers. But in both these
cases the civil tyranny has not succeeded in involving the church
in its odium.

" The independence and self-reliance of American character
is in many respects an admirable trait," admits our visitor.
Then why not hopefully add, Let us pray God that it may be
sanctified ? Nay, why not show how it has been already demon,
strated capable of sanctification by the conversion of so many
men and women among us of the purest American patriotism,
some of them among the heroes of America's brightest epochs ?
Does he know of any force of heresy or atheism capable of with-
standing six or eight millions of genuine Americans possessed

250 A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. [Nov.,

of the true faith and filled with the love of God? The free,
manly, independent American spirit oh ! let us see that sanctified
and the world will soon be redeemed. And sanctified it must
be, and by this very Catholic Church of America. The American
will not be crushed into religious shape by any force, lay or
cleric, nor wheedled into piety by any tricks of politico-reli-
gious statecraft; nor, in displaying a temper docile to the laws
of God as interpreted by the church, will he be one whit less
manly and independent. Why, the truth makes men free in the
highest sense the spiritual. Can it be possible, then, that civil
freedom unfits men for religious truth ? If the writer in the
Month had reminded us that we must seek to make the faith of
Catholics in 'America above all things intelligent, his advice
would have been to the point. Here religion will only flourish
according as faith grows in enlightenment. Here, therefore,
the church will have less to do with emphasizing the external
side of even her own divine life, and will not have much to gain
from borrowing external aid from the state, but everything to
do and everything to gain from the religious education of the
people and the developing of their interior life. In proportion
as external aids are wanting internal ones must and will be
applied. The interior life will be the predominant feature of
our Catholicity. Law-making and law-enforcing will in future
have a lower place than ever before in the application of reli-
gious aids to human aspirations.

And who can tell ? There are those who think that the future
of America is that of the whole civilized world, and that the
destiny of Christianized humanity everywhere is to live in a de-
mocratic state. Deep thinkers affirm that there is something in
human nature which demands that men who live in a busy world
and who can read and write will sooner or later choose their own
law-makers in the civil order. Now, friends of the human race
should be rejoiced that the difficulties attending the development
of this new order of civilization have been successfully encoun-
tered in the United States, and that all that is true and just in
the aspirations of the proletariat of the Old World may find its
safe expression on this continent and relieve the Old World of
the instant necessity of revolutionary or despotic expedients. It
may be the providential destiny of America to solve in advance
the political and social problems of the Old World.

Furthermore, Providence has so shaped our civilization as to
force its defenders back upon Catholic principles. Hence the
development of the providential constitution of America brings

1884.] A CRITIC OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 251

Americans within nearer and nearer reach of Catholic truth.
Whatever future awaits the human race, this much is certain : the
march of human intelligence is not towards monarchy and aris-
tocracy. And it is equally certain that religion and humanity
will not be divorced. We are fully persuaded that, in its pro-
gress towards freedom and independence in material affairs, the
human race will become apt for a fuller knowledge and deeper
enjoyment of spiritual things. It must not be disputed that the
Spirit of God will have a broader field for its influence in propor-
tion to the intelligence and freedom of the souls of men. Yet
we suspect that our quondam visitor will admit this only with
reluctance. We are not surprised. If one's whole conception
of the Christian character is that man is fallen so low that mere
obedience is the sole method of sanctification, that mere au-
thority is the best and, for the common run of men, the only
influence efficacious for the elevation of the soul to God, he must
conclude that aspirations for civil liberty and hopes for the sanc-
tification of dwellers in a free land are alike illusory.

But, after all, our traveller has some excuses. A clever
Frenchman once said that not only is England an island, but
every Englishman is an island. An Englishman brought up with
aristocratical notions must feel very insular indeed in visiting the
United States. It seems to be so, as a matter of fact, for no class
of European tourists are so much annoyed by our perverse de-
mocracy. The partisans of the theory that hereditary monarchy
is the best form of government often find it hard to admit that
theirs is but one among various opinions, or that it shall be
deemed an opinion at all; they would like to insist that heredi-
tary monarchy is the Catholic form of civil polity. The Catholic
Tory Englishman is addicted to such 'extravagance. He least of
all can conceal his conviction that frequent elections, constant
public discussion of all kinds of political questions, a feeling of
the responsibility of rulers to the people's will, must be confined
to the " aristocracy and gentry." If it is participated in by all
classes of the people it is, he thinks, the merest political chaos ;
and if he is as frank as Englishmen usually are he will add that
it is essentially uncatholic. Furthermore, he is annoyed, perhaps
enraged, that we ridicule the monarchical side of the British con-
stitution as a puerility unworthy of a great people, and that
the British aristocracy is viewed with something like a feel,
ing of detestation. No wonder, then, that a Catholic English
Tory readily takes to gloomy prophecy about us. We are only
surprised that this sample of a class so thoroughly impregnated

252 KATHARINE. [Nov.,

with the persuasion that authority and obedience are the two
poles of all stable well-being in church and state has been able
to say so much in our favor.

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XV.

THE September day had been close and oppressive, but to-
ward evening a fresh breeze blew up. Little Mrs. Kitchener,
whose genteel lodging-house commanded a fair view of Boston
Bay from its back attic windows, heard one of the doors on her
third-floor landing swinging, with that perpetually recurrent jar
of the bolt of the lock against the ward which was a torture to
her sensitive ear. She heard now and then, too, a slight cough
from the room just above that in which she was occupied with
her children, and felt morally certain that one of her lodgers, in
whom she took a special interest, was sitting, in his shirt-sleeves
and a draught, beside his open window. She knew well that the
monotonous noise which wearied her did not come from his
apartment, for Louis Giddings was one of the men who remem-
ber the trifles which affect other people's nerves, and had, indeed,
chiefly commended himself to her affection by a sort of vicarious
and sympathetic susceptibility to annoyances which, taken in
themselves, affected him but slightly.

" Daughter," she said, in the gentlest of caressing voices, to
the elder of the two little ones playing at her feet, " haven't you
a mind to save mother a long walk up-stairs ? Go all the way
to the top landing and shut the door that is ajar. And when you
come down you may stop fora little while in Mr. Giddings' room,
if he likes to have you. It is time to put Freddy to sleep. But
shut his door if you stay there. I cannot have you sitting in a
draught."

Lilly got up with great alacrity, her blush-rose face and small
but expressive blue eyes lighting with pleasure.

" I can tell him about my birfday ; he'll be glad to know I
was borned just five years ago this afternoon," said the little
coquette, who had begun to " make eyes." before she was gradu-
ated from the cradle, and enjoyed few things more than a seat

1884.] KATHARINE. 253

on the knee of Mr. Giddings and the freedom she enjoyed there
of chattering at her ease.

Mrs. Kitchener was by no means the sort of woman one would
have expected to find at the head of a flourishing lodging-house
in a modest but intensely respectable quarter of the " American
Athens." She was not even a Bostonian, nor, for that matter, a
Yankee of any of the half-dozen varieties. The daughter of a
New York Congregationalist minister long departed, and the
sister of another at present settled over a wealthy Brooklyn
church, and wealthy himself by virtue of his marriage with a
rich and fashionable widow, she had been carefully brought up
in the enjoyment of the social consideration which such profes-
sional ties usually insure. She married early one of those bril-
liant ne'er-do-weels of pleasing exterior, charming manners, kind
heart, and weak will, of whom even those who suffer most
through their instrumentality say, with a sigh, that they are
nobody's enemies but their own. At the time of their marriage
he had just succeeded to a modest patrimony, and was a lawyer
by profession, though his practice was as yet inconsiderable.
Lydia herself had nothing but her education, her social position,
a loving, warm-hearted, womanly nature, and a pretty face which
had worn from childhood a prophetically patient, half-sad expres-
sion ; so that the match had been thought a good one for both
parties. But as the years went by, carrying with them piece-
meal John Kitchener's property, which he had neither made
stationary by prudent investments nor added to by the practice
of his profession he never practised anything with persistence
and success but a guitar and the coloring of successive meer-
schaums and bringing little except children, who flourished for
a year or two and then faded, stricken, as it seemed, by some
constitutional blight, Lydia's face grew thinner and whiter and
more pathetic, while her husband's gradually assumed an un-
pleasantly suggestive flush and an altered contour which were
eloquent of a growing vice still more fatal to prosperity than
constitutional laziness.

A downward race is always rapid. Changes of abode, which
always went from bad to worse ; the pitiful shifts of a poverty
which still clings fast to respectability ; the pangs of an affection
to which kind words and caresses are never wanting (for John
Kitchener was, in his peculiar way, the most affectionate and
thoughtful of husbands), but which hungers for the solid meat
of genuine, unselfish, manly care ; keener still, perhaps, the re-
peated wounds inflicted on a heart above all things maternal all

254 KATHARINE. [Nov.,

these things grew so familiar to Lydia Kitchener that at the end
of fifteen years of marriage it seemed to her that she had had a
century of experience.

Things were going from bad to worse with her then, in all
respects but one. She had at last a child who had weathered
safely the perils of her second summer, and promised, if all went
well, to be as perfect a picture of health as she already was of
infantile beauty. The only possible brightness of the future
seemed to her to centre about that charming little head, and
that was naturally a brightness already attended by its proper
shadow, sure to lengthen as the years went on and brought wants
which the cast-off baby fineries and other half-kind, half-scornful
doles of wealthy relatives would be inadequate to supply. She
had often pondered over schemes for helping herself, but had
been deterred from trying to put any of them into execution,
partly by the fact that their means had not until now been utterly
exhausted, and partly by a scruple which possibly did more credit
to her- heart than to her judgment, but which forbade her to rob
her husband of the responsibility of her support and the illusion
that he did, in some inadequate manner, provide for it. But
latterly the pressure of necessity had forced her into burning her
candle at both ends, spending her days in the care of her house
and baby and half her nights in fine sewing, and depleting her
vital forces much more thoroughly than she filled her purse by
the operation.

At this juncture, however, a family council was held, the
result of which was announced to Mrs. Kitchener by her brother.

" We have been thinking, Elizabeth and I," he said, " that
things ought not to go on in this way any longer. We own a
house in Boston, the lease of which has just fallen in, and you
may have it, rent free, if you will go there and live. John's
shiftlessness and drinking habits are impairing my usefulness
very much here ; and, besides, I don't want to see you either
earning your living or starving under my very nose. The house
is in a good neighborhood and has been used for boarders, but
my wife thinks it would be easier and more respectable to let
your rooms to lodgers. We will all take a hand in fitting you
out and starting you, and if you can only manage to keep your
own purse-strings after that I don't see why you shouldn't do
well. All that John ever turns his hand to here he can quite as
well do there, and you will probably be saved from fretting your
heart out, as you are pretty evidently doing now. Halloo, little
tot ! " picking up the crowing baby as he spoke, and starting her

1 884 .] KA THARINE. 255

on her road to Banbury Cross, " whose pink toes are these I see
sticking- out of your shoes ? "

In the crisis of domestic affairs which she had then reached
Mrs. Kitchener took not many minutes for deliberation. Fifteen
days later she was settled in her present quarters, where all
things had since prospered with her. Courageous and prudent,
and defended by her love for her children from yielding too far
to the encroachments to which her wifely affection would other-
wise have made her an easy prey, she led a hard, laborious, but
not unfruitful life, and had begun to look back with more regret
than ever to the little ones she had lost in earlier years. There
had been times when the pangs of wounded motherhood were
blunted by the reflection that life would have been still more
difficult if she had been obliged to dread for her boys weaknesses
like his own as their sole inheritance from their father, and to see
her girls grow up in the want and shabbiness to which she had
herself submitted without a murmur. But now, when the spectre
of debt no longer dogged her, when her daily bread, though
plain, was never scanty, and for the two little ones still left to
play about her knees she seemed to foresee a future of respecta-
bility and comfort, she sometimes wept bitterer tears over the
memory of the lost than when she first laid them in their coffins.
Even after settling here she had buried one, and, though she had
borne another, new-comers, welcome as they always were, could
never replace their predecessors in that soft, unforgetting heart.
How many times had she mused with tears over the history of
the patient patriarch, who, after all his trials, died in wealth and
peace, the master of flocks and herds more numerous than of
old, and with children around him. to close his failing eyes
children his very own, the fruit of his loins and the gladness
of his heart. Did they ever drive quite out of his remembrance
that fatal day when the terror-stricken bearer of ill news crushed
him to the earth, saying, " Thy children are all dead, and I alone
have escaped to tell thee " ?

Mrs. Kitchener prayed daily for her husband's reformation,
and told herself that she had never ceased to hope for it ; and yet
her friendly interest in the lodger to whom reference has been
made was scarcely impaired by her belief that they exercised a
not altogether salutary influence over each other. Mr. Kitch-
ener entertained an affectionate admiration for .Louis Giddings,
which the younger man returned, mingled with a half-scornful,
half-indignant pity. Yet neither one nor all these shades of feel-
ing were always strong enough to prevent his occasionally lend-

256 KATHARINE. [Nov.,

ing the other's weakness the force of a like example. Such
occasions were rare, it is true, but now and then, when they had
emptied a whiskey-bottle together, and Kitchener had fallen into
tearful penitence and Giddings risen to virtuous anger, the one
would take high grounds as to the moral worthlessness of a man
who could so neglect a good wife, and the other would swear
between hiccoughs that Lydia was the best woman God ever
made, and that he would have hanged himself from remorse long
ago if he had not been sure she would die of grief for his loss.
To the poor little wife, always planning ways and means to
wean her husband from his habitual vice, the presence of this
special lodger, with his brilliant conversational powers and his
occasional excesses, sometimes seemed a danger which ought to
be averted. But the remembrance of days when no such excuse
existed, and the unacknowledged certainty that her husband's
fault was the result of hereditary appetite unmodified by princi-
ple, and neither whetted by company nor allayed by solitude,
came t the aid of a sympathy which was like divination, and
which, from the time when Louis Giddings first came to her,
had inclined her in his favor. He had fallen ill on her hands
shortly after, and by the time she had nursed him through pneu-
monia, and petted him through the rather long convalescence
that followed, she had also taken him completely into her
motherly heart.

Somehow or other the conviction had fastened on her mind
that what he sought in drink was occasional forgetfulness and
not the indulgence of an appetite. If he were happy, she re-
flected, he would be master of himself for good, as he is now
for evil. And seeing him with her children, who adored him,
intercepting sometimes the wistful glances with which he fol-
lowed them in their plays, she had often thought how well he
was adapted to the role of husband and father, and what a pity
it was that he should be postponing it so long. She had even
laid little schemes for putting that happiness within his reach
had craftily invited one or two pretty girls on visits from her
old home, and kept an observant eye on others in her new one,
where, owing to the reputation of her father and the letters she
had brought from her brother, her standing had been deter-
mined, in church circles at least, more in accordance with her
personal merit than her present circumstances. She had her
labor for her pains so far as Louis Giddings was concerned.
She found that her parlor was a place tabooed to him when
there were young girls in it, though at other times his frequent

1884.] KA THA RINE. 257

presence there insured that of her husband so invariably that
something of the domesticity of her early married life seemed to
have revived with his entrance under her roof. Her wiles were
so transparent that the object of them, whose observant eyes
lost little that fell within their range, told her at last, in a jesting
voice which had, nevertheless, a ring of intention in it which
was not lost upon her, that he made of her an exception to her
sex, all the rest of which he held in hearty detestation.

" I don't believe it," she answered in the playful way that
had been natural to her in her girlhood, and which responded
to his own mood in accordance with some subtle law of per
sonality that marked him out among men as one who always
evoked either love or hatred, the best qualities or the worst
ones of his neighbor, but never left any one who met him entire-
ly neutral. " You haven't the slightest resemblance to a woman-
hater. I never saw a man more obviously intended to be the
husband of a charming wife and the father of a brood of de-
lightful children."

" It is a clear case of practical atheism, you think," he replied
in a tone as light as her own, but rising as he spoke from the
table, where he had thrown a heap of magazines and papers on
his entrance, apparently with the intention of spending the even-
ing beside her fire. " Come, Kitchener, I have an appointment
down-town which I had forgotten. Will you walk? "

And Mrs. Kitchener saw neither of them again until late the
next night. She was a woman not at all slow in 'certain varieties
of mental arithmetic, and the result of her putting two and two
together in this case brought her innocent matrimonial specula-
tions to a definite end.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE object of all this disinterested and friendly solicitude
was, in fact, a man whom most women would at once have re-
garded with approbation. Masculinity seemed to envelop him
like an atmosphere rather than to be expressed by any single trait
or collection of traits of face or figure ; for, though tall and well
made, his appearance was suggestive neither of redundant physi-
cal strength nor even of specially robust health. What the word
womanly connotes when well applied to a member of the gentler
sex the presence, that is, in a noticeable degree of those mental,
moral, and physical qualities which belong to the ideal counter-
part and complement of man in his integrity, and recall the
VOL. XL. 17

258 KATHARINE. [Nov.,

Biblical phrase, " To the image of God he created him, male
and female he created them "that the word manly signified
when applied to him. Sanity and just proportion of body, vigor
and clearness of intelligence, were what he suggested even to
the dull of apprehension. For the rest, he pleased or displeased
according to the beholder's point of view. Certainly he had
been well hated, and would have earned Dr. Johnson's amity by
his ability to return as well as to inspire that sentiment. He
was dowered, perhaps, like Tennyson's poet, with " the hate of
hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." It must be said of
him that he had too little tolerance for intellectual weakness,
coupled with too great respect for merely intellectual strength,
and was, like the rest of us, in a liability to mistake the touch-
stone of personal antipathy for an infallible and generally appli-
cable test of excellence. Yet he was an essentially modest man,
not rating himself over-highly, although sufficiently conscious of
his own good points to be able to make the most of them on
occasion. But his instinctive judgments were so quick and keen,
and his carelessness to conciliate good opinion where he did not
entertain it was so great, that his brusqueness not unseldom
amounted to what he himself called brutality, and earned him
a reputation for arrogance not really deserved. But children
loved him, and so did the straightforward and the simple among
their elders when once they had been able to penetrate through
the veil of shyness and reserve in which he ordinarily wrapped
himself.

He had entered Harvard at an age a trifle more advanced
than usual a circumstance explained in part by the narrow
means of a widowed mother who had strained every nerve to
put the object of* his early ambition within his reach, and then
died before she had the happiness of seeing him attain it. His
collegiate career was distinguished, and if he gained a reputation
for brilliancy rather than for scholarship, that was due to his
possession in excess of the qualities which secure admiration,
and not to any defect on the side of solid attainment. He was
one of the rare people who always become the nucleus of tra-
dition their ways, their looks, their attitude toward things in
general being apt to strike the average beholder as new
and interesting. Stories began to circulate about him from the
first, and the memory of him perfumed the class-rooms and
lingered in the minds of his contemporaries and successors for
many a year after he himself had passed beyond mortal ken.
The stories were not always true, perhaps, but they were usually

1884.] KATHARINE. 259

characteristic if not actually vrai, at least vraisemblable. They
said of him, for instance, that, being very hard up one year as
commencement day drew nigh, he put himself in funds by
writing some twenty or thirty of the essays that went up from
his class. The professor an eminent critic in his day a good
deal pleased by the general excellence of the themes, said to
himself nevertheless that three or four of them showed evidence
of literary skill, clear thinking, and gentle humor which were
suspicious in the quarters from which they emanated. Pro-
longed cogitation ended in his summoning Giddings to his
apartment, where, after complimenting highly the particular
effort to which his own name was appended, he suddenly sprung
upon him the question whether he had not aided in the produc-
tion of three others, which he produced. The ingenuous candor
of infancy looked out of the young fellow's blue eyes as he admit-
ted having given their authors some rather liberal suggestions
as to matter and manner, and at the same time insinuated, by his
tone rather than by anything less subtle, his sense of the absur-
dity of supposing that so keen a critic could be imposed on,
ever so slightly, by a hand so clumsy as his own. The essays
by which these three were replaced gained the praise of being
characteristic for their putative sires, and, so they said, a still far-
ther addition to his income for their real author. The tale was
probably apocryphal, but the general credence given it testified
to the prevalent belief that Giddings could do anything he liked,
and that the professors would be no match for him whenever he
chose to pit himself against them.

There came over him in the course of his senior year a change
so marked that it attracted general observation. The actual facts
in the case never became public property, perhaps because the
one intimate friend who knew most about the matter took pains
to spread a fantastically embroidered version of them ; but the
story ran that during the previous vacation he had gone up into
Canada, where his mother's family originated, and taken a position
as teacher, with a view to remedying the chronic depletion of his
pockets. There he must have fallen successfully in love, for when
he returned in the autumn a new and peculiar sort of interior
brightness seemed to shine through him, as if his heart were suf-
fused with a happiness that irradiated him unaware. He was a
long-limbed, slender youngster then, of perhaps three-and-twen-
ty, with a face full of noble and characteristic lines, a pair of
deep-set, blue eyes under a square, broad forehead overhung
by shadowy dark hair, and a wide, full-lipped, resolute mouth,

260 KATHARINE. [Nov.,

capable of passion and of tenderness as well as of sundry other
expressions less pleasant to consider. The brightness faded as
time went on and a correspondence, at" first noticeably frequent
for one who had previously received few letters, gradually les-
sened ; but the more than customary vigor and purpose with
which he had seemed to be prosecuting his work this year did
not slacken until some sudden and apparently terrible blow pros-
trated him. He rose from the bed of sickness, which had nearly
proved the bed of death, the shadow of his old self in appear-
ance, and in mind and heart another person. His old geniality
had given place to a savage and sardonic humor or, since geni-
ality would never have been the word to describe a disposition
bright, indeed, and peculiarly open to gentle influences, but never
prone to what Emerson calls "a mush of concession " in its most
indulgent mood, perhaps it would be better to say that his
natural shyness had deepened into impenetrable reserve, and a
morose and ugly wit, which sent shafts that rankled, took the
place of the kindly humor that had usually played as harmlessly
as heat-lightning. This change passed, too, with time, as all
things do, but that was the affair of years. The permanent alter-
ation was in his will and his ambition, of which the one seemed
to be extinguished and the other aimless. A brilliant success
in any career which he might choose had been confidently pre-
dicted for him, though literature, pure and simple, seemed to be
that for which his tastes and his abilities best fitted him. Con-
trary to expectation, he began reading law and was admitted to
the bar ; but having occupied his briefless interval with some hack
journalistic and magazine work which had gained him bread and
so much reputation as was compatible with an invincible disin-
clination to publicly avow authorship, nature and circumstan-
ces had in the end been too many for him, and he was now, if not
in his proper place, at least in one not many removes from it.

His old faculty for gaining friends and lovers among his own
sex had clung to him. Younger men he himself was not
yet thirty attached themselves to him with that affection which
the royal prophet affirms to be "above that of women," and
which he probably preferred to it, for he not only did not seek
but would under no pretence accept any of the ordinary cour-
tesies of society. In entering the quarters where we find him
it had not occurred to him that the keeper of a lodging-house
could be, in any social sense, other than a sexless creature, whom
he would regard much as a Southern lady regarded in the old
days the brawny mulatto who waited on her, and in whose veins

1884.] KATHARINE. 261

there ran, perhaps, the same blood as her own as having, that is,
neither eyes nor ears, neither brains nor heart, except as a beast of
burden has them. But it was not in him to resist candor and
kindness, gentleness and simplicity, and his nurse and he, after
he left the chamber where she had cared for him and where her
little ones had brightened his convalescence, were friends as fast
as genuine sympathy and an appreciation which on one side was
certainly limited by natural capacity, but was, at all events, tho-
rough as far as it went, could make them. But the little girl
was the chief attraction of the house to him. Their moods, if it
is not absurd to speak of the moods of a child of five, harmonized
perfectly, and her flower-like, expressive face ; her quick aver-
sions and slow-growing preferences ; her genius for what he called
hitting the nail on the head ; her wilfulness, which matched itself
against all obstacles; her stanch truthfulness, which already found
a promise so sacred that neither threat nor bribe could induce her
either to breaker to renew one which she had found troublesome;
above all, her love for himself, at once shy and outspoken, capable
of feeling jealousy and trying to provoke it, had given her almost
as strong a hold on his heart as if she had been his own.

As she slipped down from his knee and vanished from the
room this evening, on the arrival of one of his friends whom she
had not yet vouchsafed to take into favor, it was with a sense of
ownership very like that which complacent fathers feel that he
said, with a laugh :

" That is a great little girl, Dick. A dozen years from now,
if she keeps all her good points and takes on no bad ones, she
will be safe and dangerous at once if any woman can be."

" They are too safe when they are safe, and too dangerous
otherwise isn't that your theory ? I found one of them when I
went home last month, whom I have been thinking more or less
about these half-dozen years, as likely to steer true between Scylla
and Charybdis. I thought she had, too, when I found her sitting
bareheaded under a tree/ looking as cool and fresh as a rose,
and ready to ' enthuse ' about Tennyson. But when I undertook
to astonish her young mind and kindle in her breast a benevolent
anxiety for my welfare by treating her to an artistic hodge-podge
of science versus religion and what-not, such as we talk here oc-
casionally, I didn't more than half like to find her receiving it all
as coolly as if she had been all over the ground before me. She
hadn't taken the consecutive steps, for want of opportunity, but
there she was at the end."

" That is the way with the feminine intelligence, my son.

262 KA THARINE. [Nov.,

Lilly, now she came up to-night to tell me that this is her
'birfday.' I chaffed her a little told her I was surprised that a
girl of her good sense should be so unwise as to have a thing she
would be sure to regret one of these days. She understands chaff
generally when it isn't too expensive, but she had evidently been
cogitating on birthdays in general. ' Why, I had to have one/
she says; 'everybody has to have a father and mother and be
borned.' Then she looks up to the sky yonder and adds, in
that musing little way she has, * Except God. My mamma says
he borned himself; and I can't I cant think how he did it.' '

Both of them laughed, and then Giddings went on again :

" The kingdom of doubt seems to be a good deal like that
other kingdom we read about. The babes and sucklings and
ragamuffins of this century find their way into it and establish
squatter sovereignty there before the philosophers and savants
have quite made up their minds about the geography of the
route."

" It is all right,' I suppose ; but, all the same, I can't quite recon-
cile myself to it where girls and women are concerned. I don't
like them too strong-minded or too strong-willed. Kitty Dan-
forth, now I showed you a picture one day in my room that I
made of her when we were both children. It is no bad likeness
even now. I used to fancy she would be everything that is
charming; ready to go as far as one would take her, and to stop
wherever she was told. Her mother was just the sort of wife
one would like to dream of growing old by soft-voiced, modest,
intelligent, self-contained, and always playing second fiddle to
her husband without thinking of it. He died while I was home,
and by an accident my father was present at the deathbed. He
came home and told about the scene that took place between her
and her daughter just afterward. Miss Kitty stepped down from
her pedestal in my imagination without great loss of time." And
the speaker, whom the reader will have recognized already, went
on to describe it briefly.

" That displeased you, did it ? " asked his friend when he had
finished. " What else would you have had her say ? If a crisis
of feeling or the presence of death does not force the truth out
of one's mouth, you may be sure it is because it is never too near
it under any circumstances."

" Bother truth ! I would have liked to see her forget herself
entirely and not add to her mother's trouble in that unnecessary
fashion. Why shouldn't she have told her she would try to
please her in every way, and got around it kindly ? A woman

1884.] KATHARINE. 263

whose mind is all angles and straight lines is as bad as a woman
with sharp elbows."

" I loved my mother," said Giddings after a rather long pause.
" I would have been glad to buy her a year or two more of life
with ten out of the middle of my own. She was a good woman,
brought up after the very strictest of all religious fashions, but
she ran away from- school and married my father out of pure
love when she was hardly more than a child. They were as
happy as two doves together until he was suddenly killed when
I was about fourteen. He had no beliefs to speak of and had
gradually unsettled most of hers. When she came to die she
wanted to go back to them, and I was glad of it, for she was
evidently timid. But she called me one day, just before the end
came, and put the question plumply. ' You have read and
studied more than I have/ she said ; ' tell me honestly, do you
think there has been any revelation ? Is there any certainty of a
life hereafter ? ' What could I say ? "

" What did you say ?"

" I told her that to the best of my knowledge and belief there
was none. She would have had the priest in but for that, and I
wish to God she had, for the look in her eyes gives me bad dreams
yet. But truth comes uppermost when one is too hard pushed.
For my part I would rather run risks with a woman who could
speak it in a supreme moment like that than trust to the softness
that thinks first of making things easy. Take my advice, young-
ster, and let them all alone. When all is said and done, what is the
best of them but God's concession to man's weakness ? "

"That reminds me," said the younger man. " I came here to
give you a message that I forgot when I met you on the Com-
mon yesterday. It was near slipping my mind again. My
uncle was summoned professionally to Montreal the day after
I reached Albany, and he stopped there and took me with him.
You remember old Jennings, the millionaire, who used to live
out near our place? He went back to Canada to end his days,
so he said ; but the first attack he had of gout in the stomach
made him conclude to defer the end as long as possible, and, as a
means to it, to send for Uncle Dick, who had pulled him out of
several tight places before. He sent for a lawyer, too, and made
his will. It was a friend of yours Crawford. Do you remem-
ber him? "

" Yes ; what about him ? Wait a minute until I light up. It
is getting too dark for comfort."

" I happened to get into conversation with him," went on

264 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Nov.,

Norton while the other was fumbling about for matches. " We
talked about ' the States,' as they say up there, and the quarter I
came from. He asked if I had ever met you, when I spoke of
Boston, and when I told him that well, in short, when I had
said the usual thing about you, he asked me to tell you, when I
had a chance, that Mary Lavvton was dead. The message sounds
mysterious, but there it is."

Louis Giddings was crossing the room as this was said, and
at the moment passed so close to his friend's chair that their gar-
ments touched. Richard Norton was a person exceedingly sensi-
tive to impressions. He said to himself afterward that he could
have sworn that he received a shock from an electric machine at
that instant.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST.
JANUARIUS.

NARRATIVE OF REV. GEORGE TOWNSEND, D.D., CANON OF

DURHAM.

I HAD ever been most anxious to see the alleged miracle of the lique-
faction of the blood of St. Januarius. I did not, however, hope to see it
now, as I had been informed that it only took place on a Sunday, or at the
times when the cardinal archbishop deemed it expedient. To my great
joy, I learned that one of the days on which the blood is exhibited is the
Sunday which falls next to the Calends of May. This was yesterday ; but
because it was necessary that one of the royal family should be present, and
the king could not attend yesterday, one liquefaction had taken place this
morning, when the king was present ; and I am told that another liquefac-
tion will take place to-morrow, when the king's brother, the P of S ,

will attend upon the working of the miracle. It was the anniversary of the
time when the relics of the saint had been removed from Pozzuoli, where
he was martyred, to Naples. . . .

The blood of St. Januarius is preserved in a rich chapel, called the
Treasury. Mr. Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, imputes the preservation
of Naples to the intercession of St. Januarius ; and Baronius, the distin-
guished papal historian, assures us that when the blood approaches the
head, though at some distance from it, as if impatient of the delay of resur-
rection, and conscious that it is near the fount from whence it sprung and
to which it is desirous to return, it ceases to remain in a solid state, and
dissolves and bubbles up, to the great admiration of the spectators. Such

1884.] BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. ' 265

is the testimony of Baronius, a cardinal, though not a saint, who is deemed
by many to be deserving of every credit. Mr. Neumann, of Berlin, on the
contrary, an eminent chemist, is said to have performed the miracle of the
liquefaction of indurated blood with all the circumstances of the Neapolitan
experiment. I do not know whether this chemist was a member of the
Church of Rome or not. So it was, however, that, whether the liquefaction
was to be regarded as Cardinal Baronius or as Mr. Neumann viewed it, I
was most anxious to see it. The carriage was ordered early, and we arrived
at the cathedral by eight o'clock.

The good, kind canon was waiting for us near the door. It was a festa
day. It was the custom at Naples to pay more for a carriage on the festas
than on other days. My servant had paid the driver the usual fare and
given him the usual gratuity. He did not, however, know that it was a
festa. The driver, therefore, followed us into the cathedral and demanded
more money. The canon assured me that, though it was a festa, the man
had already received more than he was entitled to. The man still, how-
ever, persevered in his demand, and I ordered him to be satisfied. I
thought the canon would have embraced me in his delight, and said :
"We must not mind the imposition now; we are in the church, and the
church, you know, is not the place for controversy ecclesia non locus est
controversies" I mention the anecdote because I believe the circumstance
procured for me a better place at the altar to see the miracle than I
should have otherwise attained, even with the intended kindness which had
promised me admission within the rails.*

The canon then took us to the vestry among his brethren. The

P of S came in shortly after. With many kind expressions we were

introduced to his royal highness. After a short conversation in Italian, in

which Mrs. Townsend again acted as interpreter, the P commanded

one of his chamberlains to go with us to that part of the church within the
rails where we could most easily observe the process of the liquefaction,
and the people, and the whole scene. '

The ceremony began with the Mass. The P was not at the altar

during this service. He keeps the key of the relics. It seemed to me to be
a large golden key, richly adorned with emeralds and other jewels. The
vial in which was the hardened blood was placed on the altar; the jewelled
bust of St. Januarius, adorned with a most valuable diamond cross, the gift,
I was told, of Christina, Queen of Spain, was placed next to it. We dis-
tinctly saw a hard, solid, round, dark red ball, as if of coagulated blood,
move from side to side of a vessel which the archbishop held up to the
people. The hardness continued ; the prayers continued. The blood did
not melt. A litany was begun, in which the names of saints were repeated,
and the people took up the chorus, " Ora pro nobis." The blood remained
solid. The accounts given by so many writers I found to be correct. The

* He appears to have met with kindness and courtesy from all the Catholic dignitaries
whom he visited.

266 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Nov.,

people began to scream, to shout, and to raise their voices angrily louder

and louder. A French lady, belonging to the P 's party, was kneeling

close to us, overpowered with emotion and bathed in tears. She turned
to Mrs. T. and said : " Tell me, tell me, is the good God angry with us
still?" She trembled with agitation; she impatiently called to her husband,
who was at a distance, to come nearer: " Venez id, Henri ; vous ne pouvez
pas voir la." But he did not move. The people still vociferated; the

blood did not yet dissolve ; it was near nine o'clock. The P took out

his watch ; he looked at the archbishop. Whether I am right in my opin-
ion or conviction that he looked very significantly, and that the look was
returned with equal significance, I cannot so positively say that I could
affirm it upon my oath ; but the watch was taken out and the look given ;
and by the most marvellous coincidence, which renders it uncertain whether
the sympathy of the blood towards the head, mentioned by Cardinal Baro-
nius, or the chemical solution of Mr. Neumann, of Berlin, was the cause of
the liquefaction, the red, solid mass did at that moment begin to melt. I
had up to this instant seen the hard substance move from side to side, and
I now saw the same substance gradually become liquid and flow from side
to side. The lady near us was mute with solemn delight ; the screaming of
the people ceased. The archbishop passed the glass vial, in which was the
dissolved substance, to the privileged persons who had been admitted with-
in the rails of the altar. The lady near us, with many others, kissed it with
enthusiasm. It was presented to Mrs. Townsend, who put it from her, say-
ing, " No, no! Sono Protestante / " She could not believe, as her neighbor
evidently believed. The chemist Neumann would have been credited more
than the theologian Baronius. It was taken from before her with a gesti-
culation which implied displeasure. It was placed before me. I could not
kiss the vial ; I looked at it steadfastly and earnestly. It was removed, I
think with another gesticulation, after a short pause, of surprise and anger.
It was handed round to others ; and I believe it was devoutly kissed by
them all. When it was taken quite round the space within the rails, and to

the people at the rails, we found, with the P of S , that it was time

to breakfast ; and the same early performance of the miracle permitted us
both to proceed to our meal. We left the church with feelings which I am
sure are, and must be, common to many who declare themselves to be
members of the Church of Rome. I will indulge in no exclamations on the
impossibility of believing the act we had witnessed to be indeed miraculous;
I pass by all the thoughts that breathed my horror, and all the words that
burned with indignation at the system which, taking away the Bible, and
still claiming to be pure in its teachings and divine in its authority, affirms
that the Almighty upholds by useless yet by ceaseless miracles its unscrip-
tural doctrines and all its insupportable pretensions. I quote the words of
the author of the Lives of the Saints, the zealous defender and admirer of
the Church of Rome : "That these reputed miracles demand no other as-
sent than that which is due to the evidence on which they rest." If the lique-

1884.] BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 267

faction of the blood of St. Januarius can be resolved into a chemical process
there can be no justification, as there is no necessity, for the miracle (Jour-
nal of a Tour in Italy, pp. 204 and 209).

NARRATIVE OF HENRI CAUVAIN.

The reliquary is made of silver. It is circular, and in shape resembles
an enormous watch-case with a crystal front and back. The edges and
handle are covered with ornaments in relief, which bear traces of having
been gilt. The reliquary seems to belong to the fifteenth century.

In its centre, enclosed between the crystal sides above mentioned, are
two flat vials with rounded edges and with short and narrow necks, one of
which presents its side and the other its edge to the spectator. These
vials are quite similar to those which are found in ancient tombs, and which
are designated under the name of lachrymatoria. While the officiating priest
exhibits the reliquary a priest holds behind it a lighted candle, which gives
abundant opportunity to scrutinize closely, and at a distance not exceeding
two fingers' breadth, its appearance and contents.

We examined it several times with the utmost attention, and saw dis-
tinctly what follows : The vial with its side turned towards us was about
two thirds full of a brown substance, solid and thoroughly dried up. The
vial with its edge turned towards us was about one-third full of the same
substance the drying up of which, in either vial, seems to have occurred at
a very remote period.

After having shown the reliquary, in the state above described, not only
to the cardinal and the ecclesiastics, but also to the strangers who sur-
rounded him, the canon came down the altar-steps, placed himself before
the chancel, and, elevating it in his hands, exhibited it pervaded as it was
with the light of the candle held behind to the assembled multitude. He
then ascended to the altar, and began in a loud voice to recite prayers, in
which he was joined by all the persons present. Afterwards, laying the
reliquary on the mouth and forehead of every one around him, he allowed
them to kiss it. After twenty-five minutes had elapsed, worn out with
fatigue, he handed the reliquary to another canon, nearly as aged and fee-
ble as himself, and knelt, palpitating with emotion, on the altar-steps. The
canon who took his place began to recite prayers afresh, and the pray-
ing and exclamations of the crowd were increased twofold. At last, at
thirty-seven minutes past nine, the officiating priest made a significant
gesture, while he raised the reliquary above his head. Then, at, as it were,
a given signal, the hymn of the Te Deum, intoned by all present, rose in
grave and solemnly imposing sound under the vaulted roof of the chapel
and the vast arches of the cathedral. A shower of flowers fell on the altar.
Hundreds of birds were set at liberty and flew all over the church, filling the
air with songs of joy. The miracle had been accomplished.

Although this scene was of a nature to deeply impress both the imagina-

268 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Nov.,

tion and the heart, we are quite certain that we retained all the while our
self-possession ; and, with the most scrupulous and intensely scrutinizing atten-
tion, we looked, not once but at six or seven different times, into the reliquary,
lit 'up as it was by the light of the candle held behind it. The vial with the
edge towards us gave no signs of liquefaction ; but in the other, placed at
right angles to it, the transformation undergone by the substance which it
contained was undeniably evident. The vial had become full of a liquid hav-
ing the color, the consistency, and the fluidity of blood fresh and drawn from
the veins of a living man.

Sceptics will exclaim that it is an imposture. We confine ourselves to
narrating just what we saw. The miracle of St. Januarius is not an article
of faith. The reader will form whatever opinion in the matter he chooses ;
but we can affirm that every part of the solemnity seemed to exclude the
idea of fraud or legerdemain. Our impression in this respect was, we can
truly say, shared by all the Frenchmen who were with us in the chapel and
among them there were many sceptics. We would, besides, remark that this
prodigy has been going on for many centuries back, that it has continued
during several revolutions and while Naples was occupied by the French,
and that, up to the present day, no savant or chemist has been able to
point out the process by which the result is effected.

Of course that persistent enemy of the Catholic Church, the
Sihle, did not fail to controvert and throw ridicule on Cauvain's
candid and fair statement, and set one of its funny-editors,
Taxile Delord, to work to demonstrate to its readers that the
liquefaction was a mere trick of very easy performance. The
Courrier des fctats- Un is of October 31, 1856, gives an account of
the ridiculous result of this foolish attempt. Taxile Delord
sought a Mr. Louis Peisse, employed editorially on the same
paper as Cauvain, and who he knew was devoted to the in-
vestigation of supernatural subjects, " such as visions, ecstasies,
hallucinations, miracles, double sight, magnetism, somnambulism,"
and was then writing a book on these subjects, and asked Peisse
to help him. Peisse, after having experimented before him,
in strict accordance therewith gave him the following recipe,
parts of which I have italicized in order to save comment :

INFALLIBLE RECIPE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THE MIRACLE OF

ST. JANUARIUS.

Take ten grammes of candle-tallow and dissolve it in twelve grammes of
ether; mix in it six drops of some red coloring substance, such as vermilion
or terra sienna, according to your choice. Stir all up in a vessel and pour
the mixed contents into a vial small enough to fill the hollow of your hand.
Allow the mixture to solidify ; take the vial, grasp it tightly with your fingers.

I884-J BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 269

(you may, if you like, hold it in your pocket]. After the lapse of five minutes
open your fingers and the trick will have been performed.

The Stecle must have felt pretty confident that its prejudiced
readers would not take the trouble to get Cauvain's narrative
and read it.

NARRATIVE OF REV. J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE.

It does not require any special introduction, the habit of a Jesuit or of
some other religious order, not even the profession of Catholicism, to gain
admission to the very best place for witnessing the miracle. I do not, of
course, mean that it would be easy for a stranger, or indeed for any one
else, excepting crowned heads, princes of the church, or others for very
special purposes, to have the relic exposed for his own particular benefit at
an extraordinary time ; but on the ordinary expositions that is, on the first
Sunday in May and daily throughout the octave, the anniversary of the
translation of the relics ; on the igth of September, the saint's festival, and
daily throughout its octave ; and again on the i6th of December, in com-
memoration of the deliverance of the city from a terrible eruption of Vesu-
vius any person who chooses to go into "the sacristy half an hour before
the appointed time, and to introduce himself as a stranger anxious to have
an opportunity of seeing the liquefaction as closely as possible, is sure to be
kindly received by the canons and to be placed in as advantageous a posi-
tion as can be procured for him. Their courtesy to strangers on these occa-
sions is notorious ; indeed, it is sometimes complained of they are almost too
indulgent in this particular indulgent to the prejudice of their own fellow-
citizens. The first time I went myself I arrived rather late ; Prince Borghese
and his family had preceded me, and, they too being strangers, I could not
get within the altar-rail. The next morning I returned at an earlier hour
and now nobody had precedence of me excepting a French-Canadian
bishop and his chaplain ; these knelt on the highest altar-step, quite at the
end, on the epistle side, and I was placed next to them. The head of the
saint, in a large silver-gilt bust, bearing a mitre and covered with a hand-
some cape richly ornamented with precious stones, had been already placed
on the gospel side. By and by the canon came from the sacristy, bringing
the ampulla. I found it exactly as Mabillon had described it, of the same
dull, darkish glass as the ampulla of the Roman catacombs. It was enclosed,
together with another of the same kind but of smaller dimensions, in a
round silver reliquary with flat sides of glass. The greatest width of the
reliquary was about four inches ; at one end it had a silver handle less than
four inches in length, and at the other end it was surmounted by a silver
crown and cross. A green cord was either passed through the handle or
fastened round it (I cannot at this moment recollect which) and thrown
round the neck of the canon ; he held it, however, by the handle and in an
upright position as he brought it to the altar, and as soon as he had knelt

270 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Nov.,

there for a moment he turned round and exhibited it to the people in the
same position, an assistant priest holding a candle behind it, that they might
see its solid, congealed state.

The women stationed in the foremost rank without the altar-rails, of
whom I have already spoken, immediately began, with most loud and dis-
cordant voices, to scream forth the Credo, the Ave Maria, and the Gloria
Patri; whilst the canon, accompanied by the other priest bearing the can-
dle, came round to give a nearer view of it to those who were within the
rails; there may .have been eight or ten of us kneeling on the topmost step,
perfectly close to the canon so close that those in the centre must have
been touching his robes, even when he stood with his face to the altar to
recite the prayers. He began with the bishop on the epistle side, so that I
was the third person to whom it was brought. It was first held steadily
before me, then turned upside-down two or three times, so that, the candle
being immediately behind it, it was impossible that any symptom of motion
within the glass could have escaped my observation. About two-thirds of
the vessel seemed to be of a dull, dark-red color, and the remaining portion,
though far from being so transparent as our modern glass, was evidently
free from any sort of stain, and quite as clear as any glass of that age that I
have ever seen. The canon passed it round to all who were kneeling on
the step, after which, his assistant having with some difficulty silenced the
vociferous old women, he turned to the altar and recited aloud the Litany
of Loretto, the people repeating the alternate petitions in the ordinary way.
Having read the prayers also at the end of the Litany, he again brought
round the reliquary and exhibited it to us as before. The women saw at
once that the liquefaction had not taken place, and continued, therefore, in
the same harsh, unmusical tones, but with increased vehemence, to repeat
the Credo, Gloria, etc. There certainly was not yet the slightest appear-
ance of a change ; and when the canon had completed his round I saw
him look at it very carefully himself and shake his head, to denote that it
had not commenced. As the women, however, were au beau milieu of the
Creed, he seemed to think it better not to resume the public prayers imme-
diately, but to wait for a convenient pause. Accordingly he once more ex-
hibited the relic to the bishop on my right ; he may have held it before
him for a minute, perhaps, certainly not more, when I saw the color rush
into the good bishop's face and the tears into his eyes, and guessed imme-
diately that he had detected some change. The canon saw it also, just
looked at the relic for a moment to certify himself that it was so, and then
motioned to the choir to begin the Te Deum. In less than a minute I was
looking at it myself, and could distinctly recognize the solid mass slowly
moving downwards towards the empty part of the vessel, but it seemed
thick and heavy, not unlike the consistency of treacle. In about five or six
minutes it had gona the round of the semicircle and returned to the bishop
again, and by this time it was as liquid as water ; it passed from one side
of the vessel to the other freely and immediately as water might do, leaving

1884.] BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS. 271

the other part of the vessel perfectly empty ; it no longer seemed to be either
thick or heavy, but was in every respect like natural, fresh blood.

NARRATIVE OF REV. JOHN VIRTUE.

In the month of September, 1849, I visited Naples. Being there at the
time of the festival of St. Januarius (September 19), I felt anxious to wit-
ness, if possible, the miracle of the liquefaction of his blood ; not that I for an
instant doubted the miracle, but I was anxious to be able to add my own
testimony when an occasion like the present should call for it.

In pursuance of my object I called at the cathedral a few days before
the feast, in company with a friend who knew one of the canons. I was
courteously offered a place as near to the relic as it was possible to be
namely, on the top step of the altar. On the day of the festival, the igth,
I arrived too late to witness the actual liquefaction, but saw the blood after
it had taken place. I was more fortunate on the 2ist, and arrived in good
time at the cathedral. By the kindness of the canon above mentioned I
was admitted within the rails of the chapel of the Teons, as it is called,
where the miracle takes place. After waiting some time the silver bust en-
closing the head of the saint was brought out and placed upon the altar to
the right of the crucifix. I then took my place on the top step of the altar,
and was second or third from the right-hand corner facing the altar. Pre-
sently one of the canons appeared from the sacristy and went to a taber-
nacle at the back of the altar to get the vial containing the blood. He
came around with it, beginning at the end of the altar where I was, so that
I had the first glimpse of it as it came into the presence of the head of St.
Januarius. It was held by the two ends of the reliquary, to which was at-
tached a silk cord hanging to the neck of the canon who showed it. His
hands were not near the glass vial itself, which, being hung like an hour-glass,
had the smallest possible connection with the frame that supported it.
As the relic was slowly carried past me it was turned upside-down and
every way about. Within the glass tube or vial was a dark-colored sub-
stance like dried blood, and which, if it had been liquid, must have moved
during the turning-about of the glass. No such result, however, took place.
It was carried past me to the other end of the step, and back again the same
way. As yet no liquefaction took place. As it passed me the third time I
saw distinctly the blood begin to trickle down the side of the glass, and as
it went on I followed it with my eyes and saw it increase in fluidity. It
was again brought past me, and now I saw h bubbling and increasing in
volume, so that it was presently quite liquefied; and instead of, as at first,
occupying a small space in the glass, it now more than half filled it. Now,
as far as human testimony could go, I had the strongest reason to believe in
the reality of the miracle.

Protestants are ready enough to say it is impossible, it must be an im-
posture, etc. But I would humbly submit, if it is an imposture, how is

272 THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE [Nov.,

it done ? That has never been explained yet by any objector. In fine, I
would say that viewing the matter, not, of course, as an infidel, who denies
the possibility of miracles, but as one examining the matter and according
to the rules of human evidence, either it is a real miracle or those who jug-
gle it perform one still greater in succeeding in and maintaining a deception,
not for a few years in the so-called dark ages, but through several centuries,
down to the present epoch of dazzling, or blinding (?), illumination of the
nineteenth century.

The liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius has become so
notorious that certain parallel cases of the liquefaction of the
blood of other saints, claimed to be equally certain and superna-
tural, though not so perfectly attested, are but little heard of.
Rev. J. S. Northcote, in his letter to the Rambler from which the
foregoing narrative has been taken, gives an account of these,
mentioning the testimony which he obtained in regard to them,
and which will doubtless be of interest to the generality of read-
ers. This subject is a curious one, about which reliable informa-
tion is not easy to get.

" It is stated, then, in books, and repeated by persons who cer-
tainly have had opportunities of ascertaining the facts, that a
portion of the blood which issued from the side of St. Francis
and is preserved at Rieti, as well as another portion preserved in
the church of the SS. Stimmate at Rome, liquefies annually on the
i/th of September."

The same thing is said to happen on the 2/th of July to " a
portion of the blood of St. Pantaleon, preserved in the Chiesa
Nuova at Rome."

" In the church of S. Agostino at Terni, a city within the
States of the Church, which was the seat of a Christian bishopric
as long ago as the middle of the second century, there is a relic
of the blood of St. Peter that is said to liquefy and boil every
year from the first to the second vespers of the apostle's feast."
According to the testimony of one who saw it in the year 1847,
it is contained in a vessel of thin glass " apparently similar to the
old glass vessels of the Catacombs " ; and his testimony was cor-
roborated to Northcote by that of another person who was pre-
sent at the same time.

In the church of Sta. Patrizia in Naples the blood of that
saint is said to be always solid during every day of the year but
the 2$th of August, the day of her feast, when it regularly lique-
fies. In 1847 certain English Catholic priests, friends 6f North-
cote, who had been taken on purpose to see the liquefaction, ar-
rived after it had taken place. The fact of the general solidity

1884.] BLOOD OF -Sr. JANUARIUS. 273

of this relic and its occasional liquefaction is also attested to by
Silvestro Petra Sancta, a learned Jesuit, who in the middle of the
seventeenth century published a valuable and interesting work
entitled TJiauntasia vera Rcligionis contra Perfidiam Sectarian.

" In the Gesu Vecchio, in the same city, there is a small por-
tion of the blood of St. Aloysius preserved in a tabernacle upon
the altar of one of the private chapels." On a bitterly cold morn-
ing, on the 3ist of December, 1849, Northcote, in company with a
French missionary-bishop from China, Monseigneur de Verolles,
and a party of five or six others, French and English, were wit-
nesses of the liquefaction, of which he gives full particulars.

High up in the mountain, above the town of Amalfi, on the
bay of Salerno, and more immediately above the beautiful vil-
lage of Atrani, is the small town of Ravello, which in the middle
ages was an episcopal city of considerable importance with a
population of some 35,000 souls. In the principal church of this
town is kept the blood of St. Pantaleon, which, from a hard, con-
gealed state, is said to become liquid during the octave of the
saint's festival, also whenever the Blessed Sacrament is exposed
in its presence or when any relic of the true cross is brought be-
fore it. The vial containing the blood is kept in a small, square
aperture, closed by a door, in the wall above the high altar, and
to this aperture there is access in the rear by a little staircase at
the back of the altar behind this wall and there is another door
corresponding to the one in front. The vial, which is of darkish
glass, is between two strong iron gratings, one in front and one
in the rear, both let into the wall. The vial cannot, therefore,
be manipulated, nor even touched. "In order to see the relic
clearly you light a small taper and ( pass it through the bars."
Early in the month of September, 1843, an English priest, one of
the monsignori attached to the Papal Court and who afterwards
joined the congregation of Redemptorists in England, went in
company with an Italian priest from La Casa to Ravello ex
pressly to see the miracle. The monsignor wrote to Northcote,
at his request, a detailed account of the liquefaction, which im-
mediately took place when two relics of the holy cross were
brought near to the vial.

I can think of no better or more appropriate conclusion to these
narratives than to quote the beautiful lines with which Northcote
closes his :

Truly may we conclude with St. Augustine :* " A great testimony does the

*Serm. cclxxxv. In Nat. Martyr. Vincent, vol. v. col. 1631, ed. Paris.
VOL. XL. 1 8

274 A TRUE REFORMER NICHOLAS KRESS. [Nov.,

Lord furnish to his martyrs, to those who have borne witness for him, in that
he ruled their hearts during the fight and does not desert their bodies when
they are dead. Truly, ' precious in the sight of God is the death of his saints,'
when not even the corruptible flesh is contemned, though life have deserted
it and though the invisible soul have gone forth out of the visible body,
yet the dwelling-place of his servant is preserved by the care of the Lord,
and is honored by the faithful among his fellow-servants to the glory of the
Lord. For what does God, by performing marvellous things in the bodies
of the saints who are dead, but furnish a clear testimony that what dies per-
ishes not to him, and that it may hence be understood in what honor he
holds the souls of them that were slain for him, since even their inanimate
flesh is made famous by so mighty an operation of the Divinity ? "

A TRUE REFORMER NICHOLAS KREBS.

IT is impossible to find any period or any place in the history
of the church entirely free from imperfection. The human as-
serts itself in the country parish as well as in the papal palace,
under the purple as well as under the black cassock. From the
twelve apostles down, from impulsive Peter and treacherous
Judas to the latest imprudent ruler of a see or betrayer of the
faith, the human runs alongside the divine both in and out of
the sanctuary. This universal fact, obtruding itself on the atten-
tion of the contemporary observer as well as on the eyes of the
reader of ecclesiastical annals, gives the key to all the heresies,
schisms, and scandals in the church. It is a congregation of men,
not of angels. The subject and the ruler have both the same
imperfect nature inherited from Adam, and, although regene-
rated by Christ, still bearing the traces of the original fall.

This innate imperfection often leads the subject into revolt
and his superior into rashness. Which of these defects works
the greater mischief it would be difficult to say. But as the
position of a superior is the more important, it is more neces-
sary for him to guard against the weaknesses of his nature and
the danger of imprudence in governing his flock. If prudence
had always guided the counsels of authority, would scandals have
been so many ? If patience had always tempered zeal, would re-
volts have been so frequent?

We are led into this train of thought by reading the life of
that celebrated Roman cardinal of the fifteenth century known
.to polite literature as Cardinal Cusanus, but to his father and

1884.] A TRUE REFORMER NICHOLAS KREBS. 275

plain German countrymen as Nicholas Krebs, or Nicholas von
Cues. He was the son of a Moselle fisherman from Cues, a vil-
lage near Triers. His character is the type of the true reformer,
and if he had found full co-operation in his labors among the
clergy and laity of his time the conflagration lit by Luther would
have found few materials to burn in Germany.

The fifteenth century was one of scandal. The human ele-
ment in the church, owing to the interference of the lay power
in the sanctuary, was producing its usual results around the
throne and around the altar. Nicholas saw the ignorance and
saw the immorality. He saw the abuses in the monasteries and
episcopal palaces. But he was a true reformer and not a
" crank," as we say in modern expressive phrase. Instead of
imprudently denouncing or petulantly criticising; instead of
ridiculing or sneering, like Erasmus and Von Hutten ; instead of
turning rebel to authority and thus making things worse by re-
volt and schism, he piously set to work to remedy the disease
under law, under obedience, and yet by radical treatment. He
began his work in the year 1451 during the pontificate of Nicho-
las V., continued it during the reign of Calixtus III., and finished
it and his life in the same year in which that other famous
scholar, Pius II. (^Eneas Sylvius), died A.D. 1464. The princi-
ple upon which Von Cues based his reform in Germany was
essentially Catholic. He wanted to purify and renew, not to de-
stroy or upset. He insisted that men should not modify sanctity
or change the methods of justification, but that holiness should
change men. All was to be done under obedience to the powers
that be. If they lacked zeal to co-operate he was patient and
willing to wait, trusting in Providence to solve the difficulty. If
the abuse was crying, rather than subvert authority, -the corner-
stone of order and discipline, he patiently prayed and waited.

A true reformer, he began by reforming himself. He knew
the scandals in high places. Why mince about what was then
so plain and public? Abbots and bishops were negligent. In
the neighboring city of Strassburg its bishop had not pontificated
for years. Many of the clergy were ignorant and the people
neglected. Krebs became a model of every priestly virtue. He
set an example of residence to the prelates. He remained at
home. He preached to the clergy as well as to the people ;
and his practice was in conformity to his precept. Simple in
manner, avoiding pomp or display, indefatigable in teaching, con-
soling, and edifying, a real father of the poor, he went through
Germany, from one end to the other, in years of missionary labor.

276 A TRUE REFORMER NICHOLAS KREBS. [Nov.,

The people loved him and contrasted his conduct with that of
his disedifying brethren. He reformed church discipline as far
as possible. All was done with the consent and approval of the
popes. He insisted on a higher education of the clergy ; for he
knew that an ignorant is but one remove from a scandalous
priesthood, and that although learning by itself never makes
saints, yet ignorance surely makes sinners. He insisted that the
peasants should be instructed in catechism, and organized classes
and teachers for the purpose. He compelled the clergy to
preach to the people and instruct them in the principles of Chris-
tian faith and morals ; and he punished the priests who neglected
this important duty. He held provincial councils in Salzburg,
Magdeburg, Mayence, and Cologne ; he made frequent pastoral
visitations to the monasteries and convents, and thus awakened
religion wherever he went. The evidences of his zeal are still
shown in these old cities, most of which have remained loyal to
the old faith to this day. He proposed a plan of general refor-
mation to Pope Pius II. ; and this writing shows how deeply he
felt the abuses that everywhere prevailed, yet how loyal he was
to authority and how averse he was to the folly and the crime of
attempting to disturb its sacred foundations. The zeal of Krebs
took in the Roman court itself as well as the most insignificant
convent ; but he was loyal and respectful, and never forgot his
duty as a priest or his obedience as a cardinal. How unlike the
" cranks " who assume to be reformers now ! How unlike Curci !
/The abbot John Trithemius, writing of Von Cues at the end
of the fifteenth century, says :

"Nicholas von Cues appeared in Germany like an angel of light and
peace amid the surrounding darkness and desolation, re-established the
unity of the church there and the authority of its supreme head, and scat-
tered everywhere the seeds of a new life. A part bore no fruit through
the hard-heartedness of men ; another part blossomed, but soon withered
through the sloth and laxity of many, while a large portion bore fruits
which we still perceive and enjoy. He was a man of faith and of charity,
an apostle of piety and of learning. His intellect embraced all the do-
mains of science ; but all his learning came from God and had no other
aim than His glory and the edification and improvement of mankind. We
can therefore learn true wisdom from his science." *

" Science and the contemplation of truth with the eye of the mind al-
ways give pleasure," wrote Von Cues. "The older a man becomes the
more they delight him and fill him with the desire to possess truth. As
the heart lives only in love, so the mind lives only in the circle of science
and truth. As in all seasons of the year and in all labors of the day the

*Apud Janssen, Die Allgemeinen Zustande des Deittschen Volkes, erstes band, p. 4.

1884.] A TRUE REFORMER NICHOLAS KREBS. 277

bodily eye is guided by the light of heaven, so the eye of the intelligence" is
ever illumined from the source of the true and the beautiful, and by the
teaching of centuries and the lore of antiquity. These should we study,
not forgetting, however, the mysteries of matter which surround us in this
mundane sphere. But let our study be with humility ; for humility alone
gives utility to knowledge, humility alone makes us great."

Von Cues especially aimed at reforming ecclesiastical studies.
He insisted on the teaching of the great scholastics in colleges,
universities, and monasteries, and on the profound study of the
Scriptures by every ecclesiastic. He was utterly opposed to
the superficial or to the quibble. He attacked false mysticism
and unveiled the insidious pantheism of some mystical writers.
He urged the study of philosophy, especially of Christian meta-
physics he himself being a profound philosopher as well as a
theologian. Yet his method of discussion and polemics was es-
sentially irenical. This appears evident in his great work on
Tlic Settlement of all Disputes about Religion in a Peaceful Way*
The plan of this work is to give a full view of religious truth
and persuade all mankind to embrace it in the unity of the
Roman Catholic Church, the only true world-religion (Weltre-
ligioit).

Von Cues, not content with urging a reform in the theo-
logical curriculum of studies, insisted that the clergy should
study the natural sciences also. A priest, according to him,
ought to be a leader in Israel. His lips should guard wisdom,
and the people should be able to seek the law from him in
safety. Religion should rule the world ; and although he did
not deem it essential for a priest to be a great naturalist, yet he
wished the clergy to be versed in the natural sciences, so as
not to be ashamed or afraid in the presence of their votaries,
who are too often, alas ! the assailers of Christian faith. He
was a distinguished mathematician and astronomer himself.
He was the first who, almost a century before Copernicus, had
the courage and the knowledge to assert that the earth turned
on its axis with continual motion. He wrote a learned treatise
on the correction of the Julian calendar. He led the band of
astronomers who since his time have explored the realms of the
stars and the motions of the heavenly bodies. He was the friend
and patron of George von Peuerbach and of John Miiller, the
two founders in Germany of the new school of scientists and
the fathers of mathematical and observed astronomy.

Further, he insisted on the study of classic literature. Many

* Die Beilegung aller Religionsstreitigkeiten auffriedlicliem Wege.

278 A TRUE REFORMER NICHOLAS KREBS. [Nov.,

of the monks had grown lazy and ignorant. Some of the secu-
lar clergy were deficient in Latin and Greek. Von Cues urged
on them the obligation of knowing better the masterpieces of
pagan antiquity. He knew that there was nothing in the clas-
sics, properly understood, to injure Christian faith, and that
the grand thoughts and beautiful style of Homer, Sophocles,
Plato, and Demosthenes, or of Virgil, Tacitus, and Cicero, help
to cultivate the mind and give side-lights to Christian truth. In
Italy he had studied attentively both Plato and Aristotle.
Wherever Von Cues could he introduced the works of the
latter philosopher, and was inflamed with zeal for the propaga-
tion of classical learning everywhere. He helped poor scholars.
He urged their zeal when it flagged in the pursuit of know-
ledge. He collected many Greek manuscripts on the occasion
of a voyage to Constantinople, and never tired of studying the
grand and sonorous verse of Homer, even though engaged in
the sacred work of the ministry. The art of printing, recently-
discovered, was of great use to him in his literary labors. His
zeal for the study of Greek and Latin among the youth of Ger-
many was emulated after his death (in 1464) by Rudolf Agricola.
It is such men as Cardinal Cusa and Cardinal Borromeo
who in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries refute the calumnies
of the sham reformers Luther and Melanchthon, and show us
what true reformers should be, and serve as models for them to
imitate. A study of their lives and works is the best teacher of
those who desire to correct abuses, if there are any, in the
church, or whose zeal prompts them to elevate the tone of the
clergy and of the laity either in education, discipline, or morals.

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 279

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON. Collected and arranged by Henry
F. Brownson. Vol. XI. Detroit : Thorndike Nourse.

This volume of Dr. Brownson's works contains essays on subjects be-
longing to the debatable ground between politics and religion. Whatever
one may think of the opinions advocated, he will find here some of the
finest specimens of the great author's style. It is, indeed, a model style.
The English language in Dr. Brownson's grasp is a weapon to slay and a
talisman to raise to life. Never was argumentation made more delightful
reading ; never did a teacher instruct more by the aid of his pupil's highest
faculties. It is, indeed, a most enviable gift to be able to so write, or rather
to be able so to think, discern, judge, penetrate, decide concerning the
greatest topics of the human understanding, and then to clothe one's con-
clusions in language as adequate to express as human language well can be.
Clearness, force, purity, vividness, loftiness, are terms applicable to Dr.
Brownson's literary style. True, besides the higher class of students of
fine writing, the general reading public will not study him or any such order
of men merely for the sake of his literary excellences. The pleasures of
the imagination and of narrative ar<j not to be found in Dr. Brownson.
But let one have any shadow of interest in the great questions he treats,
and every page displays the possession of a style which is the rarest of
literary gifts. For his writing, being colorless of those lesser beauties which
catch the eye but to arrest its deepest glances, and absolutely free from the
least obscurity, becomes the instinctive expression of a most enlightened
mind. It is a magnetic medium uniting the master's personality, the dis-
ciple's understanding, and the subject's essence. Cardinal Newman, we
may believe, possesses this supreme rhetoric in perhaps even a higher de-
gree, but so much can be said of few other writers of English prose. The
late George Ripley, in our opinion the best judge of literature in our country
or elsewhere, assured us that there were, passages in Dr. Brownson which
could not be surpassed in the whole range of English literature.

The editor has prefixed to this volume a preface explaining a change
which at one time seemed to have occurred in Dr. Brownson's views on
questions whose bearing is both religious and political a matter which
involved him in domestic controversy at times rather warm. Doubtless
the explanation is satisfactory, especially for the new generation of readers.
We commend it to the attention of all who wish to be acquainted with the
pure motives which influenced Dr. Brownson's public life. We do not
know how well the editor's labor of love in getting out this work is being
rewarded by the Catholic public. But this we know : the priest or intelli-
gent layman who does not buy these volumes will lack one of the best aids
to an intelligent comprehension of the first principles of religion and of
higher politics. It is, besides, an error to fancy that because one has the
old copies of Brownson's Review he has all that these volumes contain.
The author wrote some of his best articles in other periodicals, and some
of the highest flights of his mind only appeared in book-form.

We think that the last essay in this volume, " The Mission of America,"

280 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

is one of the finest specimens of English the author ever penned; and it
is the free, luminous, vigorous treatment of a subject still of the freshest
interest. We cannot help quoting a few lines from it, willing to give the
space in the hope that these few drops may but excite such a thirst in the
reader that he will go to the fountain itself and drink to his full content-
ment :

" We insist, indeed, on the duty of all Catholic citizens, whether natural born or naturalized,
to be, or to make themselves, thorough-going Americans ; but to be Americans is to understand
and love American institutions, to understand and love the American mission, to understand
and love American liberty, to understand and love American principles and interests, and to use
with a free and manly spirit the advantages of American citizenship to advance the cause of reli-
gion and civilization. Those who will not be Americans in this sense we disown, we hold to be
' outside barbarians ' and not within the pale of the American order. They have no business
here, and the sooner they leave us the better. They have no lot or part in our work, no part or
lot in the American mission. But whoever does his best to be in this sense an American, who-
ever is devoted to true American interests and is fired with a noble ambition to promote the
glory of America, we embrace as a countryman, wherever he was born or reared ; we hold him
to be our fellow-laborer, and to him we make our appeal. To all such we say, Here is a glorious
work to be done, in which you may perform a glorious part a work which you will be doing
whenever preparing yourself for your part as Catholics, as citizens, or as men ; to which every
noble sentiment you cherish, every generous sacrifice you make, every disinterested act you per-
form, every prayer you breathe even in secret, every living word you drop from your lips will
contribute. The field is as broad as your activity, the work as high as your ambition, as great
as your thought. You may, if you will, add a nation, a nation destined to rule the future, to
your church, and to the world a new civilization. You may bring faith to the doubting, hope
to the desponding, and peace to the troubled ; send freedom to the down-trodden millions of the
Old World, redeem long-oppressed continents, and fill with joy the broken-hearted friends of
the human race. Let each one work in his own sphere, according to his ability and opportunity,
but always with a view to the greater glory of God, and with a firm reliance on him for support >
and ultimate success."

The publisher's work has been especially well done in the get-up of this
volume.

THE FAITH OF CATHOLICS CONFIRMED BY SCRIPTURE AND ATTESTED BY
THE FATHERS OF THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES OF THE CHURCH. Three
vols. 8vo. With preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor Capel, D.D.
New York : Pustet & Co.

This valuable compilation, made by the Rev. Fathers Berington and
Kirk in the early part of this century and recast and edited by Rev. J.
Waterworth some forty years ago, has just been reprinted with a preface
by Right Rev. Monsignor Capel. The plan of the book is first to state in
a proposition a Catholic doctrine, then to give the passages of Scripture
confirming it, and lastly extracts from the Fathers of the first five cen-
turies. Doubtful readings and difficult passages are given in the original lan-
guage at the foot of the page. There has been added an appendix containing
Right Rev. Dr. Ullathorne's summary of the Fathers on the Immaculate
Conception, and also the full text of the Vatican Dogmatic Constitution,
" Pastor aeternus." Chronological lists of the popes, of the councils, of the
ecclesiastical writers of the period complete the work. It has been carefully
printed in type and on paper like the last London edition, and is to be pub-
lished by private subscription at a price a little less than the book was sold for
in England. We hail the work as a valuable addition to our Catholic publica-
tions. Not only will it be of service to our seminarists, to our teachers, and
to intelligent Catholics, but also it will enable Episcopalians to see in form
of a compendium the^teachings of the Fathers of the " undivided church."

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 281

THE CATHOLIC HYMNAL; containing Hymns for Congregational and
Home use, and the Vesper Psalms, the Office of Compline, the Litanies,
Hymns at Benediction, etc. The Tunes by Rev. Alfred Young, priest of
the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle. The words original and se-
lected. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.; London:
Burns & Gates.

This superb volume appears too late for us to give that extended criti-
cal notice of it which from even a casual glance at its pages it evidently
merits. We know of no such complete hymnal in the English language
for the use of Catholics. The first paragraph of its preface may be aptly
quoted here :

" Congregational singing is known to be one of the most powerful means of awakening the
religious emotions of the people, while at the same time doctrinal truths, contained in the hymns,
are deeply impressed upon the minds of those who thus proclaim in public their faith and the
devout sentiments of their hearts. If people can be got to sing in praise of any project or prin-
ciple, it is easy to arouse their enthusiasm in its favor. If they sing about anything, it is be-
cause they love it. All agree that if congregational singing were done with spirit it would be a
most powerful auxiliary to the priest. It would aid him very much in the work of instruction
and exhortation, which, for the want of some such help, he is obliged to supply by extraordinary
preaching, numerous instructions, and spiritual conferences.

" All, too, have felt the want of such singing at special Lenten services, during retreats and
missions, at Low Masses, and at the meetings of sodalities established in parishes, and in our
colleges and convent-schools. The best effort hitherto made has been to have a few hymns suit-
able for children's use sung by children, to which the older people pay little or no attention.

" The present hymnal, carefully compiled with the aforementioned purposes in view, is
offered to the reverend clergy and to superiors of our educational institutions with the confi-
dent assurance that it will realize much that has been deemed desirable in a hymn-book for
general use."

We learn that several of the hymns, printed from advanced sheets,
were successfully taught to, and sung with great enthusiasm by, the people
of the Paulist fathers' congregation last Lent.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PERSECUTIONS SUFFERED BY THE CATHO-
LICS OF IRELAND UNDER THE RULE OF CROMWELL AND THE PURI-
TANS. By the Most Rev. Patrick Francis Moran, D.D., Archbishop
of Sydney. 121110, 680 pages. Dublin : g M. H. Gill & Son. 1884. (For
sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

The distinguished Irish prelate and indefatigable student who has just
been promoted from his native see of Ossory to the archbishopric of
Sydney has issued in one volume an amplified edition of his historical
sketch of the persecutions of Irish Catholics in the terrible seventeenth
century. Dr. Moran's services to the history 9f his country are only
second to his services to the church, and the present book is not the least
in importance of the many monuments of his historical zeal. It is mainly
a work of original research, being compiled from unpublished contempo-
rary writings and from printed works rarely to be met with. The greater
part of it was written as an introduction to the author's Memoirs of Dr.
Plunket ; but it is now much enlarged and contains many new documents.

Dr. Moran anticipates a kind of criticism that a work like this is sure
to encounter. He says :

" Though the practice of the Catholic Church and the experience of the past ages show
that great edification is derived from the history of those who suffered for the truth, and the
faithful are encouraged to constancy and patience in the time of trial by remembering the sac-

282 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov..

rifices made by others in its defence, yet there are some who seem to think otherwise, and who
will not fail to condemn the historical sketch now presented to the public. Why, they say,
do you occupy yourself with penal laws and the confiscation of property, why record the
massacre of so many Catholics ? Such unpleasant recollections ought not to be preserved. It
is the tendency of the present age to repair the wrongs of past times and to heal the wounds
then inflicted why put yourself in opposition to so praiseworthy a spirit ? Why not let past
grievances be forgotten ?

" In reply perhaps it would not be out of place to examine whether the present age is so
liberal as it pretends, or whether the Catholic religion, and the Catholic people in general and
the poor especially have been treated in Ireland with such generosity as to make them forget
all past grievances. It might also be asked whether the spirit of former times is not still active,
and still tending to obtain by indirect and occult means the same ends which were so long
sought for by open persecution."

But, passing over such questions, Dr. Moran observes that motives of
prudence or feelings of delicacy did not prevent the early Christian
writers from recording innumerable deeds of pagan cruelty and describing
the noble constancy and courage of their persecuted brethren.

" Every Christian felt that the propagation or preservation of his religion in the midst of
trials and sufferings was a proof of the truth of Christ's promise to be with his church in all
ages, and the fear of displeasing pagans or exciting the feelings of the sufferers against their op-
pressors was not considered a sufficient ground for passing over in silence great historical facts
both useful and edifying. . . . Why should not we act in the same way ? For do not the suffer-
ings of past times supply us with new illustrations of the power of Christian faith, and with
motives of thankfulness and gratitude to God for having preserved our religion ? The struggle
in which our predecessors in the faith were engaged was a very unequal one : they were so
weak that, humanly speaking, they could not have resisted the powers that were brought to bear
on them for their destruction ; yet, through the mercy of God, their poverty was more powerful
than the wealth of others, and in their weakness they preserved the most precious of all trea-
sures, their faith, and transmitted it to their posterity, in whom it is now producing an abun-
dance of fruit in their virtues and good works, and in the institutions with which they are
covering the land. . . . Nor is it to be supposed that the memory of past grievances always ex-
cites feelings of hatred and rancor. Where the sufferings of true Christians are related a
contrary effect is produced. Their patience and resignation to the holy will of God, the prayers
they poured out, like our Divine Redeemer on the cross, for their persecutors, serve to make us
patient and obedient, and to act in a spirit of charity and forbearance even towards those who
afflict and persecute us."

We make no excuse for this lengthened extract, for it furnishes a
splendid argument against a reproach that is too often offered to the Irish-
man who dwells on the past sufferings of his country. Ireland asks to
have her martyrs recognized. The church has always, in every country on
the globe from Norway to Japan, searched for the martyrs to the faith, in
order that she might revere and bless their memories, or even canonize
them. It would be strange that the memory of Ireland's mighty host of
martyrs, from her archbishops and bishops down to the humblest peasant
who submitted to horrible tortures and death sooner than deny his reli-
gion, should alone be neglected. When the martyrology of Ireland is writ-
ten it will be a record not less glorious than that of any nation in Chris-
tendom.

But there are other reasons why the periods of persecution should form
a prominent feature in Irish history. It is quite impossible to understand
the condition of Ireland without keeping these periods in view. Irish
Catholics are frequently taunted with the want of a Catholic literature and
with the rags and poverty of their country. They are even told that their
ignorance and poverty are proofs of the demoralizing effects of their holy

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 283

religion. The rich and flourishing Protestants are pointed to proofs of
the advantages of Protestantism. Such comparisons are made every day;
they appear again and again in all the little anti-Catholic tracts so widely
circulated at present. Then there is that most phenomenal national sen-
timent in the whole range of history staring the student in the face the
puzzling, seemingly insensate, but terribly real hate of England that seems
born in the bones of the Irish people. To answer the charges, to explain
the phenomena, it is necessary to go back to the persecutions and the
penal laws. At four different periods the Irish Catholics were supposed to
have been utterly exterminated by English law by law, for the policy
of extermination was deliberately planned and formulated in Parliament.
They were overwhelmed in war, they were driven off their estates and
holdings to the bogs and hills, from the bogs and hills to the rocks, from
the rocks into the sea. They were shot down and hanged, their women
and babies were spitted on spears. In milder days to our own day almost
it was a crime for a Catholic to educate his child. What wonder that the
Catholics in Ireland are the poorer class? The wonder is there exists a
Catholic there at all. But the marvellous energy of this people triumphed
over every persecution. The most touching testimony of the intellectual-
ism of this much-misunderstood race was the efforts by which they, com-
mitting treason and overcoming a thousand difficulties to secure the prize,
sought to slake their thirst for knowledge in foreign lands. To-day, when
the penal laws have been relaxed, the same spirit has covered the country
with schools, colleges, and other educational establishments, and made
faith and learning to bloom there again as in a garden. Thus, to use Arch-
bishop Moran's words, "a reference to past times shows who were the real
friends and who the enemies of progress and knowledge."

The apprehension that the spirit of former times is still active on the
oppressors' side is justified in more regards than one. The English are not
content to let bygones be bygones as to the persecution periods. The
passion for misrepresenting Ireland and her Catholicism is too strong and
has been too long gratified to die easily. To prove this it would be only
necessary to refer to such a work as Mr. J. A. Froude's The English in Ire-
land. But only last month there was issued from the presses of a London
publishing firm a book, with the prestige of the same famous historian's
name to its preface, the object of which is to show that the Irish had no
grievance in those days of persecution ; that the English atrocities were
only the result of a " feeling of indignation produced in English Protes-
tants by Irish murders"; and that the Irish rebellion was the work of the
" Roman priesthood," who had a "Jesuitical " motive in stirring up disaffec-
tion. These things are sought to be proved by a selection (chiefly from
the MSS. in Trinity College) of depositions made by Protestants which, if
they were equally reliable in all their statements, would establish the fact
that the Irish were the agents of witchcraft ! The book we refer to '^Ireland
in the Seventeenth Century ; or, The Irish Massacres of 1641-42, by Mary
Hickson ; with a Preface by J. A. Froude. (London: Longmans. 1884.)
While slanders like this are actively promulgated by the opposite side, is
the wronged, the misrepresented, the martyrs' side to remain silent ? It is
not even once in a century that an honest Englishman and Protestant like
Mr. C. G. Walpole will have the moral courage to do justice to the subject,

284 NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [Nov.,

as he has done in his Kingdom of Ireland, and lay the crime at the proper
door and make no ghastly palliations.

Archbishop Moran proves very clearly that the atrocities in Ireland
were the result of a general proscription of the Irish Catholics by the Puri-
tan Parliaments. As early as the 8th December, 1641, an act was passed in
Parliament to the effect that the Catholic religion should never be tolerated
in Ireland; and in order to carry this act into execution the lords-justices
issued the following order to the commander of the Irish forces :

"It is resolved that it is fit his lordship should endeavor, with his majesty's forces, to slay
and destroy all the said rebels, and their adherents and relievers, by all the ways and means he
may; and burn, destroy, spoil, waste, consume, and demolish all the places, towns, and houses
where the said rebels are or have been relieved and harbored ; and kill and destroy all the men
there inhabiting able to bear arms."

All the subsequent acts of Parliament and orders of the lords-justices are
dictated in the same sanguinary strain ; as an instance may be cited the
enactment of the Lords and Commons of England on the 24th of October,
1644, " that no quarter shall be given to any Irishman or to any papist
born in Ireland." The acts of Parliament were supplemented by the ex-
hortations of the Puritan pamphleteers, of whose spirit the following ex-
tract is a choice specimen :

" I beg upon my hands and knees that the expedition against them (the Irish Catholics)
may be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our soldiery are hot, to whom I will be bold
to say , briefly : ' Happy he that shall reward them as they have served us ; and cursed is he that
shall do the work of the Lord negligently.' Cursed be he that holdeth back his sword from
blood ; yea, cursed be he that maketh not his sword stark drunk with Irish blood that maketh
them not heaps upon heaps, and their country a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment to
nations. Let not that eye look for pity, nor that hand be spared, that pities or spares them ;
and let him be accursed that curseth them not bitterly."

In the words of the Protestant historian Borlase, " the orders of Parlia-
ment were excellently well executed." Their officers were able to boast,
like one Tichbourne, who commanded in Dundalk in 1642, that "there was
neither man nor beast to be found " in their districts. The dogs had to be
shot, too ; for, to quote Dean Bernard, a Protestant dignitary, " they only
surviving are found very usually feeding upon their masters, which taste of
man's flesh made it very dangerous for the passengers in the roads." The
soldiery of the Puritans did not stop at killing the men and women. In
the phrase of Carew, " nits will be lice," so they killed the children. They
hanged pregnant women and murdered women "in their very travail."
One of Sir Charles Coote's troopers carried on the point of his spear
the head of a little babe which he cut off after killing the poor mother,
"which Coote observing, said he was mightily pleased with many such frol-
icks." They knocked children's brains out against the walls at Clonakilty,
and a captain who devised the plan of tying Catholics back to back and
casting them into the sea was summoned to the bar of the House of Com-
mons " and had thanks there given him for his good service, and a chain of
gold of ^200 value." They destroyed every sacred edifice in the country,
as they did the beautiful cathedral of Cashel, where " the altars were over-
turned ; the images that were painted on wood were consigned to the
flames ; those on canvas were used as bedding for the horses or were cut
into sacks for burdens. . . . They advanced through the public squares

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285

wearing the sacred vestments and inviting to Mass those whom they met
on the way." The leader of the Puritans at Cashel donned the archiepis-
copal mitre and proclaimed himself mockingly archbishop of Cashel.

How all this gloomy page is illumined with the glorious light of mar-
tyrdom ; how saintly bishop after bishop, priest after priest, Catholic lay-
men, noble and simple, earned the crown of crowns, enduring horrible tor-
tures, and from the scaffold forgiving their enemies and exhorting their
people to be true to their sacred inheritance ; how, through persecutions
such as only the Chosen People were visited with, the Irish preserved the
covenant of faith as the Chosen People did not, neither worshipping the
golden calf nor hungering for the flesh-pots all this is told with wonderful
clearness and power by Archbishop Moran.

With all its horrors it is an inspiring book for the Catholic to read, and
the student of peoples cannot pretend to understand that country so full
of amazing problems and wondrous possibilities unless he has mastered the
facts it contains.

THE CYCLOPAEDIA OF PRACTICAL QUOTATIONS, ENGLISH AND LATIN, WITH
AN APPENDIX. By J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward. New York : Funk
& Wagnalls. 1884.

The Latin department of this cyclopaedia of quotations is very poor,
but the English quotations are so copious and generally well selected, and
the indexes are so unusually good, that they suffice to carry the book. It
is easy to find faults in a work of this kind. We miss many things even
in the English department that we would like to see there, and we see
space occupied by quotations in the style of

" ' It was a fine day.'

SNOOKS, The Gloriad, canto v. line 208 "

a style much in vogue with lady novelists, who love to embellish the
headings of their chapters with such choice morsels of erudition. By the
way, the line from " Locksley Hall,"

" Sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things,"

being used by Tennyson between quotation-points as a paraphrase of
Dante's famous" nessun maggior dolore, etc.," should be described as such
and not as if it were original with the English laureate. But to find fault
with a work over which such anxious toil has been expended for slips like
this, would not be fair. The American who wants a copious, well-indexed
volume of English quotations will hardly find one to suit him better than
this.

MEN AND WOMEN AS THEY APPEARED IN THE FAR-OFF TIME. By S. H.
Burke, author of Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, etc. New
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.; London : Burns & Gates.
1885.

Readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are familiar with Mr. Sarsfield
Hubert Burke's flavor as a historical writer. A delightfully quaint and
truly Catholic flavor it is. Mr. Burke has the genuine spirit of historical
research, coupled with a quick insight into human character too seldom
possessed by the explorers of MS. collections. His work among both the

286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

highways and byways of English history is of real value. The little volume
under notice might be described as a series of short rambles among the
byways. It is a string of tiny essays and personal sketches, informal,' de-
sultory, and charming, stuffed full of information, and mainly the result of
original research. The reader may skip from a dissertation on the salt tax
to a graceful account of the. poet-Earl of Surrey, from a description of
Henry VIII. 's honeymoon to a spirited picture of Queen Elizabeth among
the Cambridge scholars. This pleasant little book makes up a really valu-
able set of side-lights on the life and character of the " men and women of
the far-off time."

ACADIA : A Lost Chapter in American History. By Philip H. Smith.
Pawling, N. Y. : Published by the author. 1884.

This book, though presented to the public under modest form and un-
pretending style, is an important contribution to American history. It is
singular that a work of such considerable merits and sure popularity
should have been gotten up in a country office, with a fifty-pound font of
type and an old Liberty job-press, and its stereotyping executed with home-
made apparatus after a process developed from personal experiment. There
are few if any of our metropolitan publishers that would not have issued it
in their best style and under the best auspices. The only thing wanting
on the part of the author and his book is an index, the omission of which
from any book of even ordinary merits is inexcusable. A book without an
index in this age is an anomaly.

The author is entitled to all praise for his industrious and sympathetic
study of the beautiful history and sad fate of the Acadians. This book better
than any other illustrates the bloody and cruel struggle between France
and England for the sovereignty of our northeastern territory a struggle
which extended also along the entire boundary westward and southward of
the French settlements.

The free institutions and the mild government of the Canadian- French
under English rule in Canada to-day are a result that one would scarcely
have expected from the cruelty, injustice, and bitter religious bigotry with
which the result was accomplished by the English government of the last
century with the aid of the zealous and bloodthirsty bigotry of the Puri-
tans of New England. The loyalty of the Canadians has been the correla-
tive reward of protection, good laws, and equal participation in the offices
and administration of their government a fact which verifies a law of po-
litical economy that history has developed from the time of the conquer-
ing Greeks and Romans.

But in the case of the Acadians a great public wrong was perpetrated
that antagonized all precedents and rules. Puritanism and the Puritans
were their deadly enemies enemies incapable of satisfaction at any result
less than their extermination. Religious bigotry and the grasp after
worldly aggrandizement were, and still are, features of Puritanism.
The Acadians were next-door neighbors to the New England Puri-
tans; they zealously professed and practised the religion the Puritans
hated, and they owned and cultivated the lands and crops they coveted.
Hence the principle of their every action was, delenda est Acadia. Expedi-
tions were fitted out from New England, with Boston as the central field of

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287

operations, against an innocent and quiet people living in their own homes ;
midnight attacks upon peaceful communities, upon men, women, and chil-
dren buried in sleep, were the favorite method of war on the part of the
Puritans ; massacre, murder, fire, sword, and indiscriminate slaughter were
the usual and favorite recourse, nay, the favorite enjoyment, of these " re-
ligious " enthusiasts. Our author, Mr. Philip H. Smith, tells us that the war-
fare of the Puritans against the Catholics of Acadia greatly partook of the
nature of a religious crusade. "/ waging war," he says, '"against these
papists the provincials thought they were doing God a service." It is enough,
indeed, to refer to the fact that one of this long succession of bloody trage-
dies and inhuman butcheries was the martyrdom of the saintly Father
Rasles, in order to show the moving and inspiring motive of this disgrace-
ful chapter in our history. Methodism gave aid and comfort to the Puri-
tans, however, in this war against religion, for it was George Whitefield,
one of the founders of Methodism, who animated the bad passions of the
New England people by his wicked and impassioned eloquence ; and
he it was who gave the Puritans their motto or battle-cry in the expe-
dition against Louisburg, " Nil desperandum, Christo Duce." No wonder,
then, that a chaplain in one of the regiments carried on his shoulders a
hatchet, with the avowed purpose of destroying the religious images in the
Catholic chapels. Not only were the Acadians exterminated, with the ex-
ception of a remnant, but this remnant were denied the privilege of neu-
trality in wars between their English conquerors and their friends and kin-
dred in La Belle France ; and the greatest of outrages was perpetrated
upon them in being torn from their homes in Acadia and left in banish-
ment along the inhospitable shores of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
Mr. Smith does not repeat the historical blunder of Whittier by stat-
ing that La Tour was a Huguenot ; but he vividly shows his betrayal by
the Puritans, his pretended friends. The sympathies of the author are in
the right place, with his dear Acadians. And yet his work is replete with
just discrimination, historical research, and strong vindication. In a pas-
sage here and there he quotes an unjust aspersion on the French clergy of
Acadia, but these embrace rather the views of others. He accords to the
Catholic priests of this unfortunate land, In general, the purest motives
and the most heroic labors and sacrifices. His descriptions of the home-
life of the Acadians are most beautiful and pathetic. Though blotted from
our maps, Acadia and the good and gentle Acadians will live for ever in
the tablets of a just and indignant human memory.

THE ROMAN HYMNAL. A Complete Manual of English Hymns and Latin
Chants for the use of Congregations, Schools, Colleges, and Choirs.
Compiled and arranged by Rev. J. B. Young, S.J., Choir-Master of St.
Francis Xavier's Church, New York. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co.

We are glad to welcome this and every such publication intended to
encourage popular common singing at religious services in our churches
and schools. It is a good step in the right direction, and we look forward
with hope to see abundant fruits to be reaped from the mutual edification
and inspiration afforded by the singing of pious and instructive hymns.
In this book only the melody of the tunes is given ; other volumes yet to
be issued will contain the harmonized accompaniments. The melodies are

288 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov., 1884.

also given of all the Masses of the Roman Gradual, but they, as well as
the melodies of all the Vesper hymns, are printed in modern style instead
of in the original chant notation. In our judgment all such attempts at
musical translation have been, and will surely be, failures. The idea of
relative time is inseparably associated with modern notes, and this is wholly
foreign to the rhythm of Gregorian chant. From long observation and ex-
perience we are sure that ordinary and even pretty well instructed musi-
cians not thoroughly versed in the principles of chant will fail to get the
true movement or expression of the Gregorian hymns and chants from
musical notation. We could also have wished to see an English transla-
tion of the Latin in a hymnal for common use ; for if the people are to
sing anything heartily they must know what they are singing.

One of the most encouraging features in the publication of this Hymnal
is the evidence it gives of a reviving taste for real church music, the larger
part of the volume being, indeed, devoted to Gregorian chant. We earnest-
ly hope that the congregations, choirs, and schools who may adopt this
book as their hymnal will, under intelligent direction, use it with diligence,
and thus acquire a taste for the noble, soul inspiring chant that sublime
melody, " which as one sings," as says Kenelm Digby, *' you hear the
whole Catholic Church behind you responding."

A WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
With illustrations by F. S. Church. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
1885.

Of the very few ideal books for boys and girls Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Wonder-Book is one. It was a happy thought and a daring to cast half
a dozen of the classic myths into the form of children's stories. What a
success Hawthorne made of the idea has been testified to by two genera-
tions of delighted children we think we might add of delighted parents,
too. The only great American novelist understood well one fact, the igno-
rance of which has been the scceva Charybdts of nearly every would-be
writer of " improving" stories for young folks : children do not need to be
written down to. In Hawthorne's words, "children possess an unestimated
sensibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long
as it is simple likewise ; it is only the artificial and the complex that
bewilder them." The volume before us is a new edition, beautifully bound
and illustrated, of the Wonder-Book. Among the new books, or the new
editions of old favorites, in the Christmas market few will be more genuinely
relished than this by the youngsters who find it in Santa Claus' stocking.

THE

VOL. XL. DECEMBER, 1884. No. 237.

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO
IN THE UNITED STATES.*

IT is a mere truism to say that the colored race is but little
known in most of the United States. As a rule the means of
knowing them the minstrel parody, the stage of the low theatre,
the opportunities afforded by the popular summer resort are
unfair and untrustworthy. No race can be measured by such
standards. When " there arose a new king over Egypt that
knew not Joseph,' then it was that Israel had to suffer. As long
as the negroes of our land are, in a great measure, unknown,
so long will they be misunderstood, so long will their needs be
neglected. The Southern people, of course, know their black
neighbors well it could not He otherwise. But the people of
the North, though they will argue for him, sympathize with him,
give money for his education in short, freely help him cannot
well, and do not, know their " colored brother." Indeed, their
friendliness is of the sort that asks and requires distance for its
exercise. Yet the negroes, numbering over six millions in our
midst, merit an intelligent recognition.

It is the purpose of this article to give some notions of the

* History of the Negro Race. 2 vols. By Geo. W. Williams, Putnam, N. Y. Our
Brother in Black. By A. G. Haygood. New York : Phillips & Hunt. Hot Plowshares. By
Albion W. Tourgee. New York : Fords, Howard & Hurlbert. Popular Science Monthly,
February, 1883, " The African in the United States," by Prof. E. W. Gilliam. Century
Magazine, April, 1884, " Uncle Tom without a Cabin," by Walter B. Hill. Agricultural
Review, January and May, 1884, " What will become of the Colored Race ?" by Dr. Geo. Ben.
Johnston. Census Reports and Reports of the Commissioner of Education.

290 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF [Dec.,

colored race, their standing, the spread of religion among them,
the work of educating them, gathered from personal work among
them and from the various sources to which reference is made
in the note at the beginning of this paper; principally in the
hope that the words of Isaias uttered in other circumstances may
be realized in them : " That a present be brought to the Lord of
hosts from a people rent and torn in pieces, . . . from a nation
expecting, expecting and trodden under foot " (Isaias xviii. 7).

The colored population in the United States is considered to
be greatly on the increase. The census of 1880 gives it an in-
crease of 35 per cent, during the previous decade, while the
whites are credited with a gain of 29 per cent., of which, how-
ever, a considerable ratio some claim 9 per cent. is due to
immigration. And as this census makes the negroes number
one-half of the whites in the South, it is safe to conclude, with
the increase greatly in the former's favor, that the time is not
far off when the blacks will outnumber their fair-skinned neigh-
bors. In two articles, however, contributed to the Agricultural
Review of New York, Dr. Geo. Ben. Johnston, a leading physi-
cian of Richmond, argues against this conclusion. He writes :

" But this [greater increase of the colored] is manifestly an impossibility,
and the estimate is only made up by comparison between the census of
1870 and that of 1880 the former being confessedly inaccurate. And so
until the census of 1890 is taken no sufficient data will be afforded through
that channel to ascertain the relative ratio of increase between the races,
and we must for the present look to other sources of information. These
are to be found in the health-reports of cities where both exist in numbers
near enough equal to form a basis of comparison. It is true that these re-
ports only give the statistics of large towns or cities ; but there is no reason
to suppose that the conditions of birth and death are materially different in
villages and the country from what they are in the cities. The observation
of any one who lived in the South and had opportunities of seeing the
colored race must lead to the conclusion that their habits and mode of
life are pretty uniform all over the South. The same causes that produce a
high ratio of deaths and still-births in the city operate in the country also.
These are mainly crowding together in small rooms, and ignorance, and
neglect of the sick " (January number, p. 28).

Dr. Johnston then gives statistics of births and deaths in the
following five cities : Washington, Savannah, Nashville, Charles-
ton, and New Orleans. The results are largely against the
negroes. He thus concludes :

" As the death-ratio of the whole population, black and white, is 15.1 to
the 1,000, and that of the colored race in the cities named averages 36.52, and
the number of still-births is so much greater among the colored race than

1884.] THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES. 291

among the whites, it must be certain that if the two races were left to them-
selves, neither assisted by immigration nor depleted by emigration, the
whites would gain" (p. 29).

In the May number of the same monthly, continuing his ar-
gument, the doctor gives in support of his views fresh statistics
the mortuary reports from Richmond, Norfolk, and Lynch-
burg, all three in Virginia. These also leave little hope for the
negroes. Now, the groundwork of his argument is : " The same
causes that produce a high ratio of deaths and still-births in the
city operate in the country." But at first sight even, this seems
unlikely. The country is generally regarded as healthier than
the city ; the personal habits of the negroes, it is claimed, how-
ever, make any advantages to be gained by country life of no
account.

While engaged in writing these lines a colored man of sterling
worth, about thirty years old, came to see me. It struck me to
ask him a few questions without in any way giving him to under-
stand my motive. Here are his answers : His grandmother had
19 children ; his mother, 9 ; his aunt, 18 ; his sister, 13 ; his niece,
6; and a daughter of his aunt, 12. All of these 77 children were
born in the country, and of them there was but one still-born a
child of his sister. Of the man's relatives living in the city, a
sister had 6 children, of whom 2 were still-born ; and a daughter
of his aunt had 5, of whom again 2 were still-born. Of 77 born
in the country i was still-born; while of 11 born in Baltimore 4
never saw the light. The disproportion is apparent. Again, of
his grandmother's 19 children, all married ; of his mother's 9, 7
married ; of his aunt's 18 there were 17 who married ; of his sis-
ter's children the only one of age is married ; the children of the
rest are under age. Though I may not say, " Ex uno disce omnes,"
yet this instance is very decidedly against Dr. Johnston's argu-
ment. The subjoined table, taken from the History of tJie Negro
Race (ii. p. 417), gives their increase for ninety years:

Colored gain
Census. Year. Colored. per cent,

First 1790 757,208

Second 1800 1,002,037 32.3

Third 1810 1,377,808 37.5

Fourth 1820 1,771,656 28.6

Fifth 1830 2,328,642 31.5

Sixth 1840 2,873,648 23.4

Seventh 1850 3,638,808 26.6

Eighth 1860 4,441,830 22.1

Ninth 1870 4,880,009 9.9

Tenth 1880 6,580,793

292 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF [Dec.,

Up to 1860 the slave-trade was certainly a prime factor in this
increase, to what extent no one knows. By omitting the unreli-
able census of 1870, and remembering- that since 1860 the slave-
trade has been dead, this fact is patent: from 1860 to 1880 a
period of twenty years the colored race have gained in numbers
2,138,963 that is, a fraction over 48 per cent. And this gain the
war in a measure tended to lessen ; for nearly 200,000 negroes
were enrolled in the Union army (History of the Negro Race, ii. p.
301), and thousands more were employed in one way or other by
both armies, and often exposed, like their soldier-brethren, to the
danger of death. Very few, we think, will venture to deny the
greater rate of increase to the blacks. Professor E. W. Gilliam
writes :

'' This superiority, while it belongs to the blacks as a race, is strength-
ened for them, i, as being the laboring class ; 2, as laboring under favorable
climatic conditions that is to say, living in a semi-tropical region. The la-
boring class is naturally the more fruitful class. In the case of a laboring
woman the child-bearing period is greater by a number of years than in
one more delicately reared. Again, in estimating fecundity the pain and
danger attendant upon parturition are factors, and its comparative ease
to the laboring woman, contrasted with the profound and long-continued
prostration it brings to the lady of tender palms and jewelled fingers, is
well known. Again, the African, on climatic grounds, finds in the Southern
country a more congenial home. In many districts there, and these by far
the most fertile, the white man is unable to take the field and have health.
It is otherwise with the African, who, the child of the sun, gathers strength
and multiplies in these low, hot, feverish regions. The wide advantage,
therefore, in the rate of increase on the side of the African finds its solu-
tion in a superior natural fecundity, exerting itself under these favorable
conditions" (Popular Science Monthly, "The African in the United States,"
February, 1883).

This view strengthens the argument in favor of the greater
increase of the blacks for this strong reason: the most nine-
tenths, perhaps live in the country.

What is universally admitted by all is that crossing the races
tends to impair reproduction.

" It is a well-known fact that females who have both black and white
blood in them lose reproductive power just in proportion to the excess of
white blood. The pure African is very fertile, the mulatto less so, while the
quadroon and octoroon seldom bear many children and are often barren:
Not only this, but both males and females of mixed blood, when the white
preponderates, have weaker constitutions and less vital force than either
race. A man of this description of robust health and sound constitution
is an exception" (Dr. Johnston in Agricultural Review, Jan., 1884, p. 29).

The immediate conclusion from this is must be the mulatto,

1884.] THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES. 293

the quadroon, the octoroon will die out, but not the pure black,
who rather will increase and multiply. The superintendent of
the Federal census during the war confirms this by writing :

, " That corruption of morals progresses with greater admixture of races,
and that the product of vice stimulates the propensity to immorality, is as
evident to observation as it is natural to circumstances. These develop-
ments of the census to a good degree explain the slow progress of the free
colored population of the Northern States, and indicate the gradual extinc-
tion of that people, the more rapidly as they become more diffused among
the dominant race. . . . The proportion of mulattoes at the present period
reaches but 10.41 per cent, in the slave population " (History of the Negro
Race, ii. p. 549).

A little more than a year ago a correspondent, writing from
Georgia, asserted in the New York Sun that the mixed-bloods
were not more than eight per cent. Whichever percentage we
accept, it is true that the bulk nine-tenths of the negroes are
Africans out and out, who, being highly prolific and hardier than
the tanned-skinned, are destined to go on and increase.

This brings us face to face with the worst side of the negro
problem the question of race-distinction ; for the blacker the
skin becomes the sharper will the lines be drawn.

" Disappearing in the mass of the population, he [the negro] must lose
the African cast and transform himself, by intermarriage and social asso-
ciation, into an actual American ; for he could be no American, however
the letter of the law might read, who, after the lapse of a century, should
retain the exclusive hue and affinity of a stranger race. But this transfor-
mation is impossible, seeing the blacks stand apart from the whites and
make a distinct and alien people. Any advancement of the blacks is an
advancement of the African as such ; and the advancement of individuals,
here and there, above the laboring level is the vanguard of the race's ad-
vancement. . . . But what will the upshot be when the black population,
advancing on the white, finally outnumbers it ? The outlook is most se-
rious. It is a repetition of the Israelites in Egypt a lower and laboring
class gaining in population and numbers on the upper, and, as a distinct
and alien race, causing apprehensions to the Egyptians " (Popular Science
Monthly, February, 1883, p. 441).

The outlook is, indeed, most serious. For those ebony mil-
lions of strong muscles and warm hearts cannot remain at a
stand-still. As easy would it be to turn the waters of the river
back to their source in the lofty mountains as to make a race
stand still. And growing in numbers they will grow in wealth.
Becoming ten, twenty, fifty millions, will the yearnings of their
throbbing hearts be upwards? Will their ideals be righteous,
chaste, honest ? To lay down answers which would be verified
in the future would demand the vision of the seer. But this one

294 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF [Dec..

conclusion cannot be rejected : for weal or woe the negro must
become a great factor ; and if the high hopes of their friends
and well-wishers are realized, how much will it militate against
the Catholic Church if such a prospectively worthy people be
not hers ? If their future career, on the other hand, is down-
ward, starting whence they do, what a dreadful scourge they
will become !

"This dark, swelling, muttering mass along the social horizon, gather-
ing strength with education and ambitious to rise, will grow increasingly
restless and sullen under repression, until at length, conscious, through
numbers, of superior power, it will assert that power destructively, and,
bursting forth like an angry, furious cloud, avenge in tumult and disorder
the social law broken against it " {ibid. p. 441).

The social law referred to is the tendency of the industrious
laboring class to ascend. Race-prejudice, this writer holds, will
keep the negroes, as a race, below the labor line. And should
these dreadful evils give signs of their approach, who could stay
the downward rush ? Who? She alone who changed the Hun,
the Goth, and the Vandal into the nations which to-day make
up Europe the Catholic Church. And when will she begin?
At the outset? It is well for us all to bear well in mind that the
negro is not an Indian. He never can be put on reservations.
Legally he is as much as the white man. Both stand on the
same footing, and the carpet-bagger's " Fellow-citizens " is more
truthful than attractive. The negro can vote, hold office any,
the Presidency included own property, make wills, etc., etc. To
sue and be sued, to give and receive testamentary dispositions,
to act and be acted upon, are the colored citizen's right and
privilege as well as gain or loss. The attempt to include by law
social recognition, though for public places only, signally failed.
Declared illegal but a short while ago, the " Civil Rights Bill "
from the start was a dead-letter. Such favors the colored race
must win. In our land, however, where wealth counts so much
in the social scale, its possession may help on the negroes. And
wealth, too, is surely going to them,

" Many of the planters attempted to farm their lands as before [viz., be-
fore the war], substituting paid labor for slave labor. In such cases it made
little difference to the friendly owner that the old negroes on the place
should be pensioners on the supplies furnished by him for the plantation.
But this system is decaying. The owner of broad acres finds it profitable
to divide them into 'settlements' and rent them to the 'hands.' Small
farms are the order of the day. Many of the thrifty negroes are acquiring
the ownership of the ' patches ' they cultivate " (Century, April, 1884, " Uncle
Tom without a Cabin," p. 859).

1884.] THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES. 295

The Freedman's Savings-Bank, where the depositors were
nearly all colored, is, perhaps, the best proof that the colored
people are capable of saving their earnings and willing to do so.
During one month August, 1872 the amounts deposited aggre-
gated $1,461,207 56, and the total amount received during the
few years of this bank's existence was about $57,000,000. At its
failure there were 62,000 open accounts (History of the Negro
Race, ii. p. 410). The miserable end of their pet institution
caused the poor people to look with suspicion on all banks.
Beneficial societies, co-operative associations, and such like have,
in consequence, become very numerous among them. The wish
to save is at the bottom of these organizations, which too often
end in fleecing the ignorant members. All drawbacks notwith-
standing, they succeed in increasing their worldly resources.
In every State they point out tax-payers on real property among
themselves. In Baltimore hundreds of them own their little
homes. From the Potomac to the Gulf there are not many
counties where negroes cannot boast of their acres. Where in
cities they select, or are tacitly relegated to, a quarter by them-
selves as, for instance, in Richmond many soon become the
owners of their homes.

" In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and in
Maryland colored men have possessed themselves of excellent farms and
moderate fortunes. In Baltimore a company of colored men own a ship-
dock and transact a large business. . . . On most of the plantations and
in many of the large towns and cities colored mechanics are quite nume-
ous " {History of the Negro Race, ii. p. 413).

In Richmond I have seen white and black mechanics work-
ing side by side, and also a colored barber in the same shop with
white barbers, all in the employment of a German. A good les-
son that for the trades-unions, so strong in the North, who,
while prating so much of the workingman and his rights, find
no place for the negro. " Give me a white man's chance," is the
negro's petition. Why not give it to him ? And if he be unable
to grasp and keep it, out upon him! But, in all fairness, not
until he is tried!

296 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST.*

" Che senza pro si pente
Qualunque priva se del vostro mondo,

Biscazza e fonde la sua facultade,
E piange li dove esser dee giocondo."

DANTE, Inferno, xi. 42-5.

" Whoe'er deprives himself of life and light
In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,
And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy."

CARY.

" Wild words wander here and there ;
God's great gift of speech abused
Makes thy memory confused."

TENNYSON, A Dirge.

JUST beyond the city limits, as one leaves Naples and turns
towards the west on the road to Pozzuoli, stands the little church
of San Vitale, which will attract more than a casual glance when
it is recognized as the burial-place of one of the most gifted of
those illustrious sons whom Italy has given to the world. Upon
the monument erected to his memory by his dearest friend are
these words, which, strong as they are, convey but a faint idea of
the enthusiastic admiration held for the man whom they com-
memorate by many of the greatest scholars of the day :

" Al Conte Giacomo Leopardi Recanatese

Filologo ammirato fuori d'ltalia

Scrittore di Filosofia e di Poesie Altissimo

Da paragonare solamente coi Greci

Che fini di' XXXIX anni la Vita

Per continue malattie miserissima

Fece Antonio Ranieri

Per VII anni fino all' estrema ora congiunto
All' amico adorato. MDCCCXXXVII." t

* Essays and Dialogues of Giacomo Leopardi. Translated from the Italian. By Charles Ed-
wardes. London : Trubner & Co. 1882.

t ft is said that the above epitaph was written by Leopardi's friend Gioberti, the implacable
enemy of the Jesuits. Our translation mars the delicate finish of the Italian:-
" To Count Giacomo Leopardi of Recanati,

A Philologian renowned beyond Italy,

A Writer of Philosophy and of Poetry of the highest order,

Comparable only with the Greeks,

Whose life ended with his 3gth year,

After long and most intense suffering,

This monument is erected by Antonio Ranieri,

For seven years before his end united
To his adored friend. MDCCCXXXVIL"

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 297

The design is almost severe in its simplicity, being for the
most part in straight lines, relieved only by the emblematic carv-
ing, which, beautiful in itself, suggests a strange incongruity in
connection with the history of him who lies beneath. A butter-
fly soars upward from the laurel which typifies his fame, as if
the soul, freed from earthly trammels, were seeking its real home
above. A cross extends its arms of benediction over the letters
of his name, eloquent symbol of the Divine Love, and beneath the
inscription a burning lamp, upon which stands the bird of wis-
dom, seems to show the path of a life enlightened and guided, and
strong in a strength not of this world. But the reality of Leo-
pardi's course is far different. The soaring butterfly was to him
a pretty, fluttering thing, born to flaunt its bright colors for a day
and then to sink into darkness ; the cross was a myth fit only for
the credulity of babes ; the light of wisdom was in man himself,
and by its rays he read in all the mysteries of the universe the
one ghastly assurance that man perishes with the brutes and that
beyond the grave is nothingness. He used the glorious gift ot
his splendid intellect to deny the Giver, and, with an ingenuity
positively demoniac, made every gleam of Christian faith and
hope appear but the ignis-fatuus of childish ignorance.

The attention given to the genius and the works of Leopardi
by scholars at the present time, and the almost unmixed laudation
bestowed upon him, seem to demand the presentation of his char-
acter from another standpoint, lest in admiration of his surpassing
mental endowments the evil that he did be too easily condoned,
and that which he tried to do be too lightly regarded. That he
was greatly afflicted, that from his earliest years he had much to
bear in mind and body, is indeed true ; but it is equally true that
his own undisciplined nature did more than all the rest to embit-
ter a lot which need not have been wholly dark. He was born
on the 29th of June, 1798, of an ancient and honorable family at
Recanati, in the March of Ancona. His parents, Count Monaldo
Leopardi and Adelaide, Marchioness of Antici, belonged to the
old nobility, and the Palazzo Leopardi, the hereditary mansion,
seems to have held a sort of feudal importance in the estimation
of the country-folk. From the letters of Giordani, as well as of
the count and his eldest son, quite a vivid picture may easily be
drawn of the mode of life to which the boy was accustomed, and
it has many features of interest. The town is situated upon a
hill, overlooking a wide and varied landscape which possesses
the mingled charm of sea and mountain, the shining waves of the
Adriatic stretching away to the east, and on the western side the

298 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

Apennine peaks keeping their steadfast watch. In the distance
may be seen the towers of Loreto, and the sloping- fields near at
hand are dotted with olive-trees and vineyards, while the dark
cypresses here and there sigh mournfully as the wind sweeps
through them. The little river Musone sparkles in the sunshine,
and green lanes thread their way beneath pleasant orchard-trees,
where on holidays the peasant-folk make festa, their gay dresses
glancing in and out as the dancers' feet keep time to merry music.
Outside the town and looking down upon it are a few villas of
the plain architecture so common in remote parts of Italy, but
pleasing to the eye by reason of the terraced lawns upon which
they stand, and the balconies draped in vine-leaves, which give a
touch of poetry to the scene. On the side towards Loreto, four
miles distant, rise the arches of an aqueduct, which one early
learns to expect as part of an Italian landscape ; and in the town
itself, as its rightful place, the cathedral stands, a visible token of
refuge and protection. Now and then are to be found traces of a
long-past time when the place was fortified, perhaps to resist at-
tack, or quite as probably as a centre from which marauding ex-
ploits might be safely conducted. Added to all this, Recanati pos-
sesses a collection of art-treasures of which a more imposing city
might be justly proud. There is something quaint, almost primi-
tive, about the people : a gentle familiarity between master and
servant, a frank unreserve in performing domestic offices in the
view of passers-by, a patient round of labor fulfilled as part of
the immutable order of things by the peasantry as uncomplain-
ingly as by their large-eyed, slow-moving oxen, a kindly tone in
their sing-song speech, an instinctive courtesy, and a simple piety,
all combining to produce an impression of old-worldliness not eas-
ily conveyed in words. In mingling with such a people, and en-
joying such surroundings as those of Recanati, the home where
Leopardi looked first upon the life in which he found so little
brightness, one fails to justify his use of such epithets as he ap-
plied to it " a tomb, a very Tartarus." It was his own restless
heart that darkened and distorted every element of happiness.
Sick with longing for any other fate than that appointed him,
panting for what he thought a wider, freer air, he never realized
that it was himself of which he could not be rid, and that, there-
fore, he must be wretched anywhere; for "surely," as old Owen
Felltham says, " man is his own devil." *

* Resolves : Divine, Moral, Political Ixvi. Of a Man's Self. The closing words of this
essay are specially applicable to morbidly introspective natures like Leopardi ; " A me me salve,
Domine ! shall be one petition I will add to the litany of my beseeching."

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 299

The household of Casa Leopardi would seem to have been
ordered with a degree of precision not unusual still in Conti-
nental homes. The father was a sincerely religious man, ot
whom it is intimated that in his youth he had been somewhat ex-
travagant, and had thus reduced the family revenues below the
requirements of his rank, entailing the need of extreme prudence
in the management of affairs. Whether from self-distrust or as
a penance for early follies, or from some other motive, Count
Monaldo had denuded himself of all control in money matters,
and placed such control entirely in the hands of his wife. This
fact was not known to the children until long after they had
ceased to be children, and to Giacomo it was the cause of intense
bitterness of feeling. Unable to comprehend the absolute poverty
of his father, he regarded him as mean and parsimonious, while he
saw the state and ceremony with which it was deemed needful to
surround the family, and was yet himself denied the only luxury
which he valued, the costly one of books, or, as he grew older, the
visits of learned men with whom his own works had made him ac-
quainted. But, severe as have been the strictures upon the count
for the state of alienation which came to exist between himself and
his son, there seems to have been nothing really blamable in his
treatment of him, except in the lack ot that confidential relation
which in our own land is happily common between parent and
child. The boy's education was amply provided for, since he was
under the care of tutors from his very infancy. Indeed, it would
seem that he enjoyed exceptional advantages in many respects,
for his father's library was rich in all the best of classic literature,
and so large that it was thrown open to the public at all times.*
The Count Monaldo himself was a man of far more than average
culture, and wrote much upon leading questions of his day. f
After his son had become famous some pamphlets by the count
attracted attention and were believed to have been written by the
younger. They were savagely handled by De Lamennais, who
characterized them as an " epitome of absolutism." The father,
bred in all the traditions of an older time, might be called
mediaeval in his views of law and government ; the son went to

* The library was doubtless deficient in modern literature, but we do not think with Mr.
Gladstone that its merits have been exaggerated by Ranieri because, for example, it did not con-
tain a Xenophon (Gleanings of Past Years, vol. ii. p. 87). The fact that Leopardi was able to
draw from its contents the hundreds of authors cited in his Saggio sopra gli errori popolari
degli antichi contradicts the statement of Mr. Gladstone.

t Count Monaldo Leopardi is the author of a work entitled La Santa Casa di Loreto, dis-
cussioni istoriche e critic/ie, to which later writers who have treated the same subject are
largely indebted.

300 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

the very extreme of the so-called modern emancipated thought,
spite of every influence to the contrary around him. The elder
upheld all that was ancient, exclusive, and aristocratic ; the
younger, chafing against everything like restraint, would have
broken even those needful bonds without which the social fabric
must fall to ruin, and among the earliest of his poetic utterances
stirred up the spirit of revolution then arising in Italy. Of these
verses Montari wrote him in rapturous terms, and declared that
they were worthy of the noblest of the Carbonari. It will readily
be seen, then, how great a barrier stood between the two natures,
so closely allied yet so entirely diverse. To the young Giacomo
the whole constitution of things was warped and wrong, and he
held himself at war with every feature of his life. With a pas-
sionate love of the beautiful, he thought his own person unpleas-
ing, if not actually repulsive an idea certainly not sustained
by the portrait of him given in frontispiece in the first volume
of his writings edited by his friend Ranieri. * Eagerly desirous
of bearing his part in the great world, feeling in his soul the im-
pulse to brave deeds, Giacomo was physically weak as a woman.
Intensely patriotic and writhing under a sense of his country's
humiliation, longing to speak in the hearing of men the burning
thoughts within him, to arouse others to that struggle for liberty
in which he could never join, he felt himself shut in, by the pres-
sure of poverty which he could not understand and by the hated
authority of his father, within the limits of a retired village, the
very name of which was rarely heard beyond the immediate
neighborhood, and of which he wrote, with scornful exaggeration,
that the March was " the darkest part of Italy, and Recanati of
the March, having for its entire literature the alphabet alone."

Painful as is the picture, it is evident that it was not altogether
a Via Dolorosa, and had there been upon it the light of faith it
might have been a Via Sacra, along which many a flower might
have bloomed. But for Leopardi, wilfully turning from that
light, it faded early into night, and the gloom grew always deeper.
Aside from this crowning evil, however, had there been in him
the warmth of real affection, had his heart held sway equally with
his brain, much that he had to endure might have been borne
without embittering his nature. Had he sought to enter into
the needs of other souls, instead of making self the centre of all
thought, the burden upon his own spirit would not have loomed

* This picture of Leopardi is strikingly like the life-mask of Keats believed by his friend
Severn to have been made by the painter Haydon, an engraving of which may be seen in the
Century Magazine for February, 1384.

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 3d

so large. But he shut himself away from the kindly offices of
home-life in sullen isolation. While yet scarcely out of the
nursery he rebelled against the companionship of his tutor as a
condition of going about the town, regarding as unbearable espi-
onage what was but an ordinary custom. Without any words
about it, he simply ceased to go beyond the gardens, and made
companions of lexicons and grammars, of dry folios and musty
parchments, instead of birds and flowers and sunshine. The
younger children, Carlo, Luigi, and Paolina, were patronized by
the dreamy boy, and he felt kindly towards them, as is shown
by letters addressed to them in after-years ; but there is no evi-
dence of any warmer sentiment towards them than that sort of
toleration expressively conveyed in the term family affection.
As to his mother, whatever her influence upon the rest of the
household may have been, it is certain that she filled a very
small space in the regard of her gifted son, between whom and
herself there came to be an entire estrangement.*

The intense application to study of this enfant trudit, unnatu-
ral as it was, did not awaken the alarm of his parents ; for it
must be remembered that in the beginning of this century physi-
cal culture and questions of hygiene were things comparatively
unknown. The child himself, by a strange contradiction, de-
lighted in astonishing the friends who were wont to assemble at
the family-seat upon festive occasions by the display of his pre-
cocious attainments, and never refused to gratify parental vanity
in this regard. The love of applause thus early manifested be-
came a ruling passion as the years went by, and in his after-life
the only thing like happiness he ever knew lay in the recogni-
tion of his genius by the world. This abnormal development of
his intellectual powers did nothing towards lessening the lone-
liness of spirit which was his especial characteristic, and already
at ten years old the sense of desolation was so strong upon him
that, in a kind of despair such as might have overtaken some
broken-hearted, world-weary man, we find him seeking relief
from his misery in a new course of study, such as could only
be attempted by the few even among matured and practised

* Leopardi's estrangement from his mother has its parallel in the history of the late John
Stuart Mill, and contemporaneous evidence shows that such unnatural feeling was as unjustifiable
in the one case as in the other. So keen was the indignation at the time of publication of Mill's
Autobiography, in which his mother is as much ignored as though she had never existed, that it
was currently reported that his sisters were inclined, in justice to their mother's memory, to sup-
plement ttteir brother's account of himself. Mill's alienation from his family was then attributed
by his friends to the sinister influence of his wife, whom he thus apotheosizes : " Her memory
is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all
worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my life " (Autobiography \ p. 251).

302 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

scholars. He speaks of his labors at this time as matto e dispera-
tissiina, and indeed they must have been, to judge by the result.
His knowledge ot Latin was so thorough, and he had become
so familiar with all that was accessible of its literature, that he
could not rest until the Greek should also become his possession.
The library in which his young life was daily spent was abun-
dantly furnished with Hellenic lore, but there was no one to
unlock its treasures to his longing eyes. In this emergency he
took the matter into his own hands, and without aid, instruction,
or encouragement, almost certainly without the knowledge of
his father, acquired before his fourteenth year such a mastery
of the Greek language as many a gray-haired savant would be
proud to own.* Like Mezzofanti, he seemed to grasp the genius
of language by a sort of intuition, almost of inspiration ; f and
this, aided by his incessant study, brought him into such sym-
pathy with the antique that, as Ranieri says, " egli confessava di
aver piii limpido e vivo nella sua mente il concetto greco che il latino
o eziandio ritaliano"\ He studied the laws, the customs, the
history of Greece and of Rome, and, in order to comprehend
every portion of the vast subject, went through the whole list
of authors in chronological order, pen in hand, making notes and
comments of his own with unwearying interest. Of French,
Spanish, and English he had perfect command, writing in them
as gracefully and fluently as in his own beautiful tongue; and he
was also a profound Hebraist, with perhaps no equal among the
laymen of Italy.

Meanwhile the reticent and secluded manner of his life was
become fixed habit, and the boy more and more unfitted for con-
tact with the world, for which he yet longed with intense desire.
His one thought was to do something great, to be known among
men in short, to be famous. With all the vast stores of his mar-

* Leopardi's infantile acquirements in the ancient languages are far more remarkable than
those of his English contemporaries, Mill and De Quincey. The former says : " I have no re-
membrance of the time I began to learn Greek. I have been told that it was when I was three
years old " (Autobiography, p. 5). The latter says : " At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease ; and
at fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only composed Greek verses in
lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment " (Opium- Eater,
p. 18).

t In relating some "of the unauthenticated tales of wonder with which certain travellers in
Italy were wont to invest the genius of this greatest of modern polyglots, the Rev. Dr. C. W.
Russell cites a story which the once popular J. T. Headley gave currency to, and adds that " he
goes so far as to say that ' Mezzofanti himself attributed his power of acquiring languages to the
divine influence ' " (Life of Mezzofanti, p. 130).

| Opsre di Giacomo Leopardi edizione accresciata, ordinal a ecorretta secondo V ultimo inten-
dimento delf autore, da Antonio Ranieri, vol. i. p. xii. : " He asserted that he had more clear
and vivid in his mind the Greek conception of thought than the Latin or even the Italian.''

I884-J AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 303

vellous erudition, there was yet wanting" the stir and movement
of modern intellectual life; he must be brought in contact with
the spirit of the day, must know those who were moulding and
shaping the busy present. To accomplish this there was but
one way: since there was no hope of his going forth to claim his
rightful place in the world of mind, he would send out his voice
from the retreat to which fate condemned him, and men should
listen and respond. At the age of sixteen years he had completed
a Latin translation of Porphyry's Uepi IIXajTirov Biov, with com-
mentary so remarkable a production that Friedrich Creuzer, the
eminent philologist of Heidelberg, availed himself of it to a consid-
erable extent in the addenda to the third volume of his own
edition of Plotinus : "Lui qui a travailU toute sa vie sur Plotin, il
trouve quelque chose d'utile dans louvrage d'unjeune homme de seise
ans." * The pride and pleasure of Count Monaldo in this effort
of his son are shown by his having written with his own hand
at the beginning of the manuscript these words : " Oggi 31 agosto
1814, questo suo lavoro mi dono Giacomo mio primogenito figlio, die
non ha avuto maestro di.lingua greca, ed Z in eta di anni 16, me si due,
giorni due. Monaldo Leopardi." f That he loved the boy, and that
he would have gladly aided him where conscience could approve,
is as certain as that he continually sought to restrain him from
evil. For while the studies of Giacomo were in nowise inter-
fered with and he was apparently left to himself, it is evident
that there was no lack of interest or of oversight on the part
of his father. That the son, in his jealous self-assertion, resented
such oversight as arbitrary and tyrannical is to be perceived at
a glance from the tenor of his letters to Giordani, to whom he
wrote perhaps with more frankness upon personal matters than
to any one. Indeed, the utter untruthfulness of his nature is
nowhere more apparent than in his correspondence. His pre-
tence of respect and dutiful submission to his father while he
was pouring out his wrath and contempt to his friend, and more
especially the assumption of religious fervor in writing to the
count at the very time that he was directing every energy to
overthrow the foundations of Christian faith, asserting over and
over his entire disbelief in the truths of revelation, should be
enough to cast discredit upon any representation of his regarding
the conduct of Count Monaldo. His letter to his sister Paolina,

* Sainte-Beuve, Portraits Contemporains. vol. iii. p. 74. " He, who had wrought all his
life upon Plotinus, found something useful in the work of a youth of sixteen years."

t " On this 3ist August, 1814, my first born son, Giacomo, gave to me this work of his, who
has had no instructor in the Greek language, and is now aged sixteen years, two months, and
two days. MONALDO LEOPARDI."

304 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

whom he wishes to persuade into a marriage with a man of evil
life because of the worldly advantages to be derived from the
alliance, is degrading to himself, as it was heartlessly insulting
to the innocent girl ; and the fair-minded reader can hardly fail,
after an examination into the life of the younger Leopardi, to
cast aside the sentiment with which his memory has been in-
vested through that instinctive homage to genius which often
becomes hero-worship and to admit that the Count Monaldo,
whatever his errors of judgment, was by far the more elevated
character of the two from the simple standpoint of morality
alone.

This comparison, however, applies, of course, to a period sub-
sequent to the production of his Plotinus. Following that work
was a most remarkable essay entitled Saggio sopra gli errori popo-
lari degli antichi, which Ranieri characterizes as a wonder of pro-
found and vast erudition mirabile di profonda e vasta erudizione.
It bears evidence of an almost incredible industry in so youthful
an author, the number of authorities quoted amounting to hun-
dreds, and showing an intimate knowledge, of patristic as well as
classic literature. In it is to be found the only positive defence
of Christianity, and of the church as the exponent of the truth,
among Leopardi's writings. From it so great a critic as Sainte-
Beuve has rather hastily inferred that the loss of Leopardi's faith
did not occur until after his majority, the more that he had in
his mind the bringing out of a volume of Christian hymns Inni
Sacra during this period. But these facts lose weight as proof
in such argument when placed beside the other fact that Mar-
tirio di Santi Padri del Monte Stnat, a production worthy the pen
of the holiest saint, was put forth in 1826, when Leopardi may be
said to have reached the very acme of his hostility to religious
truth. It was written under the guise of a translation from an
ancient Egyptian manuscript, and the imposition was so perfectly
sustained in every particular of time, place, and circumstance re-
garding these martyrs, who had never lived, as to baffle the keen-
est scrutiny, no suspicion of its real origin having arisen so long
as he chose to conceal it. His father least ot all would have
been likely to imagine the possibility of such a state of things,
and, with his devout mind, would be among the first to rejoice in
the discovery of so great a treasure. The story is told in most
reverent and touching language by an eye-witness of the faith
and patience, the heroic fortitude and final martyrdom of his
companions, and concludes as follows :

" Ed io umile fraticello Ammonio, fatto ricordo delle sopraddette cose

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 305

in una carta, come Dio voile, tornamene alle parti d'Egitto, non in quello
mio primo luogo il quale si chiama Canopo, ma vicino a Menfi in un abita-
colo piccolissimo, nel quale io mi rimango e assiduamente leggo le istorie
de' valenti Martiri di Cristo, godendo delle loro battaglie e passioni, a gloria
del Padre e del Figliuolo e dello Spirito Santo. Io Giovanni prete, come
piacque a Dio, trovai questa Leggenda in'casa d'uno Eremita vecchio, presso
a Naucrate, la quale Leggenda era scritta in lettera egiziaca ; e traslataila in
greco, secondo che di sopra si mostra, come bene intendente della lingua
egiziaca, pigliandomi questa fatica a gloria de Santi, insieme colli quali deaci
il Signore Iddio parte nel suo regno. E tutti quelli che leggerete queste
narrazioni dei santi Martiri, orate per me peccatore. E sia gloria a Dio per
tutti i secoli de' secoli, amen." *

Such a piece of trickery, of revolting irreverence and daring
blasphemy, indulged in as mere intellectual pastime by one who
had ever been even nominally a Christian, would make it appear
that Leopardi's outward conformity to usage in the home at Re-
canati was part of the system of insincerity which characterized
his dealings with his father throughout his life. Not brave
enough to defy him openly, he cheated him by an appearance of
obedience, even when most opposed to his wishes in reality, and
by soft-sounding words kept alive in the father's heart some be-
lief in his son's affection for himsejf until he could afford to throw
,off the pretence when at length he had escaped from parental
control. There is something deeply pathetic in the count's ap-
peals to him in after-years when he fancied he had lately lost the
filial love which he never had really possessed.

The imposition of the Martirio was not the only effort of Leo-
pardi "Jeter une docte poussiere aux yeux " of the savants of the
day. His " Hymn to Neptune," one of the finest of his shorter
pieces, had been still earlier sent forth as a translation of some
long-buried Hellenic gem, and so successful was the imitation
that the ablest scholars accepted it as genuine, one learned cus-
todian of ancient manuscripts declaring with absolute conviction
that the original must have been stolen from his own keeping.
In view of such success it is not to be supposed that Leopardi

* Opere di Giacomo Leopardi, vol. ii. pp. 210-11. " And I, most unworthy brother Ammonfo,
have recorded these things in a book, being by the will of God returned into Egypt, not to my
former dwelling place, which was called Canopus, but near to Memphis, in a small hut, in which
I muse upon and assiduously read the history of the brave martyrs of Christ, rejoicing in their
conflicts and their sufferings for the glory of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
I, John, a priest, as it pleased God, have found this writing in the house of an aged hermit, near
Naucratis, which account was written in Egyptian characters, and I have translated into the
Greek, as is shown above, being well acquainted with the Egyptian language, taking upon myself
this work in honor of the saints, with whom may the good God give me part in his kingdom.
And all ye who read this account of the holy martyrs, pray for me a sinner, and to God be glory
for ever and ever, amen." ,

VOL. XL. 20

306 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

should long content himself with devices like these, and accord-
ingly we find him claiming the recognition of the learned at home
and abroad by openly-published works upon profound philologi-
cal themes, and being sought out in correspondence by men high-
est in the world of letters. In spite of the poverty of Casa Leo-
pardi, there must have been means furnished for these objects,
although the young man complains continually of the privations
forced upon him. Before his twentieth year he had accomplished
an amount of literary work the record of which is almost apoc-
ryphal, were it not authenticated beyond possibility of question ;
but he had begun to pay the penalty of overtaxing a delicate or-
ganization. A curvature of the spine was the outward evidence
of still deeper mischief within, and to the morbid gloom of his
peculiar mental temperament there was added a nervous irrita-
bility which at times rose to positive torture, making the rest
of his days one dreary round of pain and weakness, with rare and
short intervals of comparative relief. At one time his sight be-
came so impaired that total blindness seemed to be in store for
him, but this danger was happily averted. The burden of en-
forqed idleness, heavy at best to an active mind, must have been
almost maddening to Leopardi in depriving him of the one re-
source on which he had hitherto depended to silence the ques-
tioning of his soul upon those deeper mysteries that can never be
solved by unaided human reason. To this period in Leopardi's
life belongs in the truest sense Ranieri's description of him, as
full of sorrowful suggestion as any words that were ever penned :
" For no one ever saw more plainly the terrible union of those
two principles which gave to man the first conception of Oro-
manzo and Arimanes the highest good, the intellect, mingled
with the greatest evil, pain. He made use of the first to express
the second, and, so to speak, sang of the inferno in the strains of
paradise." *

To this period also properly belongs the account of that epi-
sode in which there came to him the experience of a hopeless
because unlawful love. Among the infrequent guests at Palazzo
Leopardi was a young married cousin, to whom his undisciplined
heart became strongly bound, perhaps through the kindly offices
which his suffering condition would naturally call forth from a
gentle and sympathizing woman, and thus there .was introduced
a new element of pain into a lot already sufficiently embittered.
Once again, if not twice, Leopardi was to pass through such an
ordeal, for some years later he writes to his brother Carlo from a

* Opere di Giacomo Leopardi, vol. i. p. xi.

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 307

distant city of the inexpediency of his return to Recanati in terms
which seem to intimate the existence of some affaire du cceur ; and
during his residence in Milan, in the least gloomy portion of his sha-
dowed life, he was passionately devoted to a lady whose attractions
absorbed his time and thoughts. The abrupt cessation of his con-
tinual allusions to her leads to the assumption that this connec-
tion, too, came to an untimely end. Ranieri's mention includes
only two instances of this nature, but the passage is so naively
expressed that it brings a smile to the lips of the reader : " E . . .
avw due volte (benefit senza speranzd) come mai nessun uomo aveva
amato sulla terra" *

Secluded as was the mode of life at Recanati, so remote from
the activity of the outer world that it took four months for a
package of books sent from Milan to reach the little town, Leo-
pardi was yet familiar with current literature, for his acquain-
tance with Giordani originated in his having read in 1817 some
essay in a periodical of the day, probably the Antologia di Firenze,
of which Giordani was the editor. Delighted with the senti-
ments expressed as emanating from a kindred spirit, he wrote to
the author, and with the reply to his letter began that fatal influ-
ence in the career of Leopardi so well described by the present
prime minister of England. " This man . . . for many years,"
says Mr. Gladstone, " had a monopoly of the rich commerce of
his mind ; and he was an evil genius to Leopardi, confirming
every negative and downward tendency by his own very gross
and scoffing unbelief." f Of Giordani himself it need only be
said that he was born at Placentia in 1774, being twenty-four
years the senior of his young disciple, and had been a member of
the Benedictine order, but had abandoned his vows. Some nine
years before the acquaintance with Leopardi, while professor of
oratory in one of the Italian universities, he had adroitly won the
favor of Napoleon by a panegyric upon that grasping tyrant, and
obtained the position of secretary of the academy at Bologna.
When at length the Congress of Vienna restored the exiled pon-
tiff Pius VII. to his rightful power Giordani withdrew from
active life, and thenceforth employed his brilliant abilities in lite-
rary work whose aim was directly hostile to religious truth and
church authority. The sway which he held over Leopardi seems
like the fabled fascination of the serpent. The youth, unloving
and unlovely as he has been shown to be, gave himself up to an

* Ib. vol. i. p. xxvi. And loved twice (although without hope) as never man had loved
upon earth.

t Gleanings of Past Years, vol. ii. p. 83.

308 . AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

affection really romantic, and the letters between the two become
at times almost wearisome from the lover-like trivialities so fre-
quently recurring. The natural result of this intercourse was to
intensify to the utmost Leopardi's longing for a glimpse of the
world in which his friend was wielding so great power against
the follies and superstitions of men, as they both felt ; and as a
step towards obtaining his freedom he invited Giordani to visit
him at his father's house, hoping that the count would be per-
suaded to entrust his son to so desirable a companionship. But
the father read too clearly the character of his guest, and showed
his disapproval of the friendship too plainly to render possible
such a scheme, and Giordani left the Palazzo with no better com-
fort than an indefinite hope for some future time when a plan for
managing the count could be contrived. The younger Leo-
pardi, crushed by his disappointment, shut himself up more
closely than ever, and brooded over his hard fate until he seems
to have lost sight of the ordinary rules of right and wrong.
Having written to the governor of Macerata for a passport, he
arranged to escape secretly in the night, and secured tools by
which to break open the count's strong-box, that he might obtain
money for his expenses. He then wrote a long letter to his
father, which for pathos, clearness of statement, and felicity of
expression could not be surpassed, protesting against the longer
endurance of so narrow a life, declaring how obedient and sub-
missive he had always been, how he had been brought up with-
out knowing the pleasures of either childhood or youth, and, in
short, justifying his present course in every particular. A shorter
letter to his brother informs him of what he is about to do, and
states that he has not imparted his secret to him, lest he, Carlo,
should be blamed for conniving at it. Everything was now
ready for the final step. The passport alone was wanting. At
length it came, but to the father instead of the son. A terri-
ble scene followed, and it may be imagined that Count Monaldo
was less than ever disposed to send into still greater tempta-
tion the son who had proved himself capable of such a course
of conduct. He demanded a promise to forego such schemes for
the future, and Giacomo was ready to concede anything in the
humiliation of so mortifying a denouement. Thenceforth a watch
was kept upon his correspondence, which now included many
persons famous in the world of letters and representing every
shade of political and religious opinion. Aroused to the neces-
sity of some definite aim in life for his son, the count, who was
far from realizing the revolutionary sentiments and deadly unbe-

1884.1 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 309

lief which possessed him, desired strongly to enlist in the service
of the church those splendid abilities which, spiritually nurtured,
might expand into full and blessed fruition. To such a life, for
which his confirmed delicacy of constitution and studious tastes
seemed peculiarly adapted, the younger Leopardi opposed him-
self with a determination none the less firm that it was concealed
by a system of temporizing which went on in one shape or other
for many years. His desire to escape from Recanati, stronger
now than ever, led him to conciliation in any form with the hope
of inducing his father's consent and aid. His wretched state of
health rendered indispensable the comforts of the home which he
so despised, but his longing for other scenes where he fancied
he would be better continued unabated. It was finally thought
best to have him removed from the mountain air, and in 1822
he went to Rome in an interval of comparative strength, having
been offered congenial work among the rich treasures of Greek
manuscripts in the Barberini library. But the illusions with which
his studies of the antique had filled his mind were quickly dis-
pelled when brought in contact with the prosaic realities among
which he found himself, and he writes with unmeasured disgust of
the stupidity of Rome as being equal to that of Recanati. His
poverty barred the way to many enjoyments, the means of the
family being, as we have shown, utterly inadequate to the proper
support of the eldest son abroad, while there was added another
species of annoyance equally hard to bear the petty malice of a
jealous librarian, whom he afterwards satirized -under the name
of Manzo, an ox. It was during this residence in Rome that he
met the historian Niebuhr, whose admiration of him amounted to
enthusiasm, and who declarejd to his successor near the Roman
court, the Chevalier Bunsen, that in Leopardi he " had at last
seen a modern Italian worthy of the old Italians and of the ancient
Romans."* The annals of scholarship in any age or country
afford few examples, if indeed any at all, of a mere boy extorting
by his learning alone such magnificent tribute as is contained in
these words of Niebuhr: " Comes Jacobus Leopardius Recanatensis,
Picens, quern Italics su& jam nunc conspicuum ornamentum esse popu-
laribus meis nuntio ; in diesque eum ad majorem claritatem perventu-
rum esse spondeo ; ego vero, qui candidissimum prceclariadolescentis in-
genium, non secus quam egregiam doctrinam, valde diligam, omni ejus
honor c et incremento latabor"\

*A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, drawn chiefly from Family Papers. By his widow, Frances
Baroness Bunsen. Vol. i. p. 226.

t Prof, ad Flavii Merobaudis Carmina, ed. a, p. 13. " Count Giacomo Leopardi, whom I
introduce to my countrymen, is already a conspicuous ornament of his native Italy ; and I

310 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

In quitting Rome Niebuhr, who had earnestly endeavored to
procure some remunerative position for Leopardi, desired Bunsen
to exert all possible influence for the same end, and the latter
wrote in August, 1824, that he had "obtained a promise of ap-
pointment for Leopardi to the post he most desired that of sec-
retary-general to the Academy of Fine Arts at Bologna with a
special commission to employ his leisure in completing his Italian
translation of a selection from Plato, and in writing a treatise
upon it directed against the materialism of his countrymen, for which
he is to receive an extra allowance in addition to his salary."*
The appointment, however, was not made, nor were similar efforts
in other directions more successful, the hindrance in certain cases
being that only a priest was held eligible to the places solicited.
And this point in the history of Leopardi touches the theme upon
which such cruel injustice has been done by non-Catholic writers
to the elder count his desire that his son should adopt the priestly
vocation. Even the Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, with all his
breadth -of cultured thought, has not been able to rise above that
insular prejudice which makes not wholly unpleasing the presen-
tation in an unfavorable light of a [man so distinctively Catholic
as Count Monaldo Leopardi, together with the reflection upon
the church itself necessarily involved in such presentation. f The
son is placed in the attitude of a man urged beyond measure to-
wards an uncongenial calling and withheld from its adoption by
a lofty and incorruptible moral sense, while the father, from mo-
tives of ambition, expediency, or at best of bigotry, continues to
press the matter upon him even after he has given unmistakable
evidence of his atheism in contributions to journals as well as in
the publication of Bruto Minor e. The facts, however, are against
any such conclusion. It will be remembered that Count Monaldo
Leopardi had been systematically deceived by his son in regard
to his religious opinions a deception which was carried on to the
end of that son's life, as will be shown by the very last letter ad-
dressed to his father; that, aided as he was by Giordani, much
that he wrote was published in newspapers, of which his father
knew nothing ; that Bruto Minor e itself, in its pagan hopeless-
ness, was not put forth as the utterance of the author's sentiments,

pledge myself that he will attain to still greater, celebrity. I, indeed, who highly esteem the
illustrious youth, not only on account of his singular learning but on account of his ingenuous
.character, shall rejoice in all his honors and successes."

*A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, vol. i, p. 226. The baron's letter in which the above pas-
sage occurs is dated August 18, 1824 the year jn which Bruto Minore was published. If Leo-
pardi meant the latter to be understood as expressing his own opinions, he would have been
placed rather awkwardly in appearing as a writer against materialism.

t Gleanings of Past Years, vol. ii. p. 84.

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 311

but as a poetic rendering- of a fragment of ancient history no
more necessarily a test of a writer's opinions than an epic upon
the characters of the Odyssey ; and if any misgiving had arisen in
the mind of the count above the anxiety which he had always
felt regarding his son's spiritual state, the latter would not have
hesitated to assure him of the entire orthodoxy of his belief, as
he did long afterwards when his name had become known through
all Italy as an atheist of atheists. What wonder, then, that at
every opening offered by the events of the young count's life
abroad the elder Leopardi should again and again seek to per-
suade his son to accept what, to his ardent faith, would be the ful-
filment of so many prayers? After excuses and delays of every
kind the time at length came when the son, forced to a direct
answer, wrote that he would willingly assume the office of the
priesthood, provided he could be exempted from saying Mass, on
account of his feeble health, and that he believed such arrangements
might be made as would enable him to receive the revenues of a
benefice, while the duties should be fulfilled by another person to
be employed for such a purpose. At the same time he generously
offers to allow his father to administer upon the money which
should accrue to him. The overwhelming shock of such a reve-
lation to the deeply religious nature of the elder count may be
imagined, and the strongest contradiction to those charges in-
sinuated against him lies in the fact that no further step was
ever taken to induce Giacomo Leopardi to become a priest,
although there is abundant evidence that the elder count
possessed influence which, had he been a worldly or un-
scrupulous man, he could have used effectively. A few
years later a younger son entered the priesthood with the ap-
probation of his father. This passage in the life of Leopardi
finds a curious commentary in Madame Bunsen's account of him,
wherein she gravely declares that the court of Rome withheld
the secretaryship from this young genius, whose accession to the
priesthood was so greatly desirable, in the hope of wearying out
his opposition, and adds : "But not the extremest pressure of need
could render Leopardi susceptible of a bribe for hypocrisy''* This
excellent but narrow-minded woman, belonging to that class of
Protestants who will admire what is even unchristian, provided
only that it be un-Catholic, goes on to excuse Leopardi's enmity
to religion by saying that having seen around him all his days
" nothing but a system of ordinances and observances, a barrier
was interposed between his mind and the consolations of the

* A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, vol. i. p. 227.

312 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

Christian faith."* Such superficial criticism as this leaves out
of sight the fact which underlay all the darkness and bitterness
of Leopardi's unending struggle that, to a mind clear, logical,
and far-seeing as his own, there was no middle course possible
between absolute materialism on the one hand and on the other
the uncompromising claims of a divinely-appointed authority
embodied in the Church Catholic ; and that the tre barrier in
his path was that inordinate pride of intellect which, assuming
to be superior to all authority, is yet a very slave to its own
gloomy arrogance. Well might his friend Gioberti apply to
him the words of St. Augustine : " Fecisti nos Domine ad te, et inquie-
tum est cor nostrum donee rcquiescat in te."

During his first essay towards self-support Leopardi worked
unweariedly, with small return as regards money, but his fame was
continually widening and his sensitive pride gratified by the at-
tentions which he received, so that at length his first impressions
of the modern Romans were so far modified that he admitted
smilingly to a friend that he had " become reconciled to Rome."
From this time he never permanently resided at Recanati, though
frequently forced to return thither by illness or by pecuniary
need. But the restless misery of his soul drove him from every-
thing that he had desired when once attained. His constant search
for employment brought him many offers. The University of
Berlin would have bestowed upon him the chair of Italian litera-
ture an honor never before accorded to one of his countrymen
but he declined it on the score of the uncongenial climate. The
University of Parma opened her doors to him through the in-
fluence of Signor Tommassini, who had become strongly in-
terested in him while they were as yet strangers. He offered
Leopardi a home in his own house, out of consideration for his
poverty ; but this also was refused, as indeed was every subse-
quent opening of the kind obtained for him by the efforts of his

* Ib. vol. i. p. 228. The late H. T. Tuckerman, like Madame Bunsen, makes some singular
mistakes in his essay on Leopardi. The former speaks of Leopardi's birthplace as " Recanti"
and the latter of his friend and biographer as " Antonio Ramisi." But these are insignificant er-
rors when compared with the fact that such writers, under the guidance of popular phraseology,
seem never constrained to reduce vague generalities into logical terms which would render it worth
one's while to disentangle the absurdities of self contradictory thought. In this way Tuckerman
writes of one who says that the inesplicabile mister o dell ' universo weighs upon his soul : " Chris-
tianity, as practically made known to Leopardi, failed to enlist his sympathies, from the erroneous
form in which it was revealed, while, speculatively, its authority seemed to have no higher sanction
than the antique philosophy and fables with which he was conversant. Had he learned to con-
sider religion as a sentiment, inevitable and divine ; had he realized it in the same way as he
did love as an experience, a feeling, a principle of the soul, and not a technical system it
would have yielded him both comfort and inspiration " (Essays, Biographical and Critical,
p. 271).

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 313

friends, the reason given in each case turning upon the ques-
tion of his health. Although continually apostrophizing Death,
" beautiful Death," as the one object of his desire, Leopardi had
an absolutely childish fear of it; and he who declared in the
Amore e Morte, " Whatever the hour in which thy wings shall
overshadow me, thou shalt find me brave, armed against Fate and
yielding nothing to her," is seen fleeing from Naples, frantic
with terror, at the approach of the cholera. But such inconsis-
tency is part of the weakness of our common nature and readily
finds excuse in the pity awakened by his long endurance of suf-
fering. What is harder to overlook is his pretence of religious
feeling when it suited his purpose, even when he was, although
himself unaware of it, in the very shadow of death. Upon the
death of his brother Luigi he wrote to Count Monaldo in
most exquisite words of sympathy and tenderness, consoling the
father's grief and declaring that, for his part, he felt resigned,
submitting to the Divine Will. Shortly before his end Leopardi
writes to him, asserting in emphatic terms that he had " never
been revolutionary or irreligious either in theory or in practice,"
and again beseeching his father to offer prayers for him, that he
may have an early and speedy death, adding, " I call on God to
witness my truth in this. He knows how many prayers tridui e
novene I have made to obtain this grace," and that the thought
of danger " thrills him with the greatest joy." Place such ex-
pressions as these beside the letter Leopardi wrote to De Sinner
after having seen an article referring to himself in the Hesperus of
Stuttgart: " Whatever may be my sufferings, which some one
has thought fit to expose, and perhaps to exaggerate in some de-
gree, in this journal, I have at least courage enough not to seek to
diminish their weight either by groundless hopes of an unknown
future happiness or by a base submission. My sentiments as to
fate have been and still are those which I have expressed in Bruto
Minor e. From this same courage it results that, having been led
by my investigations to a philosophy of despair, I have not hesi-
tated to embrace it in full, whilst, on the other hand, it is only
through the cowardice of men who need to be persuaded of the
value of existence that my philosophical opinions have been re-
presented as the consequence of my special sufferings." The last
words penned by his dying hand were these :

" Ma la vita mortal poi che la bella
Giovinezza spari, non si colora
D'altra luce giammai, ne d'altra aurora
Vedora e insino al fine ; ed alia notte

314 AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. [Dec.,

Che 1'altre etadi oscura

Segno poser gli Dei la sepoltura."

In Milan and in Pisa, in Florence and Bologna, at Recanati
or at Rome, Leopardi found always some drop of bitterness min-
gled with every pleasure, his dissatisfaction with the Bolognese
in particular consisting in the fact that they surfeited him with
praise. In alternate hope and depression his health contin-
ued so precarious that at length, in 1830, despairing of recov-
ery, he placed his unpublished writings in the hands of his friend
De Sinner, whose apparent interest in the matter greatly encou-
raged Leopardi, so that he looked forward more hopefully than
ever before to the prospect of money and fame, and wrote that,
se piacera a Dio, he would soon obtain both. But for some rea-
son utterly inexplicable the trust was never fulfilled ; and when
Pellegrini and Giordani asked De Sinner's aid in preparing their
edition of Leopardi's works published in 1845, ne refused it
without assigning any cause se ne scusato, as is stated with
rather dry significance in their preface.

In 1830 Leopardi met Ranieri at Florence, and the two men
were at once strongly attracted towards each other. This friend-
ship, unlike that with Giordani, lasted to the end, for Leopardi
soon went to reside at Ranieri's house in Naples, and ceased alto-
gether to regard Recanati as his home during the five years pre-
ceding his death.* The malady which finally terminated his suf-
ferings was dropsy of the heart, but there was in his feeble frame
a complication of disorders that made the greater part of his life
one long anguish. Not only was he a victim of pulmonary disease
from an early period, but of an abnormal wasting of the flesh
accompanied by a gradual softening of the bones themselves and
by the loss of assimilative power in the blood. He died on the
I4th of June, 1837, while a carriage was in waiting to convey the
invalid to a country-place where it was hoped that he might
obtain benefit from change of air.

* It is evident from a letter of Giordani's that the friendship between himself and Leopardi
was broken by the latter. Cantu quotes it as follows : " Quando il Leopardi comincib ad essere
conosciuto, non mi scrisse piu. Quando in Firenze andavo a trovarlo, non mi parlava. Nelle
sue scritture ha posto molti, e dime mai una parola. Pare che il cuore non corrispondesse air
ingegno" (Alessandro Afanzoni : Reminiscenze di Cesare Cantu, Milano, 1882, vol. ii. p. 55, note).
This charming writer is the only one we have met with who recognizes the injustice done to the
father of Leopardi by his admirers. Of Count Monaldo he says : " Tanlo migliore di quel che
lo dipingono gli idolatri di Giacomo'" (ib. vol. i. p. in). Prof. James A. Harrison, of the
Washington and Lee University, in an article on "An Italian Critic " published in the New
York Critic of the 23d of August last, simply draws on his imagination when he states that De
Sanctis "literally discovered Leopardi, and was the first to make him celebrated among his coun-
trymen." Cantu says : " Jdolo del Giordani e in parte sua creatura fu Giacomo Leopardi"
(Alessandro Manzoni, vol. ii. p. 55).

1884.] AN ITALIAN PESSIMIST. 315

Ranieri's account of the final moments is very brief ; we are
only told that life was stifled at its very source, and that this
great man resigned his noble spirit with a smile, in the arms of
his friend who loved him and mourns him still : Oppressa la vita
alia sua priniii origine, qnel grande uomo rcndette sorridendo il nobi-
lissimo spirito fra le braccia di un sno amico che lo amb e lo pianse
senza fine*

In reviewing the manner of Leopardi's life the child'absorbed
in unchildlike study, the youth withdrawing from all youthful
pursuits, burying himself among the relics of a dead past, shrink-
ing from intercourse with those nearest to him, contemptuous of
the interests of common existence, exalting mere intellect above
every quality of the heart, despising the judgments of his fellow-
men yet weakly craving their applause, rebellious against right-
ful authority, ungrateful, insincere, self-conscious and self-tor-
menting, possessed of mental endowments worthy of the sages
of the ancient world, yet using his powers for the most part to
tear down and to destroy one can but read the lesson that it
brings : the utter worthlessness of a life unguided by the higher
light of duty to God and man. We have been so much occupied
with the story of Leopardi's history that time has been wanting
for any adequate study of his writings, but we have dwelt in de-
tail upon its circumstances because from these came the peculiar
tone and character so indelibly impressed on nearly every pro-
duct of his genius. And now that his Essays and Dialogues have
become accessible to' the English reader through the translation
of Mr. Charles Edwardes, it is important that a practical appli-
cation of his pessimistic philosophy and its disastrous results
should find their illustration in his own unhappy destiny. In
that destiny we discover the solution of the problem of life, not
as ordained by God, but as wrecked by man. It seems of kin to
a Greek tragedy, in which the poet closes his drama by succes-
sive strokes of pitiless, implacable fate a Nemesis which sways
the ebb and flow of its checkered course. To the Christian scho-
lar such a life appears to exemplify the retributive power which
as surely displays itself in the intellectual and moral individuality
of men as in the collective advancement of the race.

* Opere di Giacomo Leofardi, vol. i, p. xxvi.

316 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Dec.,

SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS.

No. II.

THE OBJECTION FROM SCIENCE IN GENERAL AGAINST REVELATION
CHRONOLOGY OF THE ADAMIC SPECIES.

OBJECTION FROM SCIENCE IN GENERAL.

THE illogical inference drawn by certain scientists from facts
and probabilities of geology, and set up as an argument against
the divine inspiration of Genesis, may be stated in a more gene-
ral form as an objection from natural science in all its extension
against the entire system of Scriptural and Christian theology.

Geology proclaims immensely long periods before the begin-
ning of human history. Genesis directs our attention almost
from the outset to the history of Adam and his offspring. Its
history becomes constantly more narrow and particular, until it
runs into a narrow bed of narrative whose stream is continued
through the historical books of the Old Testament. The stream
disappears under ground at a distance of about six centuries
from the epoch of David, reappearing again in the brief me-
moirs of the historical books of the New Testament, after which
it ceases entirely.

Secular science and history, on the contrary, are busied with
prehistoric researches, and investigations of the entire realm of
earth and man, considered as a kingdom appertaining to the
universal world of nature. Moreover, science, in its astronomi-
cal branch, rises to the investigation and contemplation of the
vast stellar universe. Thus science opens up an extent of time
and space as the when and the where of existing nature and natu-
ral operations, in comparison with which the earth and the period
of duration covered by historical records dwindle to a point and
a moment.

Just here and at this point of view arises the opposition, not
of science, but of certain minds bewildered by speculations to
which science has given occasion abusively, to the theological
doctrine concerning nature, this world, and man, with their rela-
tions an4 their first and final causes.

In these minds the speculation which takes a wrong direction
from science creates a pseudo-science that co-exists with the real
science which they possess, but is not identical with it and is
not in harmony with any of its certain truths or probable theo-

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 317

ries. It is a speculation which tends toward, and in point of
fact often degenerates into, rank materialism and atheism. At
this extreme it substitutes physical nature in its lowest grade as
mere matter and its activity in the place of the spiritual part of
nature and of the author and ruler of nature, its first cause and
final cause that is, God.

The notion of an indefinitely long time of duration and of an
indefinitely wide extension transforms itself into the notion of
existence without beginning and without bounds in the minds of
these imperfect thinkers, displacing the true idea of the eternal,
infinite, self-existing Being. Nature fills their entire intellectual
horizon. The idea of God as creator being excluded, and that of
nature as the original source of existence and action being put in
its place, man is regarded as merely one of its natural products,
evolved from its stuff by its active force. Measured by the
standard of material bulk, the earth, his abode, is a very insig-
nificant orb in one of the minor planetary systems, and he him-
self, as a denizen of this small world, whose known history fills
such a short period of time, and whose prehistoric origin is
supposed to have been most ignoble, is comparatively of little
importance. In a word, man is wholly subordinated to nature in
this system, and the department of nature to which he is rele-
gated wholly subordinated to that more vast universe in which
it is one of the smaller kingdoms.

The Scriptural view is entirely different. It refers every-
thing to God, and to the ideas of the divine mind according to
which the divine power creates the world and all genera and
species of beings contained in it for a definite end. This is the
grand dogma proclaimed by Moses to the children of Israel in
the beginning of Genesis. It is, moreover, the grand funda-
mental truth of natural and rational theology, provable by the
light of pure reason, as well as revealed by God and taught by
inspiration.

Again, in the Scripture, man, and the earth as.-his abode, are
the centre to which converge all lines of light from every visi-
ble point. Man is above nature, and all thing
to him as the prince of the cosmos and in
mos. He is the son and heir of God, and

of God and all his intelligent creatures, his Itosry *Jpi eainy
are that which is of the highest importance in

That this view is just and in accordance w i t nS4e jgatfty and
truth of things can be, in part, proved by pure reason without
recurring: to revelation.

318 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Dec.,

As an intelligent being whose soul is a spirit and immortal,
man is above all irrational nature, and each individual man is
better than the whole universe of bodies. This earth, at least,
is his kingdom, and everything in it is subordinate to him. The
sun and the other stars are in part, even though they be not
exclusively, for his benefit. Moreover, his own mind and the
earth as his local habitation is necessarily for him the centre of
his own observation of the universe. It is true that he is, by
his nature as a rational animal, in the lowest grade of intellectual
being, and that, in the present condition of mankind, a great
multitude of men are degraded far below the typical, ideal state
of pure human nature. Yet generically, in respect to his spirit-
ual part, he is akin to the highest possible order of created in-
telligent beings. There can be nothing higher than intelligence ;
and as the universe is necessarily subordinated to the intelligent
beings in it, man must have at least some minor share in the
high and royal prerogative of those intellectual kings of the
universe for w-hom it has been created and adorned.

By the light of reason alone we cannot go beyond this point.
But revelation teaches us that man is the centre of creation.
The Eternal Word has chosen humanity as the nature which he
has assumed and thereby raised to a divine dignity. His elect
among men, especially the glorious and sublime Virgin Mary,
share with him in this dignity. And the earth itself, as the
cradle of the human race, receives a place of importance in the
universe corresponding to the grandeur of the events transacted'
upon its surface.

Here we are met by another objection, that it is incredible
that God should choose such a small world and such an inferior
nature for such a sublime end. But this objection is irrational,
and even childish. It takes its measure of things from their cor-
poreal magnitude. By such a rule we ought to estimate the
title of a kingdom or a city to our admiration by its mere extent,
the greatness of a man by size and weight, the value of a book
by its bulk, the importance of events by the length of time they
have taken in their fulfilment. A great man ought to be born
in the largest building of the largest city in the largest empire
of the world, and he should be a giant in stature. We have
no certain knowledge of any inhabited world except our own, of
any other intelligent beings except men, by any natural means
of knowledge. By revelation we know that pure spirits exist
who are naturally superior to man; that there is a heaven, a hell,
and a purgatory. We have no objection against any one's in-

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 319

dulging in theoretical speculations about other worlds and other
species of intelligent beings, whether incorporeal or possessed
of bodies, and making as splendid an hypothesis as he pleases
about the physical grandeur of the natural order of the uni-
verse.

But the supernatural order infinitely transcends the utmost
possible elevation of nature within its connatural order. Jesus
Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary are at the summit of that
order. And, by relationship to Jesus Christ, all glorified men
are raised in their divine filiation to God the Father to a place
and dignity which makes them equal to the angels and in a cer-
tain respect superior to them.

Although man is a late appearance on the earth, and his
historical record is a short one, the science which relates to
him and his destiny is much more important than geology or
astronomy. The chief part of this science is that which imme-
diately concerns his supernatural end and his immortal existence
in the future, everlasting state of being. This science cannot
be had with certainty and completeness except by the light of
divine revelation. It is the object of divine revelation to teach
mankind doctrine respecting God and things which relate to
God ; respecting his own origin, his destiny, his original state
and his fall from it, his redemption and the means of restoration.
This is the object of Holy Scripture as a medium of revelation
i.e., its object is dogmatic and ethical, concerning matters of faith
and morals. Its historical documents are subservient to this
purpose, giving that information which is necessary or useful for
the religious instruction of mankind. These accessory matters be
come, therefore, objects of divine faith only in an accidental and
indirect manner.

As we have said as much as our space will permit about this
topic in a former article, we will pass at once to the considera-
tion of another one of the questions arising out of the coinci-
dence of Scripture and purely human science and history, in the
lines which run through this mixed and common department of
facts and ideas. This is the question of

THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE ADAMIC SPECIES.

Hitherto we have had plain sailing, thanks to the sound-
ings and surveys of former explorers. But now we come into
waters which are at present being surveyed, and we have
unfinished charts as our only guide. We must bespeak the

320 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Dec.,

patience and indulgence of the reader for a considerable time
while we follow a roundabout course among hypotheses and
theories, postponing what partial solution we are able to sug-
gest of the difficulties of the question before us, to a later period.

These theories start from real or supposed vestiges of the
human race unearthed by scientific explorers, which have been
left by generations existing before the date of the early records
of written history. They are theories concerning a prehistoric
period whose beginning is put back indefinitely into a remote
past. Such notions are not new, for they are found, in a myth-
ical, legendary form, in the traditions and ancient books of several
of the oldest nations.

A Chinese gentleman who has received a thorough Parisian
education has lately published an uncommonly curious and inte-
resting series of papers upon China in La Revue des Deux Mondes,
in the course of which he gives a resum6 of the teaching of the
Chinese sacred books concerning the prehistoric period. We
have taken the trouble of translating it, and will insert it here,
although it makes a pretty long digression. The author of the
articles is Colonel Tcheng-Ki-Tong, military adjutant of the
Chinese Embassy at Paris, and we recommend them as well
worthy of an attentive perusal. They are contained in the num-
bers of the Review for May 14, June I, and June 14, 1884.

" Having proposed to instruct myself in the knowledge of ancient things
and to learn the opinion of the scholars of the West respecting the origin
of the world, I have consulted the sources and I have ascertained nothing
very definite upon the question.

"The first man is supposed to have appeared on the earth about six
thousand years ago ; his wife drew down upon him the anger of the Crea-
tor, and their descendants have found themselves ever since exposed to all
the avenging chastisements of Heaven. Men are these descendants. This
is the Western theory reduced to a simple expression ; it proclaims a crea-
tor, God, and a creature, man. But how were arts and manners born ?
How were all the elements of social life formed ? At what epoch was
society organized ? These are questions upon which only dim rays of light
are cast; and as for the principles, they are even denied by certain savants,
who treat them as hypotheses or imaginations. Whether criticisms of this
sort are well founded or not, whether they are made in the name of science
or in the name of passion, I have not to judge ; but the Bible has for us a
great merit namely, that it is an ancient book and an Eastern book. At this
twofold point of view it is dear to us, and it will be seen from what follows
that our sacred history, under some aspects, is not absolutely different.

" The history of China embraces two grand periods that which extends
from the year 1980 before the Christian era to our own day, called the offi-
cial period, and that which goes backward into antiquity from the date of
1980, called the prehistoric period.

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 321

" Our history does not tell how man came into existence, but it teaches
that there was a first man. ' This man was placed between heaven and earth ,
and knew the distance at which he was placed from the one and the other.
He knew the principle of causality, the existence of the elements, and how
the germs of living beings were formed."

" The popular imagination represents this first man, besides, as endowed
with a great power and carrying the sun and moon, one in each hand.

" Our sacred books give, as is evident from reading the text which de-
fines the nature of man, an elevated idea of his origin and proclaim the
principle of personality. This being, placed between heaven and earth
that is to say, carrying a spirit in an earthly envelope knows who he is,
neither God nor matter, but endowed with an intelligence to which the
principle of causality will give inspiration, and surrounded by elements
which will come to the aid of the resources of his invention.

" Such is the first man. At what epoch did he appear? An incalcula-
ble number of thousands of years ago. The history of this man and his
descendants forms the prehistoric period which ran its course within the
limits of our empire.

" Every one will take notice of the popular tradition which places the
sun and moon, one in each hand of the first man. The sun and the moon
symbolize among us the masculine and feminine, and it is from their
union that the era of the suffering and abandoned humanity is dated. This
tradition approaches to the text of the Bible and has some similarity to the
adventure of the apple in the earthly paradise. We represent the same
catastrophe by the sudden encounter of the masculine sun and the feminine
moon. This also, I believe, is a veiled manner of making us understand
the original sin, but a little better specified.

"This preface of the history of men precedes immediately the recital of
their first essays in civilization, if we may express by this word the first
steps of man on the earth and his first conquests over ignorance.

."The notion of a celestial Providence watching over men and fructify-
ing their efforts appears in our history, with a great force of truth, by this
fact: that men have been governed by emperors of an inspired wisdom and
who have been the organizers of Chinese civilization. These emperors are
regarded as saints. History does not assign them any certain date, but it
informs us what were their labors.

" The first emperor is called the emperor of the sky. He determined
the order of time, which he divided into ten celestial trunks and twelve
terrestrial branches, the whole forming a cycle. This emperor lived eighteen
thousand years. The second emperor is the emperor of the earth ; he also
lived eighteen thousand years, and to him is ascribed the division of the
month into thirty days. The third emperor is the emperor of men. Under
his reign appeared the first lineaments of social life. He divided his territory
into nine parts, over each one of which he placed a member of his family as its
head. The history now for the first time eulogizes the beauties of nature and
the mildness of the climate. This reign lasted forty-five thousand years.

" During these three reigns, which embraced a period of eighty-one
thousand years, there is no mention of dwellings or clothes. History tells
us that men lived in caverns without any fear of animals, and that the
sentiment of modesty had no existence among them.

VOL. XL. 21

322 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Dec.,

'' What were the events in consequence of which this state of things
underwent a transformation ? History has not a word to say on this head.
But every one will observe that the names given to the first three empe-
rors contain three terms the sky, the earth, and men ; a gradation which
leads to the hypothesis of a progressive decadence in the condition of
humanity.

" It is under the reign of the fourth emperor, called the emperor of
nests, that the struggle for life actually begins. Man seeks to defend himself
against wild animals and makes for himself nests in the woods. He uses
the skins of animals to cover himself with, and the texts make a distinction
between the two expressions : to cover one's self and to clothe one's self.

" Agriculture is still unknown. The fifth emperor is the emperor of
fire. It was he who, by observing the phenomena of nature, discovered
fire and taught the way of producing it. He taught men domestic life ; the
institution* of barter and the invention of knotted cords for preserving the
memory of important facts are due to him. The state of savage life has
almost completely disappeared.

" His successor, Fou-Hy, taught men fishing, hunting, and the nurture
of domestic animals. He proclaimed the eight diagrams that is to say, the
fundamental principles which contain in essence all the progressive stages
of civilization and have given birth to philosophy. During this reign,
moreover, property was organized.

"This great emperor, whom our books regard as inspired by Providence
to prepare the happiness of men, regulated the greater part of those insti-
tutions which actually constitute the customs and manners of China. He
defined the four seasons and regulated the calendar. In his system the first
day of spring is the first day of the year, which nearly corresponds with
the mid-winter New Year's day of the Western calendar. The institution of
marriage with all its ceremonies dates from this reign : the wedding-gift
at that time was the skins of animals. He taught men orientation by
fixing the cardinal points. He also invented music by the vibration of
strings.

"The successor of Fou-Hy is Tcheng-Nung, or the emperor of agricul-
ture. He studied the properties of plants and taught the way of curing
their diseases. He undertook great works of canalization ; he caused rivers
to be dredged and arrested the progress of the sea. From his reign dates
the use of the emblem of the dragon as it at the present time forms a part
of the armorial bearings of the emperor. History mentions the apparition
of this fantastic horse as a mysterious event, one of those prodigies which
are often enough to be met with in the greater part of the memorials of
antiquity.

" The successor of Tcheng-Nung is the Yellow Emperor, who continued
the work begun by his predecessors by creating observatories, wind-instru-
ments, costumes, the art of furnishing houses, the arch, carriages, ships,
and coined money. He published a book on medicine, in which we read
for the first time the expression, ' to feel the pulse.' The value of objects
was likewise regulated ; as, for instance, it is said : ' Pearls are more pre-
cious than gold.' The wife of this emperor nurtured the first silk-worms.

" Under this reign the administrative division of the empire was or-
ganized.

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 323

"The group of eight neighboring houses was called a Well. Three
Wells formed a Friend, and three Friends composed a Village. The sub-
prefecture comprised five villages; ten sub-prefectures made a depart-
ment, ten departments a district, and ten districts a province.

"The first copper-mines were worked by the Yellow Emperor.

"The reign of this emperor's successor bears a certain date : it is the
year 2399 (B.C.), and the emperors who succeeded each other down to the
year 1980, the epoch at which begins the official period, are all regarded as
saints. Before this date the imperial power had not been transmitted by
inheritance. Every emperor in his declining age chose the one most
worthy to occupy the throne, and abdicated in his favor.

" Under the reign of the last holy emperor i.e., towards the year 2ooa
history mentions great hydraulic works accomplished during extremely
disastrous inundations. This is the only fact of this kind which can have
any relation with the deluge. It remains to be ascertained whether there
is an agreement of date: this is a question I will not undertake to resolve,
and which has besides only a mediocre importance, since it has been,
proved that the deluge was not universal.

" Such is, in a rapid resume, the summary of our mysterious annals.
They have not the seductive interest of the fables of mythology; they
simply recount the beginnings of the history of the world, narrating step
by step the advances which have been made. It is the primitive life which
is described.

" We attach a great price to everything which is ancient, and among, the
popular traditions which have withstood time there is none more esteemed
than the one which represents the teaching of civilization as inspired by
Providence. We love to attach our institutions to a principle superior to
man ; and in like manner Moses reported to his people the text of the
laws which he wrote under the dictation of God. The Christian world
cannot find our spiritualism very strange, since it is the basis of its own
faith."

Scientists will not take it as a compliment if we place some of
their extreme theories about the antiquity of man and the length
of the prehistoric period on a level with these Chinese myths.
Yet they are, in our opinion, about equally credible, notwithstand-
ing- the show of scientific phraseology which covers their extra-
vagance. They assign a date of at least 300,000 years before the
beginning of the historic period to the first appearance of man
upon the earth, as witnessed by his supposed vestiges left in the
strata of the tertiary period.

An ingenious Italian writer has made an arithmetical compu-
tation of the number of men who must have been existing on the
earth at the epoch commonly assigned to the creation of Adam,
according to the hypothesis just now mentioned.* The arithme-
tical expression of this number is composed of 434 figures. The

* Civiltct Cattolica, series viii. vol. xi. p. 265, June, 1873.

324 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Dec.,

full import of this statement'will not break upon the mind of a
reader at once, unless he is very familiar with computations of
this sort. A number of men one million times greater than the
estimated population of our globe at the present time would be
represented by sixteen figures. Every addition of six ciphers
multiplies the sum expressed by all the figures which precede said
ciphers by a million. Let us follow up the calculation for a short
distance, and some vague notion of the incalculable number repre-
sented by a unit with 433 zeros following after it will begin to
dawn upon the mind.

The calculation of the writer in the Civiltd Cattolica, of whose
argument we are now making a brief epitome, proceeds on two
suppositions: First, that all prehistoric men were the offspring
of one pair of progenitors a perfectly gratuitous concession to
our scientific theorists. Second, that the race increases by ^ each
year, equivalent in the average to a doubling once in 208 years.
This is a moderate estimate, less than the average rate of increase
in historic times, so far as it can be reckoned, which is about
^ih- each year. The suppositions at the base of the calculation
are, therefore, made in a manner favorable to the geological
theorists.

The population of the globe is estimated at 1,300,000,000.
The greatest number it is supposed by any political economists
to be capable of sustaining is about ten times the actual number,
say 12,000,000,000. Multiply this number by 10,000 and you
have the number of square metres on the dry land of the earth,
so that 10,000 of these make the allotted portion of each indi-
vidual when the whole number has reached the sum given above.
Increase the number one hundred thousand fold and you will
.have ten men to each square metre. Suppose the habitable
part of the earth extended to the limits of the moon's orbit in a
.series of stories each one metre in height, and filled with men
.in the ratio of ten to each square metre of standing-room, and
the number will be represented by 24 ciphers. Continue the
.stories of these towers having their bases resting upon Europe,
Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia, re-
spectively, in perpendicular lines to a distance 400 times greater
than the radius of the moon's orbit, and the limits of the earth's
orbit will be reached. Accommodation, although very crowded,
will now be provided for a number of men indicated by the
figure 2 followed by 26 ciphers. Pass the outermost planetary
orbit and go on to the fixed stars. Let the distance equal a num-
ber represented by the figure 2 followed by 18 zeros. The

1884.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 325

number of men provided for will be represented by an arithmeti-
cal expression containing 34 figures. But there is still an im-
mense amount of empty space left not occupied by these some-
what lofty and crowded edifices. More accommodation is im-
peratively demanded for our large human family. Therefore,
retaining our diameter, let us suppose it to be the diameter of
a circumference including only concentric spheres of men, each
occupying one-tenth of a cubic metre, and we have provided
narrow quarters for a number represented by unity followed by
only 57 zeros i.e., i,ooo,c>c>o,CKX>,cxDo,CKX>,ocK},c>ro^
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

What is this to a number expressed by four hundred and thir-
ty-four figures ? The proportion is less than that between one
litre of water and the whole mass of water in the seas of our
globe, as is proved by an exact calculation.

It is plain from the foregoing that our men of the historic
period could not have been furnished with our tolerably com-
fortable accommodation on the surface of the globe, by which
100,000 square metres of surface are allotted to each one of us, as
well as with our ample allowance of open air, unless our prede-
cessors had been disposed of, when they began to make a crowd,
by summary measures.

JLet us suppose, then, a succession of catastrophes, such as
glacial periods and deluges, sweeping away the whole population
of the globe whenever it has reached the number of 12,000,000,-
ooo. An increase of ^\^ each year would complete this number
in about 6,707 years from the creation of the first pair of pro-
genitors. At the end of this period we suppose all mankind de-
stroyed except one pair, who begin to repeople the earth. This
process must be repeated at least forty-four times in order to
leave the earth clear for our own first parents at the date which
lias been commonly assigned to their first appearance on the
earth.

Supposing the Noachian deluge to have been universal in
respect to the actual population of the earth when it occurred,
its present inhabitants are all descended from the eight persons
who were saved in the ark. At the mean rate of increase as
given by experts viz., -^ in each year it would require 4,320
years for 8 persons to increase to the number of 1,300,000,000.
According to the computation of some chronologists, 4,366 years
have elapsed between the date of the deluge and A.D. 1884.

We give the formula of this last calculation, as furnished by

326 THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. [Dec.,

the ingenious writer from whom we have been borrowing, at the
bottom of the page.*

It would scarcely be worth while to take so much notice of
the hypothesis of the tertiary man, were it not that M. Francis
Lenormant has given it so large a place and so much impor-
tance in a work which is being widely circulated at the present
time in an English translation.

M. Jean d'Estienne, a writer on scientific questions of high
repute, says of this hypothesis :

" It is an hypothesis and nothing more, and the indications upon which
it has been constructed do not seem, at least up to the present time, capa-
ble of withstanding a serious and profound examination. We may be al-
lowed to express our astonishment that M. Frangois Lenormant has ac-
corded both in his special and general theories such a large place and such
considerable importance to a gratuitous conjecture, sustained to-day, sav-
ing some honorable but rare exceptions, only by those scientists who are
interested in making science progress in a preconceived direction." f

The scientific congresses of Europe have received with dis-
favor the evidences brought before them for the tertiary man,
and we may therefore dismiss it and turn toward other theories
which have more probability.

THE QUARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR.

EVIL-SPEAKING people say that Napoleon III. planned the
Boulevard St. Germain to have revenge on the aristocratic fau-
bourg for showing his court the cold shoulder. In its im-
mense sweep from the Pont de Sully to the Corps Legislatif it
was to run right through the precincts sacred to Legitimacy,
carrying the bus-tie and vulgarity of modern civilization under
the noses of the descendants of the crusaders, where it did not

* log. a log. b

log. ( i + c) log. c

Let x be the number of years sought ; let a equal 1,300,000,000, b equal 8, and c -g
Then

x _ log. 1,300,000,000 log. 8 _ 9."394335 2 3 0,0030899870
log. 229 log. 228 2,3598354823 - 2,3572348470

_ 8,2108533653 _ 82108533653 _
0,0010006353 19006353

t Art. " L'Humanite Primitive, etc.," Revue des Qu. Scientif.^ Oct. 20, 1882.

1884.] THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. 327

bring down their houses about their ears. The vandalism was
accomplished, but not until its putative inspirer had ceased to
have any interest in the humiliation of the Legitimist nobility.
When the star of the Man of December set at Sedan the serpent
had crept close to their door, but its threshold remained un-
crossed. It was reserved for the iconoclasts of a Radical Re-
publican municipality to play skittles with the mansions that
housed the faithful followers of King Henry V. Baron Hauss-
mann's demolitions left the aristocratic district intact, but they
went far enough to initiate a structural revolution in the neigh-
boring "Quarter of the Schools." And the work of the great
Alsacian renovator has been carried on by his Republican suc-
cessors with a vigor which promises soon to leave few land-
marks standing that were familiar to the student youth of a
quarter of a century ago.

Light and air have been let into old crooked streets and
courts where neither had penetrated for ages ; towering rooker-
ies which had housed generation after generation of light-hearted
but impecunious aspirants to knowledge have crumbled under
the pick and crowbar ; hostelries and taverns, without which the
Latin Quarter would have seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable to
its denizens, have vanished from off the face of the earth ; the
Pepiniere of the Luxembourg even has been sacrificed to the
rage for innovation, and is now only represented to the pilgrim's
searching eye by a number of parallelograms of sward intersect-
ed by canals of asphalt. And be it remarked that here are only
mentioned the outrages on the old Quarter which can be remem-
bered by young men. Of the ruin and desolation wrought by
the great clearance which prepared the way for the Boulevard
St. Michel others have written with tear-laden pens. Were the
genial Mr. Ledbury to-day placed in the centre of the Quar-
ter which was the scene of his memorable adventures he would
feel as much at sea as in Chicago ; the Pere Goriot would find
himself a homeless wanderer in the street which still bears the
name of Lacepede, and you might put a quondam student of the
healing art within a stone's throw of the School of Medicine with
the certainty that he could not find his way to it even with the
aid of a pocket-compass.

Want of light, air, and room is said to exercise a depressing
influence on the herilth and spirits of the children of the poor.
The absence of these blessings seems in old times to have ope-
rated in a precisely opposite way on the student youth of France.
In their old, narrow streets, which only got an occasional gleam of

328 THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. [Dec.,

sunshine, they were uproariously gay. Their festivity was not
checked by the dimness of the apology for daylight that per-
meated their cell-like abodes. In tavern-dens over which story
upon story towered skywards to the height of a respectable
village steeple, where the air was thick with wine-fumes and
boon companions saw each other by the light of their pipes,
wit flashed with electric brilliancy, and spirits were high enough
to provide the materials for many a pretty quarrel that would
have delighted the heart of Sir Lucius O'Trigger. The scene
is changed. In the Latin Quarter one cannot walk for five
minutes without striking a wide, tree-planted boulevard or
emerging on a broad, macadamized thoroughfare. But where
is the lusty gayety of old? Where are the quaint figures and
costumes that once gave the Quarter its air of refreshing origi-
nality ? Where the long elfin-locks and shaggy beards in the
last respect French youths come early by a man's having where
the brigand hats, the tasselled blue or red Basque boinias, the
picturesque velvet jackets, and the grotesque promenaders in
threadbare swallow-tails and Turkish slippers ? You may see
them at the mi-careme or when the denizens of the Quarter are
engaged in celebrating the rJveillon, but you will search for them
vainly at other times. Or if you chance on a whimsical cos-
tume on some every-day occasion you may safely lay odds that
the wearer is either a disguised calicot or a travelling cockney
most likely the latter.

The student of the present day is careful about the cut of his
clothes. If his means allow him he rather affects the silken
cylinder, but if not he assimilates himself to the multitude with
a derby. His shoes are polished, and he wears a turn-down
collar when turn-down collars are the fashion, and not otherwise.
As the English officer has a horror of being seen in uniform,
so the Paris student eschews all signs whereby he might be
recognized as an embryo professional man. See him as he nears
the School of Law or Medicine, with his books and papers care-
fully enveloped in a leathern portfolio; and if the scene were
changed to the Palace of Justice you might take him for a
young lawyer on his way to plead or make believe he has a
brief. By daylight, at least, the Paris student is no longer ec-
centric ; he avoids even the appearance of it as sedulously as if
he were going in for a good-conduct prize, 'to be forfeited for
a single breach of the propiieties.

The very poor students, who used to live, and continue to
live, joyously on a hundred francs a month, or even less, seem to

1884.] THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. 329

have died out. Twenty years ago they used to be plenty as
blackberries. To understand the secret of their existence one
must have lived their life, partaken with them of their four-
course repasts, including 1 a diminutive bottle of wine, for sixteen
cents, toilsomely mounted with them the interminable steps lead-
ing to their roosts next the sky, and witnessed the genius for
finance with which the)' extracted from their budgetary surplus
the utmost value it would yield in the shape of pleasure. Before
universal exhibitions had successively drivfen up the price of
everything to high-water mark never again to sink lodgings
used to be very cheap in the Latin Quarter, especially if one were
capitalist enough and provident enough to invest a few napoleons
in furniture to secure the dignity and independence of being
dans ses meubles. And in the sixteen-cent restaurants bread was
at discretion, in point of fact constituting the really substantial
part of the fare, the exiguous portions of meat, vegetables, and
fruit merely serving as relishes to the staff of life. Again, in
Paris the customer of a cafe" is not expected to justify his pre-
sence in the establishment by the constant consumption of liquids,
without which in an English public-house or an American saloon
he would shortly be voted a nuisance by the proprietor. Once
the impecunious student had paid his footing by ordering a gloria
or some equivalent refreshment he was free of the place for the
whole evening, and ranged at will over the whole gamut of its
resources cards, dominoes, backgammon, draughts, chess, the
literary reviews, and the political papers. Twenty years ago
student-life in Paris at even a hundred francs a month was not
without its silver lining. Youth, hope, and the esprit gaulois
gave their relish to existence and buoyed up the poor student
against the weight of many privations.

To-day the Paris student appears to command a much larger
exchequer. Parents have become richer or else more generous.
The bouillons and other restaurants which now board the youth
of the schools are decidedly dear on a comparison with establish-
ments of a similar class in other European capitals. On double
the old income the student, after arranging for the necessary, has
less over for the superfluous. Never very provident, he can now
only attempt to emulate the tcartades of his predecessors at the
cost of pinching himself in the department of comestibles. Of
course he does so very frequently, and therefore does he often
wear a pallid aspect which the innocent might be disposed
to attribute to mental effort over the midnight oil, but which
really proceeds from imperfect replenishment of the inner man,

330 THE QUARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. [Dec,

combined with vigils held elsewhere than in the companionship
of the great minds of old. The solitude-commending Zimmer-
mann warns us against predicating anything positive about large
aggregations of human beings which is not common to the whole
race. And therefore let us not be taken as wishing to affirm that
in the course of a few brief years the Paris student has been
radically metamorphosed. But, at least in externals, this has
been very largely the case. Foreign observers admit the fact,
though they vary in* their explanations of it. Some think that
as northern races lose their energy in soft and fertile southern
climes, so has the Paris student, ceasing to have to contend
against an environment of murk and squalor, laid aside the arms
by which he rose superior to it.

This is one theory. Another may be ventured which has also
a good deal to recommend it. It is universally known that men's
characters are largely modified by their dietary ; witness the
peaceable, rice-chewing Hindoo and his rapacious, beef-eating
Saxon conqueror, the sprightly, wine-stimulated Gaul and the
phlegmatic, beer-inspired German or Fleming. To the Paris
student of old, as indeed to the Parisian of any class, beer was
formerly almost an unknown beverage. Now it is everywhere.
Under the' Second Empire there were two German invasions of
France. Moltke commanded in the last, the brewer Dreher in the
first. From being established as single spies in the French capital,
brasseries on the Teutonic model soon came to be counted by the
battalion. The social conservatism of the Latin Quarter might
have rolled back the tide had not its spirit been previously broken
by Baron Haussmann's ruthless sappers. As it was, the Quarter
capitulated and was in a few short years completely occupied by
the enemy. Blonde and brown beer are now as familiar orders in
the taverns of the district as in the Hofbrauerei at Munich. The
quantity of both fluids needed to sustain the youth of the schools
under the stress of study is prodigious, and if the consumption
goes on unchecked it is to be feared that before long the Paris
student will become as noted for abdominal rotundity as the
burghers of the Bavarian capital.

Misfortunes seldom come alone, and the installation of the
worship of King Gambrinus in the Latin Quarter brought with it
an institution strange to France and French habits the brasscrie-
h-femmes. The employment of young females in drinking-places
used to be as unknown in Paris as it is repugnant 'to well-regu-
lated French ideas of propriety. Now, in the Latin Quarter and
many another part of the capital, it has come to be considered

1884.] THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. 331

necessary to the success of a brasserie. And unfortunately the
rdle played by these females is not that of the German waitress or
the English barmaid. They have to pay for leave to serve from
two to five francs a day and depend for this money and their
own livelihood on the gratuities of the youthful customers. It is
their business to engage the latter in conversation and induce
them to drink as much as possible. When a girl applies for a
situation at such places the only recommendation asked or con-
sidered adequate is her ability to fill the house with her " friends."
It need scarcely be said that such a system is productive of fright-
ful demoralization fatal to the unfortunate females who are
obliged to swill beer from the close of evening till past midnight,
and seriously detrimental to the health, purity, and prospects of
the youths whom it is their office, to beguile to excess. Of such
establishments there were, at the writer's last visit to Paris, full
fifty in the Latin Quarter, some of the best known being the
Cafe de Medicis, looking on the Park of the Luxembourg, the
Cigarette in the Rue Racine, the Brasserie Alsacienne in the Rue
St. Severin, the Brasserie de la Seine in the street of that name,
the Tir Cujas in a little street off the Boulevard St. Michel, and
the Don Cesar in the Rue de 1'Ancienne Comedie.

The brasseries are, unfortunately, not the only establishments
in which the student is tempted to overstep the limits of sobriety.
There are numberless distilleries, or liqueur-stores, scattered over
the Quarter. By ^students who have not decidedly entered on the
downward path they are only frequented at Cheure de I" absinthe
the hour preceding dinner at which the fancied necessity for an
appetizer arises, and those abominable concoctions known as ab-
sinthe and amer Picoa are regularly imbibed by almost every Pa-
risian. But the passion for absinthe grows on the consumer like
the craving for opium, and the distilleries are seldom empty from
five or before it in the afternoon till half-past twelve.

There yet, we believe, exists in the Rue St. Jacques, between
the Rue Souflflot and the Val-de-Grace, one of these establish-
ments particularly affected by students, which was known as the
" Temple." A more uninviting den it would be hard to find. A
long, low, ill-lighted room, with wooden tables and cane' chairs
and stools ill-smelling, unswept, cumbered with barrels of va-
rious liqueurs. Close to the entrance a short counter, attended
by the bloated proprietor or manager, attired in the ordinary
working-costume of the marcJiand-de-vin, in a maroon net jacket
and blue apron. Here orders were given on entering and the
scot paid on leaving, and the amount of money turned in over

33 2 THE QUARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. [Dec.,

that counter in coppers, at the rate of four cents a drink, was
wonderful to see. The " Temple " was seldom without tenants
from the early afternoon, but its pillars those who came most re-
gularly and made the longest stances were either not students or
had long ceased to have any legitimate claim to the title. Re-
porters and journalists of the lowest grade, broken-down littera-
teurs, seedy professional men, failures in life of all kinds who had
chosen their abode near by for cheapness, constituted the bulk of
the habitue's outside the absinthe hour. And a more pitiful com-
pany it would not be easy to collect even from among the num-
berless victims of the struggle for existence with which Paris
abounds.

Shabby, all of them, though apparently a few were not with-
out means, to judge by the frequency with which they stood treat
when warmed by their favorite poison. The pockets, bulging
with books and manuscripts, showed that a majority considered
themselves as belonging by some title to the vast, heterogeneous
brotherhood of letters. It was a study, at once curious and pain-
ful, to watch the moods through which the company passed in
the course of a stance. Dismal, timid, nervous at their entry, as
glass after glass of the venomous green fluid went down they
became confident, loquacious, and audaciously critical of the cele-
brities of the day. At particular points of the process of stimu-
lation a stranger might have fallen into the error of supposing
these men to be authors of repute, who dressed meanly and ab-
stained from shirt-collars out of eccentricity. And if such a
stranger came along and made anything approaching to a pro-
longed stay in the " Temple," he was pretty sure before leaving
to make the acquaintance of a AufV/and of one or more of the
greasy manuscripts reposing in his pocket through the want of
enterprise of the publishers. There were a few men to be seen
here who avoided all companionship and drank en Sut'sse, consum-
ing their liquor slowly and puffing- their clay pipes without re-
spite men who came to the " Temple " because a day without
absinthe would be death to them, whose faces twitched convul-
sively and assumed horrible grimaces, and whose teeth crunched
the stems of their pipes with a sound like the crushing of hard
minerals in a mortar. But these were by no means peculiar to
the " Temple." The type occurs as frequently outside the Latin
Quarter as in it, and perhaps oftener in the working districts than
elsewhere. Many of the habitue's of the " Temple " had been stu-
dents of professions in their day had spent a dozen or more
years in the vain pursuit of a diploma, and even yet did not

1884.] THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. 333

abandon hope, when sufficiently stimulated, of attaining the ob-
ject of their ambition.

The Latin .Quarter is not without its cafes of the staid, respect-
able order, where the proprieties are strictly observed, where ex-
cess is unknown, and where sensible students meet and repose
themselves after their studies. Of this order are the Cafe de
Mus6e de Cluny at the intersection of the Boulevard St. Michel
and the Boulevard St. Germain, the Cafe Voltaire opposite the
Ode"on, and the Caf6 d'Harcourt near the Sorbonne. The Cafe"
Procope, the oldest establishment of the kind in Paris, is situated
in the Rue de 1'Ancienne Come'die. It was formerly a noted
resort for students, and in it were spent many of Gambetta's
younger days, both before and after his call to the bar. Its for-
tunes seem to have fallen beyond the possibility of resuscitation.
Within the last few years it has been taken in hand and renovated
by half a dozen different proprietors, but custom avoids it, not-
withstanding the memories that cling around it as the haunt of
the " philosophers" of the last century Voltaire, Diderot, Jean
Jacques Rousseau, D'Alembert, and D'Holbach. In an inner
apartment of the cafe is still preserved the antique table of mottled
marble at which the author of the Henriade was accustomed to
take his seat, its surface deeply worn by the friction of dominoes
rattled by the hands of successive generations of dry-goods clerks
from the neighboring stores.

A house of later but still respectably remote foundation,
which better reta'ins its original physiognomy, is the Brasserie
Jecker, in the Rue Jacob, which has long been a rendezvous of
the artistic fraternity. The mirrors which usually cover the
walls of a French cafe are here replaced by panels painted in
oils, many of them bearing the youthful signatures of artists who
in later years acquired national reputation. Here, not unfre-
quently, the chance visitor finds himself brought into close con-
tact with some of the sommitts of French art, attracted, perhaps,
by an impulse to revisit the scenes of their youth, perhaps by the
exceptional qualities of Mademoiselle Jecker's heady Alsacian
beer. But in the ordinary clientele the French element yields to
the English and American. Art students of both nationalities
swarm in the Latin Quarter, and particularly affect this portion
of it as an abiding-place, the presence of Young America an-
nouncing itself in the neighboring cr$meries by the introduction
of a breakfast dish totally unknown before oatmeal and fliilk,
or, as the waiters persist in calling it, hoatmeal.

Rational amusements, of a nature to divert the student popu-

334 THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. [Dec.,

lation from the dubious attractions of the brasseries-a femmcs and
the absinthe dens, have become rare in the Latin Quarter. The
Odeon theatre is closed during a great portion of the year, and
when it is open its programme is seldom either varied or entic-
ing. The Cluny theatre scarcely counts, as it appears to be run
with special consultation of the low melodramatic tastes of the
calicots who abound in the neighborhood since the Haussmannic
invasion opened it up as a site for monster stores. All the great
cafi-concerts are on the other side of the Seine. The open-air
sports, which are a necessity of existence to the youth of Ame-
rica and the British Islands, are unknown among the students of
Paris. They have, indeed, the gymnasium, but this, however
physically beneficial it may be, scarcely affords a much higher
species of recreation than the prison-crank Charles Reade dis-
charged a volume against. But then the Latin Quarter has its
Bullier, or Prado, or Closerie des Lilas for by all these names
is the great temple to Terpsichore known which three times a
week opens its doors to the votaries of the poetry of motion at
the far end of the Boulevard St. Michel, near the spot where
Marshal Ney was shot and his statue now stands. Of this im-
mense dance-house it would be scarcely possible to say anything
new. Pens innumerable have described it laughed at it, won-
dered at it, reprobated it. Miss Braddon introduced it into one
of her latest novels, and naively made her hero, a Parisian jour-
nalist, take his fiancee there. The fact is that no decent girl or
woman in Paris would be seen in the place. It is dear to the
denizens of the Latin Quarter, for the French are as much a
dancing race to-day as when Goldsmith piped to them, and
Bullier affords them one of the few opportunities of exercising
their limbs with the energy naturally desired by youth and
buoyant spirits. But the mature on-looker is only disgusted by
the tiresome sameness of the scene, its tawdry finery and simu-
lated gayety, the inexhaustible gullibility of its dupes, and the
utter ungracefulness of the irregular gambols which pass for
dancing.

An article on the Latin Quarter would be incomplete without
some mention of the political proclivities of its inhabitants. The
Paris students have always piqued themselves on being " ad-
vanced." In none of the revolutions have they failed to furnish
a goodly contingent to the ranks of the street-combatants. Even
the sanguinary Commune of 1871 drew some of its most con-
spicuous actors from among them. Raoul Rigault, the hostage-
murderer, was a graduate of the College Chaptal and afterwards

1884.] THE Qu ARTIER LATIN SINCE THE WAR. 335

an assiduous Jiabitue" of the Brasserie Glaser, in the Rue St. Sve-
rin, where Lucien Combatz, Paschal Grousset, the bravo Lullier,
Bauer, and a host of other Radical notabilities made their head-
quarters during the last months of the imperial regime. Scores
of students fell behind the barricades of the Rive Gauche or were
shot red-handed by the victorious troops in the Place du Pan-
th6on and the garden of the Luxembourg. The ruthless severity
with which the Communal rising was suppressed seems to have
had a sobering effect on the successors of the students of 1871.
Flighty and over-prompt to jump at conclusions as they may be,
they know too much to be blind to the teaching of facts. Mar-
shal MacMahon and General de Cissey mathematically demon-
strated the impotence of the old popular system of barricade-
fighting against the methods of modern war. Educated youths
are not to be fooled into reliance on the supposed miraculous
powers of dynamite, which go down with people who fancy that
with a pound or a ton of that combustible a city can be destroyed
or an army annihilated. Again, France and the Latin Quarter
nev*er, until the Commune, had practical experience of what a
movement means by which the scum of the population is lifted
into power. Educated tyrants in the name of liberty, like Robes-
pierre or Marat, might be tolerated, but men like " Bergeret
lui-m<?me" who could hardly write their names, were a little too
much for the scholastic stomach to bear.

The Commune disgusted the Paris students with revolution.
They are now Radicals, but constitutional Radicals. They go
in for a universal, graduated income-tax, the election of the Senate
by direct suffrage, some of them even for a single Chamber and
the abolition of the presidency. But they are contented with
public opinion and the ballot as weapons, and confidently expect
to see the realization of their whole programme at a date when
they will probably themselves have yielded to the tendency to
conservatism which years seem to bring to all Frenchmen. Be-
sides, their minds are in great measure distracted from internal
questions by an engrossing preoccupation. France has got to
beat Germany, to have her revanche, to win back Alsace-Lorraine.
Of the eventual accomplishment of this task they are fully confi-
dent, but they are alive to the necessity of earnest and thorough
preparation. They read the military papers and gloat over
every improvement in artillery, every addition to the chain of
defences by which la patric is rapidly making itself impregnable,
every gleam of hope held out editorially that the time is ap-
proaching when France will again assume her legitimate position

336 ST. MOMA'S LAMBS. [Dec.,

as the grande nation a position which is in their minds insepa-
rably coupled with the preliminary squelching" of Germany and
the occupation of Berlin by the victorious troops of the Third
Republic.

ST. MONA'S LAMBS.

DEEP in the Irish forest's leafy shade

The holy Monacella knelt and prayed :

" Have mercy, Lord, on what Thy hands have made !"

And as she knelt a little, wounded hare,

Sore spent and hotly press'd, came limping there,

While rang the hounds' fierce baying through the air.

One bitter glance the hunted creature threw,
Then, as the pack came straining into view,
Quick to the virgin's pitying bosom flew.

There nestled panting, while the royal maid,

Uplifting her soft finger-tip, forbade

The dogs' approach, and trembling they obeyed.

And I have heard that ever since that day
" St. Mona's lambs " the little children say,
As from their path the wild hare scuds away.

But if pursued, oh ! then say pityingly,
" God and St. Monacella succor thee ! "
And the dear Saint its advocate will be.

1884.] Ax APOSTLE OF DOUBT. 337

AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT.

PERHAPS the most curious expression of modern religious
thought in England is the rapid growth and development of what
is popularly called the Broad-Church party, which, withdrawing
as tar from the Evangelicals on one side as from the Ritualists
on the other, forms the third point of the triangle enclosing the
whole Anglican Church. Her sister-factions, far from holding
out their hands to welcome the new-comer, regard her. with hor-
ror and aversion, gathering up their robes carefully from her
corrupting taint; but all the same she has touched a secret
spring in the hearts of men which responds but too readily to
the call. The Evangelical demands an absolute faith in the
Scriptures, which he will decipher for you according to his
views ; the Ritualist exacts obedience to a church authority
based on insufficient and often unadmitted claims ; but the
Broad-Churchman appeals to the spirit of universal doubt, and,
far from inviting any spiritual allegiance, exhorts his congrega-
tion to judge all such matters for themselves, by the light, hardly
of inspiration, which is out of date, but of the most advanced
modern thought.

Such a doctrine is not merely attractive in itself, but it is
singularly hard to combat. You can, Bible in hand, defeat the
Evangelical with his own weapon ; but the Broad-Churchman
meets you with a prompt denial of its infallibility. You can
point out to the Ritualist certain unpleasant truths connected
with the establishment of the English Church and its early dis-
cipline ; but the Broad-Churchman replies, in the words of Mr.
Haweis, that " apostolic succession, if real, would be of no
value," and laughs at the idea of any ecclesiastical fabric being
divinely ordained.

A prominent English reviewer, anxious to say something in
favor of so unique a system, requests us to bear in mind that the
Broad Church is representative in a high degree. " It reflects,"
he says, " one of the characteristic points of the contemporary
mind that desire to translate the old dogmas which it can no
longer hold by into something which it can believe; to give
them some shadowy spiritual meaning or recondite interpreta-
tion, by which they can still be retained, if in no better aspect,
VOL. XL. 22

338 AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. [Dec.,

still as cherished antiquities." This is an interesting as well as
a novel plea, but perhaps it is better on the whole to resist than
to " translate " these points of the contemporary mind. It was
a characteristic point of the contemporary Jewish mind to wor-
ship the golden calf, and of the contemporary Cypriote mind
to celebrate the impure rites of Astarte, and of the contemporary
Puritan mind to burn witches in the market-place ; but Moses
slew the idolaters without mercy, the prostitution of even a
pagan creed reacted in favor of Christianity, and New England
did penance in sackcloth and ashes when she awoke from her
madness and saw the stain of blood upon her hands.

But in the nineteenth century men like Professor Jo wett, Stop-
ford Brooke, and the late Dean Stanley have controlled the re-
ligion of England, as the London Times controls her politics, by
standing with their finger on the people's pulse and reflecting
faithfully the restless agitation about them ; and working hand
in hand with such is the Rev. Hugh Reginald Haweis, a man
of brighter parts than any of these, and as many-sided in his
capabilities as Michael Angelo or Cellini. An able writer and a
clever artist, an accomplished musician and a powerful preacher,
he drew to St. James', Marylebone, much of the wealth, culture,
and fashion of London ; regaling them now with a brilliant com-
mentary of Shakspere, now with a sympathetic description of
Whistler's peacock-feathers, and now with an urgent and pas-
sionate appeal for his doctrine of religious liberty. If the test of
a sermon be its fitness for all minds, then Mr. Haweis has not
excelled in his peculiar vocation; for his words are. plainly ad-
dressed to a congregation familiar alike with Euripides and Me-
tastasio, with the latest scientific achievements and the political
questions of the day. Even the very vices he condemns with
such vigorous frankness are essentially the vices of the rich. It
would be idle folly, in many churches, to inveigh against pigeon-
shooting, tight-bearing reins on horses, or the self-indulgent
cruelty of eating pate" de foie gras.

But though his sermons have run through many editions
in London, Mr. Haweis is better known in this country
through his secular writings ; and My Musical Memories has been
widely welcomed by those who have read and enjoyed its pre-
decessor, Mime and Morals. The earlier book is, perhaps, the
more attractive of the two, with its sympathetic sketches of
great musicians, its charming and valuable chapters on bells and
violins, and its despairing criticism of English drawing-room
music a theme which has served as a fruitful field for Du Mau-

1884.] AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. 339

rier's pointed shafts. It is written throughout with much power
and humor, and is marred only by the author's thinly-veiled con-
tempt for those less fortunate souls who are not capable of his
own keen and critical appreciation. He is a musician par excel-
lence, and lays down the law with a dogmatic severity which
contrasts finely with his serene toleration where merely religious
matters are concerned. And how shall the uninitiated support
his marvellous " analysis of emotion," symbolized for our bene-
fit by a mysterious array of wavy and jerky lines, and calculated
to reduce an ordinary mind to the verge of imbecility by their
remarkable and meaningless gyrations?

Such an enthusiast, however, rides no hobby gently, and in
Ashes to Ashes Mr. Haweis has thrown himself into the cause
of cremation with an impetuous ardor which admits of no
shadow of compromise. You absolutely must be burnt ! He
has been wrought up to this point, in a great measure, by the
shocking desecration of so many of the old London churchyards
a subject which rouses him again to honest indignation in his
Pleas for the People. These short sermons, five in number, show
him at his best. They are a series of appeals in behalf of the
poor, and suggest, in their frank simplicity, those marvellous
exhortations of Sydney Smith's, so full of sound morality and
excellent common sense, and so utterly devoid of any religious
emotion. Mr. Haweis asks for the people, first, air air in the
parks and public gardens, and in the unused burying-grounds.
many of which mrght be turned into breathing-spots for the
poor wretches forced by the broiling sun of summer out of
their narrow rooms into the seething, grimy streets ; next,
" dinner for the people," in cheap and good eating-houses scat-
tered throughout the city, so that the workman need no longer
snatch a hasty meal, lolling with his back against some sun-baked
wall, and then going to a public-house to wash it down with
unlimited beer; "alms for the people," entreating the rich to
give, not more generously, perhaps, but more wisely, and to take
a little more trouble in organizing their charities ; " doctors for
the people," an appeal for better administration in the hospitals ;
and, last but not least, " Sunday recreation for the people," a
reform nearest of all to his heart.

On this subject he is always eloquent, pointing out clearly
and sharply that while in Catholic countries the poor first go
to church and then amuse themselves, in England they compro-
mise by doing neither. He has used all his influence to have
the museums opened on Sunday, and so provide some more

340 AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. [Dec.,

innocent entertainment than that furnished by the ever-gaping
taverns and saloons. In his own church he organized the fa-
mous "Sunday Evenings for the People," which rapidly became
a London institution, and in which he offered to the throngs
of workingmen a simple service, with some sacred music and
the sight of a few good pictures. But in this matter he
fought single-handed against the combined prejudice and selfish-
ness of English society. The upper circles were carelessly in-
different on the subject, while the middle classes were wounded
by it in their tenderest point the desecration of the Sabbath.
And, determined optimist though he be, and inclined always to
think well of his country and his countrymen, Haweis now and
then grows despairing of success and speaks with unwonted
bitterness, thinking in his heart how much joy one-half the world
might give the other.

"And all these things," he cries, " remain undone, and the barren, self-
ish, walled-up, railed-away pleasures of the rich go on, and the long,
bloody sweat of a great city's agony distils hard by, unheeded in the outer
darkness, whilst those who could watch lie asleep, and the poor of Christ
are betrayed into the hands of the traitor Drink."

There is no toleration about this man for the much-condoned
vices of the rich, and it is at least to their credit that they should
come so perseveringly to hear themselves abused. He is not
prepared to turn his back upon the drunkard, and shake hands
with those who manufacture and who sell the liquor ; to spurn
the wretched women lost in dens of vice, but live fraternally
with those who own such property and grow rich upon the
rents. The sportsman slaughtering pigeons is as bad in his eyes
as the costermoriger beating his horse ; and the dishonesty
which goes under the name of speculation or investment is to
him no better than its second cousin, petty larceny. He has
worked among the poor, in their own homes and in the cholera
hospitals amid the dead and dying, he is anxious and ready to
befriend them always, but he cannot preach to them. For the
wonderful and ingenious tissue of doubt and speculation which
is all he has to offer in the way of religion is singularly unfitted
to refresh these thirsty souls, whose spiritual needs are often in
proportion to their earthly destitution.

A clever writer in Blackwood's notes sharply this point
while commenting on the sermons of the Rev. Stopford Brooke,
.chaplain-in-ordinary to the Queen. They are, he acknowledges,
very interesting, very for those who care to make a study of
the Broad-Church principles and comprise a great deal that

1884.] AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. 341

cannot fail to attract a cultivated and not too zealous audience.
But then, as he pathetically explains, " the prosperous and vir-
tuous sons and daughters are not the only portion of. the family
to be considered. They can seek refuges for themselves, if they
will. But where are the spiritually penniless, the wanderers and
vagabonds of the world, the poor who have neither time, nor
money, nor heresies, nor opinions where are they to go?"

Ah ! where? Certainly not to St. James', Marylebone, nor to
St. James', Westmoreland street Mr. Haweis' present incumben-
cy for there they will hardly gather either opinions or heresies
enough to set them floating in, the spiritual world. Their opin-
ions they will be expected to form for themselves; and as to the
other alternative, Mr. Haweis says cheerfully, though rather, we
think, unnecessarily : " By and by we shall not be in such a mor-
tal fright of heresy." Indeed, by way of helping to banish all
such useless fears, he is quite ready to go a step further and
avow that " the time has gone by forever when it is possible
for an educated person to declare that Christianity is true and
every other religion false. . . .The time has come when Christianity
must take its place in the history of the world among other re-
ligions, and when it must be recognized as a point, and a turning-
point, in the harmonious religious development of the race."

With this platform to start from, the wonder is, not that Mr.
Haweis should believe so little, but that he should believe so
much. He gives it's clearly and plainly the grounds for his
doubts, but he neglects to say why he has accepted those por-
tions of Christianity which he continues to teach. Thus, after
carefully explaining that the dogmas of the Trinity and the In-
carnation are but the result of the Greek metaphysical mind at
work upon the Gospel materials, he yet definitely announces, after
his own peculiar fashion, his belief in the divinity of Christ.

" There was something," he says, " in the nature of the great,
boundless Source of being called God which was capable of
sympathy with man. That something found outward expres-
sion, and became God, expressed under the essential limitations
of humanity in Jesus. That such a revelation was specially
necessary to the human race I believe; that such a revelation of
God was actually made to the world I believe. More than that
I cannot pledge myself to."

This is a confession of faith which we would greatly like to
see reduced to a simple and catechetical form. Not, however,
that such an effort could be needful, for Mr. Haweis, with true
liberality, is by no means anxious that his congregation should

342 AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. [Dec.,

believe as he does. They are equally at liberty to follow him
in his views or to form others for themselves. Take, for instance,
the often-discussed miracles of Christ. He admits frankly that
in his mature age, and after much study of the subject, he is far
from thinking that they never took place. But here the natural
though perverted honesty of the man involves him in a serious
perplexity. If the historical evidence of these miracles is, in his
judgment, satisfactory and complete, so are many of the mediae-
val miracles just as fully vouched for; and denying, as he does,
the infallible truth of the biblical narrative, he gives it as his
plain opinion that you cannot consistently accept one set of
proofs and reject the other. But, in case this be asking too much
of your credulity, he hastens to explain that he holds his own
mind in "a state of suspense" upon such matters, and that, if you
prefer it, you have the option of denying " all miracles whatever
as & priori impossibilities in any sense." In other words, you
are free to accept the records of the Italian saints or to look
upon the story of Lazarus either as a hollow farce or a deliber-
ate lie.

" Intellectual unbelief alone," says Mr. Haweis, " never
damned a man." And having thus insured his future immunity,
he proceeds to show how far a Christian clergyman can doubt.
Not that he objects to dogmas in the abstract, for, as he lucidly
remarks, " What is dogma ? Why, it is doctrine crystallized.
And what is doctrine? Simply the clearest statement of what
you believe that is your doctrine." His ideal church is one
which can shift her creeds to suit the shifting thoughts and feel-
ings of mankind, and be all things to all people in a new and
startling sense. The tenets admirably adapted for one epoch of
the world's history are, he maintains, totally unfit for another,
and should be altered or cast aside as the advance of knowledge
or science renders them untenable for a succeeding generation.
Truth sitting in her well is to be covered up with repeated
layers of gravel until a firm footing is gained for those who
build over her head. The doctrine of the infallibility of the
Roman Church, for instance, he considers to have been admir-
able in its day and productive of nothing but good. But when
the world had outgrown the necessity for such leading-strings
it was replaced by an infallible Bible, also an excellent institu-
tion for the time " when historical criticism hardly existed and
the nature of scientific truth was hardly understood." But now
he proudly asserts that " the day has happily gone by when,
burning with indignation against church authority, in a fit of

1884.] AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. 343

Protestant enthusiasm, you are called on to swallow the Bible
whole; it will do you no good so." And having cut that ground
also from beneath his followers' feet, he leaves them, some-
thing like the Neo-Platonites, " safely landed at the bottom of the
bottomless, and disporting themselves on the firm floor of the
primeval nothing." *

Indeed, the infallibility of the Bible is the subject of Mr.
Haweis' most repeated onslaughts. That and the doctrine of
Transubstantiation are the two points he combats most violently,
as though unconsciously aware of their supreme significance.
Yet he is ready to maintain that the Scriptures are inspired,
though not infallible, and he defends his anomalous position as a
clergyman of the Anglican Church with lawyer-like ability, hold-
ing, and not without reason, that the very action of the state in
remodelling the forms of faith was a protest against the fixedness
of such forms. He does not hesitate to declare that the only
ground for church authority is held by the Roman See, and that
in breaking away and substituting the authority of the Bible
the Church of England once for all sacrificed its claims to any.
such supremacy. What man has done he believes that man can
do again, and perhaps a little better the next time; and so, unde-
terred by any reverence for his forefathers, he lets loose upon
the Thirty-nine Articles the whole force of his satiric humor and
absolute disbelief. In regard to the 'first, which defines the doc-
trine of the Trinity, he sadly observes that " there was, no doubt,
some powerful meaning intended by the framers of this article
which to them did not seem opposed to common sense. But
they have not, so far as I can see, been fortunate in their at-
tempts to hand that meaning down to us." He would have the
whole thirty-nine remodelled, if possible ; and if not, gives it as
the best substitute to " twist them as publicly as possible. . . .
Theology must be modified in the long run to accord with the
best obtainable religious feeling and common sense."

These views are hardly calculated to place him high in favor
with his ecclesiastical superiors; but the fact remains the same
that he is an acknowledged minister of the Church of England,
believed by the devout to possess that . apostolic succession at
which he would be the first to scoff, and the one of all others
selected by the late Dean Stanley to preach the " Sermons for
the People " in Westminster Abbey. Nevertheless, he gives it
as his opinion that " Mr. Spurgeon is much nearer the practice
of apostolic times than the Established Church," and startles us

* Charles Kingsley.

344 AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. [Dec.,

now and then with such novel definitions as the following :
"Scientific agnosticism is the frank and respectable confession of
religious failure " ; or, better still, " Rationalism means infinite
sincerity, infinite aspiration, and infinite faith." Even the Old-
Testament narratives serve to give him impressions hardly
shared by ordinary readers, for he asserts that a careful study of
the first chapters of Genesis prove Adam to be "an uncultured
savage, of 'low intelligence and feebler will, giving way to the
first temptation that crossed his path, and worshipping a fetich
in the form of a serpent, such as the lowest savages worship to
this day." Which is a view of the subject we wish Milton could
have lived to hear.

To the Ten Commandments Mr. Haweis accords a serene and
rather condescending approval, though even here he cannot re-
frain from launching an arrow at the luckless Evangelicals, who,
while they have seldom succeeded in converting a Jew, have yet
been converted by the Jews in a wholesale fashion to the most
rigid form of Sabbatarianism. But now and then, in the midst
of much chaff and of much that is hurtful to the religious life,
there is sent forth a winged word which may carry its message
to any soul that listens ; as when it is pointed out to us how
strangely prone to sin we are at the very moments that life is
fairest in our eyes. " Because you are so happy," says this keen
observer sadly, " therefore you will be wicked." And again, in a
spirit of honest impatience at the petty calumnies so much in
vogue with a certain class of religious writers, he declares it to
be " a poor and always a dangerous policy to blacken the charac-
ter of men whose opinions you consider dangerous" a valuable
hint for many of those who undertake to criticise the Jesuits.

Towards that " great but noble failure of the High Church "
Mr. Haweis' attitude is one of determined hostility, unmixed
with any shadow of passion. He sees clearly enough that
what England had in view at the Reformation was something
vastly different from the present Ritualistic movement ; and he
complains that while the High-Church party are " picking out
carefully all the Prayer-Book allusions which bear them out, and
standing with one foot on these, they presently shuffle off and
stand with both feet on the early Roman Catholic foundation."
With that foundation he is familiar enough and often bears un-
conscious testimony of the truth. But, like many brilliant writers
of his-class, he is apt tobe betrayed by the charms of antithesis
into a painful neglect of sober and uncolored facts. Matthew
Arnold points one of his keenest aphorisms when he speaks of

1884.] AN APOSTLE OF DOUBT. 345

Macaulay's " confident shallowness " ; and the same phrase might
be applied without injustice to much that Mr. Haweis has writ-
ten. The Albigensian wars have been the subject of so much
intricate controversy that it is now almost impossible to clear
away the mists from all disputed points; but to say that the
Pope of Rome persecuted the Albigenses and Waldenses " for
the sole crime of leading better lives than the clergy, with fewer
forms and ceremonies," is the most astonishing way of stepping
over the difficulties, and as sadly unsupported by the facts of the
case as anything Macaulay has ever written.

So, too, it is rather out of date to say that the Roman See
opposed science, forbade the translation and circulation of the
Bible, or slaughtered the Huguenots; while to brand Leo X. as
a pagan is manifestly unjust, and to praise Pius IX. as an " Italian
Dean Stanley " is scarcely less fantastic, to Catholic ears. Yet
in this case, at least, Mr. Haweis' admiration is genuine and often
enthusiastic, notwithstanding his Garibaldian proclivities. He
cannot sufficiently wonder at the superb method by which the
late pontiff accomplished his master-strokes of spiritual diplo-
macy at the very moments when his temporal power waned
fast. He instances the founding of the episcopacy in England,
Holland, and Scotland, and "bows in reverence to his simple and
supreme disinterestedness." . . ."This," he says, " is the Pope's
spiritual strength, whatever else it may have been, that he bears
unfaltering witness in a doubting age to an outward and visible
church, to a spiritual world, to the immortality of the soul, the
real survival of loved and lost ones, to the reality of a commun-
ion between God and man ; and these messages will have vitality
long after our little systems have had their day." These are
strong words, but their praise does not say as much as the would-
be blame which follows when he laments, as the bane of the
Catholic Church, " its failure to recognize that all statements of
truth are only approximate and must make way for new ones."

Out of the mouth of her enemies is she glorified, and Mr.
Haweis finds in the papacy a power which he is quick to recog-
nize, though slow to understand. He writes of the early popes
half in awe, half in love, unable to embrace the largeness of their
mission, yet struck with wondering admiration of their fitness
to fulfil it. " Theirs," he exclaims, " was the church of Christ
built upon the rock of Peter, while the heathen raged furiously
in the succumbing struggle, and one earthly dynasty after an-
other crumbled to pieces around the changeless papal throne."

346 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Dec.,

STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY
A.D. 1570-76.

" Can it be that there is no bright reversion beyond the stars for those who nobly think
and bravely die ?"

BEFORE entering upon the forgotten or misrepresented in-
cidents of English history I must remark that the most terrible
period in the history of the Tower, and that which has been most
deliberately falsified, even to the present time, from sectarian
motives, was that of the reign of Elizabeth. Amongst the
historical records of the Tower of London there are many
matters which possess a special interest for Catholics. To the
old English Catholic families every apartment, every little nook
or corner, in those historic buildings has deep and lasting
memories " half sunshine, half tears." Not always a prison-
house, for centuries the kings and queens of England resided
in the Tower at certain periods of the year. The romantic King
Stephen kept court there at Whitsuntide; also Henry III., Ed-
ward IV., Henry VI., and later sovereigns. Amongst its cap-
tives were such men as Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More;
likewise the Countess of Salisbury, who was horribly de-
spatched with the axe ; and from the Tower the beautiful Lady
Bulmer was sent to the flames in Smithfield. She died grandly.
" I have come here," says Lady Bulmer, " to die for the olden
religion of England. I have nothing to regret ; and I rejoice
and thank my God that I am given an opportunity of offering
up my life for the true faith of Jesus Christ."

The execution of Margaret Clitheroe is the most horrible in-
cident in the reign of Elizabeth ; yet the English reader is kept
in utter ignorance of the rack and Toppcliff s " new mode of tor-
ture." Mrs. Clitheroe was executed at York.

In after-years the story of Tutbury and Fotheringay " fre-
quently made Queen Elizabeth tremble." So writes Lady South-
well. Elizabeth in old age had a strong presentiment that her
remains would be dishonored after death. Her pictures were re-
moved from the place where they were to be seen in her lifetime.
King James " would not permit any mourning to be got up for
her' 1 He also released from the Tower several ladies who were
imprisoned for twenty and thirty years for the "rights of con-
science." The members of the ducal house of Norfolk were in-

1884.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 347

vited to court ; also the widow of the unfortunate Lord Essex,
who was sent to the scaffold tivo hours after the death-warrant was
signed. It was no wonder for the ladies of the court to state
that the approaches to the royal chamber on the " last dread
night of Elizabeth's life were filled with fluttering ghosts."

It is stated by Blanch Parry that in childhood Queen Eliza-
beth met with poverty ; for it is recorded amongst the old tradi-
tions once known in Hunsdon that after the execution of Anna
Boleyn little Elizabeth had no shoes for three months, and was in
tattered garments like a peasant child. The Princess Mary, hearing
of her condition, caused a search to be made for her, and the
child was found in the humble cottage of a gardener named Tom
Sparrow, whose wife was very fond of the unknown child. Cath-
erine Parr's little daughter was in a similar condition.

THE NORTHERN REBELLION.

The Northern Rebellion proved most disastrous to the inte-
rests of the English Catholics. The projected marriage between
the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots brought ruin upon
those who were favorable to this political union for a poli-
tical union it was intended to be, and nothing else.* Whilst
residing in Carlisle the Queen of Scots was visited by the
Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, also the Duke of
Norfolk and his sister, Lady Scrope. Mary Stuart was highly
pleased with the'enthusiasm of her heroic champions in the field,
especially Northumberland ; still, she could perceive that both
lacked that calm judgment necessary to conduct such a doubly
hazardous undertaking as that proposed. The present object of
the insurgent lords was immediately, or as soon as practicable, to
release the Queen of Scots and at once salute her Queen of Eng-
land a title to which she had a claim both in law and equity.
Then they expected a more general rising. Lord Hunsdon,
anticipating this military action, suggested that the royal cap-
tive should be removed from Tutbury immediately. Hunsdon
writes thus to Sir William Cecil : " For God's sake let the pris-
oner [Mary] not remain any longer where she is, for the great
force of the rebels consists of good horsemen full of courage
and daring." f Lord Hunsdon's advice was promptly adopted,
and in the dead of night Mary Stuart and her faithful la-
dies were hurried away to Coventry, where they were closely

* The Queen of Scots was a widow for the second time, and Norfolk had buried thret
wives

t Lord Hunsdon to Sir William Cecil ; Border Secret Correspondence.

348 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Dec.,

confined. The insurgents were within a few hours' march of
Tutbury at the time, and the news of this disaster for disaster
it proved to be cast a gloom over the Stuart party in England.
Disappointed in their hopes of effecting Mary's release, the lead-
ers of the movement determined to retrace their steps ; and, in
their situation, retreat was ruin. Disaffection and disorder fol-
lowed. Lord Hunsdon's cavalry pursued a number of the insur-
gents during the night, slaughtering them without mercy or pity.
Hundreds of English farmers were hanged at their own doors, and
their wives and daughters outraged in a manner that covers the name
of Queen ElizabeiJis soldiers with everlasting infamy. It was only
in unhappy Ireland that greater atrocities had been perpetrated
by English soldiers. For days, weeks, and months those scenes
continued. Burning houses over the heads of women and chil-
dren was the amusement of the hired mercenaries of Elizabeth.
Whether by accident or design, there were ten Catholics hanged
for one Protestant on this occasion.

La Motte FeneMeon, the French ambassador, in his secret
despatches assures the French government that since the days
of the Pilgrims of Grace, under Henry VIII., no such wanton
massacres of men, women, and children took place in England.
At a later period Sir Amyas Paulet stated that " those severities
were necessary in order to promote the growth of Protestantism
in England." And again, on the morning of the execution of the
Queen of Scots, the Earl of Kent addressed the royal captive in
these words: " Madame, your life would be the death of our reli-
gion, and your death will be its preservation" To this believer in
the essentially political existence of Protestantism Mary Stuart
replied : " O glorious thought, that I should be chosen to die
for such a cause!" Long-hidden facts can only reach the
Catholic reader through such agencies as THE CATIIOLIQ

TTT

WORLD magazine.

To return to the Stuart insurrection. While Queen Elizabeth
and her council were exulting over the recent massacres in the
north of England a meeting of Scottish nobles and chiefs was
held near Linlithgow. They sat in deliberation for several days.
This " Council of State " represented nearly all parties in Scot-
land ; Chatelherault presided. Amongst those present were
Lords Argyle, Huntley, Atholl, Sutherland, Fleming, and a few-
influential chiefs. Several outlawed Englishmen took part in
the proceedings. Lords Dacre and Westmoreland met with an
enthusiastic reception from the Scots. Those brave and chival-

* Martyre de Marie Stuart.

1884.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 349

rous noblemen assured the council that they joined heartily with
their Scottish friends in the struggle to restore Queen Mary.
Lord Westmoreland had the imprudence to inform this public
meeting that he himself, and many thousands of his countrymen,
looked upon the captive of Tutbury .Castle as their lawful sov-
ereign, and not the daughter of " wicked Nan de Bouleine."
Westmoreland's indiscreet language did much injury to the
cause he honestly advocated. The French party were repre-
sented at the council by De Virac. Sir John Gordon was
unanimously selected by the Scotch council to wait upon Queen
Elizabeth and respectfully demand the restoration of their
sovereign lady, Queen Mary. They further protested against
the violation of their country by English armies, who, by their
wanton destruction of life and property, placed themselves be-
yond the pale of civilized nations.* The excitement caused in
Scotland by the conduct of England to the people of that country
became for a time of serious interest. Randolph, then residing
in Edinburgh, had to retire to Berwick to avoid the fury of the
populace. f " The friends of England at Edinburgh," writes Mr.
Froude, " were appalled by the vacillation of Elizabeth at this
time "(1570). The " vacillation," however, was only apparent;
for in the deep recesses of the English queen's heart was evident-
ly written her undying hatred of everything and everybody who
sought to uphold the interests, or even safeguard the life, of
Mary Stuart. In 1570 there were a number of disaffected Eng-
lish along the Border Countrie, also a few desperate men from
Ireland. When Elizabeth became acquainted with the proceed-
ings of the council and especially with the fact that her " rebel
subjects were present and well received " she stormed in a ter-
rific fit of passion, stamped her foot, and uttered her usual oaths,
that the Scots should dare thus openly to insult her by re-
ceiving in their councils her traitor subjects and listening un-
checked to their rebellious words. " Vengeance is mine," ex-
claimed the English queen, with blasphemous Biblical familiarity.
An army of some five thousand men was quickly assembled at
Berwick; the chief command of this force was given to Lord
Sussex a man well acquainted with the art of shooting down
and hanging from the trees unarmed men and supplicating
women, and then burning houses over young and old. The
leading men of the "rebel confederation," as the adherents

* Despatches of the French envoy, De Virac ; Proceedings of the Convention at Linlith-
gow ; MS. of Adam Gordon.

t Sir Thomas Randolph to Lord Sussex.

350 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Dec.,

of Mary Stuart were called in the reign of Elizabeth, had
escaped and were beyond the reach of the English govern-
ment or the Scotch regent (Lord Moray) ; but the unfor-
tunate Earl of Northumberland fell into the hands of Lord
Moray by the vilest means that could disgrace the officials
of any land. It is affirmed that Queen Elizabeth instructed
Sir William Cecil "to do his utmost to decoy Northumberland
into England." It is, however, only fair to the queen to state
that Cecil required "no promptings" from his royal mistress
when a despotic or base action was to be perpetrated in her
behoof. So a plan was quickly arranged. Robert Constable, a
Yorkshire gentleman, " a near relative and a Catholic -a profess-
ing one and a bosom-friend," as he describes himself, of North-
umberland, was engaged to play the character of a traitor of
the basest type. Constable crossed the Boeder, and, after some
disguise and treachery, discovered the hiding-place of his con-
fiding and high-minded cousin, Northumberland. He immediate-
ly made professions of hearty loyalty to the cause of the English
outlaws, and, above all, brotherly love for his kinsman. No
suspicion crossed the mind of Northumberland and his outlawed
companions. They hailed their visitor as a noble and disin-
terested friend. The next step taken by Constable was to
write to Sir Ralph Sadler, informing him how "far he had got
into the confidence of his ' beloved cousin ' and the other con-
federates, whom he had advised to return to England." Queen
Elizabeth rejoiced to hear of this intelligence from her secretary.
Constable was promised a large sum, to be paid down in gold,
if he succeeded in bringing the Earl of Northumberland and his
friends within the territory of the English queen. In order to
disarm suspicion Constable spent a night at Jedburg, in a house
which was the resort of the most desperate men who wan-
dered along the Border Countrie. Those outlaws, as they may
fairly be styled, presented a strange mixture of the most opposite
characteristics ; they were profuse in their hospitality, and it re-
mained a mystery as to where the money came from. No one
dared to ask such a question.

THE BORDER OUTLAWS.

A Swedish traveller observes that " thieves, outlaws, rebels,
and patriots, of various shades of opinion, found an asylum in
the Border Countrie and lived on good terms ; but when an
English spy became known he was hanged from the nearest
tree and his body quickly removed." The writer adds: "The

1884.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 351

poorest of this mixed community spurned the gold cautiously
offered by the agents of Queen Elizabeth, several of whom were
killed on suspicion of tracking English or Irish outlaws. The
outlaws of the Border Countrie were very popular with the
Scotchwomen, of whom many romantic narratives have been
related."

Some of those exiled Englishmen were admirable story-tellers.
They had travelled over the Continental cities and towns, and
were well informed as to the scandal-gossip of many high cir-
cles. They were recklessly brave and well acquainted with
fire-arms and sword-exercise. As to religion they were no
bigots; some were professing Catholic, others Protestant, but
all were true to the brotherhood, and Mary Stuart was their
idol. The Protestant outlaws were, perhaps, the most enthusi-
astic supporters of the Queen of Scots. Pictures and memen-
tos of .the royal captive were to be seen in the apartments of
the exiles. The name of the high-minded and faithful Jane Ken-
nedy was lovingly toasted after that of the Queen of Scots.
The time was passed amidst conviviality and danger, whilst
treason-plots were continually progressing with daring courage.
Queen Elizabeth had her spies in the Border Countrie, as well
as in other districts, but a deadly fate awaited them the mo-
ment they were discovered. No mercy was extended, in any
form, to a spy or an informer. An outlaw against either the
English or the Scotch government was welcome and defended
to the death. From what Constable witnessed in the Border
Countrie he had not sufficient courage to attempt his desperate
scheme of treachery. So it fell through. Another bravo, named
Hector Armstrong, suddenly appeared upon the scene. This
man was ready to undertake any adventure, ready to commit
any crime, for gold. Few, however, even of his employers,
trusted him, and Walsingham considered him "a dangerous
man." Moray, the regent, having received private information
from Armstrong that the Earl of Northumberland was at the
house of Mr. Elliott, where a number of the supporters of the
Queen of Scots were at supper, a party of men in the interest of
Moray attacked the house. The outlaws were instantly roused
to action, and they made a desperate fight, several being killed
and wounded. The gallant Percy defended himself bravely, but
was made a prisoner and carried oft ; he was subsequently
lodged in Lochleven Castle, where he remained a close prisoner
for two years. His arrest and detention were opposed to all
international law and precedent. A writer upon the " extra-

352 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Dec.,

ordinary doings of the Border men " assures us " that Hector
Armstrong, who was comparatively rich before the above events,
fell shortly after into poverty, although he received .300 from
Moray or Lord Marr for betraying his friend." Universal exe-
cration was raised against Armstrong. The " Border women
cursed him on bended knees, and the children screamed at the
mention of his name." *

During the time Northumberland resided amongst the out-
laws he was treated with marked respect and kindness by the
poorer class, who were all devoted to the cause of the Queen of
Scots. It is stated that either Morton or Moray was present at
the capture of Northumberland ; but I think this statement is
highly improbable, for about the quarter where the earl was
arrested resided the deadly personal enemies of Moray and
Morton, and it is not likely that either of them would escape
death in the " hand-to-hand " struggle which took place on the
night of the noble outlaw's arrest. Armstrong was formerly
under many obligations to Lord Northumberland when residing
in London. But this was the age of base actions. John Knox
and Lord Moray corresponded with Cecil as to what means
should be adopted to " hunt down the wandering rebels of the
Borders."

Whilst negotiations were pending between Elizabeth and the
Scotch regent for the " betrayal and sale " of Lord Northumber-
land the career of Moray was suddenly brought to a close by the
well-aimed shot of one of his victims Hamilton Haugh.

TUTBURY CASTLE.

In this narrative I cannot pass over Tutbury and its sur-
roundings. It is situated on the south bank of the river Dove,
which parts the counties of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. The
ancient village of Tutbury is about five miles from Needwood
Forest, once connected with the ballad lore and legendary ex-
ploits of Robin Hood and his fair vanquisher, Clarinda. The
Castle of Tutbury was originally a Roman fortress, but had been
several times rebuilt and experienced frequent changes of mas-
ters. Mercian princes, Norman chiefs, and king-defying barons
had in turn made Tutbury Castle their stronghold. It had been
connected with the tragic story of the unfortunate Thomas, Earl
of Lancaster, and associated with the splendor of the haughty
John of Gaunt, who founded there his "Court of Minstrels."

* Ratclyff's Anecdotes of the Outlaws in the Border Countrie ; Ridpath's Border History;
Crawford's Memoirs of Border Life.

1884.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 353

Th.e castle was for a long- period considered a place of impreg-
nable strength. It was girded with a broad moat nearly thirty
feet in depth, surrounded with lofty walls, ramparts, and flanking
towers of defence, enclosing three acres of ground, the only ac-
cess to it being by means of a drawbridge. In this gloomy for-
tress the unfortunate Queen of Scots was closely confined for
nearly fifteen years. The reader can form some idea of the treat-
ment which the royal captive received at Tutbury from the re-
port made by the deputy-jailer to the Queen's Council: "The
woman (Mary Stuart) is well watched by day and by night. The
queen and her ministers may rest assured that the woman (Stuart;)
has no possible chance of escape, unless she could transform herself into
a flea or a miserable little mouse." * Another official states that at
this very period no servant of the captive queen could speak to
one another unless in the presence of Lord Shrewsbury's spies.
The Queen of Scots was not permitted to open her lips to any
one of her attendants, unless in the presence of one of the Talbot
family. All her letters were in the hands of the jailers ; and
Mary Stuart's interviews with her physician were also in the
presence of spies. The priest was Imnted out altogether.

Gilbert Talbot, the deputy-jailer, received the " congratula-
tions " of Queen Elizabeth for the manner in which he per-
formed his duties at Tutbury Castle. In the face of the State
Papers on Tutbury and its royal prisoner Mr. Froude asserts that
the " plot to assassinate Lord Moray was originally formed in the
household of Mary Stuart, if she herself was not the principal mover
in it." f

THE BETRAYAL AND SALE OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

To return to the noble prisoner pining in Lochleven Castle for a
period of two years. The Countess of Northumberland a most
devoted wife and a high-spirited and patriotic woman went to
the Low Countries, where, with laudable devotion, she contrived to
collect the sum of two thousand pounds as a ransom for her hus-
band.^: Lords Marr and Morton accepted the money offered, and
next privately communicated with the Queen of England and
Lord Burleigh (Cecil) as to what sum they were inclined to pay.

* Gilbert Talbot, deputy-jailer, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, May n, 1571. This precious
document is to be seen amongst the Tutbury Castle State Papers (most secret) concerning- the
Queen of Scots.

t Froude's History of England, vol. ix. p. 595.

\ At a later period the Countess of Northumberland wandered through Scotland in a state
of destitution until aided by the ladies of the noble house of Montrose. The Scotchwomen
were always true to the standard of the unfortunate Stuarts.
VOL. XL. 23

354 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Dec.,

Burleigh proposed to double the amount already offered by the
Countess of Northumberland, whilst the Scotch knaves increased
their demand upon the English council to ten thousand pounds,
all to be paid down in gold on the day that Lord Northum-
berland was delivered up to the agents of the English queen.
Queen Elizabeth, in her usual stj-le, denounced the proposal as
" an extortion ; she would pay no such sum." " Then," said Lord
Morton in his letter, " your highness will not have the immense
pleasure of cutting off the head of your rebel subject." The
queen took ten days to consider the matter. At the end of the
time named she agreed to pay the sum demanded.

"Even in that ruthless age," remarks Mr. Hosack, "the giv-
ing up of a fugitive to certain death was regarded as a heinous
crime." In the eyes of William Cecil and Francis Walsingham
such a crime became a venial offence, or one justified on the
broad ground of expediency. Of all the actors in this infamous
transaction, Morton, in the opinion of his contemporaries, in-
curred the largest share of guilt. It was given out that North-
umberland was to be conveyed in a Scotch ship to Antwerp and
there set free. He therefore joyfully left his gloomy prison at
Lochleven and 'embarked on the Frith of Forth, as he believed,
for Antwerp, where his wife and friends awaited his arrival. To
his astonishment and dismay he found that the vessel, instead
of putting out to sea, ran down the coast off Berwickshire and
anchored near Coldingham. Lord Hunsdon went on board the
vessel, when John Colville, a " Scotch gentleman," delivered to
Queen Elizabeth's political agent the unfortunate Earl of North-
umberland. The gold was then paid down in a business-like
manner. Northumberland underwent an examination which
lasted six weeks ; but he criminated no man, betrayed no one.
John Colville, who aided in entrapping the Earl of Northumber-
land, had originally been a Presbyterian minister. He next took
to the " politics of the times, and became a spy for both parties."
His treachery was revolting. He was the author of some blas-
phemous tracts against Christian principles. He was also said
to have been the writer of a life of King James VI. Like many
of the political adventurers and dagger-men of those times, he
died in poverty, abandoned by his corrupt patrons and false
friends.

Queen Elizabeth sent her final command, or judgment, to Lord
Hunsdon to bring his prisoner immediately to York, where her
highness " commanded " that he should die on the public scaffold
as a rebel and a traitor. Northumberland had no trial, but was

1884.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 355

simply impeached nothing proved against him, and no witness
to make even a false statement. Lord Hunsdon, although a
rough soldier, seemed shocked at this proceeding on the part of
his royal mistress. He wrote to Burleigh that " he would not
lead the noble prisoner to the scaffold ; some other person must
be found to perform that degrading office "; and, further, " he
would, rather than obey the queen's command in this matter,
go to prison at once."* Sir John Foster described as " a high-
minded knight " on whom the queen conferred a large portion
of Northumberland's property, undertook the superintending
of the execution. In Elizabeth's letters to Lord Hunsdon she
desires that he should hold out hopes to his prisoner of a par-
don in case he implicated others amongst the outlawed English-
men beyond the Borders, and induced them to return to England.
But When her highness was assured by Hunsdon that North-
umberland was " resolved to be true to his unfortunate coun-
trymen to the death," she became much excited, and, addressing
her cousin, Hunsdon, said: "So this traitor Percy is rather
stuck-up and proud, and will not bend before his queen. Then,
by God, I will make the remainder of his life as miserable as possi-
ble. I understand that he is fond of savory belly-cheer. Let him
have no food but of the poorest description, and not much of that;
let it be just fit for a roadside beggar. I wish to humble this
proud Percy to the dust."

The queen was disappointed. Percy died in a manner
worthy of the descendants of Hotspur. He scorned to beg for
his life, and seemed quite unconcerned as to what action the
queen might take against him. To his honor be it told, Lord
Hunsdon did not in this case comply with his sovereign's com-
mand, for he brought his chivalrous and warm-hearted prisoner
to his own table and treated him with all the respect due to a
descendant of the Border chiefs.

The Earl of Northumberland knew little of the political in-
trigues that surrounded him. He was unfitted by nature, study,
or general habits to become the leader of a political movement
like that of the disaffected English Catholics, who had to com-
bat with difficulties unknown in other countries. The Earl of
Northumberland was " merely a country gentleman," but was
immensely popular for his fine social qualities. Lord Hunsdon
relates that he found him far more ready to talk of his horses,
hounds, and hawks than of the grave charges of high treason

* Lord Hunsdon's letter to Sir William Cecil is printed in Sharpe's History of the Northern
Rebellion, p. 331 ; also Ridpath's History and Ratclyff's Border Anecdotes.

356 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Dec.,

preferred against him. He delighted in relating anecdotes of
the fox or of some favorite huntsman in the by-gone. He was
intimate with the principal sporting gentlemen of England, and
the famous story-tellers and strolling players were always wel-
come at his baronial castles, where profuse hospitality " awaited
all comers, high and low." The number of guests was conside-
rable, and the servants and retainers averaged three hundred
and sixty men and women. In the early part of the reign of
Henry VIII. the Percy property was far more extensive. Tak-
ing " all the surroundings " of this nobleman into account, it is
no wonder that he was beloved, and his sad fate lamented by so
many of his countrymen and women.

THE EXECUTION OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

The 22d of August, 1572, was the day named by Queen Eliza-
beth for the execution of the Earl of Northumberland. The
bloody scene took place at York. The earl ascended the scaf-
fold with a firm step. A spectator says : " His dress was ele-
gant, and his fine person never looked to greater advantage.
He advanced to the front of the large scaffold, accompanied
by his confessor, Father Talbot, and an Irish Dominican friar
named Hubert de Burgh, his physician (Dr. Shadwell), and
two gentlemen of his household." Lord Hunsdon had some
difficulty in procuring this indulgence from the queen, who
was inclined to listen to the suggestion of Lord Leicester
namely, that the rebel earl should not have the " benefit of
clergy." The crown was represented by the high-sheriff, Sir
John Foster, the executioners, and several officials. A strong
military guard of horse and foot was at every point surround-
ing the scaffold. Father Talbot having held up a crucifix, the
murmur in the vast crowd became hushed.* Northumberland
appeared to be deeply affected. He gazed upon the crowd
again, and then kissed the crucifix. He addressed the people-
men and women in a firm and dignified tone. " He assured
them that he regretted nothing that he had done. He wished to
tell the people of England that he would die as he had lived,
a true and devoted member of the Church of Rome. He con-
sidered Queen Elizabeth as a usurper and the illegitimate off-
spring of Nan de Bouleyn and King Henry VIII. He looked
upon the Queen of Scots as his lawful sovereign, being the

* Catholicity was not crushed out of the rural districts at this period far from it ; for it
was represented by many brave and loving hearts, men and women, true to the cause as the
dial is to the sun.

1884.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 357

grandniece of the late King Henry." He next bade all his
friends and retainers farewell. After a pause, in which he sur-
veyed the vast crowd once more, he said : " Remember that I
die in the communion of the Catholic Church, and that I am a
Percy in life and in death. Now, dear friends, I wish'you all a
long farewell. Pray for me."

Northumberland then knelt down with the priests and his
immediate attendants. The people followed the example. After
the lapse of a quarter of an hour the final preparations began
by the noble victim taking off his coat and stripping his neck.
A fresh murmur now ran through the crowd, followed by the
sobbing of widows and orphans who were depending on the
bounty of the noble owner of Alnwick Castle. The excitement
became greater upon the appearance of the headsmen and their
assistants, who came upon the scene flushed with carnificial vic-
tory from another execution. The " finishing of the law " was
conducted in a cruel and disgraceful manner. A blunt carpen-
ter's axe was used, and the executioners were, as usual, in a
state of drunkenness. For several minutes they were chopping at
the neck of the unfortunate earl, who, in a faint voice, at inter-
vals exclaimed : " Jesus, have mercy upon my soul ! " The blood
was flowing in a stream. At last one of the executioners held up
the convulsed and blood-streaming head to tJu gaze of the excited mul-
titude.

The high rank and ancient lineage of the Earl of Northum-
berland, the disgraceful circumstances attending his betrayal by
the Scots, and his steadfast adherence to the olden faith of Eng-
land created a profound sensation throughout the realm ; in fact,
all the great cities of Europe felt indignant at the conduct of
Queen Elizabeth in this special case, in which her highness set
aside the law even such a show of that arbitrary weapon as she
used on other occasions. But worse than all was her purchase
of the noble victim from the regent of Scotland for the sum of
ten thousand pounds, paid down in gold on the delivery of the
prisoner, who, according to the usage of all civilized nations,
then as well as now, was entitled to protection and hospitality
in Scotland, against whose laws he had not offended. There
was no second opinion on this matter throughout Europe, and it
hands down to infamous reproach the character of the Scottish
regent (Lord Marr), Queen Elizabeth, and Sir William CeciL

358 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER IV.
A COMEDY AND A PLAY.

FLORIAN'S relations with Ruth, he himself had to admit, were
not of the most hopeful kind. In two years he had not exchanged
words or letters with her, and from the various reports which
acquaintances from Clayburg incidentally gave him he could see
that she had settled down to the new life with her usual good
sense and determination to forget the past. It appeared, too, that
she had become literary in her tastes, and was a welcome contri-
butor to many publications. As far as his hopes were concerned
they seemed ridiculous, yet absence might have done consider-
able for him. He knew she once held him dearer than herself,
and Ruth was not quick to forget. If he had kept her sweet
image in his heart through all the blandishments of metropolitan
society and its handsomest and best women, through all the tur-
moil of political life and the hard study of his profession, was it
not more likely that in the noble solitudes of the north, amid
scenes the more dear because he had once lived amongst them,
with Linda's grave on the hillside to remind her of the dear
child's fondest wishes, his image would fade more slowly
from her mind and the old love die harder in her heart ? Per-
haps she was entertaining the same hopes that shared his loneli-
ness, and the quiet study and prayer of those years of separation
might have led her so near to the fold that to marry her would
bring her safely in. On the other hand, he remembered, with a
sigh, Ruth's rigid conscientiousness, which would make it a duty
to dismiss every thought of him from her mind until time would
allow her to look upon him merely as a friend. She had no claim
on him, and that was enough. The dead heart of Linda would
not beat more coldly than hers when they met again if this last
supposition was correct, and yet he prayed Linda's prayer the
more fervently as all these fierce doubts crowded on him, " that
we may meet again."

At all events, Florian was beginning to feel that to marry was
becoming for him a political necessity. His popularity was in-
creasing too rapidly with the mob to be other than dangerous for

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 359

one whose youth, want of wealth, and wide social standing were
embarrassing. He did not yet know his own leaders well, and
his slowly-extending influence was but imperfectly recognized by
them. He did not wish to advance too rapidly. He had no de-
sire to walk to power over the heads of older, wealthier, and en-
vious men, whose power might be used to crush him at the start.
His aim was to become a weight, an authority, a support to the
party and its representatives, and to disclaim any wish for office
until the force of circumstances, the fitness of things, would place
a position in his grasp. In the meantime the work of his profes-
sion would take up most of his time; he could gather in his shek-
els for political needs, select and strengthen his friends and sup-
porters, and by his social qualities make and secure the acquaint-
ance of the great of every field.

But social prominence, he thought, required an immediate and
advantageous marriage. He cared very little for wealth, and his
bride need have for her dower no more than the graces which
make a woman popular beaut}', fine carriage, a mind above the
average, and respectable birth. Ruth had all these, and what a
joy to him if his ambition could follow whither his heart led !
But if not, what was he to do? There were other women in the
world with some of the necessary qualifications, and Frances
Lynch was one of them. Her mother had been a noted belle
in her time, and enjoyed the friendship of remarkable men and
women. A De Ponsonby keeping a boarding-house was a little
irregular, but sucfh a boarding-house ! Only the most extraordi-
nary lights of society and intellect gained admittance within its
portals; and madame, although guilty of a blunder in marrying
an Irishman with some brains, good birth, and moderate fortune,
never lost her power in the world of society on that account.
Frances inherited her mother's wit and beauty. Now that she
appeared to him in the light of a possible wife, he began to per-
ceive that she had made a deep impression on him. She was
slight and willowy in form, with a woman's full height, and a
grace of manner entrancing if haughty. He remembered how
transparent her face was, and how delicate its outline; how the
sunlight gleamed through her yellow hair ; what a magnificent
look the blue eyes could fling; the sweetness of her voice ; the
beauty of her mouth, teeth, and smile; the gentleness and wo-
manliness of her disposition, and her winning and candid ways.
He had to admit that beside "her Ruth seemed quite plain.
And, moreover, Frances was a Catholic and very devout, to all
appearances. What her faults were he did not know, as he

360 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

never looked for them. It seemed a little odd, even to his pre-
sent changed conditions of thought, that before the old hopes
died he should thus be looking for an object on which to found
new ones, but it was an old trick with his calculating nature,
which political habits had intensified. He went off on the spur
of the moment to look for her, and study her a little more
closely. It was early yet, and she had returned from Mass and
was reading in the common sitting-room alone. Her plain-
colored walking-dress contrasted very well with the light colors
of the room, her light hair and pale face. She looked up with a
grave smile of recognition as he entered. Always gay with most
people, she had a softer mood for him.

" Your speech of last night," said she, " does not seem to have
agreed with you. You are very pale."

" If a man could have a woman's powers for talking ! " he re-
plied. " I feel that nature has not been just to politicians and
orators."

"Or to women," said she. "It is fair to suppose you have
usurped our positions when we have qualifications which you
have not for orating."

" You have not all the qualifications," said he. " Will you
pardon me for saying that sound and sense should always go
together?"

" And will you pardon me for not believing that every male
orator possesses the two? Think of all the congressional and
legislatorial talkers ! Oh ! what oceans of sound, and not buoy-
ant enough to float ten particles of sense \ "

He hardly noticed the reply. He was looking into her eyes,
at her gestures, her sweet smile, and, seeing it, she prudently
turned her back on him by going to the piano. " I have a new
piece," said she, "from our own choir-leader, and, as you know
the man, you will certainly enjoy it."

"Yes," said he, coming to turn the music. " There will be a
furious crash at the start, like the clatter he makes at the open-
ing of dinner, and after it will be mouthfuls of sound, choked
partly by his endeavors to stutter out an idea. The finale will
be simply awful."

She began smilingly to play a single melody with her right
hand, a sweet, weird, plaintive cry like that from a broken heart,
and from beginning to end there were no louder sounds than
a gentle forte. The finale was the repetition of the opening.
She was wrapt in the music and he in the musician, yet his
thoughts were off on the great river's shores with that other

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 361

girl, beside whom he had stood thus many a time with a lover's
proud privilege. When she looked up at him for appreciation
his look, fixed on her so intently, almost startled her.

" Why, Mr. Wallace," she began, "are you ill?"

"I did not think the old gentleman could write such music
or dream it," he said, recalled to perfect self-possession. " You
played it, too, in such a way that it seemed to be part of your-
self, and I hardly knew whether to weep over the music or the
musician."

Frances looked at him in mock amazement, and laughed a
nervous laugh. To him it sounded so very sweet !

" A compliment from the politician," said she. " O Mr. Wal-
lace ! you are not true to your colors."

" Always to speak the truth," said a heavy voice at the door,
" is the chief virtue of the statesman." .

And both looking, saw Peter standing there with his hands in
his pockets and a sullen look on his heavy face. It might have
been the memory of the night's carouse or some other feeling,
but his presence put Florian to flight at once, and Frances would
have gone also but that he insisted on her playing " St. Patrick's
Day " and the " Minstrel Boy " with variations.

" That's a fine air," said he, with reference to the last, which
was his favorite. " It takes Paul to write such poethry, girl. I
think he could beat that if he tried. Girls like the boys that
write poethry, don't they, Frank?"

" Every one likes poets," said Frances, withdrawing from the
room.

" Ay," said Peter to himself, " but not as well as elegant,
addle-headed lawyers, when the poets are poor and the lawyers
rich ; but I'll fix ye both, if I lose a dinner for it."

Peter was in a vicious mood, both from the potations of the
preceding night and from another cause, which declared itself
wrathfully a few moments later in Madame Lynch's presence.

" I told ye," said Peter, as he sat down familiarly in the easy
chair, "that ye never would know how to bring up a child, and
that ye never deserved to have one, with yer curls an' pomade,
an' poke-bonnets an' furb'lows, an' trimmin's an' nonsense. I
told ye, and now yer goin' to reap the reward o' yer sins."

" What's the matter now?" said madame, calmly.

" Matter now ! " grunted Peter. " Modesty was a quality of
most women I knew, but your daughter hasn't any a mere
bundle of fashions ; an' I won't stand it any longer, bad cess to
ye ! Am I goin' to see her damned and not say a word ? "

362 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

" What difference will it make to you if she be damned ?" said
madame, sneeringly. " Wouldn't you like company ? "

" Sportin' with that lawyer below, the the witch ! He makin'
faces at her an' she softenin' him with music. The omadhaun !
that has no more heart than a stone. It's a gizzard he has ! An'
he won't be a Catholic within ten years, he's such a poor wan
now. I tell ye I won't stand it ! "

" Evidently you have a grievance of some kind," said ma-
dame : " pray what is it? And, if you can, speak plainly."

" I've seen through ye, ma'am " ; and Peter leered at the ele-
gant lady. " I've seen through yer daughter too; an' I know yer
just dyin' to get the lawyer into the family. But I swear if she
tries it I'll blow on yer scheme ; I will, be all creation ! An' I'll
go to him meself an' tell him the whole thing."

" Wait a minute," said madame sternly.

" Wait a minute! " snapped Peter ; but he recognized the tone
which madame used, and kept growling in a prudent minor key.
" Wait ! I'll be hanged if I'll wait one second."

" There's a little debt of yours just sent me this morning,"
said madame, " and I was trying to decide whether it would be
better to pay it or stop it out of your monthly allowance."

" Oh ! ah ! " said Peter, slightly confused.

" And, then, Mrs. Brown was here this morning to tell me her
front room is vacant, and I thought it wiser that you should remove
yourself there, for you are getting too coarse for this elegance."

" Elegance be hanged ! " said Peter warmly ! " What do I
care for you and yer elegance? I'll go to Mrs. Brown's, if ye
wish me to, or to the divil."

" Don't hurry," said madame graciously ; " you'll meet your
old friend soon enough."

"But I'll ruin ye, I'll ruin ye!" he stormed. "I'll tell the
whole story to the lawyers, poets, and greatnesses, I will, and
end yer fine plottin'."

" There are some papers here," said madame, " which I will
read for you. You need quieting, you dear, foolish old man.
And if it is necessary to remove you from Mrs. Brown's front
room, your next journey, I fear, will be to prison."

" Oh ! ah ! " said Peter, collapsing suddenly. " But sure yer
not goin' to send me to Mrs. Brown's ; ye wouldn't turn out an
old man from such comfortable quarters?"

" You are so boisterous when you drink," said madame ; " you
make so many threats, you interfere so unwarrantably in the
affairs of strangers, that really "

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 363

" I'm not boisterous," Peter asserted, " and I never in me
whole life made threats to any wan. Did I make threats?" he
added, innocently. " Ton me honor I was dreamin', an' had no
more idea of the meanin' o' what I said than the man in the
moon. I'll say nothin'. I'll be quiet as a lamb. I won't open me
mouth, good or bad, if ye say so. But, of course, ye'll excuse
me anxiety for Paul. It was Paul I was thinkin* of, for I knew
he was in love with Frances ; arid he's such a beautiful creature,
an' it isn't fair that the lawyer should have everything, as ye
must admit yerself when ye come to think of it."

"Did Paul tell you as much?" said madame, indifferently,
plunging into some papers.

" Of course he did ! " said Peter vehemently. " Well I won't
say he did, after all; but his actions said it, and then he's a poet
an' couldn't help fallin' in love with such a little beauty. No, I
don't think he did say anything. I needn't mind going to Mrs.
Brown's? "

" Not yet," said madame slowly, "but I shall keep this debt
out of your monthly allowance."

" Don't ! " said Peter, with gloomy earnestness ; but the lady
was inexorable, and he went off convinced that whatever he
turned his hand to, whether for good or evil to himself or others,
was sure to end in a mass of chaotic, bitter ruin.

Madame Lynch was not a little disturbed at first by Peter's
manner and information, but on reflection concluded that Paul's
love for Frances wds a fiction, nor did she apprehend any further
trouble from the irascible and contradictory boarder with whom
she had so peculiar an interview.

A certain evening of the succeeding week was occupying her
attention, for an event was to take place in her parlors of so ex-
clusive and novel a nature that the world of society was ruffled
with expectation. The event was the production of an original
comedy in two acts, which a genius, as madame assured her
friends, had written for her special benefit, and which would
receive its first and last production in her parlors. Moreover
the genius himself was to be present. To the inquiries as to
whether he was old or young, handsome or ugly, madame re-
plied to her friends, " Come and see."

The genius was no other than Paul Rossiter, who, entirely
ignorant of the furore his comedy and himself were creating,
had just finished surveying his graceful form as it appeared to
him in the light of a new, splendidly-fitting dress-suit. Fortune
had smiled on him one day in the shape of a request from ma-

364 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

dame and Frances that he write them a comedy, for ingenuity
was at a loss to invent some form of entertainment for that
winter which would be worthy the fame of -a De Ponsonby
Lynch.; and Frances had conceived, while her mother executed,
the idea of having the attic poet write a comedy, and then ex-
hibit him to their friends as its author and the lion of the hour.

" Write a comedy ? " said Paul cheerfully ; " if it will please
you I'll write a dozen of them. But you must know I never had
any experience in the elaborate work of the stage, and you must
tell me exactly what you require."

" Oh ! I can do that," said Frances, " and I will make many
suggestions as you work. I'm always good at suggestions."

Therefore it happened that Paul and Frances were in each
other's company so often, he writing, she suggesting, that Peter's
face became the most cheerful object in the whole house, and
that other face which so long haunted Paul's dreams began to
fade, as every dream must fade before the reality of the living
woman's beautiful presence. The comedy became a very elabo-
rate affair before it was ended. Frances was to play the leading
part, and she made Paul put in a character for himself, that of a
ragged sailor which he had often mimicked for her, and whose
queer ways and stentorian voice were delightful comedy. How
could he know that this was a bit of strategy to brighten the
effect of the entertainment ? Society would be so put out to
see in the author of the comedy this rough-voiced and uncouth
being ; and what a surprise afterwards to meet a tall, delicate,
golden-haired, dreamy-faced youth, whose physical make-up
itself was a poem ! So the play progressed, and Paul received
a hundred dollars for it, to his utter surprise and discomfiture.
He did not think the play was really worth so much, and did
not wish to take the money.

" It's the chief feature of our reception," said madame, " and
the flowers alone cost that much. You do not know your own
merit, Mr. Rossiter."

Mr. Rossiter at once invested in his dress-suit, and surveyed
himself with contemptuous delight in the small mirror of his
room. At last he was to enter society from the garret.

There was a really distinguished audience present, and in the
back seats sat Peter and Florian, the latter curiously reading the
programme, and smiling to discover for the first time that the
lion of the evening, the author of the play, the impersonator of
a minor part, was Paul Rossiter. All concerned had kept the
secret well, for he had felt curious to see this new star which

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 365

was rising in the society constellation De Ponsonby Lynch.
The comedy proved an astonishing success, although weighted
a little with the incapacity of amateurs. It was felt to be some-
thing more than the ordinary drawing-room comedy gotten
up by literary misses for their self-glorification, and Madame
Lynch knew from the first act that her little event would be the
talk of the circle for weeks to come. Frances played spiritedly
and looked her best, and the chill of disappointment which per-
vaded the assembly on Paul's appearance as the sailor-tramp
was simply superb. He looked and acted his part to the life,
and if society regretted the physical appearance of the new star,
it had to admit his acting was excellent and his singing very
fine. People began to congratulate madame at the end of the
first act, and literary celebrities were anxious to know how she
had discovered the author, who he was, and all about him.
When the actors came in after the play was over, and they had
donned their ordinary costumes, Frances was highly diverted
at seeing the amazement on every face when Paul was intro-
duced by her mother as the author and actor. Mother and
daughter were satisfied with their event. Society had known
nothing so delightful that winter, and Paul, praised and flat-
tered beyond all his expectations, showered with invitations
from all sides, went to his room that night somewhat dizzy with
popularity. The cool garret, however, and a few moments'
thought brought him to his senses.

Florian, retiring to his room after a sentimental conversation
with Frances, was honored with a visit from Peter. He had
learned from experience how to deal with this excitable person-
age, and was no more than sociable in a distant, sleepy way,
which would not understand the manoeuvres of coughs and hints,
and glances at the wine-closet.

" 'Twas a fine play," said Peter; " the b'y has genius, I think.
Of course there was some nonsense in it, but he's young. I'll
write up a criticism on it for this week's paper. We ought to
have him down out o' the garret and make him wet it, or may be
ye might do it for him, bein' his friend. It's a fearful cough I
have from sittin' so long in wan position g-r-r-r ! Yer dull this
evenin', b'y g-r-r-r ! What's good for a cough ? A little brandy
with an egg an' sugar an' a slight touch o' water used to be a
great favorite wid me. See now, what's the use o' havin' a
thing in the house when ye don't use it ? I know ye have
brandy in the closet beyant, an' ye won't give a drop to an' old
fellow, an' old grandfather " he made a face at himself in the

366 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

mirror " that's doin' his best to amuse ye, an' isn't long for this
world only forty years or so."

Florian smilingly brought forth the bottle, which held a
feeble wine-glassful. The smile that for a moment illuminated
Peter's face at sight of the open closet faded under a cloud of
sorrow, and the expression " Oh ! ah ! " signified his intense dis-
appointment. But he said nothing as he gloomily wished Florian
good luck and drained the glass with a lingering look at its bare,
shining emptiness.

"Paul is now the pet of society," said Florian; "and from
this time we will hardly get a glimpse of him, so many parties
and balls will be thrust on him."

"Parties and balls!" said Peter with contempt. "What
would a man be doin' at such places without money ? And a b'y
that has to live in a garret an' can't afford candles an' wood, an
eats wid the nagurs in the cheap eatin'-houses, d'ye s'pose he's
goin' to run to balls, even if he wanted to, which he don't."

Florian listened in some amazement and doubt.

" Do I understand you to say, Peter, that he is too poor to
buy candles, and takes his meals at poor restaurants?"

" Have ye seen him at the table in a month ? " said Peter
grimly.

Florian admitted that he had not.

" Ye don't know as much about him as I thought," said he.
" He makes enough money, I think, to pay his board here, but no
more ; an' he's that stiff an' correct he won't go to them pub-
lishers who'd pay him well, if they are a little less respectable
than Corcoran an' his kind. Then he supports a half-dozen poor
families. An' between them all he has to do without many
things an' eat poor food."

From this Peter rambled on into a lengthy description of
Paul's troubles with a view to exciting Florian's sympathy in
the poet's behalf, and the instantaneous presentation of more
brandy on his own ; but Florian had learned quite enough for his
purposes and was not responsive.

" Divil a heart he has ! " Peter went off muttering. " It's a
gizzard, an' Paul'll stay in the garret for all he cares."

There was a shade of self-reproach in Florian's thoughts that
night, and some humiliation. Why had he not looked a little
more closely into Paul's affairs, and where was his boasted pene-
tration, that he had to be told of the many motive-springs in his
friend's disposition ? He now recalled the absence of Paul from
the regular meals, and the fact that he had never been invited to

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 367

visit the distant garret ; he remembered to have seen a queer
specimen of childhood often climbing the stairs to the garret and
inquiring solely for Herr Paul; and he had faint glimpses of
Paul and beggars appearing and disappearing in poor quarters
of the city. This was a different man from his first conception,
and it required Mme. Lynch and Peter Carter to give him a true
insight into the poet's genius and disposition. He was talented,
which formerly he doubted, and his charity shone out so strongly
after Peter's revelations that all the good Florian had ever done
for the city poor grew wan as the moon in the full light of day.
In the fifth storv the poet was sleeping in his cold, bare room.
It was with a feeling of self-contempt that Florian sank into the
folds of his own luxurious bed.

It required a stern retirement of two days and frequent visits
to the streets of the poor before Paul could thoroughly recover
from his first draught of popularity, and at the end of that time,
having thrown off the intoxication, he was able to receive with
proper coolness the visits and the propositions of a theatrical
manager, whose card the servant presented one afternoon as he
sat reading in Florian's rooms, with the Fraulein playing on the
floor. Mr. Aubrey had heard of the young gentleman's ability
in play-writing, the whole city was speaking of his late comedy,
and would it please him to write a play suitable for production
at his theatre during the next season. Paul hesitated and con-
sidered. He hardly understood the extent of his good fortune,
and it confused him so much that he hid his nervousness under
a show of experienced deliberation. Mr. Aubrey meanwhile
poured forth his reasons and persuasions. Finally the poet con-
sented to write a melodrama in his best style, and Aubrey
agreed to pay him five hundred dollars for it, and allow him a
fair percentage of the receipts.

"O Fraulein!" said he, when the great personage had gone,
"do you guess what good luck has befallen me? The mother
shall go down to the sea this summer, and all sorts of things shall
find their way from St. Nicholas' hands this coming Christmas.
We are getting rich, Fraulein."

" Herr Paul feels goot," said the Fraulein, who could not
understand much of what he said. That day he resumed his old
place at madame's table, and his looks of gratitude towards her
were so fervent and marked as to inspire her with distrust of the
young man who could look so emphatically at a woman old
enough to be his mother. Deeper into the retirement of the
attic plunged the poet, his whole soul wrapped up in this new

368 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

literary venture, and not even Frances could induce him to join
the usual evening circle or accept one of the numerous invitations
that were offered him. Revolving all sorts of ideas in his head
as to what would make the ground-work of his play, he saw
rising again in the rose-colored light of his dreams the face of
the girl in the yacht, and felt a sudden twinge of pain that he had
forgotten her so long. By degrees a novel thought shaped itself
in his mind, and what it was the play itself will disclose.

Through all the summer heats Paul was enclosed in the attic,
and nothing could draw him from it, nor could any obtain admis-
sion into its sacred precincts save the theatrical manager, who
came to read the manuscript, to make suggestions, to amend and
criticise. Peter pleaded in vain at the locked door, and heartily
cursed the Fraulein, who came daily to the room and went
through performances and sang songs that threw Paul into con-
vulsions of merriment. She alone afforded him his recreation.
The attic chamber was sometimes stifling, but the morning sun
and the midnight moon looked pure and more inspiring from that
height, and the waters of the bay shone in the distance. It gave
him his best inspirations to see these brilliant silences creeping
into his room, and to think with how little friction, worry, and
noise they did their great work. And the Fraulein was as good
as a variety show, always with some new idea or action that
amused him mightily, all the more that it came out in bad Eng-
lish and sweet accent. The night on which the play was pro-
duced the whole establishment of Mme. Lynch occupied the four
boxes of the theatre, and the front seats as well, and Florian
found himself in Frances' company, with her mother discreetly
sitting in front. The programmes handed about announced the
title of the drama as " The Hermit's Daughter," and all were
very much surprised to see in the list of actors Paul's own name
set down with a flourish, and the special announcement that the
Fraulein Stein, a prodigy of six years, would take a prominent
and astonishing part in the play.

" This drama is to be full of surprises," said Frances, " and
Mr. Rossiter so intended, I must think ; he was so very reticent
about its incidents."

" We shall all the better be able to judge it," said mad am e ;
" and it will be more pleasant. Indeed, I am more curious to see
how his acting will please a general audience than to see the
play. He was so successful as the sailor."

The curtain rising put an end to the conversation, and all
glanced eagerly at the stage. The scenery was very fine, and

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 369

represented a rocky enclosure deep in the woods, with a back-
ground of watery vistas seen through innumerable islands. A
gasp of astonishment Florian gave as he looked at this well-
kno\vn representation, and his wonder knew no bounds when
from a hut at one side came a living representation of Scott the
hermit, leading a little girl who played and danced about him.
Paul was the hermit and the child was the Fraulein, who, nothing
daunted, was filled with delight at her position, and enjoyed the
sight of the audience and the bright lights immensely. She
sang and danced and capered as the hermit bade, exactly as she
would have done in Paul's own room, and with as much childish
grace and abandon, and although the immense applause of the
surprised and delighted audience frightened her at first, a word
from him reassured her. It was evident from this moment that
the Fraulein alone had insured the success of the drama.

When the heroine of the piece came on, after a time, Frances
observed that Florian started and, leaning forward with pale face
and set mouth, seemed fairly to devour her features, and only
when she spoke did he resume his old position with a heavy sigh.
The actress was a fair model of Ruth herself, and only her voice
could dispel the illusion. Florian did not notice how the her-
mit's eyes were fixed on him as the lady entered.

These were the only incidents of the play which have any
bearing on the story. Except for the accidental resemblance of
these two persons to living characters, and of the first scene to
his own home, there was nothing in the play that indicated any
knowledge on Paul's part of Clayburg and its people. But the
play had a bad effect on Florian. He watched its continuance
with little interest afterwards, and scarcely smiled when, at the
close of the last act, the delighted audience called for the author
and heaped upon him their mighty applause. Nor did he ever
visit the theatre again, although the successful play ran for three
months. It aroused an overruling emotion in his heart. His
love for Ruth at the sight of her apparently living before him
awoke the old slumbering passion, and had a dangerous effect
on his disposition for many a month afterwards.

CHAPTER V.
RUTH.

WHILE the years were passing with tumultuous flight for
Florian, one woman was enjoying in Clayburg a peace of heart
none the less assured and real that it had been won after much
VOL. XL. 24

3/o SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

suffering-. When Florian went Ruth had found the loss of his
presence a very keen, almost unendurable pain. She would
perhaps have found it impossible to bear but that the battle had
been fought and won long before their actual separation, when it
had first become plain to her that she could not accept the Catho-
lic faith. Both had agreed that to marry under such circum-
stances would be folly, since Ruth was as convinced as he that it
would be a violation of her conscience to permit her children to
be brought up in any other faith than her own. She was very
calm in announcing her determination to Florian, because the
scene had already been enacted in 'imagination many times, but
after his departure she fought a new battle with herself, winning
quietly and passing into a life of gentle calm that nothing seemed
able to disturb. As Florian had supposed, her strict conscien-
tiousness had swept from her heart every vestige of himself and
the love she once had for him. His appearance to-morrow in
Clayburg, with or without a wife, would have been a pleasure to
her, not an occasion of regret and expectation, as it would have
been for him. He had fallen into that ridiculous position which
a rejected lover finds it so hard to assume, that of the trusted
friend of the woman he would have made his wife. Often she
visited the grave on the hill, and wept bitter tears over this one
sorrow of her life. It seemed so hard to believe Linda was dead,
the spirit so bright that she seemed to have been the immortal
nymph of the place. The whole scene was instinct with her
presence. Hers had been the earliest laugh to greet the spring,
and hers the first tears that bewailed the death of the flowers and
the coming of the long and dreary winter. Even when she had
been dead two years many said, " It seems odd that Linda Wal-
lace is not here to see this or do that; she was always first and
always gayest"; and it hurt Ruth the more. But who would
have disturbed the sweet sleep of the girl ? and who would have
called thee back, Linda, from the smile of God, even if they had
the power ?

The report which reached Florian that Ruth had devoted her-
self to literary efforts was true, and of late she began to reap so
much success and profit from her venture that a new idea had
been presented to her by an outsider for consideration which
took her fancy very much. A relative and her husband had
visited Clayburg the previous summer, and urged on Ruth the
propriety of coming to New York during the winter, or at any
time that suited her convenience, and making the acquaintance
of the literary celebrities of the day.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 371

" We have them all at our receptions," said Mrs. Merrion ;
" and we are so gratified to hear them speak of you in terms of
high praise. You will receive an ovation, and think of the plea-
sure and profit it would be to you to hold sweet converse with
them."

" Well, Barbara," said Ruth, who thought her relative's
adjectives a little silly often, "your offer is tempfing, and I shall
consider it during the winter. But I could not think of leaving
Clay burg at present. Next year, perhaps, I may go down to
hold sweet converse with your literary stars."

And Mrs. Merrion perceived from the unnecessary emphasis
on "sweet" that Ruth was laughing at her. However, Ruth
thought deeply on the matter and finally proposed it to her father,
who was delighted with the idea of being in Florian's neighbor-
hood for a time, and suggested shutting up house at once and set-
ting off on their journey. But Ruth suggested the advisability
of consulting some of their friends, and the squire was for con-
sulting the whole city, so that she found it necessary to name
Mr. Wallace and Pere Rougevin as a council of advice.

" That's it," said the squire. " I'll arrange a whist-party for
this afternoon and invite them over."

A party of that description was a dreadful trial for Ruth, who
had the hardest part of the work to perform and was not enam-
ored of its pleasures, whereupon she announced her intention at
dinner of making some calls during the remainder of the day,
and of leaving the management of the party entirely to the
squire. He was relieved, perhaps, for his congenial soul went
often a little beyond the limits of prudence, and the mild re-
proach in Ruth's eyes was hard for him to endure. The pros-
pect of a clear field cheered him ; and he was kind enough to
recommend that she might take tea with Mrs. Wallace, and he
would drive over after her at nine o'clock. To which Ruth
consented and went away early, spending a few minutes with
Mrs. Winifred while waiting for the stage which crossed daily to
Wolfe Island. Mrs. Buck was there, and Mr. Buck, as immacu-
late as to his linen as ever, and a junior Buck with so strong a
resemblance to his father and such an enormous head that people
would laugh at the child, and say witty things about his taking
the pulpit some day and no one being the wiser for his father's
absence. The members of the family were on very good terms
while Billy was absent, and called on each other amicably during
favorable intervals. But there were many awkward departures
on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Buck when Bill} 7 , suddenly, return-

3/2 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

ing by the front door, forced them to hasty flight by the back
door. He was bitterly opposed to Sara and her husband still,
and had called his grandson a " divilish little heretic " on meet-
ing him with his nurse. He might have been won over, per-
haps, had Mrs. Buck remained faithful to her religion, but Sara
found it more convenient to sit under Mr. Buck's ministry and
have her children baptized in the Episcopal communion, for it
was suck a bother to have some members of the family going one
way and others the other, and what did it matter in the end
since they were all bound for heaven ? Mrs. Winifred, placid
as ever, yet with a sad, hungry look in her pious eyes, and
a waving uncertainty in the perennial smile, took matters as
usual and never allowed one hair out of its place on either side
of her head. She was not so self-possessed as formerly, however,
and often looked a little wild at mention of Linda or Florian,
often rang the bell tor dinner and waited forgetfully for the gay
laugh and light steps that sounded for so many years in the outer
hall. It was fearful to hear Billy on such occasions. His own
grief was bitter enough, but to be reminded of it so forcibly was
to endure it over again, and his rage whistled and snapped about
Mrs. Winifred like the rush of the wind through a dead tree.
Sara always spoke affectionately of Florian. Not that she was
capable of very deep feeling or any lasting feeling, but he had
behaved so properly when he could not help himself, not rush-
ing with uplifted axe on his brother-in-law nor making any
scenes. She had named her boy Florian in honor of him, and
thought what a pity it was with his fine talents he should be so
bound by his religion. " For in this country," said she, " he can
hope for no real advancement so long as he remains a Catholic.
Now, Anglicanism was so much like the Catholic faith, there was
so little real difference in the two, save a mere trifle of acknow-
ledging a pope, that if he could be persuaded to look into the
matter and see how much to his advantage it was to become an
Episcopalian she was sure he would. And then with father and
mother to join them, and Linda in heaven, it would be a veritable
nd of a romance. Why, Fiorian might even believe in the pope
and say nothing about it to any one."

" That's silly," said Mr. Buck mildly.

" So are you, my dear," answered Mrs. Buck gently ; " and
you are no judge."

" Seemingly Mr. Buck wished to insinuate " began Mrs.
Winifred.

" He shouldn't insinuate, seemingly," said Sara.

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 373

" Of course not, my dear," assented the mother meekly.

Mrs. Buck was evidently monarch of all she surveyed, her
father being absent.

" I never could understand," said Sara, "how it just ended
between Florian and you, Ruth ? "

" I couldn't acknowledge the pope," said Ruth gravely, and
Mr. Buck hid a smile behind his mother-in-law, leaving it there,
apparently, to be resumed at leisure.

" How foolish, dear! It would have been so pleasant for you
and me to be living here together, married. For the life of me
I can't see why people make so much fuss about religion. I
never could."

" So Florian told us," said Ruth ; " he said you were always
of that gay disposition that would wear a cross as gracefully as
a bible, and be happy with a Mormon or a Mussulman."

" Just so," Sara replied, impressed with such a compliment
and desirous of letting Mr. Buck see her indifference. " Florian
was a good judge, too. I always feel sorry that I acted so cross
with him. I think it wore on him."

" Very much," said Ruth, and Mr. Buck resumed his smile
and deepened it into a laugh, which he pretended was for baby.

The stage came along at that moment, and stopped at the
door. Mrs. Winifred had been invited to accompany Ruth on
her journey, and, after excusing herself to her family, put on her
wraps and departed.

" I am going to visit the hermit Usually I bring father with
me, but he was engaged this afternoon," Ruth explained.

Mrs. Winifred grew very uneasy and fidgety for some mo-
ments after this announcement, but soon recovered and expressed
her willingness to favor Ruth similarly at any time. It was a
bitter cold day, and the open sleigh in which they were seated
afforded a fine view of the vast stretches of ice that lay away
from them for miles, and of the islands between, sullen and
gloomy like life-prisoners in Siberia. When they reached the
island they left the stage at the house of a friend, and procured
another conveyance to take them eastward to the narrow chan-
nel opening into Eel Bay. They crossed the ice on foot to a
dark wood, where a few maples with dead leaves clinging to
the bare branches made a great stir like the chuckling of many
skeletons. Through this they went by a path evidently fre-
quented of late, and so beaten down as to make the wood pass-
able, and finally they came out on a bluff which showed them
the hermit's house a short distance off, with a light in the win-

374 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

dow. It was a cloudy and gloomy day, and Scott was at home,
with a bright fire burning in the chimney-place and his solitary
candle lit, while Izaak Walton lay open at a well-thumbed page
that brought back a fresher memory of the brightness and sweet-
ness of what had once been before the gloomy winter. He was
surprised at the appearance of the two women, but politely in-
vited them to sit down and remove their wraps, while he put a
fresh log on the fire and showed a bachelor's feverish desire to
set things in order. Ruth was in the habit of calling on him as
often as she thought her presence would not be too intrusive,
but she had never disturbed his retreat during the winter, and
perhaps he thought this visit a mere freak of inquisitiveness.
Mrs. Winifred was uneasy, and made most wretched attempts to
seem commonplace and ordinary, looking about her with the air
of meek terror that used to provoke the anger of Linda and
Florian because of its ludicrous side. Ruth and the hermit paid
her no attention.

" It was a mere notion, you know," the girl was explaining to
Scott, as she sat in the blaze with her hands clasped over her
knee, " for I could have waited until you came to town and ex-
plained it to you then ; but an idea seized me like an apoplexy,
and I must down without delay. I have not seen you in a long
time, and I was and am thinking of going to New York." She
was looking at him very closely as she said this, for she was sure
the hermit would accuse her in thought of going after Florian,
and would look at her once with his keen blue eyes. He was as
interested as if she had stated her destination to be Timbuctoo.

" It's a fine place, New York," he said quietly ; " but why
need all the blood rush to the heart ? "

" It must all pass through it," said she, taking up the figure
with a smile, " or else be cast aside ! And do you know, at this
very hour the squire, the pere, and Mr. Wallace are playing
whist and discussing this matter at home ? for if I go father goes
too."

" Sartinly ; you'd scarcely go atone. I guess they'll be apt to
settle your goin' very well, if there's much punch in the matter."

" Seemingly," ventured Mrs. Winifred, " there are none of
them hard drinkers " ; for she wished to remove any bad impres-
sion from the hermit's mind, and she looked at him sideways
timidly. But he never turned his eyes toward her.

" You see," said Ruth, ' I would not go to stay, but only
to make a few friends among the great thinkers and writers and
poets. It would be something to know them, would it not?"

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 375

"O yes! it does one good to meet a great person, I think;
but, then, they needn't be all bookish folks. There are great
people in the garrets and cellars of a big city, an' in the work-
shops."

" You were never in a great city," said she, and repented of
the words immediately, for she did not see how much like a
question it was until it was uttered. " Pray do not answer that,"
she broke in. " It was not meant to pry into your affairs. It
was an accident. But what do you think ? Is it wise for me to
go ? I have won a little fame by writing, and I would so like to
know great minds. Then there are great doctors of theology
and eminent Catholics there. Who knows but that I might get
some light from them."

He shook his head, and smiled a little.

" I understand," said she. " I know to what you refer. Well,
I have prayed and prayed, and yet light will not come. I have
tried to be content with Methodism and I can't, nor can I find
rest in any other faith."

" It is a time of doubt with you," said the hermit, "and that
means change. I dunno as great minds 'ill help ye much ; mostly
it's the little minds do God's work, an* bring peace an' rest."

" Well, I'll visit the garrets and cellars, and hunt up little
minds, and see the great people too."

" Them fine writers an' thinkers," said Scott seriously, "have
a mighty high opinion o' themselves, an' look at a religion pretty
often in queer ways. They kind o' handle it as a jew'ler handles
a watch. They've got the secret o' the thing, an* don't think
much of it. They give ye a doubt about it sometimes, unless ye
get the -'umble ones, that thinks more o' their neighbor than they
do o' themselves. I've met some of 'em fishin', an' they were too
green for anything. They didn't l,ike to be told so, either."

" Then, would you say go, Scott?" she persisted.

" Would I say go? Well, if great minds is the only trouble,
an* religion, why, yes, go."

Somehow she was not so satisfied with his answer, and sat
staring into the fire, wondering. Was there anything else that
should trouble her save religion and the great minds ? There
was the rush and whirl of polite society, but it never could en-
tangle her, and then Florian. She looked at Scott. He \vas
reading Walton, and Mrs. Winifred was watching him shyly as a
curiosity. Why should he have put in the iff Did he think the
old trouble would begin again ? She was not afraid of herself;
but then what security was there for Florian ? She had often

376 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

wondered if he had given up the old l<3ve as completely as she
had, and, knowing his fond disposition, feared he had not.
Would not her presence excite it more violently and more hope-
lessly, and was this what the hermit meant ? The silence grew
so profound that Mrs. Winifred felt called upon to say some-
thing.

" From what I've heard of big cities," said she, " seemingly
nothing troubles the girls there but their dress and beaux."

" Yes," said Scott, looking at her with an expression of severe
reproach in his eyes, which puzzled Ruth, " beaux?"

" Do you think my presence, Scott, would annoy Florian?"
" I do," said the hermit, as if he had been expecting the ques-
tion. " I think he never got over losin' you, an' it would kind o'
stir him up to see you agin'."

" Is that a good reason for me to remain away from New York
or any other place ? "

" Not if ye care nothin' for him." And seeing she did not
perceive what injury her presence could be to Florian, he went
on a little hurriedly, as if it annoyed him to speak of these things:
" I know he's kind o' hoped agin' hope that ye'd come to him
some time, as he'd like, an' make up. It's been a help to him a
long time, an' kept him out o' harm perhaps, or leastwise from
gettin* away from the right. Politicians," he added, seeing that
her look suggested a doubt as to Florian's getting off the path an
inch, " get right an' wrong so mixed up with their own likin's,
that they don't allus do right even when they mean to. When
he finds out yer not in love with him any more, there won't be
any holdin' to him. God only knows when he'll stop."

" I don't think you are quite correct in that," said Mrs. Wini-
fred, with a boldness that frightened herself. " Florian, seemingly,
was always one of the strict kind."

" Mebbe," said the hermit, resuming his book, while Ruth
looked her absolute doubt of Scott's inferences eloquently.

" I hain't no pretensions to bein' a prophet," he said after a
silence, " but it'll surprise me if Flory don't propose to ye agin'
down thar, an' offer to take ye jist as ye stand, atheist or Protes-
tant, an' git mad enough to do wild things when ye refuse."
"How do you know I'll refuse?" said Ruth, saucily.
" That's so." smiled Scott. " You can't know a woman two
minutes at a time, an' I'm no wiser than other men, for all o' my
solitude."

" Well, I'll follow your advice " the hermit had not given
any, and looked at her " and go. I'll avoid Florian, and see the

1884.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 377

great and the little minds of the great city, and pick up, perhaps,
some grace that's lying for me there like money in a bank."

The hermit studied her attentively with his great blue eyes.

" Did it ever strike you," said he coldly, "that you might be
plnyin' with grace, just as a man does with a stubborn fish amus-
in' hisself ?"

" No," she interrupted loudly, and with such indignation that
Mrs. Winifred uttered a faint cry. " Do not accuse me of that,
Scott never, never, accuse me of that."

He resumed his air of meek indifference at once.

" Yet, how do I know," she said, humbly, " what sins I may
or not be guilty of ? But in this matter I have been so much in
earnest, so very much in earnest, and except in my methods I
can find no blame."

She had no more to say, and Scott read his book in a way that
politely invited their departure.

" Will you excuse me for one moment ?" said she ; " I am going
to take a view of the river from the boulder before I go."

She went out and stood on the spot where Florian had knelt
and prayed of mornings during his retreat, and dreamed and
chatted of evenings with Scott or alone. The scene was like the
buried beauty of that happy time, risen from its grave in white
and ghastly cerements, and the weird wind-moan through the
evergreens gave a voice to the forlorn ghost of wild and dismal
melody. Would it ever look otherwise to her again ? Could
she ever gaze upon the summer scene that in time would banish
this pale spectre of the dead with the same calm and joy and
sweetness as when beside her stood Florian and Linda ?

" If I cannot," said she, with, oh ! such a heavy sadness, "then
change of heart will not be for the better."

When she came back, after ten minutes' of looking and think-
ing and sighing, Mrs. Winifred was putting on her wraps, a trifle
pale and tired, and very confused and frightened from her tete-a-
tete with the hermit, and Scott was standing with his back to the
fire and his hands behind him and his chin in the air, as if an in-
spiration had seized him. But Ruth put no emphasis on such
things, and bade him good-by with a promise of seeing him again
when she had come to a firm and conscientious determination.
He came with them across the river and through the wood, with
its chattering and shivering maples, and over the channel to
where the horse and cutter still stood, and, as was his custom,
stood facing them under the shadow of the wintery sky until they
were out of sight.

378 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Dec.,

" Can you conceive anything more lonely than such a sight?"
said Ruth ; " that solitary man standing in such a solitude and
going back through that gloomy wood to his lonely home. How
does he stand it ?"

" I think him a saint," said Mrs. Winifred so emphatically that
Ruth looked at her in surprise.

On their way across the bay a cu-tter came skipping along at
a fierce rate, and from beneath a pile of buffaloes and furs Pere
Rougevin's smiling face looked out as he stopped to greet them.

" Nothing decided in the council yet," said he, " except that
the supper was exceptional and that I was invincible in whist.
A sick-call took me away early, leaving the squire and Mr. Wal-
lace to the enjoyment of the liquids ; but I shall visit you some
time for a talk, though matters must be pretty well settled by
the time a lady mentions such a thing to her friends." And he
drove off laughing.

Mrs. Buck had tea on the table when they returned, and \vas
ready with all sorts of questions about their drive and business,
which Ruth eluded for an hour and which Mrs. Winifred laughed
at without answering at all, while Mr. Buck was snubbed for en-
deavoring to put a stop to the flow of his wife's questions.
Sara's perseverance would have succeeded in eliciting every
particular of the afternoon but for the unexpected appearance
of Billy from the whist-party in a state of speechless delight.
There was a beaming smile lodged in every wrinkle of his coun-
tenance as he opened the door and appeared among them, waving
his hand as if to accompany unuttered speech and looking oceans
of benevolence on every one about him.

Mrs. Buck and her family vanished like mist before him and
went speedily home, and Ruth felt a strange misgiving as to the
total results of the afternoon's council when a part of it was so
speechlessly affected. Billy mumbled and waved his hand
through the room to the delight of Mrs. Winifred, who trans-
lated his speech very aptly for Ruth.

" Yes, yes, my little man, seemingly you've settled it all to the
satisfaction of every one. Didn't I tell you so? That's right.
Bring down your fist on the porcelain ; the crash and the cost
will strengthen the argument."

Billy sat down with his face in a muscular uproar. He had
several ideas all struggling to express themselves mirth, rage,
triumph, and war ; but not a feature would obey, and the wink-
ing of eyes and the lifting and falling of eyebrows, the puckerings
of the mouth into severity and then relaxation into a benevolent

1884.] SHAKSPERE AND HIS AESTHETIC CRITICS. 379

smile, soon wore out all efforts and Billy's face settled into a blank-
ness of the vastest kind.

Ruth thought it best to return home afoot, and did so in time
to receive the squire's blessing and paternal command to start
for New York that night and leave him to his fate, as he was
under the impression that the executioners of the rascally gov-
ernments were without thirsting for his head, and were only pre-
vented from rushing in upon him by his own wakefulness.

TO BE CONTINUED.

SHAKSPERE AND HIS AESTHETIC CRITICS.

IT is matter of very frequent complaint that our critics and
commentators read into Shakspere much more than they read
out of him. But if they find it there, who shall, after all, gain-
say them ? Why should not poets build better than they know ?
What else is it that gives what is called immortality" to human
work ? What we have to guard against, I think, is not so much
an over-sestheticism as a tendency to demand from the text of
Shakspere so many propositions as to the man Shakspere of
which the world is yet in reasonable doubt. The paper, " The
Delicacy of Shakspere," in a late issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
is so notable and admirable an instance of how loving and ardent
study of the glowing text can at once contribute to its hermeneu-
tics, and avoid insistence on dogmatical or debatable conclusions
therefrom, that it deserves the highest praise. There is alto-
gether too little of such work extant. And what is it we have
instead ? Let us see.

In the trial of a question of fact in a court of justice reliance
is had on two sorts of evidence : first, circumstantial, or, as it
may be called, narrative or historical evidence ; and, second, ex-
pert that is, "self-regarding" or ''opinion" evidence. Ques-
tions of literary authorship are to be decided in like manner by
two sorts of evidence, corresponding exactly to these ; viz., ex-
ternal evidence (the date, surroundings, and circumstances under
which the composition of which the authorship is sought was
produced), and, second, internal evidence that is, the manner
and style and text of the composition itself. Now, this internal
evidence is itself of two sorts : first, comparative criticism, and
second, textual criticism. The first, as its name implies, is to be
considered by simple comparison, the problem being simply:

380 SHAKSPEKE AND HIS AESTHETIC CRITICS. [Dec.,

given a literary work known to be by a certain author, to dis-
cover if another work is also by that same author. But this
class of evidence is not absolutely reliable. To quote the words
of the late accomplished Mr. James Spedding : " In passing upon
questions of authorship by means of internal evidence the critic
must always be allowed to judge for himself." That is to say,
it is found to be absolutely impossible to remove from the criti-
cism of any one man that personal equation, or " point of view,"
which arises imperatively from the education, temperament, and
tendencies of the comparative critic himself. A notable instance
of the failure of comparative criticism was in the Ireland Shak-
spere-forgery cases, where the work of a mere lad was accepted
as Shakspere until, from outside circumstantial evidences, the
young forger of the style of the world's greatest poet was sur-
prised in the act of forgery and confessed to the whole. An-
other well-known case was that of Mr. Collier's alleged dis-
coveries, in 1852, of corrections in the Shakspere text. No
amount of comparative critical acumen (and every Shaksperean
critic in England and America worked at them) was able to de-
cide as to their genuineness. But by and by it occurred to the
authorities of the British Museum to go to work with microscope
and acids, when they speedily exposed the emendations as of
very recent manufacture indeed, scarcely antedating their pro-
duction by Mr. Collier himself. Thus it appears that, unassisted
especially at remote dates from the fact the chances are very
largely against an arrival at the exact truth by unaided compa-
rative criticism. For example, supposing, in the twenty-second
century, a body of comparative critics should be given the of-
ficial report of the Berlin Conference and the speeches of Lord
Beaconsfield, whose tactics in that great parley were singly and
alone able to confront an empire in the flush of victory, and to
force it to relinquish a prize it had been struggling to possess for
centuries, which it had just won by sword and battle ; suppos-
ing this same body of critics were then presented with a copy
of Lothair, and asked, from internal, comparative evidence only
(they having no records of the nineteenth century and no life of
Beaconsfield before them), to say definitely whether the same in-
dividual who defied and dominated Russia by his statesmanship
also wrote the novel. Can we doubt what the verdict of these
comparative critics would be ?

Second, textual criticism, on the other hand, is capable of
being made reliable, but only negatively. It can demonstrate,
for example, from the employment of words that were unin-

1884.] SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. 381

vented or unused before certain dates, the age and period earlier
than which certain compositions could not have been written,
and thus exclude all authors earlier than that age or period.
But to pronounce positively as to who was, as well as to who
could not have been, the particular, identical author it is quite
as powerless as any other sort of critical evidence. Hence it
follows that since even documentary, historical, and circumstan-
tial evidence is fallible, no one single class of testimony ought to
be relied upon ; and that in literary questions, exactly as in those
submitted for judicial determination, all sorts, classes, and kinds
of evidence must cumulatively be availed of in order to set out
with any hope or chance of reaching exact truth.

Putting aside any questions as to the authorship of the Eliza-
bethan English works so universally credited to William Shak-
spere ; leaving Baconians, editorialists, and pro-Shakspereans to
submit propositions, make postulates, and riddle each other's
theories and corollaries to their hearts' content by means of all
the evidence, historical, circumstantial, textual, and compara-
tive, it is proposed in this "paper to examine a new candidate
for favor which the present century (and the last quarter of it)
has developed. This new testimony is called AESTHETIC CRITI-
CISM. I do not mean that the invention is of the last quarter of
the nineteenth century. It was known before. But earlier it was
called merely eulogium, encomium, or, perhaps, panegyric. So
far as can be discovered, it is only very recently indeed that it
has claimed to be actual evidence actual and undebatable proof
as to the actual man Shakspere, his moods and tenses, his for-
tunes, follies, hopes, and fears.

To begin with, these marvellous works are like a bank of
clouds in a brightening sky. Every beholder will for himself
happen to see some semblance somewhere in their profile which
he may describe in words, but which, seeing that he has no
bearing by which to indicate it, he cannot hope to point out
to his fellow-gazers. So in the Shakspere works one will be
attracted by a figment of the poet as a whole, another by a
detail thereof. As for example, one will be moved over the
picture of dishonored Lucrece sitting lonesome, with full heart,
awaiting her husband's return and the moment when her own
suicide will be appropriate, while another will wonder at the
knowledge of human nature which makes her, in the very
depth of her misery, discover herself admiring a picture on the
wall. One will see in the "Midsummer Night's Dream " only
a beautiful romance, while his co-reader will find in it the touches

382 SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. [Dec.,

of a hand used to theatrical business, in that he allows the clowns
to play their interlude only until the fun is exhausted, when he
makes them omit their epilogue and substitute a dance instead.
And so on. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than that each
one should, in dealing with the works, write of that which Shak-
spere is to him. But when the writer goes further, and insists
that the William Shakspere whose name is associated with these
plays was the embodiment of that which he himself, this particu-
lar reader, finds in the works, and that the whole world shall so
consent to understand Shakspere in other words, proposes to
write the biography of the man out of his own inner reading of
the text of the works before him this matter of aesthetic criti-
cism becomes not only incontinent and inconsistent, but leads at
once into all sorts of irregularities and absurdities.

The modern and present exponents of this aesthetic criticism,
used as a method of writing an author's history from the text of
his alleged works, are principally the members of the New Shak-
spere Society of London: It would never, of course, have occur-
red to these gentlemen to write the life of the late Mr. Robert-
son out of the pages of his comedies," Caste," " School," "Ours,"
or " Play," or the life of Mr. Boucicault out of " London As-
surance," " Arrah-na-Pogue," "The Shaughraun," or "For-
mosa " ; but, all the same, they have given us a beautiful history
of William Shakspere out of his plays alone. Without under-
taking to follow the voluminous papers of the New Shakspere
Society, a brief notice of the labors of Mr. Furnivall, its presi-
dent, and Mr. Fleay and Mr. Dowden, his coadjutors, will suffi-
ciently illustrate their methods.

" It is Stratford," cries Mr. Furnivall, " which has given Shak-
spere the picture of the sweet country school-girls working at
one flower, warbling one song, growing together like a double
cherry," etc. " The wail of Constance for the loss of her boy
could only have been written by one whose feelings had been
lacerated by the loss of a beloved child," cries Mr. Dowden.
" Some sacred voice whispers to him [Shakspere] that the privi-
lege of immortality was annexed to every line he wrote." " I
now believe that this strange and difficult play ['Troilus and
Cressida '] was written when Shakspere had ceased to smile
genially, and when he must be either ironical or take a deep, pas-
sionate, and tragical view of life."

Mr. Ward, in his elegant History of Dramatic Literature, as-
sures us of William Shakspere's diffident and shrinking nature
(proved from a passage in the plays) ; and we could easily cull

1884.] SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. 383

several volumes of this mental biography from the aesthetic
works of enthusiasts like the above-named gentlemen. But, un-
less that word possess a meaning unknown outside of the New
Shakspere Society, this is hardly "evidence" to an exact mind.
Still, admitting it to be " evidence," it would hardly prove an ex-
clusive Stratfordian authorship. For there is certainly the same
internal evidence that William Shakspere was born in Epi-
damnus or Rome or Troy as that he was born in Stratford.
There is certainly much more in the plays about Italy, Rome,
and Greece than about England. For two comedies whose scene
is Warwickshire there are twelve whose action is outside of
England. And certainly no more familiarity is shown with War-
wickshire customs than with those of Venice, or Scotland, or
the Roman Forum, or the ways of the Cypriotes. And, again,
there is precisely the same evidence that Shakspere had mur-
dered his wife, like Othello, and his rival, like Macbeth, and
had been driven from home by his daughters, like Lear, as that
he had " buried a beloved child," like Queen Constance, or ex-
perienced intimations of immortality, or was of the "diffident
and retiring" disposition asserted by Mr. Ward.

No man, as a matter of fact, ever led a jollier life than Wil-
liam Shakspere. The records, at least, of his jokes and his gal-
lantries survive him, and he died in a frolic. The late Mr.
Bardell was knocked on the head with a pint-pot in a cellar.
But Sergeant Buzfuz preferred to throw the glamour of pathos
over his end by describing it as " gliding imperceptibly from
the world and seeking elsewhere that tranquillity which a
custom-house can never afford." I am afraid the most that can
be said for Mr. Furnivall, Mr. Dowden, and Mr. Ward is that
they are no whit behind the eloquent sergeant in gush over their
hero. But perhaps Mr. Furnivall is striving to elude these en-
tanglements of " internal evidence " when he exclaims : " I wrote
the introduction to the ' Venus and Adonis,' and thought I had
really persuaded myself that it really was Shakspere's first work.
But on turning to ' Love's Labor's Lost ' and the ' Comedy of
Errors ' after it the absurdity was too apparent." Or again
(forgetting that " Titus Andronicus " was, as a spectacle, much
more to the taste of Elizabethan mixed audiences than the blood-
less dialectics of Hamlet and Brutus) : " ' Titus Andronicus '
I do not consider. . . . The play declares, as plainly as play
can speak, ' I am not Shakspere's ; my repulsive subject, my
blood and horrors, are not and never were his.' ' " About the
sonnets, ... in addition to Nos. 8, 11, 16, 18, 20, and 21, I sup-

384 SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. [Dec.,

pose that 10, 13, 14, and 15 are not his either. About No. 19 I
doubt. That 'to sin and never for to saint,' and the whole of
the poem, is by some strong- man of the Shakspere breed."

It would seem incredible that the New Shakspere Society
should be willing to leave the reasonable doubts and difficulties
as to a Shaksperean authorship, which for the last twenty-seven
years have been growing more and more emphatic, to mumble
and roar about their ears, and solace and coddle themselves with
little purrings of mutual confidence like the above to rest the
whole pro-Shaksperean case, that is to say, on mere expressions
of personal whim or taste, and to meet all the historical and
documentary considerations by simply looking in another direc-
tion. But there appears to be no escape from just that conclu-
sion ; to wit (I quote from my friend Mr. Rolfe's introduction
to his " Pericles " ) :

" In the discussion which followed the reading of Mr. Fleay's paper on
'Pericles' before the New Shakspere Society, May 8, 1874, Mr. Furnivall
remarked : ' I hope the fact I am going to mention will render all further
discussion as to the Shakspere part of the "Pericles" unnecessary. When
I first saw Mr. Tennyson ... he asked me whether I had ever examined
" Pericles." I had to confess that I'd never read it, as some friends whom
I considered good judges had told me it was very doubtful whether Shak-
spere wrote any of it. Mr. Tennyson answered : " Oh ! that won't do. He
wrote all the part relating to the birth and recovery of Marina and the re-
covery of Thaisa. I settled that long ago. Come up-stairs and I'll read it
to you." Up-stairs we went, and there I had the rare treat of hearing the
poet read in his deep voice, with an occasional triumphant " Isn't that
Shakspere ? " " What do you think of that ? " and a few comments, the
genuine part of " Pericles." I need not tell you how I enjoyed the reading,
or how quick and sincere my conviction of the genuineness of the part
read was. The parts read by Tennyson were almost exactly the same that
Mr. Fleay has marked as Shakspere's ; and,' Mr. Furnivall adds, 'the inde-
pendent confirmation of the poet-critic's result by the metrical test-work-
er's process is most satisfactory and interesting.' "

Now, it must have been a rare privilege indeed to hear the
laureate read his favorite passages. That they were the finest
passages in the play the testimony of Mr. Tennyson ought to
satisfy us ; and it is gratifying to know, too, that Mr. Furnivall
and Mr. Fleay both agreed with Mr. Tennyson that those pas-
sages were " Shakspere " (that is, what every man means by that
phrase viz., whatever is matchless and sublime in literature).
But if evidence, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, of any-
thing, this story about Mr. Tennyson is evidence of what any-
body reading Mr. Furnivall's and Mr. Fleay's writings can see
viz., that the quantitative-analysis process of the metrical enume-

1884.] SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. 385

rators invariably gives all the great, noble, and admirable parts,
not to the abstraction we call Shakspere, but to the identical, his-
torical man of that name. In other words, the New Shakspere
Society leave the question just exactly where they find it. After
circumambulating their circle they assert that the eloquent pas-
sages are Shakspere's (which is precisely what the world be-
lieved before these gentlemen were born), and that if William
Shakspere of Stratford did not write them they can't imagine
who did. But while nobody, of course, will disagree with Mr.
Tennyson that the parts he read are the finest in " Pericles," is
the fact of his admiration of certain parts of that play to pass
as evidence unimpeachable that the manager of the Globe Thea-
tre wrote those parts, and employed outside aid to write all the
clowns' and prostitutes' parts, all the badinage and sparkle of
wit, all the double-entendre and small-talk of some thirty or forty
more, while he, William Shakspere, only walked in the stately
buskin of tragedy himself? I am sure I don't wish to be disre-
spectful to the New Shakspere Society, but it seems to me that
all their mighty discovery as to stopped and unstopped lines
amounts to is that there is no arbitrary rule as to structural
forms of tragic and comic poetry, pathos and doggerel merely
this a^nd nothing more ! The New Shakspere Society were cer-
tainly not the first discoverers of the fact that the world uses
the term Shakspere as a synonym for what is most sublime and
eloquent in literature, and not as the name of any particular
rhetorical form. '

Again, if there are words in the English language strong
enough to assert, and demonstration from internal evidence deli-
cate enough to prove, that many hands and many brains were
concerned in composing the works we call Shakspere, surely
Mr. Fleay uses those words and conducts that demonstration
in his Shakspere Manual, and I read his conclusion to be that
of thirty-nine plays not an orthodox Shaksperean ought to
accept as canonical the list of thirty-six plays those innocent
partners, Heminges and Condell, supposed to be Shakspere's ;
that only twenty are " certainly " or " undoubtedly " Shakspere's.
And of the remaining nineteen any one having patience enough
to tabulate the results of Mr. Fleay 's demonstration (pages 22
to 56, the Shakspere Manual, Macmillans) will see that William
Shakspere a la Fleay can only retain about two-fifths ! So that,
whoever William Shakspere was, according to the New Shakspe-
reans, it is not sacrilegious to show up poor Shakspere stripped
of about half the feathers which Greene declared three hundred
VOL. XL. 25

386 SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. [Dec.,

years ago that William had wrongfully beautified himself with,
provided the stripping be done regularly that is, by means of
" stopped " and " unstopped " endings, and so that the name of
Francis Bacon is not brought anywhere into the neighborhood
of the discussion.

Up to date, then, the external and internal evidence seems to
agree in this: that the plays can be separated into text and stage-
setting, and that the author of the text, while also author of the
poems, was certainly not one and the same individual as the
stage editor who set these plays for his boards. So far, at least,
Mr. Furnivall's demonstration of the numerous distinct prose and
metrical styles (which he calls "periods") in the plays, and Mr.
Fleay's demonstration that between these two there was at least
one shrewd enough to know the public taste and turn the know-
ledge to gold, are not conflicting. The only difference between
Mr. Fleay and myself I can draw from the Shakspere Manual is
that I am not sure that Mr. Fleay's man of shrewd and ready
wit who made these plays available for revenue was not the very
man we are after, William Shakspere by name, while Mr. Fleay
believes him to have been a partner of Shakspere's whose name
is, so far, undiscoverable. I am inclined to believe that he was,
because every record and every tradition as to William Shakspere
shows such to have been his character. Wayward, lovable,
clever, brilliant was William Shakspere, boy and man ; and that
he became rich as well is matter beyond dispute.

Ben Jonson's plays were stuffed even fuller of classicisms than
Shakspere's, but they would not pay for a sea-coal fire. We
may be very sure that it was Launce and Trinculo, Barnardine
and Boult, the drunken porter in Macbeth, young Gobbo, and the
like, who, by catching the ears of the groundlings, paid Shak-
spere's running expenses. Had these plays emptied the theatre
of the rabble then, we need not be ashamed to believe, because it
is the historical fact, they would scarcely have survived to be
studied by scholars now.

It would not be fair to Mr. Furnivall to conclude without
crediting him with his own views on the Baconian-authorship
theory. Tn his introduction to the Leopold Shakspere (p. 124)
he remarks : " The idea of Lord Bacon's having written Shak-
spere's plays can be entertained only by folk who know nothing
^whatever of either writer, or are cracked, or who enjoy the para-
dox or joke. Poor Miss Delia Bacon, who started the notion,
was, no doubt, then mad, as she was afterward proved to be
when shut up in an asylum. Lord Palmerston, with his Irish

1884.] SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. 387

humor, naturally took to the theory, as he would have done to
the suggestion that Benjamin Disraeli wrote the Talmud. If
Judge Holmes' book is not meant as a practical joke, like Arch
bishop Whateley's historic doubts or proof that Napoleon never
lived, then he must be set down as characteristic-blind, as some
men are color-blind. I doubt whether any so idiotic suggestion
as this authorship of Shakspere's works by Bacon has ever been
made before, or will ever be made again, with regard to either
Bacon or Shakspere. The tomfoolery of it is infinite."

In other words, Mr. Furnivall assures us that a man to whom,
from the records, not a day's schooling can be assigned, and
whom the highest heights of Shaksperean fancy have never
credited with more than one or two terms passed in childhood
at a provincial grammar-school of the sixteenth century, could
write in a score of different literary styles ; while Francis Bacon,
foremost classical and contemporary scholar of his time, author
of the Essays and the Novum Organum, could only have had one
literary style, and therefore could not have anything to do with
aught that was not frozen into the sententious mould of his ac-
knowledged works.

But if Francis Bacon could not have written the plays, how
could the William Shakspere with whom by this time we have
become so intimate have written them ?

The genius of William Shakspere appears to have been any-
thing but poetical. He elbowed his way from abject poverty to
exceptional affluence. He found the play-house a tabooed thing,
a vagabond pastime to be enjoyed by stealth. He made it a
profession honored by the court and protected by the throne.
He captured the populace and brought the city into his theatres.
First to occupy the field, he held it alone and amassed a fortune.
His successors had no such monopoly. For the next one hun-
dred years in London no manager achieved an income like
William Shakspere's. The plays he mounted were prepared to
catch all ears and enchain all tastes. They contain specimens
of all known rustic English dialects of the periods they cover,
put into the mouths of appropriate speakers. William Shak-
spere and his family and neighbors spoke Warwickshire dialect.
The condition in life implied by a man's employment of one
patois would seem to shut out the probability of his possessing
facilities for acquiring a dozen others. . No allusions to classi-
cal, philosophical, or antiquarian lore were necessary to make
these plays "draw"; were rather inclined, had the allusions
been recognized, to injure them. No practical stage-manager

388 SHAKSPERE AND HIS ^ESTHETIC CRITICS. [Dec.,

would have put them there ; though, if pressed for time or
not recognizing them himself, he might not have weeded them
out. Had William Shakspere, a practical stage-manager himself,
thought them necessary, not being a scholar he would perhaps,
have used a work of reference and so inserted them accurately.
But the ripe scholar who wrote the text of these plays tossed
in his learned allusions with lofty nonchalance, christened his
characters with Greek and Hebrew derivations that only ripe
scholars to-day recognize as apposite, and perpetrated the bold-
est and most astounding anachronisms with airy contempt for
the mixed audiences in the pit and the rabble in the gallery.
And withal nothing is clearer in the context than that in every
breath he breathed and in every syllable he penned this writer
was patrician, with the scorn of a Coriolanus for the mob who
gave him their suffrages. But such a man, indeed, William
Shakspere was not. Of the two, then, is it not anti-Shakspe-
reans who best recognize the law of cause and effect, and the
improbability of its having been suspended for fifty years to
cover the life of the original of the Droeshout portrait? It is
fashionable for Shaksperean biographers to cloud over the stub-
born facts in their hero's life by complaining that we know so
very little about him. As a matter of fact don't we know all
about him? Of what other private subject of Elizabeth do we
know a hundredth part as much ? And yet commentators who
load down their editions with " historical sources of Shakspere's
plots," accounts of where this overworked man of affairs, pressed
with daily care of his investments, leases, rentals, and his two
theatres, borrowed plots wherever hands could be laid on them,
will not allow us to conjecture that, however pressed, he ever
condescended to borrow a dialogue or a speech from a scholar
who stood at his elbow.* But so it is that, while the New
Shakspere Society ransack history for, and crowd their publica-
tions with essays upon, the most meagre details concerning any
individual who can be ever so remotely connected with William
Shakspere Greene, Nash, Middleton, Marlowe, Marston, Cyril
Tourneur but once mention the name of Francis Bacon, and
they touch their foreheads and cry " sacrilege " and " lunacy " !

It is said that William Shakspere once played before Queen
Elizabeth. There is no record of it in the court minutes, though
we cannot find that any. of that period have been lost. There is a
record, however, that Francis Bacon did. February 8, 1587, cer-

* It has even been conjectured that Holofernes was William Shakspere's good-humored bur-
ksque of Bacon himself.

1884.] HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO. 389

tain gentlemen of Gray's Inn, Bacon among 1 them, performed be-
fore her majesty a play called " The Misfortunes of Arthur." The
play is not one of the list known as " doubtful " or " spurious "
(of which were " Pericles," " Edward III.," " The Two Noble
Kinsmen," and about a dozen others not included in the first
folios), but no one can read it without being impressed with its
resemblance to what men call nowadays " Shaksperean " gait
and movement. We are told, however, that it was written by
Thomas Hughes, William Fulbecke, Nicholas Trott, Francis
Flower, Christopher Yelverton, John Lancaster, and a person
named Penroodocke, " and that Francis Bacon devised the dumb-
shows " with which its royal representation was accompanied.
That Francis Bacon, a tireless and prolific writer who was to
be described as the very acme of the learning and literary ex-
pression of his time should have allowed seven young lawyers,
never heard of before or since, to have written the entire play,
and contented himself with merely preparing the pantomime, is
incredible certainly hard to believe by anybody who knows
anything of the habits of literary men, particularly of the impe-
rious moods of Francis Bacon ! In our feverish appetite for a
single Shaksperean fact, why not work such circumstantial data
as this ? For how much longer will our libraries of Shakspe-
reana pass completely over everything external and devote
itself exclusively to esoteric criticism, to transcendental analysis
after the German, to mere ad libitum scheme-work like Mrs.
Cowden Clarke's Girlhood of Shaksperes Heroines (a title rather
suggesting the Rev. Mr. Cream-cheese's sermon on " The
Maidenhood of Lot's Wife "), or to metaphysical questions as to
whether Hamlet was sane or mad or only feigned madness,
whether Macbeth was incited to murder Duncan by the witches
or had conceived the plan before meeting them, or to the micro-
scopical amenities of the New Shakspere Society ?

HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO.

To those whose ideas of life west of the Missouri River are
chiefly derived from the performances of Mr. Buffalo Bill or the
thrilling Western drama, in which the six-shooter and the coro-
ner take the leading parts, a short sketch of Western home-life
may be useful by way of antidote.

The ranch of my friend Mr. Sutcliffe is situated some ten
miles from the county-town of Castleton, in Colorado, and is a

390 HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO. [Dec.,

good example of all that a Western home might be. Castleton
is a town of some fifty wooden houses, amongst which are a
court-house, school, newspaper-office, and four or five saloons.
The population is chiefly engaged in farming land in the vicinity
of the town. The predominant standing of the gentlemen is that
of judge, owing to the fact that they are supposed to have occu-
pied that responsible position " back East " before they came to
Castleton. There is, indeed, one admiral there, strangely placed
so far inland, but this is accounted for by the fact that he came
there a retired first lieutenant, and has received his promotion
since at the hands of the settlers.

Leaving Castleton, the track to the ranch of Mr. Sutcliffe winds
amongst the hills, gradually ascending until it suddenly emerges
on the brow of the " Divide." Here a magnificent panorama is
spread before the eyes of the traveller. In front is a verdant, un-
dulating valley of great extent, intersected at intervals by little
streamlets or creeks, which take their rise in the foot-hills beyond,
their course marked by the thick growth of pines and cotton-
woods, and an occasional gleam of silver where the sun lights up
the rapid water. At one end of the unbroken chain of foot-hills
Pike's Peak rears his venerable head, silvered with frost, and far
to the right of the landscape Long's Peak, shaped like a gigantic
pyramid, towers in snowy magnificence.

Nestling in the valley is the house of my friend. It is a good-
sized frame house, of which the architect and builder, a local
genius, known in these parts as " old man Grant," has every rea-
son to be proud. In front of the house stands that most useful
invention, the windmill, by which the breezes are constrained to
pay toll in kind and keep up the supply of fresh, pure well-water,
and a little to the right of the house is the wood-pile, where the
hungry tramp must labor for a time before his wants are at-
tended to.

Mr. Sutcliffe is 'an Englishman, and twenty-five years' resi-
dence in Colorado appears only to have brought out more strik-
ingly the national characteristics. He is a stout, hearty man of
about forty, on whose face a life of incessant work has left the
stamp of honesty and keenness. He comes of a good old farm-
ing stock in Derbyshire, where his family have farmed the land
time out of mind. Mrs. Sutcliffe is also English, and a glance
round the house will make it clear that here comfort and cleanli-
ness reign supreme. The parlor, on the right of the entrance, is
a large room, well lighted with three windows. There is a large,
open fire-place, and on winter's nights, when the red curtains are

1884.] HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO. 391

drawn close and the pitch-pine fire roars up the chimney, you
may sit in warm slippers before the cheerful blaze and have only
an increased feeling of comfort from the thought that Jack Frosl
is squeezing the mercury into the bulb of the thermometer out-
side or screaming enviously round the corners of the house. At
the back is a cosey little room devoted to the ladies of the family.
Here, amongst other things, are a piano and a sewing-machine
and in the long evenings work and music go merrily together.
The hall is adorned with a magnificent pair of antlers, a trophy
from one of Mr. Sutcliffe's hunting expeditions. Up-stairs are
the bed-rooms, where the spotless linen and shining furniture in-
vite repose. Such a house as this is not a very common thing to
oneet with amongst the settlers in the West, and it is easy to see
that it is appreciated, when in the summer-time the stream of
tourists begins to pour along the Pueblo road, from the number
that seek for a night's lodging here and the earnestness with which
they pray to be admitted.

The family consists of a boy and three girls, all of whom take
their share of the house-duties. The girls, amongst other cares,
milk some twenty head of cows twice a day, churn the milk, make
the butter, assist in the cooking, and attend to the welfare of the
poultry and calves. The boy helps his father with the farm-
work, collects the milch cows, and is always in readiness to ride
anywhere, at his father's commands, on his fleet-footed pony.
Work is never slack on such a farm. In the winter's mornings,
when there are sun-dogs at dawn, and the air glitters with minute
particles of frost, and the mercury stands far down below zero,
Mr. Sutcliffe will draw on his warmest coat, and, mounted on his
favorite mare, her shoes well sharpened, will sally out on a tour
of inspection. Every beast, down to the latest arrival, he knows,
and his practised eye can discern at a glance exactly how each
is bearing the cold weather.

Expeditions in search of beef-steers to be fed and kept fat
until the price of beef in the Denver market rises are made in
the winter-time. A snow-storm may come on on the evening of
the expected return. Then the resources of the larder are taxed
to the uttermost, and the table, covered with a snowy cloth, groans
under a surprising display of good fare. The heaped-up logs
roar and crackle in the wide fire-place, and a welcome change of
garments hangs toasting in readiness. Suddenly the watchful
eye of Mrs. Sutcliffe discovers a dark patch moving towards the
house through the curtain of snow, and a distant bellow announ-
ces the approach of the wanderers. Then there is a hurrying to

392 HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO. [Dec.,

and fro, and the girls run out to open the corral-grate and take
charge of the tired horses, so that father and brother may get the
sooner to the welcome warmth of the house. Never does house
look more cosey or food more enticing than to the tired ones on
such occasions.

But when the snows have melted and the silence of winter
gives place to the hum of returning spring, then comes the
farmer's busy season. The crops have to be put in and stock
branded up and turned out on Uncle Sam's big property, still
requiring continual attention.

The change from winter to spring in Colorado is very strange
in its completeness. In winter the grass is dried up and yellow
after the summer's heat, the ground is hard with frost, and not a
sound breaks the icy stillness except the occasional howling of a
wolf or the chattering of a magpie. But when the winter breaks
the soft, green grass springs up as if by magic, the air is filled
with the voices of countless birds of gay plumage, and the ground
is covered with a wealth of wild flowers unequalled in any
country.

Summer and harvest-time follow quickly on one another in
Colorado, and not many weeks elapse from the appearance of
the tiny spears of rye above the ground before the " waves of
shadow" chase each other across the golden fields and the
crop is ready for harvesting.

All times are busy with the settler's wife. But during the
haymaking, and when the threshing and the harvesting begin,
then she must be well endowed with those qualities which Dr.
Robert Collier sums up under the title of "clear grit" to bear
the strain which is laid upon her. Breakfast takes place by
lamp-light, dinner in the fields at noon, and at sundown the men
return with the neighbors who have been lending a helping hand
some ten or twelve, perhaps hungry, tired, and dusty, to have
their wants supplied. To each must be given a cheerful word of
welcome, and for each a plentiful meal must be prepared.

Farmers in Colorado are to be congratulated that the seasons
there are not so fickle as elsewhere, and if they be blessed with
as happy a temperament as my friend Mr. Sutcliffe, and with
such an untiring helpmate as he has got, I can safely predict
their home-life in Colorado will be healthful and happy.

An example of a Colorado house of a different kind is the
next ranch up the creek. It is a genuine old-style log cabin.

The owner, Mr. D , was an Irish barrister, but ill health

would not allow him to continue his work in the old country.

1884.] HOME-LIFE IN COLORADO. 393

The ground-floor is divided into parlor and kitchen. The par-
lor is a square room, supplied with a couple of windows and a
door, so constructed as to let the breezes wander at their own
sweet will through the house. The chief ornaments on the
whitewashed walls are a collection of guns and rifles. There
is, in fact, nothing to suggest the barrister in this room. At
the top of a steep staircase, however, is an ingeniously-contrived
den which presents a somewhat different aspect. Here a table
stre\ved with writing materials, a well-filled book-case, an easy-
chair, and a reading-lamp hold possession. Ranch affairs do not
penetrate into this sanctum. Calculations as to the price of
beef and arrangements for the slaughter of the fattened hogs
are rigidly excluded from this Colorado Parnassus, where such
topics might be uncongenial to the distinguished company al-
ways present. For ranged against the walls are Homer, Hor-
ace, Shakspere, and a number of sages and philosophers whom
it is rare to encounter on a ranch in the West. In their com-
pany Mr. D may sit and soon forget that he is not in some

cosey nook of the temple, within easy reach of Simpson's.

" Baching " in Colorado has its disadvantages as well as its
charms, and as dinner-hour approaches visions of Simpson's
may rise for a moment when the old steer which has been
slaughtered for home-consumption proves a trifle tough ; but
a day's work irrigating, putting up fence, or driving cattle
sharpen a man's appetite wonderfully, and the food, if not dainty,
is plentiful and the cooking good. " James," a Sligo lad who
takes the place of the "'neat-handed Phillis " in this bachelor's
establishment, is an excellent cook and always in the best of
spirits, but the busy woman's hand is missed and shirt-buttons
are at a premium. The situation of the little house is one of the
most beautiful in the neighborhood. It is close to the foot-hills,
which rise behind it, clad to the summit with pine-trees. Two
of the hills directly behind the house bear an odd resemblance to
old Sugarloaf and Corragoona in the County Wicklow. The
main product of the ranch is hay, and when the meadow is stand-
ing, and the sunflowers and wild flowers of every hue peep out
through the long, waving grass, a prettier spot could not well
be imagined.

For occupation, the buying and feeding of cattle in winter and
the getting-in of the hay-crop in summer furnish plenty. Then
Mr. D has opened a " law-office " in Castleton more, I sus-
pect, as an excuse for a day or two of quiet study in the week
than from any hope of a lucrative practice. The county judge

394 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

is by profession a house-painter. His knowledge of law he ac-
quires in court. Legal training is considered rather an impe-
diment to a man obtaining the office of county judge, on the
ground, presumably, that such training might bias him when
deciding on law-points.

Farm-life does not present very many striking novelties, but
the time passes with wonderful rapidity and a store of health is
quickly laid in.

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XVII.

IF the first blow were really half the battle, as the misleading
proverb says, the impulsive and the ignorant would be crowned
with victory oftener than is actually the case. There was cer-
tainly no lack of vigor in the effort which Mrs. Danforth and her
daughter instinctively made to ward off what they felt to be
disgrace from the name of their dead, and their acceptance of
poverty for themselves in its place was willing if not cheerful.
But Mrs. Danforth had not only miscalculated the extent of her
own forces, but had no just appreciation of those drawn up
against her. Her life had lain hitherto in a little round of peace-
ful domestic duties, untroubled by grave responsibilities, and ap-
parently as far removed from anxiety for the future as from want
in the present. She was one of those fortunate people whose
horror of debt is not based upon humiliating experience, and
whose sensitiveness on the score of pecuniary honor seems to be
hereditary and instinctive. Personal pride, which so often mas-
querades as principle, had been in her case its powerful auxiliary.
She had been a pretty woman, and as aware of it and as willing
to make the most of it as a modest woman may be; yet, girl or
matron, she had never seen the day when to owe for a ribbon or
a gown would not have seemed to her an intolerable disgrace,
beside which mere shabbiness must have sunk into comparatively
small importance. Still, she had seldom been called upon to
make the choice, even in the early days when prudence coun-
selled strict economy ; and of late years, although she had been
saving and simple in all her household ways, she had been so
through choice and custom and with no thought of any ulterior
good to be attained in that manner.

1884.] KATHARINE. 395

Even now the privations entailed by narrow means would in
themselves have signified little to her. Her husband's death,
though unaccompanied by the present disaster, would probably
have been the signal for a contraction in her expenditure which
she would have explained to herself and others by saying that, as
there was nothing more coming into the house, there was all the
more reason why less should hereafter go out of it. The true
explanation, however, was to be looked for in her nature rather
than in her circumstances. She had an instinct for saving and
going without, for pinching here and sparing there, and, in gene-
ral, trying to make the half do the work of the whole, which bore
as little apparent reference to any real or anticipated personal
need as do the accumulations of a magpie. If to the trait which
ill-natured people had sometimes called stinginess there had
been added the faintest suspicion of self-seeking, Mrs. Danforth's
character would have been an unamiable one. But her closeness
in little things was more than outbalanced, if not by generosity
in great ones, then by justice, so far as she understood it, to all
the world and a complete unselfishness toward those she loved.
Though she looked long at a sixpence before parting with it for
what she called superfluities ; though she was fond of saying that
enough is as good as a feast, and of reminding impatient Kitty
that man's imaginary wants are far greater than his real ones,
yet it was always she who bore the chief inconveniences of her
small economies, and she was at least as lavish of her time and
strength in the service of others as she was sparing in the use of
money. The range of her sympathies was somewhat narrow
and her exterior cold, but the channel of her affections was by no
means shallow.

The action by which she hastily despoiled herself of all that
was her own under the stress of mingled pride, anger, and aver-
sion, while more impulsive than almost any other of her life,
was not uncharacteristic, although it represented what was least
worthy in her. Nothing had been definitely ascertained as yet
concerning either the amount of the firm liabilities or the extent
of the available assets. There was still some reasonable ground
for hoping that the defaulter might be traced and compelled to
unload his booty. The law's delay imposed the usual restraints
and afforded the usual protection to debtor and creditors alike,
and justice demanded that one of the latter should not be pre-
ferred to another in case it proved that all claims could not be
paid in full. Such considerations, and others which he thought
not less important, Mr. Warren had resolved to press once more

396 KA THARINE. [Dec.,

upon Mrs. Danforth's attention when he again visited her after
an interval of a week or two which was intended to mark his
sense of her unwisdom in rejecting- counsel. Though he had
heard her express her intention of parting with her private pro-
perty, and knew she meant it at the moment, he thought it not
unlikely that she would listen to reason in the end, and certain,
in any case, that her determination was one which would require
time to carry into effect. It happened, however, that an offer
had been made for her house some months before, which her
husband had decided to reject on the ground that the property
was growing in value every year. Under the sting of pride,
wounded by what she had resented as an imputation on his
honesty, Mrs. Danforth recalled this proposition and wrote at
once to invite its renewal and express her wish to make the
transfer without delay. The natural consequence came in the
shape of a lowered offer, nicely adjusted to the anxiety indicat-
ed by her note, but Mrs. Danforth closed with it at once. Mr.
Warren found the affair already terminated, the importunate
creditor paid in full, and the widow quite unconscious that she
had been imprudent or unjust toward either her husband's credi-
tors or herself. She admitted her haste and folly when once
persuaded that advantage had been taken of her need and her
ignorance of business, but she could never be brought to see that
she had failed in justice.

" Since it was my own," she said, " 1 surely had a right to do
what I liked with it. I don't see that any one else is wronged
merely because Peggy Smith's mouth was stopped now instead
of eighteen months from now."

" P e b&y Smith's mouth was safe enough," grumbled her
brother-in-law, " without your emptying your own and Kitty's
to fill it. I didn't know you were so fond of that gossiping old
granny. I shouldn't have thought her your sort at all."

" Fond of her! She would never have been paid at all if my
liking were the measure of her claim. I knew her long tongue
of old, and I never wanted James to have anything to do with
her money. He has been paying her eight per cent, on her five
thousand dollars for the last six years, because she made such a
poor face and said she couldn't manage to live without getting
as much as that. It was pure charity on his part. I have heard
him say her account was twice as much bother as it was worth,
for she was always coming to fuss about it."

" Charity of that sort is what I call arrant nonsense ! And
then to see you crown the whole thing out of sheer pride ! I

1884.] KATHARINE. 397

wouldn't have believed it of you. If it had been Anne, now
but, to do her justice, though she wastes five dollars to your one
she would know her own interests better than that. The truth is,
Eliza, you don't seem to realize your own position at all. If Deyo
can't be caught and squeezed everything James owned will have
to go, and it is doubtful whether the claims can be fully settled
even then. There are new ones coming in still. I have nothing
to say against that, though he was as clearly victimized as any-
body. But it is all the more reason why you should have held
on to all you were entitled to. It is very easy to talk about liv-
ing on nothing a year, refusing the rent from Kitty's house and
selling it as soon as possible ; but what good will it do ? If
everything could be cleared up in that way it might be different.
But how are you and she to manage? Is she fit for anything?
Has she even finished her schooling yet, supposing she thinks of
preparing herself for teaching ? One thing you may rest assured
of, and that is that I shall use the authority given me under her
father's will to prevent her income from being disposed of ex-
cept for her benefit. Do use your common sense. A month ago
I would have said you were as full of it as an egg is of meat, but
here you go about like a madwoman, mopping up debts with
which you have no more concern than I have, and which, as a
matter of fact, you have no right at all to pay until the whole
business is straightened out and every one put on an equal foot-
ing."

Mr. Warren sp6ke in a tone which nothing but his habitual
respect for his sister-in-law and his real sympathy in her be-
reavement saved from being a snarl. ' Mrs. Danforth hardly
noticed it. What he had been saying, though not really new to
her, for he had urged it in less forcible terms before, seemed for
the first time to assume significance in her mind. Her ignorance
of affairs beyond the limits of the four walls of her household was
what one would call almost childish in these days when women as
sume and carry without difficulty so many more burdens than of
old. But she belonged to an older generation the generation in
which, while man and wife were one in the eye of the law in all
that regarded money, the man was the one assuming all respon-
sibilities, controlling all income from whatever sources it might
arise, even when it was the woman's inheritance or the product of
her daily labor, and at liberty to divert it to his own purposes by
his pleasure during life and by his will after death. Neither Mr.
Danforth nor' his wife had ever questioned the justice of the law
in this regard, she because she had never suffered from its pres-

398 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

sure, he because he was accustomed to take things as he found
them, without investigating very closely what seemed to have no
special personal bearing. His wife had nothing when he married
her, and when, after her sister's death, the whole modest income
arising from her mother's property fell to her share, he had
drawn it, invested it, and kept no private account with her,
simply because they were actually one in mind and heart as well
as by virtue of the legal fiction, and had no divergent interests.
Her acquaintance with business forms up to the last week, when
she had suddenly enlarged it at her private cost, had been limited
to what she called "signing off" on various occasions when her
husband had wished to dispose of real estate. This would be
an ideal state of things if men were always just, women always
reasonable, and death never uncertain. Otherwise it has its
drawbacks.

" You seem to forget," she said, after a meditative pause
which the nervous working of her fingers showed to have been
an anxious one as well, " that I have something from Aunt Jane's
estate ; I thought we ought to be able to live on that. There
is the house, you know, besides the money. This one is larger
than we need, and, besides, it isn't ours. He talked of buying it
next May when the lease runs out. I shall move up on the hill
then."

" I didn't forget it ; but what does it amount to, after all ?
Who assures you that you will live until next May ? There is
absolutely nothing now that you can count on for Kitty except
the house you declared the other day you wouldn't accept the
rent of and would sell the moment you were able, unless every-
thing could be cleared off without it. I don't say there wouldn't
have been a sort of unnecessary justice in that, since, after all,
it came from James. At all events, I shouldn't have disputed
much about it with you if you hadn't gone and upset everything
by putting out of your hands the most valuable piece of real
estate you had, and the only one that had absolutely not the
shadow of a claim upon it. Commend me to your unreasonable
sex for undoing whatever man can do to protect you from your-
selves."

Mrs. Danforth made no immediate answer. She was trying
to adjust her mind to the new horizons which were opening out
before it. Life was evidently to be less plain sailing hereafter.
Her first venture into the open sea of business, with no other
chart than the apostolic injunction, " Owe no man anything,"
seemed to have been disastrous. She had accepted as true, and

1884.] KATHARINE. 399

acted upon to her own loss, statements which, as had just been
shown her, must have been intentionally misleading. Fresh
from such a lesson as had been taught her at her husband's bed-
side, she had taken counsel of pride rather than of prudence, and
run the risk of leaving her daughter empty-handed on the thres-
hold of young-womanhood rather than bear awhile the sting of
an imputation that she knew to be unfounded. To tell the truth,
she was, perhaps, judging herself over-harshly now, for the
thought of herself or of Katharine, except as guardians of the
dead man's honor, had not so much as occurred to her up to this
moment, partly because the effects of the life-long habit of being
cared for had not yet had time to wear- away, and partly because
of an ingrained belief which, if it had taken shape, would have
done so in the words: "I have been young, and now 1 am old,
yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed beg-
ging bread." But Mr. Warren's manner, never aggressively
amiable, and his words, which seldom lacked directness and
were in this instance expressly intended to put a stop to any fur-
ther independent action on her part, were just now a sort of em-
bodied conscience, which made articulate certain misgivings as
to her motives which had made themselves felt from the first,
but had been silenced by an appeal to general principles which
had commended itself to her mind without justifying itself to her
instinctive self-knowledge.

" What am I to do, then ? " she asked, breaking a silence
during which her companion had been measuring the length of
the parlors with impatient strides.

" Do? Nothing at all. If any one else comes bothering here
with bills and claims refer them to me. You have money in
hand ; you know pretty well what you can count on. Cut your
coat according to your cloth, and wait until affairs are settled.
What do you propose to do with Kitty? She is likely to have
to earn her living in the end, as far as I can see. I have nephews
and nieces on my own side of the house, and I don't know that
there is any one else to look to. No," he went on, interrupting
with a gesture the disclaimer he read on Mrs, Danforth's face,
"you don't need to tell me you never expected anything from
me. Is she to keep on at school? Teaching is all she will pro-
bably be fit for, unless she marries."

Mrs. Danforth sighed.

" Little good her schooling has done her thus far. He would
have it, though many a time he was told it was an injury to her.
But I don't see what else she can do now but go on and finish."

400 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

Mr. Warren understood the mother's sigh and had a partial
sympathy with the feeling that extorted it. There had never
been much love lost between him and his niece. She had re-
garded -him from childhood as a sort of domestic tyrant who
very often spoiled by his fretting and fault-finding the pleasure
she would otherwise have taken in his household ; and he, whose
good points did not include tenderness to women or fondness for
children, had been passively cognizant of her verdict on him.
He had been present also on the night of her father's death, and
the reply that had been wrung out of her then by her mother's
appeal had shocked and at the moment almost terrified him.
Though not a professed believer in times of health and pros-
perity, he was a potential one at all times, and very near the
verge of actuality in that regard whenever sickness or death ap-
proached him nearly.

" I don't approve of so much learning for women myself," he
said. " If she had been mine I never would have given it to her.
But you can't come to a halt in the middle of a bridge. School
has begun, hasn't it? I see the girls going by the house in the
mornings now."

" Yes, last Monday. Anna went up to be examined, but
Kitty hasn't been yet. I hadn't made up my mind what to do
about it, and then she didn't seem to want to, either. She has
been moping around so ever since " Mrs. Danforth sighed
again and left her sentence unfinished.

" Better send her at once, then, and get her mind off her
trouble. And talk things over with her first, or let me do it.
Somebody has been telling Anne that she has never half worked
at school. Let her know that it isn't for her amusement you pay
her bills now, but that she must consider that she is learning her
trade."

: "And have I really nothing to do?" asked Mrs. Danforth,
rising from her seat in the corner of the sofa as her brother-in-
law picked up his hat. " I thought I was one of the executors
of the will. There was a man here yesterday afternoon when I
was lying down, but Kitty did not call me. He left word that
he wanted to speak to me about buying the mill, and that he
would come again."

" James Thomson, I suppose. I heard he was thinking of it.
Send him to me. You are joint executor with me, but I think it
would be safe to confine your share of the duties to signing your
name when it is necessary and taking your percentage when
things are settled. _Your lawyer and I will attend to all the rest.

1884.] KATHARINE. 401

You don't seem to shine as a woman of business. And you need
rest," he added in a softer tone, as, coming out into the porch,
the daylight struck upon the widow's face and revealed the
changes in it.

She had been a young, fresh-looking woman a month before,
bearing her fifty years so lightly that everybody would have
credited her with a decade fewer. But now grief and anxiety
had already graven deep lines in her forehead and about her
eyes ; her cheeks were thinner, and her hair, where it waved
back from her temples under the cap which, except for its al-
tered material, was such as she had worn for twenty years was
grizzling fast.

" Take care of yourself," he said, pressing her hand lightly,
" and remember that you stand now between Kitty and the
world."

Poor mother! That was the one fact with regard to the im-
mediate future which it would have been well for her peace of
mind that she should forget.

CHAPTER XVIII.

WEEKS and months went by, and life with Katharine and her
mother slipped gradually into newer grooves. As the business
was wound up the outlook for the creditors grew brighter, and
even promised to be less absolutely disastrous for the family
than was feared in the beginning. Mr. Deyo had been neither
a long-premeditated rascal nor, as we count greatness in such
matters nowadays, a great one. Though no trace of him was
ever come upon, and Mr. Warren never enjoyed the longed-for
pleasure of making him feel what he called the edge of his
tongue and causing him to pay for his roguery in person if not
in pocket, yet the latter could hardly have been sufficiently
well lined to insure that his life should compensate in some
fashion by its evident outward prosperity for its interior dissatis-
faction. "What exile from his country can fly himself as well? "
is a line which, if not expressly invented for absconding de-
faulters, at least fits admirably those minor knaves whose con-
sciences have been quickened by their training and associations,
and whose opportunities to violate them have borne an inconve-
niently small proportion to their inclinations.

The final settlement, however, was still far off when Mrs.
Danforth began to put in operation certain changes in her way
of living which her exaggerated fears as to the situation seemed
VOL. XL. 26

402 KA THARINE. [Dec.,

to her to render necessary. Anna Germain was soon chafing
against them with a visible and growing irritation, and even
Katharine, who sympathized with her mother's motives without
fully comprehending all of them, thought them overstrained and
needless. Their tenure of the house they occupied was too
near its term to make it worth while to share it with another
family, as Mrs. Danforth at first proposed ; but the head of faith-
ful Hannah, who had been with her for many years, fell straight-
way into the basket. She begged to stay at lowered wages, but
her mistress, in the first access of her economic fever, refused to
listen to the proposition.

" But I have almost nothing to do," she persisted in replying
to her daughter's early entreaties that she would spare herself.
" There are only three of us, and you two are away the best
part of nearly every day. You may help me in the mornings
and evenings, if you like, but I cannot afford Hannah's keep
even, much less to pay her wages."

And to Anna, who undertook some time afterwards to demon-
strate to her by dint of figures that her income would cover the
actual outlay, even were the latter increased so as to include this
expense, she replied, with a touch of irritability that was new
to her :

" I don't care about your arithmetic. I never kept accounts
myself, and I never mean to, but I know enough to put the quar-
ter's money into my bureau-drawer and take good care that it
isn't all gone before the next comes in. It is all very well for
you children to talk. He that knows nothing fears nothing.
The more I can save the better I like it."

" But why, mother ? " urged Katharine, when they were alone
together later on. It was near the holidays ; Anna was spend-
ing the evening with the Whites, with whom she had quickly
Cemented an intimacy from which she apparently derived much
pleasure, and the mother and daughter were sitting on either side
of a not very brisk fire built in the dining-room grate. " Can't
we really afford to light the furnace-fire and have some one to
attend to it? Anna is vexed, I know, about that and other
things. She says the parlors are so cold always that she is
ashamed to take people in there when they call upon her. And
then she does not like to study down here. It makes no dif-
ference to me I have always been used to doing my lessons
beside you ; but she told me the other day that she thought she
paid enough to have a right to be made comfortable."

" I thought we might avoid that expense this winter," an-

1884.] KATHARINE. 403

swered the mother, with a despondent accent. " And what does
she want with so much company she that pretends to be a
school-girl still? I don't like those Unitarians coming to the
house, anyway."

" They are pleasant people," said Katharine, " and her rela-
tives ; you can hardly shut the door against them. It isn't her
comfort I am thinking of so much as yours. Hannah went away
cross, but she would come back at a word, I am sure. You
ought not to be here alone all day, and I cannot help you as I
would like because I have a great deal to do in school this
year."

" I don't need Hannah. With a woman to scrub and wash
and iron, what occasion is there for another pair of hands and
another mouth? When all is done my time still hangs so heavy
on me that I should be glad if I were able to undertake every-
thing."

" But," insisted her daughter, who had been primed that day
with arguments from various sources, " I am afraid it is wearing
on your health. Do you know that you are actually beginning
to stoop a little and that your hair is almost white already ? I
met Uncle Horace out by his door this morning. He gave me
the money for my school-bill, and told me he was going to pay
the taxes on the Pearl Street house, and would come to-morrow
to give you the balance of the quarter's rent. Aunt Anne came
out, too, after he ,had passed on ; she thinks you are wearing
yourself out."

" Oh ! Anne, indeed ! What does she know about it ? Thank
Heaven, I was never one of her sort groaning and grunting at
death's door one day, and up and gadding the streets the next !
There is no use in talking about it, child. We don't know yet
how things are coming out. The Pearl Street house may have
to go after all, and then there will be nothing but what little I
can lay by to make up to you for the one I sold last fall."

" Ah ! " said her daughter, kneeling down on the rug before
the fire and putting her hands upon her mother's where they lay
idle in her lap, the fingers working nervously, as was their habit
nowadays, " you talk as though you were sure of living for ever,,
or as if I were likely to need what you can save. I shall be
able to earn something for both of us in a year or two. Prof.
Mitchell says I must keep on and take the post-graduate course,
if I think of teaching."

Mrs. Danforth sighed again, but made no answer. Her
thoughts were travelling so far into the future, and her anxiety

404 KA THARINE. [Dec.,

to live for her child's sake was so great, that the burden of re-
sponsibility and nervous worry was really wearing on her to an
extent of which she was quite unconscious. She had always
enjoyed singularly good health, but she had owed it, in a measure
of which she was naturally unaware, to the peaceful and even
tenor of her way of life. She had neither muscular strength nor
powers of sustained physical endurance, and, though the house-
hold tasks she had now assumed for the first time were not
heavy in themselves, they were adding the little strain under
which she might some day suddenly succumb. But of this
neither she nor her daughter had any suspicion. The latter,
although her solicitude was real, still spoke under the impulse
of affection rather than of actual fear, while the mother, rightly
attributing her frequent languors to their first source in her
anxiety and grief, knew too little of herself to suspect that her
mental troubles were reacting on her body, and that she was
abetting their insidious attack upon her vital forces by the slight
but constant privations to which she daily subjected herself.
But when she fell doXvn in a dead faint one morning in Christmas
week, just as they were about to sit down to a late breakfast,
the family doctor put his hand at once on the real difficulty.
Both she and Katharine had been alarmed beyond measure, each
of them seeing a " stroke " in the attack, though neither owned
her suspicion to the other.

" Not a bit of it," said the doctor ; " there is nothing in the
world the matter but" nerves and stomach. What do you eat
nowadays? Bread and coffee, bread and tea, gingerbread and
pickles and preserves ! These girls don't owe their red cheeks
to such trash as that, I'll be bound. And how often do you take
this hearty food ? Humph ! I thought so. Where is Hannah ? "

Katharine explained the situation. The doctor, an old-fash-
ioned practitioner, who had not yet given in to the custom of
written prescriptions, weighed out a dose or two from the wallet
he always carried, and then beckoned the girl to follow him from
the room.

" From all I can make out," he said, laying a heavy, kindly
hand upon her shoulder as she stood beside him in the lower
hall over the closed register, " there is no necessity for your
mother's either starving or worrying herself into her grave."
He pushed aside the grating with his foot as he spoke, and a
blast of cold air came rushing up. " Freezing herself too, eh ?
Well, there is no need of it but that is what she is doing. She
is nothing but a bundle of nerves, and those of her stomach are

1884.] KATHARINE. 405

very properly rebelling against her treatment of them. She has
no occasion for medicine, though I have humored her with a
taste of rhubarb and magnesia. What she wants is beefsteak,
regularly and often. She is growing too old now to begin play-
ing tricks with herself. And it seems to me that Hannah would
come cheaper in the end than another tombstone."

Thoroughly alarmed as to her health on one hand, and some-
what reassured on the other by the reports brought by her
brother-in-law, who had been able to dispose of the mill property
on unexpectedly advantageous terms, Mrs. Danforth gradually
relaxed her rigors. Hannah reassumed her familiar place, and,
although the house was still the house of mourning, it began to
put on a more cheerful air.

It had seemed to Katharine, in the first few weeks after her
father's death, that life could never again wear so bright an
aspect as before. Until he was gone she had never realized how
intimately he was bound up with her existence. The wrench
seemed at first to tear her heart in twain, and afterwards to
deepen and make more painful the doubts and fears which until
then had possessed only a speculative interest. What had be-
come of her father ? Where was he ? He had believed in and
hoped for a life beyond the grave, but his belief was in itself no
warranty, and he had failed in his effort to communicate it to
her. The fountain of her tears was sealed up by the weight of
her agony as she beheld him in the death-throe, but it began to
flow again when she awoke from her first troubled slumber after-
wards. Urged by an irresistible longing, she arose from her bed
and slipped noiselessly, lamp in hand, into the room where they
had laid him. The watchers were drowsing in the adjoining
parlor, and the folding-doors between the two were closed. The
cooler airs of approaching dawn breathed through the bowed
window-shutters, and the faint chirp of a half-awakened bird
came in now and then from the garden, but it was still dark.
The daughter stood alone beside her father, regarding through
her streaming tears the face stiffened and contracted into the
painful unfamiliarity of death. And her heart first, and then her
lips, called him, begging vainly for light on the great mystery :

" If there is another life, and you are able, come back and tell
me!"

As she said it she sank down on her knees beside the stretcher
on which he had been placed to await the undertaker's visit in
the morning. Her voice did not rise above her breath, but she
waited after she had spoken, half fearing, half hoping for an

406 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

answer. There passed through her mind at that moment a fami-
liar verse from St. Luke's Gospel: "'If they hear not Moses and
the prophets, neither will they believe though one rise from the
dead." Then there came a strong gust from without, the fore-
runner of a rising storm, which in another moment broke over-
head with sudden violence, and the flame of her lamp was extin-
guished. An instinctive, unreasoning fear fell on her, and she fled
to her chamber, chilled through with terror, although the sum-
mer night was warm. It was an experience which, naturally
enough, she never spoke of, but it haunted her memory and for a
long time colored all her thoughts with a sombre hue entirely
new to them. Sometimes she awoke suddenly at night to find
herself in a state of hushed and awed expectancy, as if the still-
ness were on the point of becoming vocal, or had just been dis-
turbed by a voice that called her and then sank back into silence.
But by degrees these feelings wore away. Youth reasserted its
empire, and gradually she reconciled herself to the altered aspect
of life and began to take new interest in it. She would never
forget her father, for her heart, which seemed inconstant else-
where, paid a homage to the great natural ties as unerring as
that which a stone yields to the law of gravitation. But youth
seldom lingers long beside a grave, even when it is the grave of
kindred and beloved youth. To that of age it brings regret and
love and memory, and passes on.

CHAPTER XIX.

A CONTEMPLATIVE saint of the middle ages, favored with an
abundance of divine revelations, says that there was but one
among them all which she was inspired to commit to writing, as
having, presumably, a wider than merely personal bearing. It
was to the effect that God will take away his light and grace
from those who, being brought immediately to their internal
Master, are so ungrateful as to forsake him and betake themselves
to an external one. It would seem natural that in this crisis of
her experience, when her heart, softened by grief and longing,
felt more than ever the need of some adequate support and con-
solation, Katharine should have reverted to her earliest attrac-
tion, the chief obstacle in the way of following it being now re-
moved. Had it returned she might probably have done so, but
it did not return. The short and easy road to peace had been
opened to her youth, and she had thought herself justified in de-
laying to enter it. Now, if she ever reached that goal, it would
be by the path of difficulty and danger.

1 884.] KATHARINE. 407

The winter which followed Mr. Danforth's death was na-
turally a quiet one. It had, nevertheless, certain distractions
which made it seem almost gay to Katharine, who had hitherto
led a nearly solitary life at home. Her cousin's presence alone,
had that been all, would of itself have made a sensible difference.
But Anna, who knew that her stay in the city was measured by
a few brief months, did not feel that she had a sufficient share in
the family trouble to make it either necessary or becoming that
she should avoid society. Her relations with Mr. White's family
were such as to gain her an easy access to a circle of cultivated
people with whom she exchanged calls and visits. The Unita-
rians were, like the coneys, " a feeble folk " in point of numbers,
but they believed themselves to possess, and were, indeed, gene-
rally credited with, an amount of intelligence and general cul-
ture which would have amply " furnished forth " several ortho-
dox congregations, if divided among them in the ordinary pro-
portions. " It is not numbers but weight which tells," was a fa-
vorite aphorism of the Rev. Arthur White when he surveyed
his own meagre audience or beheld the crowds which sometimes
poured out of an evening from a shouting revival meeting. " If
one is to count noses," he sometimes reflected further, " the hod-
men and coal-heavers and servant-girls that throng the cathedral,
even on a rainy Sunday morning, would put us all to shame.
Quality, not quantity, is the test where brains and influence are
concerned." Mr. White was a small, fair man, with a refined,
intellectual face and a head disproportionately large his " bodily
presence," indeed, like that of a far greater man, with whom
nevertheless he flattered himself that he possessed some other
points in common, being somewhat weak, though his speech, in
the matter of fluency, grace, and plausibility, was by no means
contemptible. Had he been the most orthodox of the orthodox
his personality would still have colored his reflections on delicate
topics where brains and muscle fell or seemed to fall into oppo-
site scales. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to remark
that Anna Germain, a tall, well-made, though rather exuberant
brunette, sympathized entirely with him in this respect, as in
some others. She shared, for instance, to an extent that sur-
prised Katharine the first time she had an opportunity to ob-
serve it, his doting, parental admiration and fondness for his mo-
therless daughter, a badly-spoiled little creature of some three
years old, to whom his widowed sister, who was likewise his
housekeeper, played the part of temporary mother.

Mrs. Danforth, whose sense of decorum and whose feelings

4o8 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

would alike have prompted her to keep her house shut up and
her parlors shrouded in funereal gloom, in which the rare, infre-
quent caller would have felt subdued to hushed tones and melan-
choly smiles, was not at all pleased to have this programme
interfered with. As a matter of fact Anna's visitors were not
sufficiently numerous nor their visits frequent enough to have
called for much remark had their quality been different. That
was a point on which Mrs. Danforth was as sensitive as the Rev.
Arthur White himself, but their standards were naturally dif-
ferent. She had a horror of Unitarians, as she had a feeling
very near akin to contempt for Universalists, and that her door
should ever be darkened by a minister of either objectionable
sect was a bitter dose to her. She felt herself powerless to in-
terfere after her first essay to do so, the manner of her young
cousin, which ranged between extreme though somewhat con-
descending gentleness and a brusqueness which was almost rude,
having effectually deterred her. But she promised herself that
no real or fancied family duty should ever again induce her to
take a stranger within her gates. She was not the first person
who has thought it worth while to shut the stable-door after the
horse has been stolen.

At first Katharine rarely met her cousin's friends. But the
girls occupied adjoining chambers, their talks at night were fre-
quent and took a wide range, while the books that Anna brought
to her notice were of a sort that greatly interested the younger
girl. She had read much rather than widely hitherto, poring
over her favorite authors until she knew them by heart, and
longing to make the acquaintance of others who as yet were only
names to her. Mr. White's library, which was well stocked on
very liberal lines, and to which Anna had unchecked access, en-
larged her horizon in various directions, even while as yet she
knew it but by hearsay or by occasional volumes which her
cousin borrowed. Had the Browning Society been in existence
at that time she would have been a thoroughly qualified candi-
date for admission a month or two after her first acquaintance
with Men and Women and The Blot on the Scutcheon, though she
fell from grace in that regard later on. She made acquaintance,
too, with Channing and with Martineau, and developed a ten-
dency to grow sentimentally pious from the top down a ten-
dency which did not last long and was quickly superseded by a
long-enduring admiration for Emerson's essays and an enthu-
siasm for the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, whose
Thoughts became her pocket-companion and were to her much

1884.] KATHARINE. 409

what George Eliot describes the Imitation as having been to
Maggie Tulliver. They made their appeal, however, to her in-
tellect and to her aspirations. Goodness of the Stoic type be-
came her ideal, and she made great plans for crushing out self-
ishness, mastering emotions of which she had as yet only the
vaguest notions, and walking manfully over heated ploughshares,
if need be, toward the goal of a purely theoretic perfection.

Toward spring her curiosity overmastered her disinclination
to give her mother unnecessary pain, and she began visiting Mr.
White's church and his library on her own account. The latter
was by far the most attractive place, for the preacher, when he
abandoned the graceful elocution with which he discoursed on
the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, and kindred topics of a
sort to which his new hearer was unused, and descended to logic
and argument in behalf of the hybrid theology he had under-
taken to set forth, made much the same impression on her as the
teachers to whom she had listened all her life. She told him
so one day, some weeks after their first acquaintance, when he
found her poring over Strauss' Life of Jesus, and advised her
that it might be dangerous reading. Katharine was fast grow-
ing into a very pretty girl, with a face full of animation and of
charming color. She lifted her head as he spoke to her, tossing
back the loose curls from her forehead with a gesture very usual,
and looking at him in a way that drove the little lecture he had
meant to read her quite out of his head and deprived her an-
swer of its sting. A sting, indeed, she had neither suspicion nor
intention of administering, her candor being still in that trans-
parent stage in which she thought that truth, at least in matters
of that sort, could have no personal bearing.

" Do you really think any book on the subject dangerous ? I
was in church last Sunday morning and heard your sermon on
the miracles in the Gospels."

" Didn't it please you ? " he asked, with a smile. " You seem
to have a criticism to make on it."

" Oh ! no. But I don't understand the distinctions you lay
down between them. Some of them you seem to think are true,
some possible but not probable, some owing to a sort of self-
deception on the part of him who wrought them or on that of
the beholders, and some absolute fabrications. And yet you call
yourself a Christian ! It is more straightforward, it seems to me,
to take a steady line and follow it, as Strauss seems to be doing."

They were very good friends, nevertheless, as a man of thirty
and a bright but not coquettish girl of eighteen may be, and Mr.

410 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

White, who had a natural desire to gain intelligent recruits to
his society, made his house and himself as attractive to her as
possible, half leading, half following her in whatever direction
her daring speculations led her.

" The trouble with you thus far," he had said to her at the
close of their first long talk, " is that you have lived always with
people on an intellectual plane below your own. We will try to
remedy that hereafter. I quite understand your first attraction
to Catholicism. Given the premises on which Protestant ortho-
doxy tries to build, and the most ordinary intelligence ought to
see that the superstructure it has reared is an absurd failure.
With the Trinity and the Incarnation at the bottom you can
have only a cathedral and a tiara on top. An orthodox meeting-
house, crowned with a codfish and a pumpkin by way of a
weathercock or a symbol take them which way you will is
simply laughable. But the bottom is as bad as the top. We
will change all that one of these days, though perhaps it behooves
us to be gentle yet awhile with the elder generation. It has
taken three centuries, you know, to get them even to their
present level."

Mrs. Price was some years older than her brother, fair like
him, but larger in feature and of buxom, matronly proportions.
Her experience during her marriage and widowhood had been
somewhat checkered, and she was a rather less enthusiastic
believer in the perfectibility of her species than she had been in
former years.

"Keep clear of fads, whatever you do," she said one day to
Katharine, who had been an amused spectator of one of little
Fanny's tantrums. " I wonder what Aaron Carew would think
now of her prospects for growing up a saint and becoming the
wife of our first black president ! He advised holding that up to
her as a reward of merit when he was here last week with Susan
Anthony quite serious he was about it, too. I begin to believe
that there is nothing in the world like a well-grown whim for
blinding the eyes and darkening the understanding. I began
with them myself, and if poor Price and our baby had lived
perhaps I should have been working on that line still. But see-
ing is believing, isn't it ? This child's education began, you
might say, before her birth, for my sister-in law took such a
course of gymnastics, and limited herself so entirely to oatmeal,
wheaten grits, and tasteless messes of that sort in order to insure
that the baby's bone and muscle should be of the most approved
description, that she never lived to see the result ; while as to

1 8 84. J KA THA RINE. 4 1 1

Fanny, the grits seem to have got into her temper instead of her
arms and legs, don't they ? Now we are supposed to keep her
on bread and milk and vegetables, without any salt except what
she may absorb through her bath, and with no sugar. I shrewd-
ly suspect, however, that her fondness for black Dinah in the
kitchen has some secret connection with the chronic depletion of
the sugar-bowl, though I close my eyes so as not to behold the
iniquity. But when her father is worsted in a struggle with her,
as he was just now, he takes refuge in testing and weighing her
food, making sure that she has flannel next her skin and no pillow
in her crib, and consoles himself with the certainty that if these
essentials are attended to everything else will right itself in due
course of time. What does Miss Germain think about it, by the
way ? "

It was Katharine's first visit to the nursery a casual one,
which followed an accidental meeting with Mrs. Price near the
latter's own doorstep and Anna was not with her.

" My cousin?" she answered, innocently enough. " I haven't
heard her express an opinion. I have a notion, though, that she
thinks children rather troublesome comforts."

" Ah ! There's one of her views, then, that she won't be
likely to be called upon to change later on. You don't happen
to know any of the Carews, do you? No? She is as like them
as two peas in everything but looks. She favors her father's
people there, I suppose. They take life with tremendous serious-
ness, and after a cut-and-dried pattern of their own that is amus-
ing to witness. Lizzie reminds me of a geranium in a pot a
self-conscious geranium, endowed with the power of snipping off
its dead leaves, grubbing up about its own roots, and administer-
ing at the proper intervals the precise quantity necessary of tepid
soap-suds. To see her get up at this hour and go to bed at that,
read so much goody nonsense out of this book in the forenoon
and do so many lines of introspective diary in the afternoon, and
keep an eye on herself all the time to make sure she isn't strag-
gling too far from the straight line of duty, is as good as a play.
I'll wager she turns over in bed according to some preconceived
idea as to the best way of doing it, and I know she carries a com-
pass with her when she*goes away from home, lest the aforesaid
bed shouldn't lie due north and south. She is afraid of being
depolarized, or something of the sort, if she should get out of the
electric current."

Katharine laughed a little at the picture, which was a slightly
exaggerated copy of some things she had been watching at home,

412 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

sometimes with a suspicion that a more earnest desire for perfec-
tion on her own part would induce a more persistent imitation of
them than she had yet achieved, but oftener in a mood not unlike
that of the present lively critic. Mrs. Price looked at her rather
closely as she ran on after a moment's pause :

" It will happen one of these days as sure as preaching. She
will forget her compass, or have a bad dream and mistake the
foot of the bed for the head, and there will be the whole labor of
a life undone in the twinkling of an eye. I hope you will take
every care that no such catastrophe happens to Miss Germain
while she is under your roof. The consequences would be more
disastrous in her case than in Lizzie's, I fancy, for she seems
to have inflammable materials in her make-up, while a genuine
Carew is three parts oatmeal and the rest milk and water."

That some serious intention underlay this chaff was evident,
but Katharine, having as yet no clue to what it was, looked so
serenely unconscious that Mrs. Price dropped the subject.

" The best thing I know about the Carews," she went on
again, returning to a different head of her discourse, " the only
thing that shows real spontaneity and naturalness, is just the one
that my brother likes the least. They have taken up with spirit-
ualism."

" Yes, I know," said Katharine. " Anna used to tell me a great
deal about the stances, and the communications she received
while at their house, but latterly she rather scoffs about it."

"Oh! she is soundly converted to better views, I know.
Arthur will have it that all that is not fraud in the matter is pure
self-deception, but for my part I know better. Have you ever
seen anything of it ? "

" No ; but I have a lively curiosity and an equally lively scepti-
cism."

" Oh ! so had I. There isn't a doubt of it that Arthur is quite
right about there being an infinite deal of fraud in all the pub-
lic performances and most of the professional mediums. What
converted me was finding out that I was a medium myself. If
I were a writing medium, now, there would be some use in it
that is to say, I could practise by myself for my own edification.
B.ut you can't regulate those things. I go into trances when I
sit down at the table with any one who is sympathetic, and they
tell me I say quite wonderful things. Of course I don't know
anything about it myself."

" I wonder if I am sympathetic ? " said Katharine, with a
rather shamefaced eagerness.

1 884.] KA THARINE. 4 1 3

" I am sure you are. I saw it in your eyes the first time I
looked at you. Would you like to try ? If you don't mind my
saying it, I had that in my mind when I begged you to come
in this afternoon. We had a few sittings up at Dr. Lord's, and
there were some quite wonderful things happened ; but my bro-
ther is so opposed to it, and ridiculed the mediums so much,
that for shame's sake none of his congregation will have anything
to do with it before him."

She drew up a little sewing-stand as she spoke, and, having
taken the precaution to lock her sitting-room door, the two sat
down opposite each other and the proceedings began. Katha-
rine was quite in earnest and a little more anxious for results
than she would have been willing to avow. Her heart beat at
a more rapid rate than usual, and she was distinctly nervous
during the rather long interval in which they faced each other
solemnly and in silence. Presently Mrs. Price leaned back with
her head against the wall, her figure took an easy attitude, her
hands gradually slipped from the table, her eyes rolled upward
with a rapt expression and then closed. The great moment was
evidently at hand, and Katharine's inward trepidation was re-
doubled. She waited in a growing anxiety, but the revelations
were delayed ; Mrs. Price remained motionless and her eyelids
ceased to flicker. Then her lips fell apart, and after perhaps
a quarter of an hour of intense expectancy the long-wished-for
sound issued from between them. The listener's ears tingled
sorely when they caught it. It was the faintest, the most lady-
like, but, alas ! the most unmistakable of snores.

" Was I unsympathetic or was she sleepy?" she said to her-
self, with a smile, as she slipped softly out of the room, leaving
her hostess to her slumbers. The absurdity of the situation
tickled her fancy so much that for a long time it was the most
effectual of barriers against further efforts at investigation in
that direction. In the end this sitting turned out to be only the
first one of a series, but, as far as results went, it was not by any
means the least interesting or important.

CHAPTER XX.

SCHOOL was to close about the middle of June, at which
time both of the girls expected their dfplomas. It had been ar-
ranged the previous summer, during Katharine's brief visit, that
she was to accompany Anna home and be present at her Cousin
Mary's wedding. Circumstances had changed the face of things

4 1 4 KA THA KINE. [Dec.,

so much since then that very little had been said about the pro-
ject. Occasional reminders of it came in Mary's letters to her
sister in the earlier part of the year, but Anna grew more and
more thoughtful and silent as vacation drew nigh ; her home-
letters seemed to cause her some annoyance, and she no longer
read out extracts from them, as had been her habit. Katharine,
although not very observant on such matters, had a vague im-
pression that her visits to Mr. White's residence grew less fre-
quent, and that, while her own relations with Mrs. Price were as
cordial as ever, a cloud had come between the widow and her
cousin. On the other hand, Mr. White himself often dropped
in of an evening, and Anna's attendance at church and Sunday-
school, where she had taken a class soon after her arrival in the
city, was too faithful to admit of interruption from either sun or
storm. But she observed great reticence about her private af-
fairs, and Katharine was so much occupied with her own pre-
parations for commencement-day that the last week of their life
together had arrived before the subject of the visit was again
touched upon. A letter in Mary's handwriting came by the
last post one day, and Katharine, who was standing in the porch
when it arrived, carried it up to her cousin's room.

" I wonder how a girl feels," she said, with a smile, as she
threw it into Anna's lap, " when she reflects that she is signing
her o\vn name for nearly the last time? It must be an odd thing
to sink one's own identity so completely as a woman must when
she gives herself to a husband. I wish we were going down to
the wedding, but mother has another touch of rheumatism com-
ing on. If it lasts as it did in the spring we won't be able to
leave home. Ten days from now, isn't it?"

Anna looked constrained, and for a moment made no answer.
She fumbled absently with the letter, but made no attempt to
cut open the envelope.

" You might come down with me," she said at last, after a si-
lence which was growing awkward. " I wish you would but
the fact is that Mary's wedding is put off again."

"Again? Poor Mr. Asbell ! His name ought to be Jacob
instead of Jonas. His Rachel is certainly worth waiting for."

" I don't know why you should pity him so much," said Anna,
with a touch of irritation in her voice ; " they see each other
every day, and have done so for years. He makes a great ado
about being asked to wait a little longer, but some people never
think of anybody but themselves."

" What is the matter this time or is it a family secret ? "

1 884.] KA THARINE. 4 1 5

" You will have to know it one day or other," Anna answered,
with a perceptible embarrassment. " I may as well tell you
now as any time, I suppose. 1 to tell the truth I am going
to be married myself early in July. I thought we might have
a double wedding," she went on with great precipitation, " but
Mary has so many whims and old-maidish ways. You might as
well try to unwind a clock as alter her mind when once she has
got.it all arranged to suit herself. She had laid out the next
year or two fdr me as if she had been Fate itself, and when she
found I was not going to carry out the programme nothing
would answer her turn but to wait at home another year and
train my younger sister. It is simple nonsense! My father
could find a housekeeper or a wife, for that matter, if he chose.
Anyway, I don't see that I am called upon to wreck my own
happiness or interfere with Arthur's plans merely because Mary
refuses to give up her whims."

" Arthur! Then you are going to marry Mr. White?"

" Where have your eyes been ? We are going to sail for
Europe on the fifth of July, and won't be back until September."

" My eyes ? " said Katharine. " In my pocket, I fancy. And
Mrs. Price and Fanny ? "

Anna's face, which had relapsed into serenity after the fading
of a very becoming blush, clouded up again.

" That is another nuisance ! Mrs. Price has made herself
excessively disagreeable. She thought' she was snugly settled
down for life when Mrs. White died and left that poor, dear lit-
tle thing behind her. Arthur told her that our marriage would
make no difference, but she has chosen to make herself so un-
pleasant that I think she will find two can play at that game.
She isn't fit to have the management of a sensitive, delicate crea-
ture like Fanny in any case. Fancy ! Arthur actually heard
her threaten to slap her one day to make her stop crying. We
shall leave her here with her aunt for the present, but I shall
devote myself to her education when we come back."

" But poor Mary ! And Mr. Asbell ! Of course I congratu-
late you, and all that, but it is too bad. I'm sure you must think
so. After all these years ! "

Anna had torn open her letter while her cousin was speaking.
It was very short, but Katharine could see by the failing day-
light that her face darkened and grew troubled as she read it.
She held it for a moment as if about to tear it ; then, changing
her mind, she passed it over to her cousin.

"It is her own fault! "she said. " If it were not I should

4i 6 KATHARINE. [Dec.,

be sorry for her. She has worn out even his patience at last.
I always knew he was selfish, though. He would hardly speak
to me last summer after it was arranged that I should leave
home for a year. Some people never think of any one but them-
selves ! "

" Dear sister," the letter ran, ''my father wished to write to you him-
self, but I have persuaded him that it is better to let me do it. I showed
Mr. Asbell your last letter on Sunday night, and told him that while my
father was in such feeble health and the two little ones still so young I
could not think it my duty to leave them to entire strangers. He made
me very little answer, and was married on Wednesday to Sarah Frisbee. I
hope God may forgive him and you, and that you will both be happy in
your new homes is the prayer of your affectionate sister,

"MARY GERMAIN."

Katharine's eyes were moist as she looked up from the paper,
but her heart was very indignant.

" May I never give any one occasion to make such a prayer
for me ! " she said. " I should be afraid to have it answered."

" Do have common sense ! " her cousin replied imperturbably.
" In the first place, she is well rid of a man who could act in that
way, and, in the second, don't you think it more important that a
man like Arthur White should be able to carry out his plans and
settle down to a life of quietness, in which he will be able to do
his best work and bring out all there is in him, than that a
country farmer like Jonas should insist on marrying to-day in-
stead of to-morrow ? He is only twenty-six when all is said. I
don't blame him half as much as I do Mary. I can't help it
if she chooses to throw herself down before Juggernaut. My
father ought to have prevented it. I talked the whole thing
over with Arthur."

" And he would not wait another year himself ? I am disap-
pointed in him-."

" Well yes he would, I suppose, if I had been very stiff
about it. But he really needs this European trip, and the con-
gregation insisted on his taking it. I think the doctor has pre-
scribed it for his throat-difficulty. He would have gone alone
but well, he thought, as I do, that Mary's carefulness is over-
strained. A man with my father's money can always hire what
help is needed, and Mary was to be close by in any case. Why
should we have waited ? I might never have had such a chance
for culture offered me again. Of course I didn't believe things
would take quite this turn. One comfort is that Jonas will sup
sorrow for it. If ever a man was absurdly in love with a girl, he

1884.] THE GLENRIBBON BABY. 417

was with my sister Mary. I'll wager he has repented every
minute since."

" But you are frightful ! " said Katharine, rushing to the door.
" Poor Mary ! poor Jonas ! I'd rattier be in either of their places
than in yours! "

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE GLENRIBBON BABY.
I.

THERE was a sound of horses' feet in the borheen outside, and
immediately the three small children in the cradle ceased rock-
ing and pricked up their ears to listen. For right well they
knew that the sound meant nothing less than apples, rosy apples,
and good old Larry Jot a-horseback ! And Larry, indeed, it was
who presently rode up to the half-open door and shouted, while
the youngsters tumbled madly out of the old cradle to meet
him, "Come out here, cloqrikeens ! Here's an apple in Lar's
pocket for Tommy, an' one for Johnny, an' one for little Tim."
" Mammy she's gone to de town," volunteered Tommy, the blue-
eyed eldest, when he and the others had had a delighted " shake-
hands " with their old friend and taken their prizes, " an' I'm
mindin' de brudders." "That's the boy, Tom," said Larry Jot
approvingly ; " you're able to take care of 'em like a man'. I
heard you singing ' The blackbirds an' thrishes ' for 'em when I
was coming up, an* as soon as ever you'll learn your a b c I'll go
to Ballyhooly fair an' buy a grand song-book for you. I will so
a grand sixpenny song-book ; for I'm very fond of you, Tom,
you're such a good, sinsible boy." Larry's steed ambled grace-
fully away, and the children, first laying aside one of the apples
for mammy, huddled into the cradle again and proceeded to di-
vide and eat the others. That was at two o'clock in the after-
noon, and at four, when the milkwomen were going to town, they
heard Tommy drowsily singing for the now rather querulous
and sleepy brothers, who droned a fretful accompaniment to his
song. " Oh ! wisha, listen to "em," said Nelly Marooney, one of
the women ; " wouldn't it put an ache in your heart to hear the
little craichurs, an' the poor mother slaving in the town to keep
the roof over 'etn ? Tommy," she said, going up to the door,
"here's the milk, a-clureen, for mammy. Put it on the dhresser,
VOL. XL. 27

4i 8 THE GLENRIBBON BABY. [Dec.,

darling." Tommy, withdrawing artfully from sleepy Johnny
and Tim, took the milk and placed it as Peggy directed, and
then once more sought the \yarmth of the cradle. There was no
further occasion for singing, for the babies were fast asleep, and
as Tommy's drowsiness was now all gone he had nothing to do
but to watch through the little window he had shut the door
upon the cold at the gray October mist creeping up the woods
on the opposite side of the glen. High above the fog and the
trees, its gentle, steady radiance deepened by the blue of the sky
in which it was set and the earthly vapors that rolled up but
could not reach or obscure it, shone the evening star. Somehow
it reminded him of the way his mother used to look when,
seated on the doorstep at her sewing in the summer evenings,
after her day in the town, they clustered about her as if they
would never let her go again, and listened to* her telling about
the daddy who was now up there beyond the stars and the sun-
set. But this was not summer, and it was damp and cold in the
wood through which the mother's homeward way lay. She
would be tired and chilly, and her cloak and dress would be wet
from the dripping trees. If Tom could only have a bright little
fire waiting to welcome her, and the kettle singing over it so
cosey wouldn't that be nice for the poor mammy ! But the fir-
ing? The small store of carefully-hoarded turf in the loft was,
of course, not to be touched, and there was not a fragment left of
the last bruma. The part of the woods where fagots might be
gathered was so well scoured by the children that he was hope-
less of finding a solitary stick there. But it had been windy that
morning, he remembered, and some stray branches may have
been blown down with the leaves. It was dark in the wood, but
the good, kind star would be overhead and he would not be
afraid, for while groping for his brusna he could look up often
and see it. The stream ran through the cabbage-garden at the
side of the cabin ; so, taking the kettle out, he filled it and left it
ready to hang over his fire when he should return.

It was lonely enough in the borheen, but the high-road and
bordering wood, when he came there, looked utterly desert-
ed and forlorn. A wild pigeon now and then made mournful
sounds among the tree-tops, and there was sometimes a sudden
twitter and folding of wings in the high boughs that was inex-
pressibly lonesome, for the star could not be seen, and the
sounds seemed to say, "Ah! Tommy, Tommy, isn't it an eerie
time for you to be in the wood ? Were safe up here with our
mother." And there was never a branch to be found. Search and

1884.] THE GLENRIBBON BABY. 419

search as he might, nothing met his. hand but the damp grass
and bracken, and now and then a slimy, horrid frog. Further
down, though, where the firs grew he knew that there were " tory-
tops," as he called the cones, which would make a merry blaze.
It was a dark, funereal place, which his mother had always been
unwilling for them to visit, but in this case he would just pick
his pinafore full of tories and then run home as fast as could be.
Notwithstanding the darkness, he made his way to the firs, which
he knew by clasping the rough, branchless trunks around. The
wind had been busier here than among the oaks, for the ground
was strewn with cones, and he soon had as many as he could
carry in his pinafore. Rejoicing in his success, and glowing with
the thought of how the mother would exclaim at the unexpected
warmth and light, and how the" brudders" would laugh and clap
their hands at sight of the flames dancing among the pretty tories,
he made the best of his way in the direction whence he thought
he had come. But running down hill unburdened was different,
poor Tommy found, to toiling up heavy-laden. It had grown, if
possible, darker, and the stones, which he had not noticed coming
down, seemed now strangely plentiful and sharp. They cut his
feet and bruised them ; but that was nothing, for he would soon
be home with the mammy and Johnny and Tim. These two
would be in her lap, and Tommy would sit at her feet, and there,
snug and safe and happy, she would tell them again about the
little leprechaun shoemaker hammering under the fairy rath at
his " buskins for the fairy prince and shoes for his son." She
would sing for them, too, and oh ! what a sudden faintnessof heart
seized him, how heavy and gruesome seemed the sad, dark wood,
as he thought of the lark-like voice singing of the upland, and the
sun, and the fresh, free wind above the heather. Stumbling on
over the rough ground, where the stones were like dull knives
under his flayed feet, and where, now that his hands were occu-
pied, the briers stretched out long, venomous claws to rend and
tear and startle him, the words of his mother's song kept repeat-
ing themselves to him like a cheerful, comforting voice :

" There sings a bonny linnet

Up the heather glen ;
The voice has music in it

Too sweet for mortal men.
I never can pass by it,
I never da'ar go nigh it,
My heart it won't be quiet

Up the heather glen."

420 THE GLENRIBBON BABY. [Dec.,

The break in the trees through which he had entered from the
oak-wood seemed still unaccountably far off, and it was growing
late, and he would not have the fire ready after all if he did not
hurry. But hurrying was sad work, what with the rocks and
thorns and the load of tories. Once or twice, too, he lost his foot-
ing and rolled down steep places into other cruel briers, out of
which, still holding fast to his precious load, he found it hard and
painful to escape. The fog had by this time turned into a dense,
saturating rain, and the wind was beginning to rise again. Tired
and bleeding and blinded, he struggled on, desperately anxious
now to get home ; for the mother would have arrived ere this,
and she would be frightened at his absence and think the tinkers
had taken him away. A tribe had passed the house a few even-
ings before in the half-light previous to the mother's return, and
Tommy had covered up the brothers under the cradle-clothes
and then stood trembling against the shut door for half an hour.
She would run distracted out when no Tom was there to wel-
come her and to wake up Tim and Johnny with the glad news
of her arrival, and, wet and cold as she would be, would cry her
heart out on the lonesome road. Tom had never seen her cry
but once for she was a light-hearted poor mother and that was
when he and the brothers had brought in a brusna from this same
fir- wood. On being told where it had been gathered she turned
white and sick, and then said, with a flood of uncontrollable tears,
" Ah ! darlings, take it away, and don't go near the fir- wood
again. 'Tis a lonesome, lonesome place ! " And to-night if she
knew that Tom was out here in the rain in the eerie, unfriendly
dark! He was crying now himself, without knowing it. The
picture of his mother's grief, the pains in his bones, and the tor-
tures of his torn hands and feet, added to the numbing misery of
the cold and wet, were waging a hard battle with his courage.
" O mammy, mammy ! " he cried, " I'm down here in the wood
an' I can't go home." But his childish voice, even if unweakened
by suffering, had little chance of being heard from such a distance.
As it was, the shrill wind drowned it as it rose, and no human ear
heard the moans, growing feebler and feebler, of the lost child in
Glenribbon.

II.

It was a woeful figure that the police-sergeant on the Skoogh
opened the barrack door to that evening,at eight o'clock. Drench-
ed with rain and splashed with mire, she had, after searching

1884.] THE GLENRIBBON BABY. 421

and calling through the house and garden and borheen, hurried
up to the police to get them on the track of the kidnappers who,
she was certain, had taken her boy away. Tom had not exag-
gerated the grief she would feel ; so pitiful was it that Sergeant
Dogs, as he was called by the nickname-loving Skooghers, felt
a pain somewhere inside him that hurt and astonished him deep-
ly. " Well, widow," he said, " don't give up like that, you know.
He may have gone to one of the neighbors, for children are
restless and hate being in the house. I fwouldn't say but he
might be home before you. Cheer up, ma'am ! At the worst
we'll do our best for you." She had provided against his re-
turn, forlorn hope as she felt it was, for Tom would not leave
the brothers, while she was away, for friend or neighbor. The
door was unlatched as she had left it, but the light of the sputter-
ing rush-candle showed only the babies still asleep in the cradle
and no sign of the little stray. At Nelly Marooney's no one had
laid eyes on him since Nelly gave him the milk that afternoon,
nor had the Donovans seen him, nor any of the household at
Cyprus Collins' of the great farm. The neighbors were all
grieved and mystified by the strange disappearance, and some'
volunteered to go to Kilcrona to leave word with the police
there, while others, Larry Jot among the number, went to the
adjoining towns for a like purpose and to make unavailing in-
quiries as to whether such a child had been seen that day or
evening with the strollers who passed through. The police
noted the description of the boy and promised to make active
search, and the magistrates who were applied to for advice and
help in the matter agreed to offer a considerable reward for any
information concerning him, and to have placards to that effect
posted in their several districts as early as the following day.
In Kilcrona, the race-week being on, the town-crier went ringing
his bell for four days after, proclaiming his desolate tidings: " A
child lost! a child lost ! A four-year-old child in a plaid dhress,
with fair, curling hair and blue eyes, of the name of Tommy.
A child lost ! child lost ! "

But though the tinkers and wandering ballad-singers and
travellers of that kind were narrowly watched in all the towns
and country places within the province and in the next one,
there was no trace of a child answering to the description of
little Tom. No froth on the river ever seemed more utterly
lost and vanished than he. Every day the heart-broken mother,
growing more and more wan and sunken and anxious-eyed as
the hope of tidings died away from her, came in to her work in

422 THE GLENRIBBON BABY. [Dec.,

the town. Sergeant Dogs, whose bark a very loud and bully-
ing one where the Skoogh drunkards, for instance, were in ques-
tion was, after all, very much worse than his bite, confessed to
his Kilcrona fellow-officials that the desolate creature's face and
questions morning after morning were like a stab to him. It
was a sad, sad thing to have to meet the half-hoping, half-despair-
ing inquiry, " Is there e'er a word, sergeant dear ? " with the
same hopeless answer, " Not a word, ma'am."

The town children stopped their play when she approached,
and, in their deep sympathy and anxiety to comfort her, asked
after Tim and Johnny. " They're well, darlings," she would
answer drearily ; " but Tom little Tom ! " Those children are
grown now, but that sad time is ever renewed for them in the
heavy weather of late autumn. Never was a more sullen Octo-
ber than that memorable one in Kilcrona. The Glenribbon for-
ests, always sombre, stretching away darkly for miles and miles,
were more than ever suggestive of " the ghoul-haunted wood-
lands of Weir"; the river, fed by a hundred bursting upland
streams, flowed with leaden, treacherous quiet over all the green
inches, and the rain came down as hopelessly and heavily as a
mourner's tears above a grave. In those times the Kilcrona
children were haunted by the thought of the mother in the bal-
lad and her " plaintive calling "

"O'er the mountain, through the wildwood, where his childhood loved to
stray,"

for the boy whom the fairies had stolen, and some of the grace
of that poetic and most tragic figure fell, in their imagination, on
the bereaved Glenribbon widow.

III.

And so October passed away, and All Souls', the mournful
festival of the dying year, the day set apart amid falling rain and
withering leaves, brooded over by gray, sad skies and chanted
to by banshee winds, came around once more. Up on the raes *
people lit the long All Souls' candle early and sat sorrowfully by
its pale light, thinking of their dead. In the old churchyard in
Kilcrona the mounds were grown over with rank grass and net-
tles, and few were the flowers to be seen in that city of the ab-
sent. But warm in the hearts of those they left behind were the
occupants of those neglected graves. Remembrance, hot, quick

* Moors.

1884.] THE GLENRIBBON BABY, 423

tears, and aching, passionate prayers for a happy reunion were
the rue and rosemary and blossoming white roses that garlanded
the resting-places of the beloved.

The candle in Nelly Marooney's window threw a long lance
of light out across her yard to the dark rae beyond, making her
cabin, on its high perch, a kind of light-house to travellers, if any
there were, on the mail-road. It was late, and the rest of her
household, a widowed sister and her children, were asleep ; but
Nelly, with her heart stirred to keenest recollection by the anni-
versary and the doleful sobbing and crying of the wind about
the house, could neither sleep nor rest. The ray of the candle
pointed straight to the fir-wood in Glenribbon when she looked
out into the night, and she stood there, her eyes fixed gloomily
in that direction. All day long, in town with her milk and up
here at her work, her thoughts had been back to a time when in-
stead of the gloom of the firs and oaks the country-side smiled
with pleasant farms. But the owner of that fair estate had been
seized with a hatred of the sight of his fellow-men a life of riot
and good-fellowship ending in sour misanthropy and nothing
would please him but to shift as far off as possible all signs and
tokens of human neighborhood from around his dwelling. To
wish with the autocrat was only to have his desire obeyed, no
matter at what cost ; and thus in less than a twelvemonth every
one of the homes in Glenribbon was laid low, and in five years
the owner was surrounded by the desolate but acceptable lone-
liness of miles of young forest. It was twenty years ago to-night
since the first stroke of the crowbar was laid at the pleasant
homes, and on the site of the old village the firs, from what she
could hear for the place was accursed and few visited it were
great trees now. Nelly's reflections were interrupted by a
sound of disturbance from the shed where the cow and the hens
were housed, and she went out to see to matters there. When
she returned to the house her sister was sitting up in bed and
trembling violently. " O Nelly ! " she said, " I'm fairly, fairly
killed from listening to little Tom Corbett all night. To hear
the crying of him, an' I couldn't see him at all ! O Nelly, Nelly,
poor little Tom ! I thought we were at home in the old place
down the glen, and that I was inside, an' I heard him going
around an' around, crying as if he was lost, but I couldn't see
him when I went to the door there was never a light in the
house an' I couldn't call out to him, although I tried. O Nelly,
poor Tommy, poor little Tommy ! " The influence of the dream
was still so strong on her that it was only by a violent effort she

424 THE GLENRIBBON BABY. [Dec.,

quieted herself and listened and tried to believe it when her sis-
ter told her it was the sound of the wind that put the fancies
about Tommy, of whom they talked a good deal, in her head.
But the dream made a deep impression on Nelly herself, and
when she lay down to rest the thought of the lost child wander-
ing and weeping around the old home pursued her even into
her dreams. She was once more sitting with her mother at the
fireside, waiting up for her father and brothers, who were at the
fair, but whose graves under the abbey wall in the churchyard
she remembered through it all. They were long in coming, so
long that the wind had time to change into a sound that resolved
itself into the moaning of a grief-worn child. With a finger
raised and a listening look in her infinitely tender eyes, her mo-
ther she died in the frost and snow of their first winter on the
raes, the earliest victim of the cruel change waited for a repeti-
tion of the sound, which was more mournful than the first. Run-
ning to the door, they both peered into the thick darkness, but
no moving creature was visible, although the moaning voice was
quite near. "Come, a-gilibeg," said the mother coaxingly,
" come here to us out of the cold ! Come, darling, come ! "
But pleading was vain ; the waif, crying desolately, kept up his
unseen wandering about the house. They followed, led by the
voice, but nothing met their arms, when they stretched them out
to shelter and rescue the child, only formless air. " O dar-
ling!" said the mother again, and her voice, it seemed to Nelly,
would have drawn the dead to her, " if you are lost we'll take
you home. We'll take care of you and love you." They had
retreated into the house as she said this, so that the. child might
take courage to enter. The flame and glow of the fire had
died down by this time and nothing remained but a bed of gray
ashes on the hearth. While Nelly was kindling the turf anew
a small figure passed in and seated itself, with its face to the wall,
at her mother's feet. It was still moaning piteously and reject-
ed, with a despairing movement, all their efforts at comforting it.
When the flames were high again they could see that the
child's dress, soaked with rain, was of plaid, and in his pinafore
were tories from the fir-trees near the borheen. Do what they
would, they could not comfort it or cause it to turn its face
towards them. It held its pinafore tightly and seemed absorbed
in its sorrow, while Nelly was tortured by a dim, haunting re-
membrance of its identity. . . .

It was not yet daylight when the mooing of the cow awoke
Nelly out of her painful dream, which she could not convince

1884.] THE GLENRIBBON BABY. 425

herself, at that ghostly hour, was all a phantasm. An irresistible
impulse was drawing her down to the long-shunned fir-wood,
and she could not rest until she had seen the place, which, fire-
lighted and with the walls and roof and belongings of old, was
so vivid to her during the night. My God! if all that had hap-
pened since long ago were a dream, that the father and brothers
had not broken their hearts trying to wring a living from the
barren rae, if the mother were still untouched by the blight of
the mountain winter, that the forest above the site of the old
homes were but a dreadful nightmare ! She must have been
half-dreaming still when, dressing herself and drawing her cloak
about her, she closed the door and took her way to Glenribbon.
Ah ! but the awakening came soon. The sullen, silent woods
stretched grimly along the glen and hillside, and there was not
a sign of former human occupation within them, except the scat-
tered stones that had once formed part of the homestead-walls.
In the depth of the fir-wood Nelly knelt, with bitter tears, on the
spot where she had seen her mother sitting last night. Under
the moss and grass was still a portion of the old flagged fire-
place, which she passionately kissed. When, after a while, she
lifted her face, the gray dawn had broken, bringing out each
separate feature of what had been dense black shadows half
an hour before : the white tombstone, not far away, of him to
whom the forest owed its origin for the crowning shame of
having their destroyer buried, according to his will, among their
ruined hearthstones had been inflicted on the banished people
the clumps of laurel glistening with the night-mist, and the
briers and bracken dropping sodden, yellow leaves upon the
grass. Covering up the old fireplace again as if it had been
a disturbed grave, Nelly moved aside a straying brier-branch.
Ah, my God ! my God ! what was this ? this little dress of
faded plaid, this torn pinafore full of fir-cones and clasped tightly
by a poor, dead baby-hand, this little face turned downward?

And so they came to know in Kilcrona that neither tinker
nor stroller had stolen the Glenribbon baby, that the tragic fate
that lay before him on the day Larry Jot promised him the
"grand new song-book" was to die less than half a mile away
from home, of cold and grief and terror, in the artificial solitude
created by a monster whose existence had been so depraved that
the sight of his fellow-men was unendurable to him.

426 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

REASONS WHY WE SHOULD BELIEVE IN GOD, LOVE GOD, AND OBEY GOD.
By Peter H. Burnett. New York : The Catholic Publication Society
Co. ; London : Burns & Gates. 1884.

Mr. Burnett is an old gentleman seventy-eight years of age, residing,
after a long, active, and variegated life, in patriarchal prosperity and peace
at San Francisco, surrounded by a large family of children and grand-
children. He was born in Tennessee, and has spent his life partly in that
State, but also for considerable periods in Missouri, Oregon, and California,
everywhere a pioneer, and showing a most energetic character and the
highest moral rectitude. He went to California in 1848 ; in 1849 he was
elected the first governor of the State, and in 1859 he was appointed a judge
of the Supreme Court. In boyhood he had but a short allowance of the
plainest common school education. He was admitted to the bar after six
months' reading of law, and afterwards took advantage of six months'
seclusion, on account of ill health, to devote that time also to the study of
his profession. He is, therefore, a self-made man, and seldom has one
made such solid attainments in various important branches of knowledge,
and educated himself so well, with such limited advantages. He has been
by turns lawyer, merchant, banker, and legislator, ' besides having gone
through all the hard manual labor which fell to his lot in youth. The
large and vigorously written book which he has now sent to the press, and
which has been published in a handsome style by Mr. Kehoe, of New
York, shows that he still possesses the robust strength of manhood, al-
though almost an octogenarian.

In 1846 Mr. Burnett, who had belonged to the sect of the Campbellites,
became a Catholic. He gave the reasons of his faith in an able plea for
the Catholic Church contained in a large volume entitled The Path which
Led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church.

The present work treats of Natural Theology and the Evidences of
Revelation, with expositions of some special doctrines in the way of re-
moving objections based on these idoctrines.

Mr. Burnett, in his Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer (p. 85),
quotes from a Protestant writer the opinion that lawyers, more than any
class of men, have shown clearness of judgment and ability in weighing
and marshalling proofs in respect to this great theme of the evidences of
religion. Mr. Burnett accounts for this, by himself accepted fact, from
the logical talent necessary to success at the bar, the superior mental
training of the profession, and the habit of referring to decisions of judi-
cial tribunals.

He himself is a specimen of this class of writers, and his book is a
specimen of the kind of writings on theological topics in which legal and
judicial skill in argument, in the array of testimonies, and in the formation
of analytical judgments is employed with powerful effect.

As an impartial critic we are bound to point out, nevertheless, that in
respect to one of the topics of Cathplic doctrine handled by Mr. Burnett

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 427

his exposition does not fully express this doctrine in its whole extent.
This is, naitiely, the absolute supernaturalness of the cause, the principle,
the motive, and the nature of the assent of divine faith. " In some compa-
ratively rare cases," writes Mr. Burnett on p. 541, "where the worthy in-
quirer possesses superior intellect and ample opportunity, he may, by
long, careful study, profound reasoning, personal experience, and close
observation, come to the conclusion that God truly made the Christian
revelation, and that it is impossible for him to lie. This case, however,
is quite exceptional. The great mass of men, either by choice or from
necessity, arrive at true faith in a different way. Our Lord said : Ask and it
shall be given to you, etc." In this extract and its context the distinction is
not clearly enough marked between the preamble of faith and faith itself.
The conclusion reached by reasoning is a rational conviction. This
rational conviction does not require such exceptional conditions as those
which are mentioned. Even children and illiterate persons must have a
rational motive for the judgment of their minds that God reveals the truth
which the church proposes to their belief. The grace of God is abso-
lutely necessary for every one in order that he may rise above a merely
natural conviction to the assent of divine faith by an act of the will made
by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, yet freely made, which determines
the mind to a supernatural assent to the truth which God reveals, because
he reveals it, who cannot be deceived or deceive. And this assent of faith,
produced by a divine light and inspiration in a human subject elevated by
grace above his merely natural condition and operation, is not merely " a
faith which, in most cases, is greater than that which the evidence of the
truth of Christianity would produce in their minds independently of the
grace of God," but one which surpasses in firmness, and transcends in
certainty, in all cases, every merely natural assent.

Again, in respect to mysteries, the distinction between truths which
transcend comprehension and those which transcend understanding is not
sufficiently expressed. The truth that God is the self.-existing, most per-
fect Being is intelligible by its intrinsic reason to the natural understand-
ing, yet it cannot be comprehended. The mysteries of faith are above the
scope of reason, they are not evident to the understanding even when
proposed to faith by the divine revelation, and are believed purely on the
divine veracity. This is the doctrine defined by the Council of the Vatican.
The being and perfections of God, the credibility of his revelation, the
divine institution and supreme authority of the Catholic Church and many
doctrines not above reason, can be demonstrated so completely that there
is no reason for a prudent doubt. It is, moreover, evidently reasonable
and obligatory to assent to the truth of mysteries revealed by God, on his
veracity. There are harmonies between these mysteries and the truths of
reason which a mind enlightened by faith can discern in an imperfect and
obscure manner. This is the Ultima Thule of the human mind. The region
beyond is the object of faith, which is an obscure light, and cannot become
evident except in the clear light of glory.

Mr. Burnett has given an excellent demonstration of the preamble of
faith, and his two solid essays taken together furnish ample proof to any
intelligent and candid mind that it is the height of reason to be a Catholic
and the depth of folly to be an infidel or an atheist.

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

MODERN SCIENTIFIC VIEWS AND CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES COMPARED. By
Rev. John Gmeiner, Professor in the Theological Seminary at St. Fran-
cis, Milwaukee Co., Wis. Milwaukee: J. H. Yewdale & Sons. 1884.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

We have great pleasure in calling the attention of our readers to this
little work. Of course, in two hundred and twelve small octavo pages we
dare not hope for exhaustive treatment of the difficulties to be met with in
astronomy, geology and paleontology, biology, psychology, and the theory
of evolution. But more will be found than we dared hope for, and we
should be at a loss to point out in English a better discussion in a few pages
of the questions which arise in psychology, especially on the distinction
between sensation and intelligence. The opposing theories, with the foun-
dations on which they rest, are clearly stated and the scholastic theory ex-
plained in an admirably exact manner and as fully as is compatible with the
vastness of the field Father Gmeiner has undertaken to cover. This chapter,
together with a recent article of Mr. St. George Mivart, "A Limit to Evolu-
tion," in the Nineteenth Century, will be of great service to the many who
are interested in the question of evolution. We can heartily recommend
this little work as one well calculated to be of great service in showing
that religion has nothing to fear from truly scientific research and investi-
gation. From the religious standpoint Father Gmeiner shows that there
is no conflict; from the scientific standpoint the same thing has recently
been affirmed in the best and most authoritative way by the president of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Lord Rayleigh,
in his address at the recent meeting at Montreal. His words are so im-
portant, not only on account of their author's high position among men of
science but also of their own intrinsic excellence, that, though somewhat
lengthy, we shall quote them in full :

" Many excellent people are afraid of science' as tending towards materialism. That such
apprehension should exist, is not surprising, for unfortunately there are writers, speaking in the
name of science, who have set themselves to foster it. It is true that among scientific men, as
in other classes, crude views are to be met with as to the deeper of things of nature ; but that
the life-long beliefs of Newton, of Faraday, and of Maxwell are inconsistent with the scientific
habit of mind is surely a proposition which I need not pause to refute. It would be easy, how-
ever, to lay too much stress upon the opinions of even such distinguished workers as these. Men
who devote their lives to investigation cultivate a love of truth for its own sake, and endeavor
instinctively to clear up, and not, as is too often the case in business and politics, to obscure, a
difficult question. So far the opinion of a scientific worker may have a special value, but I do
not think he has a claim superior to that of other educated men to assume the attitude of the
prophet. In his heart he knows that underneath the theories that he constructs- there lie contra-
dictions which he cannot reconcile. The higher mysteries of being, if penetrable at all by human
intellect, require other weapons than those of calculation and experiment. Without encroaching
upon grounds appertaining to the theologian and the philosopher, the domain of natural science
is surely broad enough to satisfy the wildest ambition of its devotees."

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL FOR 1885 (seventeenth
year). With calendars calculated for different parallels of latitude, and
adapted for use throughout the United States. New York : The
Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates.

Seventeen years is a long time in the life of a periodical publication, but
the Illustrated Catholic Family Annual does not look its age. Its issue for

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 429

1885 is brighter, fresher, more alive to use an expressive word than any
of its predecessors. Years have only brought it strength and ripeness (per-
haps the right thing to say, then, is that it does look its age). Its one
hundred and sixty-eight pages are packed full of information which no
American Catholic can afford to be without, and with bright articles which
make it as readable a little volume as one could take up in a leisure hour.
Nearly every distinguished Catholic who died within the past year has a
carefully-prepared biographical notice and a well-engraved portrait. Thus
among others are noticed Bishop McMullen, of Davenport, Iowa; Arch-
bishop Perche, of New Orleans; Bishop Quinlan, of Mobile; the Rev.
Henry Formby (author of the illustrated Bible and Church History) ; Arch-
bishop Vaughan, of Sydney ; the two Abbes de Ratisbonne, of Jerusalem
(the conversion of one of whom from Judaism is attributed to a miracle),
and many others. Nor are these notices confined to distinguished ecclesi-
astics. Such Catholic laymen as the late Richard Doyle, the caricaturist,
and Hendrik Conscience, the Flemish novelist (whose portraits, by the
way, and those of the Abbes Ratisbonne and Archbishops Vaughan and
Perche, are perhaps the best of a strikingly good collection), receive a
similar attention ; and articles are devoted to Catholic laymen like the
Hon. Eugene Casserly and Judge Gaston of North Carolina, whose lives
are special examples to American youth. Places of American historical
interest are described and illustrated, and one of the most interesting
things in the book is an account of old St. Peter's, in Barclay Street, the
first Catholic church in New York, whose hundredth anniversary will be
celebrated in November next year. Capital articles are those on the
Propaganda, the castles of Wartburg and Canossa. Among the lighter
contributions a leap-year idyl by Mr. Maurice F. Egan, which is made the
subject of ten illustrations, is specially good. The excellent account of
Father Junipero Serra and his work should also be mentioned. We have
named here but a small portion of the contents of this excellent little pub-
lication, whose compilers seem to have striven to give it the accuracy of a
book of reference as well as the attractiveness of a Christmas annual.

LUTHER: An Historical Portrait. By J. Verres, D.D. London: Burns &
Gates.; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

An indirect but none the less real and important effect of the recent
glorification of Luther has been to direct the attention of Catholics to the
Reformer's life and works. We noticed a few months ago the exceedingly
valuable little pamphlet of Father O'Conor, in which, with the utmost care
and accuracy, were exhibited in Luther's own words the genuine doctrines
of this "second founder of Christianity." We have now to call our reader's
attention to a larger work on the same subject, written with the like
scholarly attention to accuracy and complete mastery of the subject.
The object of Dr. Verres has not been to give a complete and detailed life
of Luther. His desire has been that the Reformer should describe himself,
his character, and his work in his own words. At the same time the author
has not omitted what was necessary in the way of historical elucidation ;
and readers of the workjvvill find many things of great value in this part.
The main interest, however, lies in the opinions and views of Luther as he

430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

himself enunciated them. We shall be much surprised if these opinions
and views will not excite the abhorrence of many who glory in the name of
Protestant. While they will find much to gratify their dislike of the pope,
they will learn that in the opinion of the Reformer there was one more
worthy of detestation namely, the prophet of whom our Lord was the
antitype : "The Lord will raise up to thee a prophet of thy nation like unto
me" (Deut. xviii. 15). This is the way in which Luther speaks of this pro-
phet, Moses : " If you are prudent send that stammering and stuttering (bal-
bum et blesum} Moses with his law far away from you, and be not influenced
by his terrific threats. Look upon him with suspicion, as upon a heretic,
excommunicated, damned, worse than the pope and devil " (p. 137). Ex-
tracts of a similar character might be multiplied giving Luther's judgment
on many other doctrines which we are fain to believe good Protestants
nowadays would agree with Catholics in regarding as sacred. Students of
politics also will find much to interest them in the treatment accorded to
the peasants in their revolt : " A rebel is not worthy that one should answer
him with reason ; he is not accessible to them ; the fist has to answer such
jaws, until the blood spurts out from the nose'* (p. 241). Again : " I, Mar-
tin Luther, have during the rebellion killed ail the peasants, for I have com-
manded that they should be killed " (p. 240). Even if it is possible to un-
derstand how the most militarily organized of nations in modern times can
look up with reverence to such a teacher, it passes our comprehension how
citizens of countries with free institutions should make a man of this stamp
an object of regard. Lovers of " urbanity " in controversial literature will
scarcely find a model in one whose habit it was to call his opponents
'' liars," ''sows,"" stupid-heads," " mad-brains," and other names with which
we dare not sully our pages. Yet people glorify this man, and those who
glorify him are the enlightened and cultivated, the promoters of progress,
pure religion, and civilization, and his opponents are obscurantists and reac-
tionaries and enemies of the Gospel ! God help us! After the appearance
of this book, however, and others of a similar character which have lately
been published, there can be no excuse for the dense ignorance which has
hitherto been common. Very few, doubtless, have access to the original
editions of Luther's works, or the time to wade through them. But any
one who wishes can find in the present volume enough to make him thank
God that he and such a man cannot be classed under any common religious
name; or, if he has that misfortune, to make him ask himself whether he
cannot find a way of removing that blot from his soul.

LIFE OF VEN. PADRE JUNIPERO SERRA. Translated from the Spanish of
Father Palon by Very Rev. Joachim Adam, V.G., Los Angeles, Cal.
San Francisco : P. E. Dougherty & Co. 1884.

The story of the Franciscan missions in California is the most delight-
ful chapter in the religious history of the North American continent, and
this work gives the only full and authentic account of the founder of these
missions, Father Junipero Serra, justly styled the Apostle of California. It
was written a hundred years ago at the Mission Dolores, San Francisco,
amid the scenes which it describes. Its author, Father Palon, was the
pupil, friend, and companion of Father Serra in"' life, and he it was who

1884.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 431

closed the great missionary's eyes in death. The narrative is simple and
direct, like a chronicle of the olden time ; the facts and incidents of Padre
Junipero's saintly life and heroic labors are agreeably told, and it enables
us besides to form a very good idea of the Pacific slope and its inhabitants
when the tide of Spanish conquest first touched its distant shores.

The Very Rev. Joachim Adam, to whose industry and research we are
already indebted for much important information relating to the early
missions of California, has in this instance done more than the work of
a mere translator, for he has filled in the gaps and rounded out the narra-
tive and made the relation complete. The value of the publication is still
further heightened by its rarity, there being only a few copies now extant
even in the original Spanish.

The translation is fittingly dedicated to the venerable Archbishop Ale-
many, who for four-and-thirty years has emulated the missionary labors of
California's first apostle, and who, a son of St. Dominic, has watered the
cross planted by the sons of St. Francis until it has become a great and
flourishing tree.

We would earnestly recommend the perusal of this plain, unvarnished
record of a noble life spent in the service of God and man.

A SERMON AGAINST DRUNKENNESS. By Bishop Ullathorne. London :
Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

This is a sermon against drunkenness, and no mistake. It attacks the
vice most vigorously, and pictures the degradation of the victirh with an
eloquence seldom equalled. It is the sketch of a master's hand who is in-
tensely conscious of the reality of his work and seeks to give it full ex-
pression, and, although so forcible in its treatment and intense in its ear-
nestness, it is the plain, simple truth ; there is nothing extreme or exagge-
rated about it. The>malice of the sin of drunkenness and its consequences
are stated in the usual way, and the remedies suggested are moderate and
practical.

Sermons of this character frequently preached from our pulpits would,
we think, do much to restrain a vice that is the fruitful source of almost
every evil against which we contend. And is it not somewhat strange
that in a country where the evil of drink is so widespread and soul-de-
stroying so few sermons, comparatively, are preached directly against it,
and the lecture-platform is left to do the most important work of the
pulpit?

DE DlSPENSATIONIBUS MATRIMONIALIBUS JUXTA RECENTISSIMAS S. URB.

CONG. RESOLUTIONES. Auctore Zephyrino Zitelli, S.T.D., LL.D., etc.
Romae: Apud Typogr. de P. F. Pretio Libell. 2. 1884.

Monsignor Zitelli, as a prelate of the Roman Curia and enjoying all the
advantages of the counsel and supervision of the highest Roman authori-
ties, is plainly one unusually well qualified for the task he has undertaken
under the auspices of Cardinal Simeoni. Every priest will see by the title
how practical and valuable is this brochure of one hundred and fifty pages,
which is a succinct and summary epitome of the ecclesiastical law on dis-
pensations, with juridical forms and a reprint of the most important consti-
tutions and instructions of the Holy See.

432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec., 1884.

UBALDO UBALDI. II Libro di Giobbe Tradotto e Spiegato dal Signer
Ernesto Renan. Estratto dal periodico La Rassegna Italiana, Roma.
1883.

L'ECCLESIASTE, etc.

IL CANTICO DEI CANTICI, etc.

The. members of our clergy who are Italians, and all others who have
been educated at Rome, know well the merits and reputation of Dr
Ubaldi. Indeed, we may extend this remark to all Catholic ecclesiastics
who are versed in the study of the best authors on the Holy Scripture.
Dr. Ubaldi's visit to this country in the company of Monsignor Roncetti
and Count Mirafoschi, when the dignity of cardinal was conferred on the
venerable Archbishop of New York, has left a very pleasant memory of his
genial qualities in the minds of all who had the pleasure of making his
acquaintance. The three short treatises which he has sent us are worthy
of his learning, and each one of them contains an admirable refutation of
the pseudo-criticism of Renan on its respective topic.

VOCAL AND ACTION-LANGUAGE. By E. N. Kirby, Teacher of Elocution in
Lynn High School. Boston : Lee & Shepard. 1885.

Elocution is growing more into favor with educationists. But it is still
far from being thought so much of as the Athenians or the Romans
thought of it. Public speaking in our day has been regarded too much in
the light of a natural gift and too little as an art except in the seminaries
of the Catholic Church, where the art of teaching how to preach is given its
right place. Let a man be natural, they say, and if it be in him he will
prove an orator. This is a'grave mistake. It is very difficult for some men
to be natural in the sense meant. A man may be a "born orator " and yet
be unable to produce nine-tenths of what ought to be his full oratorical
effect, simply because he has not cultivated the art of oratory. Demos-
thenes was the greatest of the orators, but Demosthenes was howled off the
hustings by the Athenian populace time after time when he began his
career. Satyrus, the actor, showed him his mistake, and Demosthenes
shaved one side of his head so that he might not be tempted to leave his
study until he had made himself a thorough elocutionist. We are glad to
see the number of handbooks on elocution increasing. The one before us
claims to broach no original theory ; but it presents the whole subject, from
the proper culture of the voice to the art of proper expression by voice and
action. Its instructions are thoroughly practical and sensible.

THE "AvE MARIA" SERIES : No. i. Francis Macary,the Cabinet-maker of
Lavaur, by Henri Lassare. No. 2. Rosa Ferrucci : A Memoir and
Letters, by Henry Perreyve. Notre Dame, Indiana : " Ave Maria "
Press. 1884.

This pair of pure and charming little stories, both translations from the
French, seem to be the) first of a series which the publishers of the Ave
Maria are about to issue. It is a very commendable project ; and we
congratulate the publishers on the taste with which their opening issues
are got up. These two small volumes in their plain covers and clear type
are a pleasant contrast to the vulgar and gaudy little prints that too often
come under the notice of the Catholic reviewer.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD

VOL. XL. JANUARY, 1885. No. 238.

A SHADOW OF CHRISTMAS.

RESINOUS odor of forests
Filleth the snow-chilled air,

Where, o'er the city's curb-stones,
Prisoned, but strong and fair,

Rise the green fir-trees, waiting
Santa Glaus' symbols to wear :

Waiting the shining baubles

Gladdening the little ones' eyes

Light unto light uplifted,
Sparkling in sweet surprise,

Dancing with joy as in child-hand
Gift of the Christ-Child lies :

Waiting to lend their dark beauty

Unto the altar of God,
Unto the little Child-Shepherd

Off ring earth's honor and laud
Chorus of deep-hearted city,

Silence of hill-top broad !

Out of the near gray heavens
Fall the fine crystals of snow,

Starring the cross-boughed fir-trees
Soon with the Christ-lights to glow,

434 ^ SHADOW OF CHRISTMAS. [Jan.,

Filling the steps of the passers
Hurrying to and fro.

Over the city's dulled clamor,

Mire-stained snow of the street,
Mine is a vision of mountains,

Sound of a chorus sweet
Rivers that sing to the valleys

Clasping the great hills' feet.

Odorous breath of the balsam

Beareth afar my thought
Where, of the sunshine of summer,.

Earth's golden days are wrought,
Where with the peace of the mountains

Swift-winged hours are fraught.

Green are the forests about me,

Morning's blue heaven o'erhead,
Snow of the Alpine blossoms

Over the uplands spread
Where the white mists, untiring,

Climb with their noiseless tread;

Song of the thrushes mingling

Sweet with the murmur of rills
Voice of the west wjnd calling

Unto the heart of the hills
That, in its deep rock bosom,

Unto the music thrills.

Mine are the pathless forests

Strewn with the autumn's gold;
Cliffs of the wind-swept ridges,

Jewels the rude rocks hold ;
Echoes of sweet human voices

Hollow and hill-top enfold.

Odorous breath of the balsam,

Lead not too far my thought;
Not of the mists of the mountain

Life's daily duty is wrought,
Though with soul's earnest endeavor

Strength of the hills be fraught.

1885.] A SHADOW OF CHRISTMAS. 435

Fair are the upland pastures,

Peace for the peoples they keep
Where soft the little Child-Shepherd

Leadeth His wayward sheep,
Ever, where fall His footsteps,

Growing the way less steep.

But if He calls from the valley,

Shall not our feet descend,
Unto the way He showeth

Willingest heart to lend ?
So with the dust of the highway

Peace of the hill-top blend.

Odorous breath of the balsam,

Be thou pure incense of prayer,
All a heart's grateful outpouring,

Counting the days most fair
Under the shadow of mountains

Cleaving the rare, blue air ;

All a soul's holiest duty

Offered at earthly shrine,
In it;s strong faith with its brothers

Serving its faith divine,
Marking each hour as it passes

E'en with the cross's sign.

Incense-wreath'd boughs of the balsam,

Grown in the sign of our God,
Unto the little Child-Shepherd

Lift ye hearts' love and laud,
Holding, so, deep-hearted city

Peace of the hill-top broad.

436 THE FALLS OF WEND. [Jan.,

THE FALLS OF WEND.

A LEGEND OF NORTH WALES.

IT was Christmas eve, and Sir John of Wynne lay dying 1 , as
unconscious of the holy season in his last hours as he had been
unmindful of its lessons during the long years of life. Without
the stars shone frostily in the blue-black sky and nature slept
girdled in ice and snow ; within the lights burned dimly and
the watchers nodded drowsily as they waited waited for death
to corne and carry off the last of an ancient line. It seemed
strange and hard to believe that he who two days before had
ridden home in the conscious strength of manhood should now
be lying as helpless as the clod of earth he was so soon to enter ;
that he whose name had struck terror into the hearts of many
should now have sunk so low that none were left to fear him.
He had fallen speechless upon his own threshold, struck by some
swift and sudden malady which no leech could fathom. In hot
haste one had been summoned, and at first, under his ministra-
tions, the baron seemed to rally ; his eyes grew conscious for a
moment, and his lips strove to utter words whose meaning none
could catch. Then came a violent change, and for nineteen
hours he had lain gasping and unconscious, waiting in that dim
border-land whose only egress is the door of death.

A message had been sent to the monastery of St. Kentigern,
and the horror-stricken abbot had mounted Brother Anselmo,
the sacristan, upon his own sleek white mule, and had despatched
him to the castle with words of ghostly comfort for the dying
sinner's ears. But all in vain the monk had held his crucifix
before the glazing eyes and had striven to catch some whisper
of repentance from the half-open lips. After that one feeble
spark of intelligence had fled Sir John gave no sign or token to
show that he understood aught that was passing. Hour after
hour dragged heavily along and still he lay unchanged, drawing
each breath with a manifest effort terrible to listen to, yet show-
ing by the length of the respiration that life was still strong
within his powerful frame. Now and then he would break sud-
denly into thick, short gasps, and then nurse and leech and priest
would hastily approach the bed, believing that the end was near.
But always, after a brief struggle, the longer, heavier respirations

1885.] THE FALLS OF WEND. 437

would return, the staring eyes still gazed vacantly into nothing-
ness, and the gleam of white teeth inside the handsome mouth
looked like a cruel smile. Who shall say through what scenes
the soul passes during those long hours of waiting? Who shall
say whether or no it is conscious of its deadly peril whether
those dim eyes see, and the ears hear, and the mind imprisoned
in the slowly chilling clay flutters and beats to the end? Who
has come back from even this sad stage to tell us anything?

In the meantime what was most apparent to the watchers
around the couch was that Sir John was very long a- dying.
The leech shrugged his shoulders as he turned from his patient's
side back to the glowing logs: this might last half the night.
The nurse shivered, and pushed aside the hanging tapestry for a
glance into the peaceful night. Even Brother Anselmo heaved
a quiet sigh as he thought that this was Christmas eve, and that
in a few hours his comrades would be kneeling in the dim chapel
chanting the midnight Mass. With a great longing he desired
to be back among them now, in the tranquil safety of the mon-
astery walls, and away from this heavy atmosphere of sin and
horror. He heard in fancy the first notes of the " Kyrie " float
through the air, and tears started to his eyes. Of what use was
he, after all, to the senseless lump upon the bed? Then, struck
with sudden penitence for the selfishness of his devotion, he de-
tached his heavy rosary, and, kneeling in the coldest corner of,
the room, prayed Jong and fervently for the departing soul.

But human nature is weak, and our bodies respond but poorly
to the higher demands of the spirit. A weight of sleep seemed
hanging on his drooped eyelids, and his head nodded drowsily
over the wooden beads ; the other watchers dozed in their more
comfortable quarters, and the dying man was left to face the
end alone alone, for wife and child were dead, and there were
none to weep for him now or later ; alone save for the spirits,
good and ill, who struggled still for the mastery. And the stars
shone brightly over all, and the crisp snow lay smooth and un-
broken on the hills, and the pines whispered to one another in
the silence that the birth-night of the Lord had come.

Suddenly a sound from the bed broke the dead stillness of the
room. A voice was it the baron's or another's ? said distinctly,
"The Falls of Wend" ; and, startled and dismayed, the watchers
hurried to the couch. It was too late ! White as a marble
mask upon his pillows lay Sir John of Wynne, his lips sealed in
death, while into the gray sky crept the first faint blush that
hailed the Christmas morn.

438 THE FALLS OF WEND. [Jan.,

With rude pomp the last of a noble race was borne to his
grave ; and when Brother Anselmo told with a troubled heart
the story of that strange death-bed, the abbot, knowing full well
the golden merits of silence, sealed his lips for ever on the
subject, bidding him pray much for the departed and gossip
neither of the living nor the dead. But the other two who had
heard were not so reticent, and little by little vague rumors
floated about, gaining form and color as they passed from mouth
to mouth. The beautiful Falls of Wend, which in summer
leaped flashing from rock to rock, hiding in still, deep pools and
brawling over shallow, pebble-lined basins, now hung bound in
icy chains. But underneath the hidden waters panted and
struggled to be free, and in their murmuring voices the peasants
grew to recognize a strange yet familiar sound. Sometimes they
lingered in midday to listen and whisper to one another their
beliefs and fears; but when night fell they hurried breathless
by the spot, for then, borne on the wintry wind, came appealing
moans for help and freedom from the imprisoned soul. And
when the summer sun melted the snow-wreaths, and the waters
dashed fearlessly down their rugged banks, their call, once bright
and joyous, had grown wailing and bitter ; for even then the
reluctant waves held fast their captive, and every ripple that
broke upon the stones carried with it a cry for deliverance.

So wide-spread became this belief that the tale was carried
over the whole country and grew into one of those traditions
that cling to a land when creeds have grown cold and gene-
rations have passed into oblivion. To this day the student of
Welsh folk-lore may learn how the soul of the master of Gwy-
dir, imprisoned under the Rhaidr y Wenol, did penance for the
oppressions of his lifetime. And if the innocent waters became
an object of terror to those who once loved their beauty, yet
there was a secret sense of justice satisfied ; and the peasants
ef Bettws y Ceod, who had suffered sorely from his exactions,
felt that their wrongs had been avenged. They trembled, it is
true, and muttered many a hasty prayer for his relief, yet were
not unhappy to believe that he was suffering. Custom goes
far to reconcile us to the ills of others, and the old women and
young girls, even while breathing their petition, were conscious
of no great distress that it should be needed.

All but one, and in her soul fear and justice were alike swal-
lowed up in a great and enduring pity. Like that Eastern
woman, dear to Buddha's heart, who stands waiting, waiting
always by the gates of Paradise, purified herself, yet unwilling

THE FALLS OF WEND. 439

to enter while one unhappy soul wanders forsaken in the dark-
ness; so this child, unlearned in the mystery of sin, wept with
unwavering charity over its requital. The moan of the troubled
waters, which others heard with a half-pleasurable sense of ter-
ror, filled her with passionate distress. She remembered, too,
that once she had sat by their side, weeping with babyish sor-
row for the flowers which had slipped from her little hands
into the glancing waves. And while she sat bare-legged and
bare-headed under the summer sun Sir John of Wynne had
ridden down the green slopes of Gwydir, and seeing that the
child was youn-g and fair, and that she turned her troubled
face appealingly to his, he had reined in his horse and rescued
for her the dripping roses, smiling alike at his own folly and at
the little maid's delight.

It was the impulse of a moment, and in another moment was
forgotten ; but when, after a year, he died, and those whom
fear had kept silent during his lifetime now wagged their
tongues freely over his misdeeds, one peasant child alone remem-
bered that he had done her a kindly action. And as years went
by, and the story of his doom was told by every fireside, and
the curse hung unlifted over the Rhaidr y Wenol, her childish
pity grew and strengthened with her growth. In the hot
brightness of the summer noon the falling waters sounded fit-
fully in her ears ; when winter storms raged all night long, and
the rough wind howled round the cottage door, her heart beat
fast to think of the angry falls all white and foaming in the
darkness. It seemed so terrible to lie in her warm bed and
hear the despairing soul sobbing in the furious elements! When
she went to Mass, and the priest, knowing how small a share
of happiness comes to the poor on earth, expatiated for their
comfort on the joys of heaven, the image of Sir John of Wynne
floated between her and the pulpit. Life was hard and bread
was scarce, but what was trouble, after all, in comparison to this
unutterable woe? How could the sun shine and the flowers
bloom while on the clouded earth rested the burden of unpar-
doned sin ?

So ten years passed and Morna was sixteen, a tall, pale girl,
as fair-haired as the child of five who wept by the water-side
over her lost roses. For ten whole years, the Fails of Wend had
guarded well their prisoner, and still by day and night went
forth that bitter cry for help. It was again a Christmas eve,
and in the still coldness the whole world seemed wrapped in an
enchanted slumber, ready to waken at the angel's voice. Morna,

440 THE FALLS OF WEND. [Jan.,

looking out upon the night and thinking over her old sad
thoughts, could not forbear to give them voice for once. The
ancient grandam with whom she lived was not a ready confi-
dant ; but she had no other, and so turned instinctively to her for
help in her perplexity.

" Grandmother," she said softly, " will the Falls of Wend al-
ways moan as they do now? Do you think the curse will never
be lifted nor the dead forgiven ? "

The old woman raised her head from the embers, and a dan-
gerous light gleamed from her sunken eyes. But she controlled
herself and said shortly : " It is not for you nor I to answer.
The judgments of God are just."

" But there is mercy always in heaven," persisted the girl,
"and the years are so long, so long! Surely his atonement is
completed and the day of his deliverance is at hand."

As she spoke she held up her finger and listened softly for a
minute; then her eyes clouded with wondering sadness. "If
only it were over ! " she murmured, and hid her face in her
hands.

Her grandmother arose and looked at her intently, then
turned trembling back to the fire, the ready comfort of old age.
"Why should you weep over the punishment of sin?" she said
bitterly. " Sir John laid a heavy hand upon all his vassals, but
none have suffered more than you. Your father's hot blood
rebelled against his lord's exactions, and he fought fiercely in
defence of the labor of his hands. Three of the baron's men-at-
arms lay dead before he fell, pierced to the heart, upon his own
bloody threshold. Your mother, lying in childbirth, sickened
and died, leaving you, a helpless baby, to my care. Poverty
and loneliness have been your portion ; a childhood without
love, a girlhood robbed of all that makes the happiness of youth.
This is your debt to Sir John of Wynne, and you can find
naught else to grieve over than that it is repaid ! "

The girl listened with pallid cheeks and quivering lips. " If
this be true," she whispered, " and if we forgive him freely,
surely .God will pardon him at last."

Her grandmother muttered something and would have
turned away ; but Morna flung herself passionately at her feet.
" Only think," she pleaded, " for how long he has suffered ! My
mother and father forgive him now for all, and you will, too,
for this is Christmas eve."

The appeal rang pitifully through the darkened room, but
the woman who heard it stood like a block of stone. " I had but

1885.] THE FALLS OF WEND. 441

one son," she said slowly to herself. " He suckled at my breast,
and grew tall and strong. I put him on his feet, and he stood
erect as a young sapling, asking help from none. When he lay
last in my arms my breasts were smeared with his blood and his
dying eyes looked up fearfully into mine. My wrongs have con-
sumed me like fire, and children cry forgive ! " She paused and
looked down at the trembling girl. " You are young," she said,
"and heaven lies very near you ; but I am old and have suffered
and sinned. Goto your bed and leave me ! Your father was
fierce and dark, my own son ; but you are fair like your mother,
and no grief of mine can pierce the coldness of your heart.
When you lay a baby in your cradle I knew you were a thing
apart from me, and that there was no tie save that of blood be-
tween us. Be off and leave me to myself ! "

Terrified and distressed, Morna arose and groped her way into
her little bed-room. There, crouching by the window, she re-
called her grandmother's words, and with a fast-beating heart
pictured to herself that last, fierce, hopeless struggle and her
dying father prone on his own hearth. Then her thoughts
strayed to the Falls of Wend, and once more she saw Sir John of
Wynne riding down the sunlight, and the smile, half-kind, half-
scornful, on his handsome lips. For one brief moment her soul
was torn with sudden passion, and the white, hard face turned to
the glittering stars told how bitter was the inward strife. But
through the stillness of the night a faint sound floated to her
ears, and she knew that it came from the Falls of Wend, where
the unquiet waters beat hard against their icy chains. As she
listened hate weakened and died, and the infinite pity that had
filled her heart so long regained its old mastery. It was so ter-
rible to think that on Christmas eve, when choirs of angels
thrilled earth and air with melody and nature's pulse responded
throbbing to their joy, this one unpardoned soul should call in
vain for mercy. Unless he were forgiven now in this holy sea-
son of peace and reconciliation there could be no hope for him
in all the darkened future.

Moved by some powerful impulse, she wrapped a cloak
around her and stole out' into the night. It was very cold, but
not a breath of wind stirred in the haggard, leafless trees ; the
snow lay deep and smooth, and far off the pale radiance of the
Northern Lights shone faint and clear upon its untrodden
purity. As she hurried by the sound of her soft footsteps rang
with unnatural loudness through the utter silence, and only
when she neared the falls there came sighing- forth that muffled

442 THE FALLS OF WEND. [Jan.,

moan which had haunted her troubled heart so long. Under the
starlight the hanging masses of ice and snow gleamed with a
ghostly whiteness, and, kneeling close by the rocky bank, Morna
held her breath and listened. The imprisoned waters under-
neath panted and strove, and the girl's face grew whiter, and her
eyes more hopeless, and her whole soul sick with pity. Carried
beyond herself, she was conscious neither of the cold nor of the
lonely night, and the hopes that burned in her heart fell in
broken words from her pale lips, more like self-communings than
a prayer.

" It has been so long ! " she whispered always. " He has suf-
fered so long, and thou art merciful, O Lord!" And again:
" He was not all bad ; he was hard, but not cruel ; and t-hou, dear
Christ, didst forgive even the Jews who slew thee. Have mercy
and receive his soul !" And then over and over again : "Have
mercy, Lord ! have mercy ! "

And as she prayed the cold stars looked down upon her
myriads of golden eyes watching in tranquillity her passionate
sorrow and pain ; the cold snow spread itself like a giant wind-
ing-sheet on every side ; the cold night wrapped her in its chilly
shroud. But Morna, gazing into the vaulted heavens, pierced
through their veil, and saw in spirit the hosts of angels hovering
over the manger of Bethlehem. The earth seemed holy in its
solemn joy, the darkness was radiant with flashes of white light,
the air trembled with glad hosannas to the new-born King. The
gleaming wings of triumphant cherubim outshone the virgin
snow, 'and when the far-off peals of heaven-born music grew faint
and dim the whir of their bright pinions filled the silence with
soft cadences of sound. Yet ever and anon from out the ice-
bound falls that other voice called pleadingly, and as she heard
it the hope in Morna's soul sickened and died. Benumbed with
the cold, she knelt motionless as a figure carved in ice, and, look-
ing ever upwards, knew nothing but the intensity of her own
desires.

" They say that I have suffered most," she murmured 'softly ;
" but I forgive him from my heart. And all the others he has
hurt would gladly forgive him, too, if they could know how
terrible it is to be dead and yet shut out from heaven. No
pain that he has caused can be like this. And to-night, when
all the blessed souls are doubly happy in the Saviour's birth
it must be that to-night he will be free."

She covered her face for a moment, and it. seemed to her
that the moaning of the waters had given place to another so.und,

1885.] THE FALLS OF WEND. 443

sharp and clear, that died away whenever she bent her head to
listen. And the skies were growing brighter with a strange,
sweet radiance, and the stars shone less frostily, and the dark
night felt less unpitying and unkind. A faint perfume as of
summer roses filled ihe air, arid she thought she saw the Falls of
Wend flashing in the midday sun, and a fair-haired child reach-
ing over the water, while, dark and strong, Sir John of Wynne
rode by. Then all vanished, atid in their place lay the child
Jesus sleeping in his manger, watched by his Mother and attend-
ant angels. The Virgin smiled upon her, yet raised a finger
warningly, as if to say, " Break not my Baby's slumber!" The
angels gave her silent greeting, and, trembling with devout awe,
she laid at the Infant's feet a branch of dripping roses. Then
she was back in her own poor home, and her grandmother's
dark eyes were fixed upon her in stonv wrath. Sae tried to
utter som3 word of supplication, but a deep current was bsar-
ing her fast away ; a roar of waters sounded in her ears ; a
wave of crimson light dazzled her eyes; there was a passing
glimpse of green fields and flowers ; and then, as she sank upon
the snow, there came to her a*s in a dream the thought that she
was dying dying at midnight by the frozen falls, with no word
of love or comfort, and no watcher save the silent stars.

For a minute the consciousness of approaching death carried
with it a great wave of bitterness and fear. Her life had been
far from happy \ but she was young, and as the world slipped
from her grasp it seemed very bright and fair, and Azrael's
awful eyes looking into hers chilled her soul with terror. What
mortal has gazed without a tremor into their inscrutable beauty,
or has followed them into the unknown darkness, without one
backward glance at the brief sunlight of the past? But* in that
moment of dread and loathing there flashed across her failing
mind, like a single note blown from an angel's trumpet, the
thought, " For him, dear Lord I give my life for him." And as
though the words were carried on high by thousands of heavenly
voices, there rang through the air a cry of joy and triumph ;
and with a mighty sound the sharp ice cracked on every side,
and the waters dashed madly down their rocky bed with danc-
ing foam-wreaths and eddying ripples, rejoicing that the ciirse
was gone. And white and cold beside them Morna lav, while
her spirit mounted higher, higher, through the gleaming paths
of light, to plead for the ransomed soul before the throne of God.

444

SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS.

[Jan.,

SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS.

No. III.

CHRONOLOGY CONTINUED.

A MORE moderate theory of the antiquity of man, which
nevertheless assigns him a much longer period of existence than
the six or seven thousand years of the common chronology, is
now generally adopted by geologists, some eminent men of
science who are Catholics being included in the number.

We cannot do better than to quote what one of these latter
says about this theory. The basis of it is laid in the discovery
of artificial utensils and fossil remains of human skeletons in de-
posits assigned to the quaternary ages :

" The earliest evidence which can be certainly authenticated of the
presence of man on the earth is attached to these ages. Not only de-
tached flints which are not shapeless and unfit for use, like those of Thenay
and Otta, but artistically fashioned into hatchets, punches, and scrapers,
are met with in the quaternary deposits of all countries (Europe, America,
Syria, India, . . .) ; but also human bones, together with remains of great
mammifers of the period belonging to species now extinct, are found in a
great many of these layers, at least in Europe.

" Moreover, M. de Quatrefages establishes, by an examination of skulls
collected from the deposits of this time, that the human species was al-
ready composed of distinct races. . . .

" It appears, then, to be a proved fact that man was already dispersed
over the greater part of the surface of the globe at the time of the later
glacial phenomena?

" Let us admit that these glacial phenomena had as their principal and
determining cause the great cosmic winter brought about by the coinci-
dence of the aphelia with the vicinity of the winter solstices of our hemi-
sphere. The grounds of this theory are well known, and M. 1'Abbe
Hamard has explained them in a brilliant manner in the second edition of
his Gisement du Mont Do I.

"The line of the apsides of the earth's orbit making a revolution
around this orbit and therefore passing through all .the points of the
ecliptic in 20,900 years, there is a moment when the aphelion coincides
with the summer solstice of one hemisphere and at the same time with the
winter solstice of the other.

" The eccentricity of our orbit, as every one knows, is scarcely percep-

* These last two paragraphs have been transposed, in order to make a more immediate
connection with what follows.

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 445

tible ; but still the earth's movement of translation is slackened at the
aphelion, the times of this movement being proportional to the surfaces
traversed by the radius-vector. The consequence of this is that the hemi-
sphere whose summers correspond to the aphelia receives much more
heat by the increase of their duration than it loses by the greater distance
of the sun. Reciprocally, the opposite hemisphere, whose winters are
lengthened by the same number of days, undergoes a loss of heat much
greater than the feeble gain of heat received by the nearness of the sun in
the summer. The difference of the length of the two seasons is a decade
of days when the apsides coincide exactly with the two solstices, which
occurs for each of them, as we have said, once in every 20,900 years. The
length of each one of the two seasons of the cosmic year is therefore 10,450
years. When the apsides correspond to the equinoxes the two seasons of
the ordinary year are rigorously equal ; from this moment the inequality
increases constantly, attaining its maximum at the end of 5,225 years, when
the line of the apsides coincides anew with the two solstices, to return
again to zero in 5,225 years, and so on.

" Six hundred and thirty-four (636) years ago the aphelion coincided
exactly with the summer solstice of our hemisphere, and 10,450 years be-
fore that date i.e., 11,086 years ago it coincided with our winter solstice ;
5,225 years before that, or B.C. 14,427, the apsides corresponded to the
equinoxes, and since that epoch the summers of the northern hemisphere
have been shortening and the winters lengthening. It is plain that this
inequality, for a long time imperceptible, since it takes above 500 years to
amount to 24 hours, could not make the effects of its accumulated re-
frigeration felt until after the lapse of a long series of ages. It is even
probable that their maximum was not attained until several centuries after
the coincidence of the. aphelion with the winter solstice, B.C. 9202, just as
the maximum of heat or cold in our annual seasons generally occurs some
days, even weeks, after the solstice. The glacial period would have re-
sulted from the greatest sum of cold, or, more correctly speaking, from the
maximum of the loss of heat combined with an increase of evaporation
realized during the summers by the small surplus of heat determined by
the nearer approach to the sun when they are at the shortest length ;
although this little surplus, being compensated during the winter through
the increased distance of the sun, would not affect the mean annual tem-
perature.

" From these data we infer that we may with probability place the
grand development of glacial phenomena at an epoch near to or after the
year 9000 B.C. It being admitted that the first snows and ices began to
make short appearances during the winter months at the pole and on the
summits of the highest mountains which were thrown up during the ter-
tiary ages, no sooner than the pliocene ages, what a series of centuries
must have been required for the formation of that enormous icy skull-cap
which covered the pole permanently and came down as far as the latitudes
of Scotland, and of those immense shrouds of snow and frozen water which
enveloped all the mountainous regions and extended far into the plains !

" It is conformable to theories admitted by the generality of compe-
tent scientists to make the quaternary ages begin after the first appear-
ance of cold and frost on the surface of our globe. Were these first cold

446 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Jan.,

seasons brought on solely by the slow shortening of the summers of our
hemisphere? We can presume that they are independent of it, and that
they proceeded more likely from an increase of the inclination of the ter-
restrial axis, provoked by the latest orographic upheavals. It is certain
that the angle of this inclination is an essential function of the variations
of temperature, for if it were made equal to zero the displacement of the
major axis of the terrestrial orbit, although it could act on the climates,
would be devoid of all influence upon the seasons, since these would be
always equal to each other ; say, rather, would not exist at all. It is never-
theless reasonable to admit that the two orders of phenomena viz., the de-
marcation of the seasons by the inclination of the axis, and that refrigera-
tion which was the special resultant of the displacement of the aphelion
may have begun almost simultaneously. According to our hypothesis,
then, the quaternary epoch may have commenced at about the epoch of
the correspondence of the apsides with the equinoxes that is to sa) r , about
14,500 years before Christ. The grand glacial phenomena not having had
time to attain their full magnitude until after the year 9000, we see that
'there remains a margin more than sufficient for the appearance of man-
kind on the earth, their multiplication, and division into races which have
left their imprint upon all parts of the globe. Ten centuries would be
amply sufficient, and we would have fifty at our disposition."

Let us, then, assume a hypothetical date of about 12,000 years
before the present time for the creation of Adam and Eve, the
progenitors of the human race. The calculations previously
given show that the actual population of the globe will not per-
mit the supposition that the human race has gone on increasing
in an uninterrupted and normal manner for more than a few
thousand years. Yet as M. d'Estienne's hypothesis furnishes in
the glacial phenomena a way of accounting for a wholesale dimi-
nution of the human race during their continuance, and as we
have the undoubted historical fact of the Noachian Delude which

made a new beginning for the Noachides at least, if not for
the human species universally, we may admit provisionally the
computation of 12,000 years as the period of the history of the
Adamic species to be one of the theories worthy of consideration.

But what we are aiming at is to answer the question whether
the chronology of early human history is determined by the au-
thority of the Holy Scriptures. We say decidedly it is not, at
least in the present doubtful state of that portion of their text
on which chronological computations have been founded.

The common short computation has been made from the text
of the Latin Vulgate, which is a version of the Hebrew text. It
is obtained by adding the intervals between the birth of the
patriarchs in the Mosaic genealogies and the birth of their next
following successors in the line, from Adam to Abraham. These

1885] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 447

intervals are different in the Septuagint, and in the Samaritan
Pentateuch they differ from those of both the Hebrew and the
Greek texts. It is doubtful which of these texts correctly rep-
resents the original, and it is not certain that either of them is
exactly correct. If we suppose, therefore, that the original text
contained the data for an exact chronology of the period between
Adam and Abraham, we must nevertheless confess that we have
no certain knowledge of these data, so that our chronology is
floating and undecided, as the following table will show :

Greek. Hebrew. Samaritan.
Years. Years. Years.

From Adam to the Deluge 2,262 1,656 1,307

From the Deluge to Abraham 1,172 292 942

From Adam to Abraham 3>434 1,94-8 2,249

We are not obliged to follow the reading of the Vulgate.
The chronology of the Septuagint has always been received in
the Greek Church, it was admitted during six centuries in the
Latin Church, and it has been retained in the Roman Martyr-
ology, which places the creation 5,199 years and the Deluge 2,960
years before Christ.

"In fine," says M. d'Estienne, "the systems of biblical chronology
repose on such uncertain foundations that we know, at the present day, of
more than two hundred of them, counting only the principal systems !*
It is clear that, in the presence of such a diversity, the figures comprised
in this part of the history of the world have no longer any more than a
relative value ; they give us no warrant of their integrity or authenticity."

But more than this : it is possible that the original, authentic
text of Genesis never contained the data for a complete and
exact system of chronology. The construction of a system of
chronology from tables of genealogy must assume that there are

* Dessignoles mentions above 200 different computations of the period between Adam and
Christ, the shortest 3,483 years, the longest 6,984 years. Julius Africanus makes it 5,562 years,
Eusebius 5,300, Origen 5,000, and Petavius adopts in round numbers the computation of
5,000 years.

Chevallier, by a new system of calculation, peculiar to himself, based on the hypothesis of
two different modes of reckoning years, one civil, in which the year contains 365 days, the other
religious, in which it contains 7 lunar months i.e., between 206 and 207 days brings the chro-
nology of the Hebrew, Samaritan, and Greek codices of Genesis into harmony with each other,
and gives as one result of his ingenious system the following dates :

Years.

1. From Adam to the Deluge ',656

2. From the Deluge to the birth of Jesus Christ 4,293

Total 5,949

From the creation of Adam to A.D. 1885 7.834

Moigno says of Chevallier's theory that it can scarcely be called probable, but rather con-
jectural, and yet leads to astonishing results in solving difficulties and reconciling apparent con-
tradictions, and may possibly be true (Sflettd. de la Fof, vol. ii. pp. 611 and 612, App. E, p. 61).

448 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Jan.,

no gaps or omissions in these tables. This is an hypothesis
which cannot be absolutely proved, and there are reasons de-
rived from the Scripture itself which are thought to militate
against it. St. Matthew, in his genealogy of our Lord, leaps over
three generations between Joram and Ozias, merely for the sake
of symmetry. St. Luke inserts the name of Cainan, not found in
Genesis, in his genealogy. The use of the verb "to beget" ad-
mits, therefore, of a large and mediate sense, and it can be applied
to a grandson, or to the grandson of a grandson, as well as to
a son. The Abbe Vigouroux, who is one of the most eminent
scholars in sacred science of the age, has therefore reason when
he says :

"The sacred chronology has been constructed artificially by the addi-
tion of the age of the patriarchs, proceeding from the supposition that the
list of generations is complete ; wherefore if this hypothesis be false, and if
Moses has omitted one or several generations, it is easy to see that it is
impossible for us to know what time elapsed, for instance, from Noah to
Abraham " (and equally from Adam to Noah) ; ." it follows also that all the
chronologies heretofore constructed are too short." *

Sylvestre de Sacy long ago wrote : " There does not exist
any biblical chronology." The Abb6 Le Hir says : " The biblical
chronology floats in an undecided state; it belongs to the hu-
man sciences to recover the date of the creation of our species."
Father de Valroger expresses the same opinion. Father Bel-
lynck, S.J., writes in that extremely learned periodical, Les Eludes
Religieuses (1868) : "There does not exist any chronology in the
Bible ; the genealogies of our sacred books from which some
have deduced their series of dates sometimes have gaps in them."

Mgr. Meignan, on the last page of his celebrated work, Le
Monde et V Homme Primitif, writes : .

" One may always question whether the chronology of the first chapters
of Genesis has not been altered by the negligence of copyists or disfigured
by their systems. Those signs which express numbers are easily alterable.
The word of God has been perpetuated across the ages by the labor of
copyists who have been undoubtedly carefully watched over, and it is cer-
tain that we possess a biblical text admirably preserved considering its an-
tiquity. Nevertheless God could permit that it should suffer from the
injuries of time in its least important parts."

Eusebius of Csesarea expressed very much the same opinion in
the fourth century.

Dr. Schaeffer and the Abbe de Foville extend the range of
these very just and wise reflections over the entire collection of

* Manuel Biblique, t. i. p. 430.

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 449

historical books which are contained in the Bible, and add some
others which cast light upon the general subject of Scriptural
chronology :

" Many of the numerical data of the Scripture have not come down to
us in their primitive integrity. Even if all of them did deserve our confi-
dence from a critical point of view, we could not draw from the Bible any
system of chronology, because the sacred book has a totally different ob-
ject which respects higher ends.

"The alterations introduced into the sacred text by means of transcrip-
tions bear in an altogether special manner upon the numbers ; and thus
the little security of the chronological data can be at once concluded from
the great uncertainty which reigns over the other kinds of numerical
designations. Sometimes in two passages relating to the same object we
find different numbers given instead of identical ones. According to 2 Sam.
x. 1 8 David destroyed 700 chariots of the Syrians, and according to i Par.
xix. 18 he destroyed 7,000; according to 2 Sam. viii. 4 David took 1,700
horsemen prisoners, and according to i Par. xviii. 4 he took 7,000; etc. In
other cases numbers which are only once given excite suspicion by their
very magnitude ; thus, for instance, the number of 30,000 chariots which
the Philistines are said to have sent against Saul may very probably be
thirty times too great. . . .

" There is another class of numbers the integrity of which is beyond
the reach of criticism, and their relative exactitude such that we cannot call
it in question, and yet the larger proportion of which cannot be of any
service in establishing an absolute chronology. . . . The frequent recur-
rence of certain round numbers for instance, the number 40 suggests
doubts of their arithmetical exactness. The symbolical use which was
made of them from a very early period had brought in a habit of often
employing them in an approximative sense, as we do with the number 100.
The four judges Othniel, Ehud, Barak, and Gideon procure, each one, 40
years of repose to. their land; the oppression of Israel by the Philistines
lasts for 40 years ; the judgeship of Eli and the reign of Saul fill each 40
years. Take note, besides, that in no case is the exact date to which a
book of the Bible goes back indicated to us, and that often we cannot
determine it by any combination. This ignorance extends to the writings
of the New Testament, and although we possess fourteen epistles of St. Paul,
and find in the book of Acts many details concerning this great apostle,
the problem how to frame an incontestable chronology of his life has
never yet been solved. . . . There are a few lines of Father de Valroger in
which the veritable object of the chronological indications of the Bible
is perfectly marked out."

" The Bible indicates, in a measure which suffices for its divine scope, the
chronological order of the facts which it relates. But, the Holy Spirit not
having inspired it in order to found or to cast light upon the science of
chronology, we should not seek in it a detailed and precise chronology, a
complete system of dates accurately indicated, methodically connected, and per-
fectly preserved." *

* Rev. des Qu. Scienti/., Oct. 20, 1882, pp. 504-534.
VOL. XL. 29

450 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Jan.,

We finish this part of the subject with a sentence of Cardi-
nal Manning, who is much better known to most of our readers
than the foreign authors we have quoted, and whose judgment
has deservedly very great weight with all English-speaking
Catholics : " No system of chronology is laid down in the
sacred books." *

The inference which M. d'Estienne draws from all these
premises is " that every Scriptural criterion for measuring doc-
trinally the age of mankind by the sacred books is wa'nting to us ;
so that, consequently, the greatest latitude is left to believing
scientists for putting back this age as much as their theories re-
quire." He is not alone in maintaining this thesis. The Abbe
Bourgeois was one of the zealous advocates of the miocene or
tertiary man, and he was permitted to defend his theory in the
Rev. des Qu. Scientif. of Brussels (October, 1877). In regard to
the conciliation of this theory, and in general of prehistoric
geology and archaeology, with the Scripture, this learned priest
declares that he takes his stand upon the ground of fact :

"Without entering on the road of explications, the text of the Bible" (he
adds) "is brief and obscure ; prehistoric geology and archaeology, notwith-
standing some truths which have been acquired, are not less obscure in
respect to many essential points. Why establish premature concordances,
and not rather wait for light with a well-founded confidence that scientific
truth can never be opposed to religious truth ?"

We have seen that some who reject the hypothesis of the
Abbe Bourgeois and a few other scientists that mankind was
upon the earth during the tertiary period, arguing from the
evidences of their existence during the quaternary period, put
back the date of human origin to 10,000 years before Christ.
They even theorize freely of a possible earlier date verging
towards 20,000 B.C. The theory of the tertiary man requires a
still further recession into antiquity. Nevertheless it does not
demand the extravagant computations of Lyell and others. And
the Abbe Bourgeois, with all his hardihood, does not give them
any countenance.

" I will not say " (he writes) " that I am disposed to take into serious
account the fantastic calculations of Lyell and other archaeologists who give
to the human race hundreds of thousands of years, for the chronometers
which they use appear to me altogether defective. I pretend only that if
science, which is a means'of interpreting the Bible when the church has
not spoken,' obliges us to put back the beginnings of mankind, there is no
occasion for getting into a fright about it."

* Temp. Miss, of the Holy Ghost, p. 165 (Eng. ed.)

1 88 5] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 451

Certainly not. Let the supposed fact be proved to be a real
fact, let it be proved that science obliges us to accept some evi-
dence of the existence of man on the earth during the earlier
part of the quaternary or during- the tertiary period as conclu-
sive, and there is no other rational attitude possible except that
taken by the Abbe Bourgeois. We must stand upon the fact
and the scientific truth. If there is an apparent opposition be-
tween these certainties and other certainties belonging to faith,
we must, it possible, remove this appearance, not by violent but
by fair explanations, or else we must hold both at once in spite
of their apparent discrepancy, and await further light.

Thus far we have not seen any plausible reason to put back
the beginnings of the human race to an earlier period than
10,000 years B.C. We are firmly convinced that a concurrence
of proofs from all branches of science bearing on the subject,
Scriptural exegesis included, requires the admission of a date
for the creation of the human species at least 10 or 20 centuries
earlier than the vulgar era of 4004 B.C. How many more cen-
turies can be added on before we get into a serious difficulty in
respect to the interpretation of Genesis we will not pretend to
determine positively. Neither will we attempt to define pre-
cisely the limits of that latitude in theorizing which can be justly
conceded to the claim advanced by writers already quoted and
others of a similar bent. The Abbe Bourgeois characterizes the
calculations of Lyell which run back for hundreds of thousands
of years as " fantastic," and M. d'Estienne qualifies the hypo-
thesis of the tertiary man sustained by the Abb6 Bourgeois as
" conjectural or problematical," although we suppose it does not
demand more than 30,000 or 50,000 years ; and M. d'Estienne's ex-
treme limit of theorizing extends only to about 20,000 B.C.* Our
principal question, however, relates to the dogmatic and doctri-
nal criterion. Is there or is there not such a criterion? If any
one should be captivated by a " conjectural" or a "fantastic"
theory, can he indulge his conjectures or fancies, salva fide, sub-
ject only to the censure of sound science and common sense ?

We have already shown that there is no positive and definite
doctrinal criterion in the shape of a biblical system of chronolo-
gy. It is certain that there is a great latitude conceded by good
theologians to theories and systems. Some respectable Catho-
lic authors, as we have seen, openly advocate theories respect-
ing the antiquity of man in comparison with which the longest

* That is, as we understand his not very clear statements. Perhaps his maximum number
is less.

452 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Jan.,

chronology ever proposed by any Christian scientist, before
our time, is short. Thus far there has been no judgment, cen-
sure, or interference by ecclesiastical authority. We cannot,
therefore, fix a limit by any sure and authoritative rule beyond
which it is unlawful for a Catholic to stretch the antiquity of
man.

The grand dogmas and doctrines of faith, revealed by God,
contained in divine scriptures and unwritten traditions faith-
fully transmitted from the beginning of the human race until
now, declared or defined by the infallible ordinary teaching and
solemn decrees of the church, and by her proposed to our be-
lief, in so far as man's origin and antiquity has any connec-
tion with faith, are these : First, God created all things, out of
nothing, in time. Second, God created the human species in
one pair, Adam and Eve, with a constitution of original grace,
righteousness, and integrity, but subject to probation. Third,
Adam fell by sinning from this original estate, involving all his
posterity descending from him by natural generation and under
the ordinary law in original sin and its penalties. Fourth, God
provided, and from the beginning of this fallen state promised
to the Adamic race, redemption through a Saviour belonging by
his conception and birth to the same race a Saviour who, by
the fulness of revelation, was manifested to be the eternal Son
of God as well as the Son of man, Jesus Christ our Lord.

In so far as the whole creation, exclusive of the Adamic spe-
cies, is concerned, no theory, however conjectural it may be,
respecting the length of time which has elapsed since the crea-
tion comes into collision with the revealed truth. All things
have had a beginning and a progress. Sound science confirms
this truth, and, in so far as the present order of our solar system
.and of the stellar universe is concerned, it indicates that all calcu-
lations must be restricted within a few millions of years. In re-
spect to the flora and fauna of our globe scientific theories de-
mand only some hundreds of thousands of years, which can be
granted to them without hesitation.

When we come down to man the science of anthropology is
confronted with other dogmas besides that of creation in time
viz., with the other three lately specified. The most extrava-
gant of all the theories which have been broached in the name
of science viz., the one which assigns to the human race an
antiquity of 300,000 years does not directly contradict the sub-
stance of the doctrines of revelation. It is plain that one who
maintains that Adam was created before any definite given date

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 453

does not thereby deny that he was created, constituted in ori-
ginal righteousness, that he fell, that all his posterity fell with
him, and that the whole Adamic race has been redeemed by
Jesus Christ. The question which arises relates to the concilia-
tion of theories of human chronology with that which belongs
incidentally to faith and is in some way connected with the sub-
stance of dogma.* And here we may distinguish between hypo-
thetical prehistoric men in the quaternary or tertiary period who
are pre-Adamites, and those who belong to the Adamic species.
Theories about an extinct species resembling the existing human
species do not trench upon the domain of sacred history or sacred
science. The Holy Scripture deals only with Adam and his
race and with angels. In respect to possible beings in another
category, whether of a purely intellectual nature or of a mixed
rational and animal nature, it is silent, affirming nothing and
denying nothing. Some writers, even Catholics, indulge in con-
jectures and speculations about rational creatures inhabiting
planets of our own system, and planets which are supposed to
revolve like our own around the fixed stars. They incur no
reproach on the score of orthodoxy by so doing. For the same
reason it is allowable to propose an hypothesis according to
which any traces of the existence of beings similar to ourselves
which are proved or conjectured to belong to a prehistoric
period are referred to one or more species of the human genus
appertaining to.creations prior in time to the creation of Adam.
The Abb6 Bourgeois and Father de Valroger actually proposed
this hypothesis in a conjectural form. It cannot be called a pro-
bable theory. In order to give it a foundation of scientific credi-
bility it would be necessary to establish, two things: first, that
the prehistoric man really existed; second, that the date as-
signed to the beginning of his existence by certain science cannot
be reconciled with certain facts of the history of the Adamic
race made known through revelation, or otherwise. Neither of
these affirmations can be positively made and sustained by con-
clusive evidence at present. The nations of the old time have
their prehistoric periods, but the earliest period of the human
race is more properly called dimly historic than absolutely pre-
historic, unless we give in to the extreme theories of Bourgeois
and Lenormant. Those respectable Catholic writers whom we
have quoted whose theories are more moderate do not put back

*Quae ad fidem pertinent dupliciter distinguuntur. Quaedam enim sunt per se de sub-
stantia fidei, . . . quasdam vero per accidens (antum, in quantum scilicet in Scriptura tra-
duntur (S. Thorn., 2 Dist. 12, q. i, a. 2).

454 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

the beginnings of man to such a very remote antiquity as to evi-
dently and necessarily antedate the period of dim history. All
of those who reject the hypothesis of the tertiary man, so far as
we know, proceed on the supposition that the most ancient
traces of man on the globe appertain to the actually existing
human species, and put the creation of Adam at the beginning of
their chronology.

According to the Abb6 Moigno, the fundamental question
concerning the antiquity of man reverts to the following term :
" Does the existence of Adam remount, not to some thousands
of years, but to some thousands of ages f " Even the Abbe Bour-
geois, who is at one extreme, as well as those Catholic writers
who are at the other, maintains the negative side of the question.
It is a question of more or fewer thousands of years, from six or
seven to eight, ten, and conjecturally somewhat more, but always
far short of the extravagant supputations of such writers as Lyell,
or even of the most moderate one compatible with the theory of
the tertiary man.

We will let the subject rest here for the present, intending to
resume it in a future article.

THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE.

THE Count de Kergalon was no admirer of the empire, neither
was he of the republic ; but he was one of the purest, truest, and
most steadfast of Frenchmen. He was convinced in his patriot-
ism without being Chauvinistic, and ready to make quiet sacrifice
of his life for any cause he held to be righteous. And the cause
of France stemming the tide of foreign invasion he held to be
righteous, albeit he did not run into hysterical bellowings of the
" Marseillaise " or look upon Bismarck as synonym for Beelzebub.

He was a Breton. That in itself conveys that he was brave
and stubborn one not merely to rush to attack with impetuosity^
but to be obstinate in following up the attack and slow to re-
treat. Being a fervent adherent of Legitimacy, he had held aloof
from the Tuileries during the luxurious heyday of Imperialism,
preferring to reside in his lovely ancestral seat on those wild, re-
mote Atlantic-beaten shores where Chateaubriand saw the light
the shores from which Jean Bart and Robert Surcouf sallied
forth to dispute the mastery of ocean with all comers.

1885.] THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. 455

In agriculture and the chase he passed most of his time ; and
being a Breton of la Bretagne bretonnante, he was passionately de-
voted to the old language and customs of the province, attended
the pardons, danced at the wedding-feasts, considered the shrill
noise of the bagpipes the sweetest music in the world, and took
a share with the long-haired peasants in the Celtic game with the
horell. He was a model country gentleman, popular for his fine
social qualities, respected for his lineage, and pointed to as a
paragon of modern chivalry and genuine piety ; for the count
had worn a private's jacket in the Pope's Zouaves, and paid his
annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Guingamp.

His mother, who resided with him, was very proud of her
boy, and was anxious that he should contract an alliance with
the daughter of a noble family at Morlaix a family whose flag,
like hers, was not the tricolor, but the time-honored drapeau
blanc ; whose favored flower was the lily, not the violet, fimile
was perfectly willing, tor Berthe de Menars was a charming
creature, modest, winsome, gentle, and accomplished. She had
been educated at the convent of the Sacred Heart at Vincennes,
where she had met the daughters of the best people in France
undoubtedly the best in stock and probity and manners those
who seclude themselves in their mansions of the Faubourg St.
Germain, who know nothing of that frivolous Paris which calls
itself society, but live apart with an exclusiveness which is dig-
nified without being arrogant. Wealth cannot procure the
coveted entry into those saloons ; but the visitor provided with
the proper introduction is cordially welcomed, even though he
may walk to the massive doors or drive up in a hackney-car-
riage instead of in an equipage with prancing team and liveried
servitors. Pedigree and worth count more there than gold or
new-fangled titles. The descendant of somebody whose head
was cut off on the guillotine or who was cast to cruel death
in the noyades of Nantes is thought more of than a prince of
finance or the wearer of a coronet invented by the first Napo-
leon. Yet these people, with all their ever-present consciousness
of race, are possessed of a sweet gravity of bearing, so simple
and sincere that the stranger under their roof at once feels him-
self at his ease.

The marriage had been fixed to come off at Paris in the
church of Notre Dame des Victoires it was there the Countess
de Kergalon had worn the bridal veil in the first week of Sep-
tember, 1870. Berthe and her aged father, green and sturdy
still for his age, were in the capital on a visit to a friend, who

456 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

was only too willing to play the host. The Marquise de Belle-
cour had been a prized acquaintance of the venerable M. de
Menars when he had been a gay officer in the body-guard of
Charles X., and had been at school with his wife. Her late hus-
band and he had been comrades, and her granddaughter had
been at school with Berthe ; consequently the Morlaix family
was on a footing of the most tender intimacy at the Hotel
Bellecour, which was close to the Rue de Rennes, the very
core of the quarter of the ancient nobility.

The Countess de Kergalon was away in the chateau in Mor-
bihan, superintending those preparations which only a woman
can understand to make the place more fitting for the reception
of the expected young mistress who was to be the future chdte-
laine. As it was in Brittany at home, in fact, the dearest and
wisest and wholesomest of resorts the honeymoon was to be
spent, the matron had set her heart upon putting everything in
apple-pie order, so that the brown, mournful-looking building,
wrinkled by the weather-stress of centuries, might wear an air
of cheerfulness and comfort. She desired to give the .couple
which was so closely knitted to her affections a smooth start
in housekeeping, well knowing that so much of the happi-
ness of married existence depends on the way in which it be-
gins, and that a spirit of peace and content is to a great extent
created and controlled by surroundings. It was delightful to
see her, with eyes lively under their spectacles from fond excite-
ment, her gray hair lying in soft plaits across her brow, bustling
about, keys at girdle, as if the weight of years had been removed,
making this suggestion and that devised by thoughtful kindness,
planning one surprise of prettiness or other in picture, flower-
vase, or embroidered screen. There are those who pretend that
there are no such words as " home " or " comfort " in the
French vocabulary. They were never admitted to a French
household who say so; assuredly were never inside a French
chateau presided over by a motherly hand directed by a culti-
vated taste. Because a house is artistically furnished it is not
the< less a home. And because a reliquary is more valued than
a racing-cup, and a stainless genealogical tree than a big rent-
roll, it does not follow that those who have reverence for, tradi-
tion and pride of pedigree are less ripe in robust beauty and
sense of enjoyment than the pretentious lovers of sport who are
turgid with conceit when they hear the rattle of their gold coins.
Because a lamp is trimmed in an oratory, and bells tinkle for de-
votion as well as for dinner, it does not follow that the inmates

1885.] THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. 457

of the household are fanatical or lugubrious. There were reli-
quaries and an oratory, a genealogical tree, and many out-of-date
and out-of-fashion articles in this worn old Chateau de Kergalon ;
but when the hedges were clipped and the walks freshly gravel-
led, the turf shorn and a coping put to the ruined balustrade at
the other side of the moat, it did not seem an ill-suiting spot to
have chosen for the festal season after marriage. The bride who
would not have been satisfied at the sight of the great brown
pile of masonry, with its gable fronts, its- lattices, its gargoyles
and armorial shields hewn out of the stone, as it peeped from
amid a plantation, would have been hard to be pleased. It was
stately and handsome and unique. Besides, there was a terraced
garden, an orchard, and an avenue bordered by limes and
orange-trees in large, square green boxes.

" Be sure that the smoke curls from the chimneys and that
you have music and bonfires when the count and the new coun-
tess come back," said the dowager-countess in prospective to
Crepin, her steward ; for she intended to go to Paris to be present
at the marriage ceremony, and to remain there, like a discreet,
good-natured woman, for a few months until her dear young
couple had settled down.

And the count, where was he? While his mother was full of
domestic concerns he was immersed in higher affairs. He had
accompanied a deputation of nobles who believed as he did on a
visit of what he considered duty to another count the count
exile at Frohsdorf, in Austria, count to whom he bent the knee
and whom he saluted " Majesty." Very affable Henry V., King
of France in nubibus, was, and the partisans who had relinquished
the allurements of a court, had made many sacrifices and were
ready to sacrifice all for the cause, were ecstatic at his royal con-
descension when his majesty limped over to a piano and played
them a German sonata. This, surely, was more than recom-
pense for having travelled so far. But his majesty would do no
more the hour for action had not yet arrived.

De Kergalon, having acquitted himself of his debt of alle-
giance to the king beyond the borders, hastened back to Paris
to pay his devoirs to the queen of his heart.

But in the interim the hour for action for Napoleon III. had
arrived. While the young Breton was lost somewhat in the
shadows of impossible politics, and much more in the distracting
mazes of love's young dream for his was to be a marriage of
affection as well as of judgment and arrangement great things
had been happening. One of the hinges upon which history

458 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

turns was being- forged. The day he got out of the train at Paris
on his return there was a strange animation in the streets.
Men chatted excitedly in groups ; there was much shaking of
heads, and now and again an unthinking laugh or a shout of
triumphant joy.

War with Germany had been declared !

II.

The count, it has been stated, was no admirer of the empire,
but he loved his country and had the inherited warlike instincts
of his race. He was puzzled to know what course he should
take in this crisis forced upon France, and adopted what was a
prudent plan, perhaps the best plan, under the circumstances.
He consulted his intended father-in-law.

" This is no quarrel of the nation," said M. de Menars ; " it is a
quarrel of the emperor. The Napoleon knows that a coup d'etat
cannot be made twice in a reign. He has no alternative but a
war with the foreigner in which he may gain prestige and make
the throne safe for his son for a time, and a domestic uprising in
which he would be compelled to deluge the boulevards with
blood. On that blood he might float but only for a time.
With the astuteness of the Corsican, he has chosen the lesser
evil. Your course, my son, is to assume the policy of masterly
inactivity do nothing ; await events."

Events did not leave him long to wait. They marched at the
double-quick at that era. Within a fortnight of the formal pro-
clamation of hostilities the Germans had won three signal vic-
tories ; within a fortnight later came in quick succession their
further fortunate encounters at Courcelies, Vionville, and Grave-
lotte. By the i6th of August Bazaine was virtually beaten ; by
the 2d of September MacMahon followed suit. The war, as far
as any valid prospects for the French went, was over ; the em-
peror was vanquished and a prisoner. In the very week ap-
pointed for the marriage of the Count de Kergalon the republic
was ushered into being thank God ! without effusion of blood
amid frantic hosannas and every outward manifestation of popu-
lar rejoicing. The aged countess was advised to remain in the
Morbihan. The marriage was postponed. Affairs of family
had to give way to the affairs of that larger family called the
nation.

The count, it has been stated, was no admirer of the republic,
and some of the earlier antics of the third French republic con-

1885.1 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. 459

firmed him in his natural prejudices against that system of gov-
ernment.

On the 5th of September he went to dine in one of the res-
taurants of the Palais Royal. The waiter, determined to prove
the sincerity of his attachment to the new order of things, forgot
to address him as monsieur.

" Have the kindness to bring me a Maintenon cutlet," said the
count politely.

" Yes, citizen," answered the attendant.

" Citizen ! What do you mean ? "

" We are all equal under the republic; every man is as good
as another man."

" Good ! It seems to me, my friend, every man is better than
every other man."

" Jack is as good as his master " was one of the absurd funda-
mental principles of these neo-republicans, who fancied, in their
simplicity or ignorance, that equality before the law meant social
equality.

When the count had finished his dinner he rose, paid the
exact amount of his bill, and quietly said to the waiter, who held
out an optative palm for the pourboire :

" Good-evening, citizen ; I am too sound a republican to insult
an equal by offering him a gratuity."

The haste and indecent exultation with which the legend
Libertt, Egalittf, Fraternitt was smeared in large black letters
across the fronts of the churches gave a shock to his sentiments
as a Catholic. Although he had no tinge of Imperialism, he
could regard only with unutterable loathing the legion of time-
serving tradesmen who had toadied and intrigued for the per-
mission to mount the imperial coat-of-arms over their stores with
the notification that they were purveyors to the court of this or
that merchandise by appointment, and who were now dragging
them down with simulated readiness, as obsequious to the clamor
of the mob as ever they had been to the patronage of the
wealthy.

There was one consolation, not unmixed with surprise, for
him in this terrible topsy-turveydom this descent, as he con-
ceived it, from the frying-pan into the fire : the governor of
Paris, Trochu, was a Breton, and so was the prefect of police,
De Keratry.

Thus while the enemy was coiling, with a grim premeditation,
for the final spring preparing to environ Paris in his embrace
and crush the fair, heedless city the " patriots " were active tear-

460 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

ing away the emblematic eagles, trampling on the emblematic
bees, and picking the emblematic " N's " from the walls and
bridges.

De Kergalon almost regretted the empire and rejoiced that
the poor, pale empress had got away in safety, owing to the
ingenuity of an attache at the Italian embassy, Chevalier de
Nigra, and the ready aid of an American dentist, Dr. Evans.

Again he consulted M. de Menars.

What was to be done ?

"The invader is on our soil for the third time in my life,"
said the Breton veteran. " Our duty is plain. There are no
more distinctions of Legitimist, Orleanist, Imperialist, or Republi-
can : we are all Frenchmen ; we must protect the mother-coun-
try, whose children we are. The Prussians will invest Paris
here I remain ; I can still handle a musket, I am strong, a good
shot, an old soldier. I may be of use at least my presence here
may be useful as example to others."

"And Berthe?"

" Where there is fighting there will be wounds. We do not
expect our womankind to fight, nor even to make bow-strings of
their hair ; but they can tend our wounds."

And so when the " useless mouths " were warned to quit the
doomed city, and the Marquise de Bellecour left for England at
the earnest persuasion of her friends, Berthe remained behind,
and the Hotel Bellecour was turned into an ambulance and the
white flag with the red cross of Geneva was hoisted over its
entrance. M. de Menars joined the One Hundred and Sixth
Battalion of the National Guard, the crack battalion of the
aristocratic quarter, and the ex-officer of the royal body-guard
did his duty on the ramparts uncomplainingly in the uniform of
a common private. There were clerks and grocers, who knew
no more how to set a squadron in the field than the babe in
arms,- masquerading in the silver lace and epaulettes of majors
and colonels.

A regiment from Kergalon's own department of the Morbi-
han was among the contingent of the provincial Garde Mobile
brought up to the capital. In physique and spirit these rustics
were all that could be desired: strong, patient, healthy, and
amenable to discipline the stuff out of which a good soldiery
is made ; but the stuif wanted working up. They were the
cream of the youth of the country, bigger men than the average
infantry of the line, and more intelligent, but they lacked drill,
that experience of embodiment together which gives cohesion

1 88 5.] THE HOTEL BELLE COUR DURING THE SIEGE. 461

and the requisite professional training in the majority of their
officers, who were at best militia officers. The count was at
once appointed to a captaincy in the Morbihan corps, and ac-
cepted the trust with gladness. Some of these Bretons he had
served in the ranks with in Italy ; many were his near neighbors,
all knew his family. M. de Menars was elated beyond measure
when the stout Armoricans arrived, and still more when he heard
that the outlying forts were to be manned by seamen-gunners,
most of whom had come from the ports of the western seaboard
from Cherbourg to Rpchelle.

" Ah ! there is some hope now," he said ; " these are better
than your brawling street politicians and your pursy bourgeois
with their chest-protectors."

He was right. They were the backbone of the defence.

There was a tendency to laugh at the clownish Bretons with
their strange speech, their long hair, their wondering stares,
their old-world respect for religion and their social superiors,
their singular bagpipes ay, even their chaplain. The Parisian
is a born scoffer, but he has a reverence for courage. The Bre-
tons soon learned to cut their hair and manipulate their chasse-
pots ; they did not grumble at their fare or lodging ; and at Cha-
tillon, where the first serious contact with the enemy was outside
Paris, they held their ground when make-believe Zouaves and a
scratch battalion of the line were seized with panic and rushed from
the field, never crying halt until they were safe within the bas-
tioned walls. The regiment of Morbihan saved that rapid retro-
grade movement from degenerating into a disgraceful wholesale
rout. The Count de Kergalon, all, ay, even the chaplain for he
was in the midst of his children, smiling and collected distin-
guished themselves. Had the Germans been in sufficient force
they might have pressed in through the gates at the heels of the
French that day and taken the city by surprise. But the Bretons
would have .stood to their post until they were killed to a man.
Perhaps it were better so.

Chatillon had one good result. After that the proverbs
"drunk as a Breton " and "dirty as a Breton " were no longer
heard. Now they were heroes and pets.

The siege was wearisome. The process of leaving the Pari-
sians to " stew in their own gravy," as Bismarck elegantly ex-
pressed it to the English newspaper correspondent, Alfred Aus-
tin, was allowed to go on with a remorseless regularity. The
cooks outside waited in steady satisfaction, smoking their pipes
and grunting approval as they heard the hiss of simmering; and

462 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

felt that the joint would soon be ready to be dished. But the
simmering was slow, very slow. Month after month passed ;
no army of relief appeared ; the gloom of a dull despair settled
on the once light-hearted capital. Funeral convoys were too
frequent. The aged, the delicate, and the very young died off
like flies. Provisions and fuel ran low ; the weather was intense-
ly cold. The stars in their courses seemed to conspire against
Paris. Trees were cut down and park-seats torn up for firing ;
the streets were lit with straggling oil-lamps gas was too pre-
cious ; it was used to inflate the balloons by which communi-
cation was kept up with the outer world. While the Prussian
cannon were booming outside and the Prussian spiked helmets
ringed the devoted city, discontent was seething within, and the
partisans of the red flag that flag which, as Lamartinesaid, " had
made the circuit of the Champ de Mars in blood " plotted to
overthrow the government of defence.

The attempt with that fell object on the 3ist of October was
put down principally by the stern fidelity of the Bretons and the
National Guard of the Faubourg St. Germain. There were
some men who were still true to the ancient French device of
" honor and loyalty."

The women behaved nobly in this purgatorial time. They
bore their privations without a murmur, none with more forti-
tude than the gently nurtured. Berthe de Menars gave herself
no leisure to fret ; she moved about among the patients in the
ambulance of the H6tel Bellecour, sympathy in every -tone of
her voice, solace in every touch of her hand. When she entered
the wards it was as if a ray of cheerful sunshine had entered
with her. Who could prepare a cooling draught so skilfully,
who could arrange a pillow so smoothly, who could fold the plies
of a bandage so delicately, who so ready with whisper of hope
and encouragement ? There was balm and healing in her very
presence.

The Count de Kergalon seized every available occasion
when he could be spared from the front to visit his friends in the
Faubourg St. Germain, and he generally managed to bring with
him some little luxury potatoes, the materials of a salad, or a
head of cabbage, for they were luxuries then to add to their
store. M. de Menars would have none of them.

" What ! " he would exclaim, " feed like a sybarite while my
comrades have not even garlic to flavor their black bread ? "

Berthe accepted the gifts strange gifts of a lover and
dressed them with care. But they went where the fine wines

1885.] THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. 463

from the cellar of the H6tel Bellecour had preceded them to
the sufferers in the ambulance. It was one of the tenderest of
idyls, this courtship on short commons.

A curious incident happened the count one day. He was
passing along the Boulevard des Italiens when his attention was
drawn by a group around a kiosk. There were hung round it
a collection of caricatures of the filthiest nature, gross daubs
putrid with blasphemy and obscenity. Trochu was represented
as a Capuchin in a confessional, the empress as a camel ; and
worse pictorial atrocities too hideous to be mentioned here.
And the group, jeering and grinning and nudging each other,
passed their criticisms.

The young Breton flushed with indignation. " What do you
ask for your entire stock?" he demanded of the crone who sat
inside the kiosk.

" Five-and-twenty francs, mon capitaine"

Kergalon counted out the money, took the caricatures, rent
them to shreds, and trampled them under foot.

There was a silence of amazement in the sordid group, and
then one beetle-browed churl in the uniform of a franc-tireur
approached him and said roughly :

" You are one of those accursed reactionaries ! -Why did you
do that?"

" I have the right to do what I please with what I buy."

" You are a Jesuit or an Imperialist disguised in uniform."

" I have not the honor to be the one nor the misfortune to be
the other ; but you no uniform would disguise you as a soldier.
A soldier fears God and honors the sex of his mother."

The fellow raised his foot to kick Kergalon in the face, but
the Breton was quicker than he reckoned on. He drew back
suddenly, caught the ruffian by the heel, and hurled him violently
on his back several yards off. His skull came with a crack on
the hard pavement, where he lay stunned. The populace is
capricious. A shout of approbation burst from the group. It
was neatly done, and was proof that the Breton had not wasted
the hours he had devoted to practice with the horelL

When the story was told to M. de Menars the old man's glee
was almost schoolboyish. He laughed and crowed, and asked
De Kergalon to tell it to him again, and said he felt happier than
if he had drained a bottle of the best vintage of Champagne.

" You did well, Kergalon," he cried. " I wish I had been
there. ' The soldier fears God and honors the sex of his mo-
ther ' the saying was worthy of Chateaubriand ! As if these

4^4 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

Parisians, with their cowardly savate, could stand before our Bre-
ton muscle. How I long to tell them of it at Morlaix !"

The gloom was deeper than ever. The cloud of despair
thickened. It was getting colder and colder still, and provisions
were getting scarcer and scarcer every day. One gleam of hope
was kindled. A great sortie under Ducrot was to be made,
and Ducrot had sworn that he would return dead or victorious.
He did neither. For three days the unequal fight was waged at
Champigny, and then it was admitted that the great sortie had
failed. The gleam of hope died out. To all reasonable men it
was clear that Paris was lost.

III.

Christmas in beleaguered Paris will not be forgotten by those
who had the unenviable privilege to be trapped there. The
entire population was rationed on meat, which was distributed, to
those holding tickets, at the nearest butcher's stall every three
days. That meat was horse, and the ration was so small
counted by ounces that it was common for those who had just
received it to eat their three days' portion raw before reaching
their own doprs. Beef was not to be had for love or money.
Milk was jealously reserved for the lying-in hospitals. Eggs
were displayed in the jewellers' windows. The flesh of ass, dog,
cat, even of rat, was publicly sold. The day was at hand when
the wretched bread, in which there was more bran and sand than
flour, would have to be rationed. Tobacco was the only thing
which held out. News had begun to filter in through carrier-
pigeons, but all of it was colored with sadness. The Germans
were victorious everywhere. No one would move to the aid of
France. Every man, to the street-hawkers who pestered you to
buy La Femme Bonaparte, ses Crimes et ses Orgies, was in uniform ;
every second woman was in black. The frivolous city was
forlorn, most drear and melancholy, and shivered with bitter
cold and hunger bitterer still. The only music was the blare of
bugles and brattle of drums. Santa Claus was empty-handed.
Instead of carillons of joy there was the muffled roar of ordnance.
The " Adeste Fideles" was replaced by the vacuous "Mar-
seillaise " or songs of ribaldry.

Nevertheless they managed to keep the festival with some
show of subdued gayety in the Hotel Bellecour. De Kergalon
was off duty; Mass was celebrated in the salle cChonnenr, and in
the evening M. de Menars was persuaded to take share of a

1885.] THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. 465

bottle of generous wine. He drank but one toast " To France
out of the toils and regenerate." Before the darkness had come
down Kergalon had to buckle on his sword, don his great-coat,
and pick his way over the slippery thoroughfares, in the biting
inclemency of the hardest winter experienced for years, to his
remote quarters on an outpost beyond the walls. The agony
was approaching.

On the afternoon of January 5, 1871, a shell fell in the Rue
Lalande, in the Quartier du Maine, and wounded a turner at his
work. The bombardment of Paris had begun. Shells soon pitched
all over the fourteenth arrondissement ; tombs were shattered by
fragments of missiles in the Montparnasse cemetery ; projectiles
came hissing and bursting in the gardens of the Luxembourg.
One night the Germans had the noble inspiration to cannonade
the city by moonlight. Shells smashed and crashed into hospi-
tals, lunatic asylums, churches, and almshouses. In the Refuge
for the Youthful Blind five children were killed by one truculent
bolt.

" There is nothing left for us now, Berthe, but to die," said
M. de Menars.

" God is still just. He will not desert us. If we are to die
we can die like Bretons, with faith in his mercy \ " said the brave
girl.

" Thou hast spoken well, my child," returned the old man.
" I wish all had your heroic spirit."

Then a clamor arose that Trochu was not serious in his plan
of defence ; there were men in Paris who had never seen the
enemy ; it was unheard of, impossible, that a stronghold so for-
midable and wide-spreading as this should be ceded to an in-
ferior force ; a sortie en masse should be attempted.

Trochu knew that a capitulation was inevitable, and he
wearily gave way to the clamor, feeling that this people
would still retain the belief in their invincibility until they had
proved what a cool, vigorous, remorseless enemy had them in
his iron clutch. Some whispered that the general had even said :
" Let them have a blood-letting, if they will insist on it ; it will
do them good ! "

The iQth of January was fixed for the final sortie, which was
to be made in the direction of St. Cloud. An order came from
headquarters to have additional beds prepared in the ambulance
of the Hotel Bellecour.

" We shall have warm work, my child," said M. de Menars, as

VOL. XL. 30

466 THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

he kissed his daughter before leaving with his battalion on the
previous evening.

" Go, my father ; God keep you ! "

De Kergalon, with the regiment of Morbihan, was to join in
the same sortie, but was stationed at the other extremity of the
front of battle, which extended four miles. His division was
under command of Ducrot, and was to attack the chateau of
Buzenval on the right. The crack battalion of the Faubourg
St. Germain was on the left with Vinoy, and had assigned to it
the hazardous r6le of retaking the redoubt of Montretout, which
commanded the high-road to Versailles.

How anxiously Berthe passed through the racking hours of
that day of trial ! When she was not moving by the bedsides of
the patients she was kneeling before the Holy Sacrament on the
altar in the salle d'honneur. Every percussion of artillery re-
echoing over the house-tops in the raw January air sent a sharp
pain to her heart. In the evening came rumors of success.
That night was one of suspense tinged with hopefulness. In the
morning came the dread awakening to the truth. When the
Journal Officiel appeared there was first a note by pigeon-messen-
ger telling of Chanzy's crushing defeat at Le Mans, and next an
admission that the final sortie had failed. An armistice of two
days was to be asked for, and the black-robed Christian Brothers
were already on their pilgrimage to the scene of action with
litters and mattocks to pick up the wounded and bjury the
dead.

When the casualties came to be reckoned there was seen what
a current of rich blood had been spilled uselessly spilled in
that ill-conceived, ill-executed sortie of despair. Amongst the
dead were Henri Regnault, the glorious young painter of
" Salome, the Dancer," she who demanded the head of the
Baptist as the price of her steps ; Gustave Lambert, the intrepid
Arctic explorer (the snow whitened his pall), and the gallant
Rochebrune, formerly chief of the Polish Zouaves of Death under
Langiewicz, slain by a bullet from a Pole of Posen. Amongst
the wounded were Victor de Lesseps, son of the baron of Suez
Canal fame, hit through the thigh ; Seneste, a beardless actor
of the Com6die Franchise, who lost a leg, and M. de Menars !

The veteran had been struck by a splinter of the same bomb
which had killed the Count de Montbrison, one of the noblest
names in France.

He was carried to the Hotel Bellecour, pale, with drooped
lids, in a swoon of exhaustion from anguish and loss of blood,

1885.] THE HOTEL BELLECOUR DURING THE SIEGE. 467

and was received at the door by his daughter. For hours he re-
mained insensible ; the doctors said there was no hope for him
but in amputation, and even then they would not answer for re-
covery at his age. If he had been only twenty-seven, indeed !
But at sixty-seven !

Berthe sighed a sigh of resignation and looked upwards, as if
she could send her pleadings through the painted ceiling, studded
with rosy cherubs, to the feet of God's throne.

The first words of M. de Menars when he came to himself
were, " Where is Kergalon ?"

There were no tidings from the captain ; his regiment had
performed prodigies of valor, but had been overwhelmed in the
common fate.

" I wish to see him," murmured the old soldier.

" He will be here later," ventured Berthe.

" I know he will ; I feel that he is safe. Wake me when he
comes." And he turned off to sleep.

" If he is to bear the operation we must rouse him," said the
surgeon-major.

A smile flitted over the old man's wan lips. His dream was
a dream of peace.

" I have not the heart to wake him," sobbed Berthe. For
now that her father could not detect her tears she lost her self-
control. " Let him sleep on ; God's will be done ! "

The surgeon passed on to another patient.

By and by there was a noise of a jingling scabbard in the
courtyard, and Berthe, stirred by the presentiment of love, moved
over towards the window. It was Kergalon. He caught sighfc
of her ; his face was radiant with happiness.

She rushed to meet him.

" Berthe, my affianced," he cried, " congratulate me. I
have won the red ribbon." There was something in her manner
which struck him. " I know," he stammeredf ''it is it is out of
place to rejoice when we are beaten, but it isjiot^my fault nor
the fault of my braves ; and the cross the/l$RoJ3^Sv

" I too have my cross," she said quietMgyi^i leaMma to. the
bed where her father lay. |>Y f^.

The old man opened his eyes, smiled, afiH^aid wiUi a/strange-
ly strong voice, " I have been expecting yvm^HBrni'le./ Give me
your hand ; now yours, Berthe." And he lmkcti~lnem on his
breast, and said : " Take her and guard her ; she will be the

k treasure of your heart. And you, my daughter, always cling to
my fimile ; he is worthy of your love and pride. I have not long.

468 THE HOTEL BELLE COUR DURING THE SIEGE. [Jan.,

to live, but my last hour is peaceful. I have my recompense.
God bless you both ! "

And they knelt at each side of the bed and received the bene-
diction of the gallant old gentleman marriage benediction from
a dying couch.

The Viaticum was administered shortly after, and he re-
lapsed into a slumber, his beloved children watching by his side.
After a time he wqke, murmured farewell, and with the beautiful
words syllabled on his lips, " Into thy hands, O Lord ! I commend
my spirit," he breathed his last dying like a true Breton.

Berthe stooped and kissed his forehead, and then, following
the impulse of her nature, she kissed the Count de Kergalon and
cried : " My beloved, now 1 have but thee left."

And the serenity of the chamber of death was broken in upon
by a drum-beat and a hoarse cry of " A bas Trochu ! " from the
streets. It was a half-drunken section of the National Guard
reeling towards the prison of Mazas to set free M. Flourens and
other leaders of the enemy within the gates.

M. de Menars was fortunate in the time of his death and for-
tunate in the manner of it. He died like a soldier and a Breton,
shedding his blood for his country, strong in the confidence of
a Christian, happy in the love of those he loved and in the
promise of their happiness. His last days were not embittered
by the grief of Paris surrendered, by the degradation of the Com-
mune.

The Count and Countess de Kergalon had no wedding feast
at that stately chateau in the Morbihan, but they reside there in
peace and affection with the dowager-countess, respected by
their neighbors and idolized by the veterans of the war with
Germany. The H6tel Bellecour, which was devised to the
count by the marquise at her death, is a splendid mansion, one
which many envy him, but he prefers quietude among .the
friends of his boyhood in dull but .honest Brittany to all the
iascinations of brilliant Paris.

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 469

THE TIN SOLDIERS.

IT was late in the afternoon of the day before Christmas.
The sun had already set, leaving a dull red glow in the west, while
the new moon showed a slender crescent of faint silver against
the pale sky, and one or two stars were beginning to twinkle.
The snow had fallen heavily all the morning, covering every-
thing with a thick white mantle, and the cold wind, which had
driven away the storm before it, was piling up the snow into
drifts wherever it could, and was filling the air with fine, frozen
spray a sort of horizontal after-clap of the storm. The trees
stood out like black silhouettes against the background of snow
and sky, and their naked branches creaked and whistled in [the
wind. The ordinary rattle and noise of the city streets were
hushed and deadened, but there were sounds that broke the still-
ness. The snow-shovellers were busy cleaning the sidewalks,
and one could constantly hear the sharp scrape and metallic
ring of their shovels against the pavements. Every now and
then a sleigh dashed by with a bright jangle of bells, the horses
scattering the snow in little clouds before them as they went ;
and at regular intervals came the patient, monotonous tinkle-
tinkle of the car-bells as the steaming and panting horses slowly
dragged the heavily-loaded street-cars along. Moreover, there
were the children, and the combination of small boys and snow
is never a quiet one.

Main Street was thronged with people. It was the principal
business thoroughfare of the city ; on it were situated those big
retail stores which offer the greatest attractions to shoppers.
And the streets are sure to be crowded on Christmas eve, some
people hurrying along to buy, some leisurely enjoying the crowd,
and some carrying home their bundles bundles whose mystery,
not to be solved until the glad untying of the next morning, is a
fascination and delight to every well-regulated child. Is there
any one who has not felt that .delicious thrill of expectation
caused by the sight of those neatly-tied-up packages brought
home by father or mother on Christmas eve packages which,
becanse they may contain anything, do for the time being con-
tain for us everything ?

Of all the shops from whose windows the light streamed out
on the snowy street and passing crowds the most brilliant and

470 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

fascinating was the large toy-store of " Black & Co." Its win-
dows, lighted by many rows of gas-jets, contained everything
that the heart of boy or the soul of girl could want. There were
large toys and small toys, cheap toys and dear toys, imported
toys and toys of native manufacture, toys to be used and played
with and toys to be looked at and admired, toys masculine and
toys feminine, mechanical toys and domestic toys in fact, it was
a sort of " Great International Toy Exposition." They were
the kind of windows in front of which youngsters will stand by
the half-hour, eagerly disputing among themselves as to the com-
parative merits of certain of the contents, and trying to decide
which of all the articles there exhibited they would rather have;
each one of them being perfectly sure that if some kind fairy
or generous uncle would only give him his choice from that
window, he would not want a single other thing to make him
perfectly happy.

So, at least, thought one little fellow who was flattening his
nose against Black & Co.'s big window that afternoon. After
a long and serious consideration, and a deliberate balancing of
the attractions and merits of the different toys, he had at last
decided that the one thing in all the world needed to make his
happiness complete beyond expression was the possession of a
battalion of tin soldiers who, with two brass field-pieces, were
marching there on dress-parade. The decision had wavered for
a time between them and a train of cars with a locomotive that
could be wound up like a clock and would then go of itself ; but
the military instinct overcame the mechanical, and his choice
fell upon the soldiers. Of all that that window contained they
were the brightest and best.

Having made up his mind on this point, did he boldly march
into the store and buy them ? No, indeed ; one need only look
at him to see that he was not one of those who can buy things
whenever they want them. His clothes were not ragged, but
they had been patched and patched again until they were really
marvels of needle-work. His coat-sleeves stopped before they
reached his wrists ; his trousers did not come down to his ankles.
Coat and trousers had both grown tired of trying to keep up
with his growing limbs, and were now taking a deserved rest
after their efforts in that direction. His hat and shoes were
whole and warm, but they were far from new. For he was a
poor, shabby little boy. So there he stood, enduring the cold to
feast his eyes on that little mimic army, until he felt that it was
time for him to go home. " Grandma may want me to go on

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 471

some errands for her," he thought, and, giving the soldiers a last,
lingering look, he turned away. It was hardly possible that he
should ever see them again some one would be sure to buy
them ; and remembering a picture he had once seen of Gene-
ral Washington bidding farewell to his officers, he was sure that
Washington must have felt then just as he did now. There was
a certain consolation in that thought, and he went off bravely,
throwing his shoulders back, his chest out, and his chin well up,
as a soldier should.

Turning down a side-street, he soon came to the house where
he lived ; it was in a poor but decent part of the town. He
ran up the stairs to the top floor, and, scarcely waiting for the
" Come in " that answered his knock, opened the door and went
in. The room was very plainly furnished : there was no carpet
on the floor, and a stove, a couple of tables on one of which
stood a lamp a little bookcase, and a few chairs were about all
the furniture it contained, while through an open door there
was a glimpse of a bed-room which seemed to be about as
sparsely furnished. Everything was as neat as wax and as clean
as a new pin. There was a perfect harmony between Jem's
clothes and his home, or, rather, both were pitched in the same
key of decent, self-respecting poverty. The lamp was not
lighted, but there was a fire burning in the stove, the flickering
flame of which gave all the light there was in the room. Near
the stove, in the one rocking-chair, sat an old, gray-haired man.
He it was who had said " Come in " to Jem's knock, and he was
now looking at the place where he stood with that peculiar,
steadfast gaze only seen in eyes from which the light has been
taken ; for Jem's grandfather was blind.

" Well, Jemmy, boy, is that you ? "

" Yes, sir, it's me. Hasn't grandma come home yet? I'm
awfully hungry."

" Not yet ; but she will be here pretty soon now. She must
have been through her work before this, for I heard the church-
clock strike six a little while ago. May be she has gone down
town to get something for us. That would be nice, wouldn't
it? But where have you been all the afternoon? First put a
little coal on the fire not too much and then come here and
tell your poor old grandad all about it."

Having filled the stove, Jem sat down on the floor, with his
head resting against his grandfather's knee and his feet stretched
out towards the fire. The old man's hand caressed the boy's
curly head as he talked, and as the evanescent blue flames began

47 2 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

to creep up through the fresh coal they flashed faint gleams of
light every now and then over the two. Jem went on to tell
how, after school, he had played for a while with the boys and
had borne a creditable share in a glorious snow-fight, in which
" we fellows just licked that Hamilton Street gang clean out of
their boots " ; and how, after they had driven their adversaries
off the field in great confusion, he had gone down to Main
Street to look at the shop-windows, and how in Black & Co.'s
he had seen the most splendid tin soldiers that ever were. He
would give anything if he could have them ; they would be im-
mense to play with. But then he supposed, with a sigh, that they
must cost heaps of money.

" Poor little fellow ! If I could get them for you, Jem, you'd
have those soldiers this very minute. But your grandad can't
get things for you as he'd like to. I'm an old man now, and
people don't want me any more, because I am blind and feeble,
and it's about all grandma can do to get enough for us to eat
and to keep us warm. She has a hard life of it now : who
would ever have thought it could come to this? But I'll tell
you what, Jem : let's you and me pretend not to mind it, and
act as if we had everything we want, so she won't feel sorry
about it."

Already Jem was looking forward with longing ambition to
the time when he could come home some night and tell grand-
ma that he was big enough to work now, and that she could
stay home with grandad, because he had got a place where he
would earn all the money that was needed. How surprised and
pleased she would be at that ! Presently he asked :

" Grandad, were we always poor like we are now ? When
you were a boy used you have lots of things and good times at
Christmas? And when father was a boy like me used he? Or
were things then as they are now ? "

Then his grandfather told him that when he was a boy, and
when Jem's father was a little chap, they used to be pretty well
off; they lived in the country then. And Jem said he could
just remember when they lived in the country ; they had a big
white house with trees around it, and he thought he remem-
bered that there was a cow. Yes, the old man said, that was
all so ; he was surprised at his remembering it, for he was only
a little bit of a boy, not in trousers yet, when they came to the
city. Well, in those days they used to have grand times at
Christmas. The house was decorated with evergreens, and
they hung wreaths and stars of holly wherever they could ; and

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 473

then there was always a Christmas-tree. He grandad always
cut that tree himself and hauled it to the house. It was so tall
that it almost reached the ceiling-, and he and grandma hung it
full of presents and stuck lots of little candles in the branches.
Of course most of the presents were for Jem's father, but then
there were always some for grandma and him, too.

Jem knew all about Christmas-trees, for he had seen a beau-
tiful one himself only last year. It happened in this way. He
was going along Forrest Street one evening in the holiday week
on an errand, and on his way passed a great big house where
they were having a Christmas party. They had not drawn down
the shades, so the people in the street could look in. Jem climbed
up on the newel-post of the railing, and from there he had a fine
view of the parlors. In the centre of the room was a big Christ-
mas-tree all ablaze with lights and brilliant with the colored
glass globes and other pretty things hung on it. It bore also
a fine fruitage of presents and cornucopias filled with candy.
Around it was a swarm of little children dressed in the prettiest
clothes he had ever seen, the blonde heads clustering there
thickly with the dark ones. Each child, on getting a present,
shouted for joy and showed it to the others, making a glad con-
fusion. In the back part of the room were some grown-up
people. The man who took the presents from the tree and
handed them around was dressed all in furs; he had a pipe in his
mouth and a loqg white beard, looking as if he had just come in
out of a snow-storm. At some of the things he said everybody
laughed heartily. He was Santa Claus ; Jem knew that. After
he had gone away the children grew a little quieter, and then
some one whom he could not see began to play on the piano, and
all the children sang a carol about the dear Lord how he was
born on Christmas eve long ago in a stable, born of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, our sweet Mother of Mercy, and was cradled in a
manger ; how the angels sang for joy at his birth to the listening
shepherds, and how he always loved little children, because he
too had once been a child. After that Jem had to go on, but he
remembered it all very distinctly.

Then his grandfather went on to tell about the dinners they
used to have on Christmas roast goose with apple-sauce, all sorts
of vegetables, and as much cider as they could drink. The des-
sert was always mince-pie and plum-pudding, the latter brought
on blazing away as if it was on fire. Yes, they used to have fine
Christmas dinners in those days.

That was about all Jem could stand. It wouldn't have been

474 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

so bad if they had always been poor ; but for every one else to
have had good times and all they wanted, Christmas-trees, toys,
good things to eat, and everything, and he to be compelled to go
without it was not fair or just. I think myself it was the hav-
ing mince-pie and plum-pudding together that was too much for
him. But, be that as it may, a big lump came in his throat and
almost choked him, his lips quivered a little, and he couldn't see
very distinctly. Indeed, if his grandmother hadn't come in just
then I am afraid he would have disgraced himself by crying.
But she did come in just in time to prevent that. She was a
stout, vigorous old lady, and when once you had seen her you
understood in a moment why the room was so neat and clean
and why Jem's clothes were so scientifically patched. Dirt and
torn clothes never existed long where she was ; she waged an
unceasing and ever-successful war on them. This evening she
had a big basket on her arm, which she put down on the deal
table, and then, hanging up her bonnet and shawl, she poked the
fire until it blazed briskly, and lit the lamp.

She was so bright and cheerful that in less time than it takes
to tell it Jem had swallowed that lump in his throat and had
forgotten the feeling of being unjustly treated. Melancholy and
discontent could not stand her presence any more than the dark-
ness could remain after she had lit the lamp. Besides, Jem re-
membered how he and grandad were going to pretend that they
had everything they wanted. Always in good spirits, to-night
his grandmother was especially happy. Mrs. Bassett, the lady
for whom she had been sewing, had insisted on giving her for a
Christmas present that basket full of good things. Jem was an
interested spectator as she unpacked it. It was a wonderful
basket, almost inexhaustible. It made him think of a hat out of
which he had once seen a street conjurer take so many strange
things. She took enough things out of it to almost cover the
table there were packages of tea, coffee, and sugar, a bag of
flour, some butter, and a turkey. None of your tough old
roosters this, but a genuine, tender turkey. Then all the chinks
and crannies had been filled with apples and oranges ; and, best
of all, there was a round, flat parcel done up in white paper,
which on being opened turned out to be a pie a mince-pie.

She sent Jem out to get some sausages for supper, and in a
little while they were ready on the table, sizzling hot. Jem en-
joyed that supper hugely. To be sure there was nothing re-
markable in that, for always, at any hour of the day or night, he
was ready to eat, being a very valiant trencherman. But this

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 475

especial meal was peculiarly delightful to him, in that it was a
sort of earnest of the dinner he would have on the next day ; the
good things he had just seen unpacked and an orange his grand-
mother gave him were witnesses of that.

After they had supped, and the dishes had been washed and
put away, grandma produced an oddly-shaped package, which
she gave her husband as her Christmas present. It proved to be
a pipe and a paper of tobacco. It had been a long time since he
had had a smoke. Although it had been a life-long habit of his,
when he couldn't earn any more money he gave it up, for he felt
that they were too poor for him to keep on spending money on a
pure luxury. If you are a smoker yourself you will know with-
out my telling you how he felt when once more he had his
beloved " pipe and 'baccy " in his hands they were bought
and paid for, and so must be used and if you are not a smoker
no words of mine can describe it for you. In either case it
would have done your heart good to see him nestle down in his
chair, stretch his old legs out towards the fire, and, shutting his
sightless eyes, puff luxuriously away at that new pipe. Enforced
abstinence had doubled the pleasure of indulgence. When his
wife watched him with the smoke curling about his head I don't
think she felt a bit sorry that she had bought him the pipe and
tobacco, although the money they cost would otherwise have
gone towards a little sum she was saving up for a new dress.

After a while v Jem asked if he could go out to look at the
shop-windows again ; and, as his grandmother had her own rea-
sons for wanting a chance to work when he was not by, she said
yes. So he hurried off to see if those tin soldiers were still in
Black & Co.'s windows. When left alone the old couple began
to talk of the times before Jem's father had left them, after his
wife's death, to seek a fortune in the far West. They lived in
Hydeville then. After he went away everything went wrong :
the crops were poor, the cattle died, and times were hard. At
last the bank where all their money was deposited failed, and the
mortgage on the farm was foreclosed. They were too proud to
live as poor people where they had once been well to do, so they
came to the city. For nearly a year before they left their old
home they had not heard from their son. His letters, which had
at first been regular, suddenly ceased, and they never heard of
him again. The father felt sure that he had died ; but his wife,
motherlike, never lost her faith that some day he would come
back to them. The years went by, but he never came. In the
city they did pretty well until he lost his eyesight, and then they

476 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

grew poorer and poorer. She worked hard and patiently, but
what can a woman, and especially a woman well on in years, do ?
She was just able to make both ends meet.

This Christmas eve their talk naturally was about their boy.
She could not give him up ; she still clung- to her belief that he
would even yet come back to them. Her husband did not con-
tradict her, but in his heart he knew that he would never hear
his son's voice again until they met in that happy country where
the inhabitant never says, " I am weary," where there is no more
sorrow nor any crying, but where the Lord God wipes away all
tears from off all faces. There his eyes would be opened and he
would see his boy. Then they talked of the holy Christmas
time, of the blessed Babe and his glorious Mother, strengthening
their sad hearts by their consoling faith.

II.

Mrs. Bassett's big house was full of visitors. She believed
that Christmas should be the happiest time in the whole year,
and so, when it came, she filled her house with her friends and
made the holiday season one of unalloyed jollity. In her care of
her guests she did not forget those to whom Christmas does not
mean a time of plenty and rejoicing. Her object was to add to
the pleasure of the poor as well as of the rich, and if she had
been compelled to choose between the two it would have been
the poor instead of the rich who should thank her. Her own
dinner that day was always sweetened by the knowledge that
she had generously provided for some who were unable to pro-
vide for themselves. To-night her house was brilliant and gay.
They were busy preparing the tree for the children on the
morning. Some were stringing popcorn to be hung about the
tree in long festoons, some were fastening candles on the boughs,
some filling cornucopias with candies. Every one was talking
and laughing. There was a bit of mistletoe hung on the chande-
lier, and its presence did not tend to lessen the jollity and the
noise. As Mrs. Bassett said, they carried on and chattered like
a flock of hungry magpies.

Among her guests was a Mr. Stanton, from Colorado a tall,
sunburnt, rather taciturn man of about five-and-thirty years. He
had a large cattle ranch near Cheyenne. Now, not six months
before Mrs. Bassett's brother, a Mr. Boynton, who lived in
Cheyenne, had died, leaving an only child, a girl of twenty, named
Amy. He had lost his wife some years before, so his death left

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 477

her an orphan. The Boyntons and Stanton were good friends ;
indeed, Mr. Boynton had given him the start in his business that
enabled him to succeed. When Mr. Boynton was taken ill he
was at their house, and stayed with him until after the funeral.
During that sad time he did what he could for him and her. He
shielded her as far as possible from all trouble and annoyance,
in her sorrow proving himself a considerate and efficient friend.
Mrs. Bassett, as soon as she heard of her brother's death, offered
his daughter a home with her. This offer Amy accepted ; but
she was detained in Cheyenne until late in November by some
law business connected with her father's estate, of which Stanton
was the executor, and when she came on East he came with her.
Her dead father's kindness to him, his own gratitude, the many
little services he had been able to render her, their constant com-
panionship, all combined to bring them closer together. When
Mrs. Bassett heard of Stanton's kindness she asked him to make
his home at her house during his stay East. This he declined, '
saying that he had business to attend to which might necessitate
a good deal of travelling ; but he gladly accepted her invitation
to spend the holidays with her.

He had arrived that day, and was astonished and pleased to
find how much brighter and more cheerful Amy had become
during her few weeks at Mrs. Bassett's. The change in her sur-
roundings, the absence of all that could recall painful associa-
tions, and the affectionate home-life at her aunt's had done won-
ders for her. She was like his old friend, with a certain subdued
element in her manner that was very attractive. He himself
had altered, as she quickly saw, but in the contrary direction.
Always quiet, he had become almost saddened, and there was a
pained look in his face. She wondered what could be the cause
of it, and determined to discover, if she could, and help him if
possible.

Mrs. Bassett happened this evening to catch them looking at
each other, and immediately jumped at a theory which explained
both his depression and Amy's sympathy. That good lady had
the faculty of what she Called putting two and two together.
This operation sometimes produced equations that would have
confounded a mathematician, such as 2-f-2=3, or 2-|-2=7^. On
this occasion we need not trouble ourselves about Mrs. Bassett's
sum in mental arithmetic any more than to say that the result
she came to made her execute a little manreuvre, intended to
give Stanton, whom she liked, " another chance." She conve-
niently remembered that there were no presents for the Ferris

478 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

twins she had forgotten them. Now, if the Ferris twins should
be passed over in the distribution of gifts on the morrow there
would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, for the
twins were mighty in lung-power. Calling Amy to her, Mrs.
Bassett explained the situation and asked her if she would be
kind enough to go down to Black & Co.'s and buy them some
toys. " Mr. Stanton will be glad to escort you down and back ;
won't you, Mr. Stanton ? And I shall be so much obliged to you
both ! " And in a few minutes Stanton, with Amy on his arm,
was making his way along crowded Main Street. Kind Mrs.
Bassett !

Amy wanted to ask him what was troubling him, but before
their talk gave her a fitting opportunity they had reached Black
& Co.'s. As they went in she determined that she would find a
chance, or make one, to do it on their way home. The store was
full of buyers, and they crowded their way up to the counter and
were soon busy in selecting the toys which should bring joy and
.gladness to the hearts of the Ferris twins, and so make peace a
possibility to the rest of Mrs. Bassett's guests.

Jem was outside of the window looking at his beloved tin
soldiers. They had not been sold. There was the colonel on his
prancing white horse, bravely waving his sword ; the color-ser-
geant proudly carried the stars and stripes ; the well-disciplined
platoons of men stood in company front, ready to follow wher-
ever led, and on each flank was a cannon ingeniously made to fire
death-dealing peas. Jem formed the resolution to go to Mr.
Black on the day after Christmas and offer to work for him as
cash or errand boy all the holiday week, if he could have those
soldiers for his pay. The more he thought over this plan the
more likely it seemed to him that he would get them in that way,
and he was beginning to look on them'as his own, when, alas for
him ! they caught the eyes of Miss Amy Boynton. They would
be just the thing for her little cousin Ralph ; so, forgetting the
presents she had already bought for him, she bought these at
once. In a twinkling they were swept up and packed, and added
to the bundles Stanton was already carrying.

When Jem saw his army carried off, horse, foot, and artillery,
in one fell swoop, his heart was almost broken. He had planned
such splendid fights with them, assaults with bayonet, stormings
of forts, through all of which the flag should be carried triumph-
antly ; he would have been so careful of them. And now they
were gone, and would probably be given to some careless fellow
who would break them all to bits, or to some boy who didn't

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 479

care for such things. Well, it couldn't be helped ; and, sad at
heart, he turned away to go home. He noticed that it had
clouded over again and was snowing softly and heavily. As he
passed the store-door out came Amy and Stanton. She was so
very pretty that Jem forgot his good manners in his good taste,
and stopped to look at her. Seeing the falling snow, Stanton
said :

" Will you excuse me for a moment ? With all these bundles
and you to look after, the snow will be too much for me. If
you'll wait here a second I'll get a cab." And then to Jem :
" Here, boy, do you want to earn a quarter ? Just hold these
parcels until I come back. Keep close to this young lady."
And he started off after a carriage.

Jem stood there with his arms full of bundles ; in one of them
were those tin soldiers. In a flash the temptation came to him
to run with them. He saw that the lady was all wrapped up in a
long, heavy cloak, and he knew that he was a swift little runner.
But what would grandma say if she knew ? Need she, then,
know ? But he would have to tell Father Currier. He knew
how wrong it was to steal ; but he did want them so badly ! It
was a terrible temptation. Moments come to all of us when our
power to resist temptation is put to a supreme test. Such a
moment had come to little Jem. He happened to look at Amy
just then, and it occurred to him, " What would the beautiful lady
think if she knew I wanted to steal her things?" But what
would the Beautiful Lady, the Queen of Heaven, think, to whom
Jem had been dedicated, and for whom he cherished a most in-
tense devotion? That settled the fight in the little fellow's
breast. His angel guardian had conquered. And so when Stan-
ton drove up with his carriage, there was Jem, with his arms full
of bundles, talking to Amy as if he had known her always. She
was soon seated in the carriage, and Stanton turned to take their
purchases from Jem. Something in his face impelled him to
speak to him.

" What's your name, my little man? "

"Jem Stanton, sir."

" What ? "

"Jem Stanton."

" How old are you? "

" Going on eight."

" Where's your father?"

" I don't know, sir. He went West after mother died, ever
so long ago. Grandad says he is dead ; but grandma, she says

480 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

she knows better than that. He'll come home some day, she
says. I live with grandma near here."

" Have you always lived here?"

" No, sir. We used to live in Hydeville, but we moved here
a good many years ago about four, I think."

Stanton took the bundles and piled them on the front seat of
the coach ; he said, " I am going- home with this boy. Will you
excuse me if I leave you to ride home alone? I shall be back in
a little while, and should like very much to have a chance to talk
with you to-night. Don't retire too early, please." Then he
shut the door and gave the coachman Mrs. Bassett's number.
Amy was not a little astonished at this sudden desertion ; she
noticed how excited he was and wondered what the matter
could be, for she had not overheard the talk between the other
two. But she would find out that night when Stanton came
home, she knew that. When she got to Mrs. Bassett's she told
her that Mr. Stanton had gone home with a poor little boy who
had held their bundles for them a piece of information that
astonished that lady considerably.

Meanwhile Jem and Stanton walked off rapidly. Jem won-
dered who this strange man could be who spoke so kindly to
him and held his hand so tightly ; he wondered, too, if he had
forgotten all about that twenty-five cents he was to pay him for
holding the parcels. As they went along, the little boy almost
trotting to keep up with the big man, Jem told all about himself
and his family how he was in the fourth reader, how grandad
was blind and couldn't work, how good Mrs. Bassett had been to
give them such a bully Christmas dinner, and how he meant to
work when he grew up.

Before he came to the end of his story they had reached the
house where he lived. When they had climbed the stairs the
strange gentleman held him back for a moment and went into
the room before him. The lamplight showed the old couple
sitting side by side before the fire, he smoking his new pipe and
she knitting industriously at a gray worsted comforter which
was to be Jem's Christmas present. They made a pretty pic-
ture ; so the stranger thought, at any rate, for he stood there a
moment watching them without saying a word. Jem slipped
past him and was on the point of introducing his new friend
when the old lady looked up.

What she saw astonished her greatly, for she sprang to her
feet, dropping her knitting on the floor. With a quick, nervous
movement she took off her spectacles, wiped them, and replaced

1885.] THE TIN SOLDIERS. 481

them without saying a word, never taking her eyes from the tall
figure that had now come a little nearer to her, so that the lamp-
light fell on him. One would have said that she did not trust
her Oxvn eyesight.

"What is it, Mary?" asked her husband. But she paid no
attention to him ; indeed, she did not hear him. Coming still
closer to Jem's ne\V friend, she said in a low, frightened voice :

" Who are you ? Who are you ? "

He opened his arms and s lid : " Mother, little mother, don't
you know me? Have I changed so much as that?"

In another moment she was in his embrace, kissing him again
and again, her face streaming with happy tears. " My boy ! my
boy ! " was all she said. Then turning her face towards the old
man, who had risen from his seat and stood there trembling, she
cried : " Father, it's Jim ! It's Jim come back to us again. Oh !
I knew he would come some day, and now he is here. My
blessed boy ! " And she led him up to his father. " Jemmy, lad,
this is your father your father who went away so long ago. He
has come back. Go to him ; tell him how glad you are to see
him, and how much you love him. Oh ! tell him all. I cannot.
God be praised that I have lived to this night ! "

Then they all sat around the fire, Jim, with his boy on his
knee, holding his mother's hand in his, telling the story of the
years that had passed. She first told him of the family misfor-
tunes, and that w.hen his letters stopped, and they heard no more
of him, his father feared that he was dead. " But I knew better
than that, didn't I, John ? I knew that though you had gone
forth in sorrow you would come back rejoicing, bringing your
sheaves with you, dear bringing your sheaves with you."

Then Stanton told them all about his adventures. At first he
had had poor luck of every sort ; things went from bad to worse,
until at last he fell sick of a terrible fever which laid him up for
months and left him as weak and helpless as a new-born infant.
That was why his letters stopped. When he was well and
strong again, and his memory had come back to him for it was a
good while after he began to get well before he could remember
anything, even his own name he wrote home to them the first
thing. He didn't receive any answer to his letters, so he wrote
to the postmaster at Hydeville, asking him what had become
of them. The postmaster wrote that the farm had beea sold
and that they had gone away, no one knew where. He came
East and searched and searched, and could find .no trace of the
loved ones anywhere ; so he returned to the West again with
VOL. XL. 31

482 THE TIN SOLDIERS. [Jan.,

despair in his heart. Then things prospered with him. He got
a start in the cattle business and made a good deal of money.
And now he said that he was spending the holidays with Mrs.
Bassett, and told how he had met Jem on the street that night
and how Jem had brought him home. Now that he had found
them, they would never be separated again never. They must
go back to Colorado with him next month and live on his ranch,
and Jem should have a little pony of his own to ride.

They sat there, happy in each other's new-found society, talk-
ing over both the past and the future, until the church-clock
struck eleven. Stanton remembered then that he was Mrs. Bas-
sett's guest, and also that Amy Boynton had promised to wait
for him. So he jumped up and said that he must say good-night
and leave them or Mrs. Bassett would lock him out. As he was
leaving the room Jem called out :

" Father, who was that young lady with you? My ! isn't she
awfully pretty."

Somehow or other Stanton, singularly enough, had made no
mention of Miss Boynton in his account of his Western life, and
now when called upon to stand and deliver, as it were, he was a
trifle confused. He stammered a little and said that she was a
very dear friend of his who had lived near him in Cheyenne,
and with whom, in fact, he had come East. She was a niece of
Mrs. Bassett's. His mother, who had watched his embarrass-
ment, and who herself had seen Miss Boynton, smiled a little,
and whispered as she kissed him good-night :

" Give her my love, dear."

When Stanton reached Mrs. Bassett's he found that nearly
every one had gone to bed. But among the late ones was Amy.
She was in the music-room singing ; he heard her voice as he
came in the house and went directly to her/ She was alone, and
he waited at the door until she had finished her song. She
sang :

" One morning, oh ! so early, my beloved, my beloved,
All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease.
'Twas the Thrush sang in the garden ;
Hear the story, hear the story :
And the Lark sang, ' Give us glory,'
And the Dove sang, ' Give us peace.'

' Then I listened, oh ! so early, my beloved, my beloved,
To the murmur from the woodland of the dove, my dear, the dove.
When the Nightingale came after,

THE TIN SOLDIERS. 483

' Give us fame to sweeten duty,'
When the Wren sang, 'Give us beauty,'
She made answer, ' Give us love.'

" Fair is April, fair the morning, my beloved, my beloved ;
Now for us doth spring's bright morning wait upon the year's increase .
Let my voice be heard, that asketh
Not for fame and not for glory
' Give, for all our life's dear story,
Give us love and give us peace.' "

;",At the last chord he spoke to her and she turned on the
piano-stool to meet him. In a moment he was beside her and
was telling her why he left her -in the carriage, where he went,
and whom he found. And now that he had it told, he said, now
that a weight that had lain upon his heart had been removed, he
wanted to tell her something that, ever since he saw her first, he
longed to tell her.

Just then the clock in a neighboring church-spire struck mid-
night, and at once the air was filled with the music of chiming
bells.

" Amy," said Stanton, " it is Christmas morning. I wish you
a very merry Christmas and many of them. You spoke of giv-
ing my boy a present. I am going to ask one for myself."

The next morning Jem found beside his plate at the break-
fast-table a package, which on being opened proved to be his tin
soldiers, at last come to their destined general. On the top of
the box was a Christmas card, on which was written :

" Dear Jem, from his new mother."

He didn't understand it at first, but grandma did, and she
was not a bit astonished, when Stanton came in the forenoon, to
see him lead Amy into the room and present her as her new
daughter.

484 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

LILIES AMONG THORNS.

THE snow, which had begun to fall about four o'clock in the
afternoon, came down swiftly, whirling in the wind and de-
stroying itself on the lighted window-panes. It was how six
o'clock. Under the track of the Elevated Railroad the road-
way was comparatively clear; everywhere else the white car-
:pet lay. People who had started out in the morning under a
blue sky stamped energetically as the cold snow melted on
their shoes. In spite of the closing of day, which ought to be
sad; in spite of the whirling snow, through which the gas-lamps
peered dimly; in spite of the blast, that pierced light coats and
tried to tear away thin shawls, the time was cheerful.

To many it was cheerful because work was over ; to many
because it was near Christmas time.

The young women coming into South Fifth Avenue from the
down-town factories and work-shops, each with her novel and
lunch-box clasped close to her bosom, had much to say, in loud
and sprightly tones, of festivals, past, present, and to come :
how one had assisted at the sociable of the Rosebud Coterie on
Monday and at the assembly of the Select Six, and how another
expected to appear in a new gown and compete for a prize for
waltzing on the succeeding Monday, " Says I's," " says "he's,"
and " says she's " were as frequent as dropped /is in the streets of
London. Young male persons on various street-corners raised
their hats in mock politeness and expressed their opinions, in
stage-whispers, of the passing damsels. Thereupon there was
much giggling. Cheerfulness reigned, principally because it
was Saturday night. South Fifth Avenue, dingy as it is, looked
quite gay when well covered up with snow.

Beyond lay Washington Square a tabula rasa, a great,
white sheet of yet untrodden snow, silent in the bustle around it.

In that lively French quarter of which Washington Square
is the upper boundary is the charcuterie of L. Marquette. L.
Marquette's veal-pies, sausages, arrangements of ham, elaborate
and mysterious, are as well known even outside the French
quarter as the table-d'hdte of his friend C. Martel in Bleecker
Street, where innumerable courses, a half-bottle of wine, and

1885.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 485

conversation on all the leading topics of the day may be had
for the moderate sum of forty-five cents lawful money of the
United States.

Aurore Marquette finished a moss-rose as the clock struck
six, and descended from her little work-room over the back
part of the shop to join her father and mother. Aurore was
the daughter of " L " otherwise Louis Camille Jacques. She
made artificial flowers in the little back room, while her father
and her young brother Jean managed the charcuterie, and her
mother carried on a laundry in the basement. " Each to his
talent," Madame Marquette often said.

L. Marquette always closed his shop at dusk. He had im-
perative engagements, he said, on Saturday nights. He had
dressed to fulfil one of these engagements. He was leaving the
house somewhat crestfallen, for madame, who did not approve
of this early closing, had attacked him on the subject of religion.

" Tais-toi ! " cried madame. "Thou hast no more religion
than a pig."

" I am a Catholic," answered her husband reproachfully,
" but of the liberal school of the school of progress."

" Thou art too liberal with thy tongue. Va ! " cried madame.

Monsieur felt these insulting words more deeply than usual.
He felt himself to be a very important personage this evening,
for he was about to preside over a dinner of the Cercle Voltaire
at the restaurant of C. Martel, where free thought was poured
out abundantly.

Madame Marquette was not very religious ; like many of her
class she came of a race of Burgundian peasants she looked on
priests with a certain terror because they reminded her of death.

Aurore was different. She never missed Mass ; she ap-
proached the sacraments frequently ; her father paused in his
abuse of religion while she was present. Madame approved of
this. She believed that religion was good for young women ;
and of course, when one became old, very old, and had nothing
else to do, one ought to be devout. That went without saying.
But the laundry and the accounts of the charcuterie took all her
time ; besides, if one went to the priests, the priests were likely
to come to one for something. Madame worked hard for Jean.
She loved Jean ; one day he should go back to Burgundy, live
on the land she would buy him, and be a gentleman. So far
Jean was abominably American ; but, though disappointed, ma-
dame felt that this might be overcome. She was very indul-
gent to Jean ; Aurore she kept with a tight rein. She adored

486 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

in the French sense the performances of opera-bouffe, but
she would have swooned if Aurore had entered a theatre. Au-
rore had much less freedom than the young girls around her.
Having lived in a tenement-house during a great part of her
life, she knew more of life than girls of seventeen are supposed
to know. She was good and pure. She had been sent to a
parochial school, taught by sisters, for two years.

After that, there being no room in the laundry for her, she
was set to the moulding of caramels in the small factory of her
uncle, Napoleon Champfleury, in Houston Street. But again
madame said, Chacun b. son metier, and Aurore went into the arti-
ficial-flower business with success.

The Marquette household was much more comfortable than
many of the households near it. The principal reason of this
was that Madame Marquette owned the house she lived in, so
that there was no landlord to be reckoned with, and a great deal
of the combined earnings of the ckarcuterie and the laundry were
put into bank by madame with a view to Jean's future aggran-
dizement. Madame tolerated her husband, respected Aurore,
and worshipped Jean. Hard as a rock in her dealings with the
world at large, she could refuse him nothing. The future, when
her beloved son should be a proprietor in her native commune,
adding land to land, was real to her. She thought of it, planned
for it, every day of her life.' She was indefatigably industrious.
When other people could barely make both ends meet Madame
Marquette could make them lap over.

Her husband and she were materialists. He, echoing his
favorite Paris orators and journals, believed that liberty meant
entire freedom from restraint ; that the flesh and the world were
to be cherished as the only existing things ; that the devil was
an invention of the priests. He held that religion was good for
young girls and old women, but he often said, with the applause
of the Cercle Voltaire, that a woman's husband should be her
only confessor. And yet when the sharp point of a skewer had
run into his side he had howled and yelled for a priest, and
blasphemed horribly because the priest was slow in coming.
When the priest did come the brave Monsieur Marquette had
discovered that the wound was trivial, so he apologized, and, as
it was Friday, invited " Monsieur le Cure" to dine off a ravish-
ing haricot of mutton." He was superstitious. He was sullen
all day when anvbody upset the salt. Once, when he found he
had dined with twelve other men at the Cercle Voltaire, he
went home and lay sick for a week.

1885.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 487

Madame had her " feelings " about religion. Once, when Jean
had the scarlet fever, she went to church to pray. She fast-
ed rigorously on Good Friday, eating only tripe, although the
other Fridays were nothing to her, and she crossed herself
whenever she spilled the salt. She would cheerfully have sent
Aurore to the Protestant Episcopal mission-school, but both
Jean and Aurore had been insulted by a tract distributer who
offered to give them new clothes, so they had been sent to the
parochial school of St. Alphonsus.

Louis Marquette was never weary of uttering foul threats
against "the enemy,*' the priest.

" Tais-toi ! " cried madame. " It is true that they take our
substance and give us nothing in return; but thou shalt not
abuse them in thy loud voice in the shop. The Americans do
not understand thee. They think thou art a fool, and some day
an Irlandais sauvage will break thy head. To hear thee talk
one would think that thou art a pagan, that thou hadst never
made thy First Communion."

" I am not an animal ! " answered Marquette, stung by the
insinuation about the First Communion.

It seemed strange to the Americans who knew this pair and
others like them, so utterly earthy and so ill-instructed, that a
Catholic country could have produced them.

To eat, drink, work, sleep, to attend occasionally a caf 4 -concert
in Fourteenth Street or the Bowery, to spout at the Cercle'Vol-
taire, to be seen with madame at the annual ball of the Societe
Industrielle, was the life of this human being. A short, stout,
bull-pecked man, with a close-cropped bullet-head, white-skinned,
with sharp, black eyes and plump hand, was Marquette. He
generally wore a cook's cap and apron.

Madame was short in stature, blonde, not yet fifty, good-
natured, but firm and a thorough woman of business. Manette
and Ninon did the work of the laundry. Madame saw the
customers, kept the accounts, and marked the "'pieces " with
red silk threads.

Aurore had the smooth, delicately pink-tinted complexion
which seems to us essentially French because we always find
it on the covers of the old-fashioned Paris bonbon boxes. The
good boy, with a stiff white rosette and a prayer-book in his
hand, in these works of art, always has it. She had large, black
eyes, bright and alert, a slight figure, neatly dressed. She was
not permitted to wear the gilded ornaments which gave her
acquaintances such fictitious glory. When Aurore was not

488 LILIES AMONG THORNS. . ["Jan.,

making- artificial flowers she was knitting. Aurore was a good
Catholic ; she had become used to her parents' manner of life,
but she was not influenced by it. Although very much of a
French girl, it seemed "foreign " to her.

Most of the working-girls of Aurore's acquaintance spent
their days in hard work and their nights in revelry. They
lived in their work-shops; spent a few hours in the tenement-
houses where they lived ; the rest was dancing and gaslight
assemblies in the winter, picnics in the summer.

Jean Marquette, Aurore's brother, was no stranger to this
social revelry of which one-half the world of New York
knows so little. He ran wild. Jean had no sympathy with the
views of his father, who was " French," and consequently, in
Jean's progressive eyes, imbecile. Aurore spoke a kind of
patois with her father and mother ; Jean rarely condescended
to anything but the slang of the Bowery. Jean was a taller,
slimmer edition of his sister, with a rougher skin, but with
similar large, alert eyes and an indefinable air of New York
" knowingness."

While the snow fell and the trains on the Elevated Railroad
thundered through it, while Marquette uttered ribaldry over his
chasse-caf<? at C. Martel's, while the Bowery, further down, be-
gan to flare and glare, while God waited almost deserted on the
altar of St. Alphonsus', while careless laughs sounded from the
crowds on their way to the theatres, madame dozed in the lit-
tle office of the laundry in the basement over her pint of Beau-
jolais, Aurore knitted, and Jean pitched a penny in a corner. A
whistle, quick and sharp, sounded outside. Aurore hoped that
Jean had not heard it. She knew it was the usual Saturday night
signal. It meant the gallery of a theatre with a boon companion
and a night of anxiety for her. All night she would lie awake
fearing that her father would discover that Jean was out, fearing-,
above all, that Jean would drink whiskey. Aurore, who would
have seen with perfect equanimity Jean drink glass after glass
of claret or Burgundy, had an inexpressible horror of whiskey.

The whistle was heard again. Jean raised his head.

" Ha ! " he said in a dramatic whisper. " 'Tis he ! I must
dissemble! We may be happy yet. Farewell, Aur-o-r-r-re ! "

" Don't go, Jean. Stay with maman and me. Just this
once ! Do ! "

Jean put his finger to his nose derisively. " What do you
take me for? Mom's asleep and you're not much fun. See you
later ! Ned Barnes is waiting for me."

1 88 5.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 489

" Stop, Jean ! Bring him in. Let me see what kind of a boy
he is."

" Can't. He's boss, but he's shy. And the old lady would
raise the neighborhood if I brought a boy in here. Good-by.
Wait up for me this once and let me in. I'll go to confession
next week, I swear."

"Ah ! Jean, you've promised before."

" Yes, I will I will, Aurore, just to spite the old man."

" Don't say that, Jean ; you don't mean it."

" Tu paries ta douce vie ! you bet your sweet life I do ! I'm
off, Aurore. I've got seventy-five cents. Wait up now, like a
daisy ! "

" O Jean ! I will, if you promise not to drink the whisk-ee ! "
Aurore cried imploringly. To this Jean answered by forming
his hands into the shape of a cup and drinking with much ap-
parent gusto.

The whistler without struck up a lively melody. Madame
awoke, and Jean slipped out. Madame raised her glass to her
lips and looked around.

" Dame ! " she said, " where's Jean ? "

" Gone out, maman."

"Aurore, you should have kept him in. He is becoming
like the Americans, an infidel, a spendthrift, a vaurien, respect-
ing neither religion nor his parents. I shall take him back to
France soon for his education. America," said madame, with a
solemn shake of her head, " is a bad place for boys. The} 7 grow
careless. They ought to make their First Communion and
marry well. But here," sighed madame, " there is no dot ; they
cannot marry well."

" I hope Jean will not drink the whisk-ee," sighed Aurore.

"Bah!" retorted madame. "The boy must have his fre-
daine de jeunesse ; he must amuse himself. He came home the
other night smelling of the whisk-ee, and I said, ' At whose wed-
ding have you been?' and I scolded him well. He begins
young. It is the way of the Americans ; but it will be the
sooner over. Thou wouldst make a little priest of him," cried
madame fiercely, dropping into the patois, " with thy confessions
and scapulars ; but I want no priests here. I would strangle
him if I thought he would wear a beretta. No money of mine
shall ever make a priest, Aurore. Bah ! Let the boy alone ! "

Aurore smiled a little at the idea of Jean as a priest.

" No," said madame. " Ni I'homme, ni femme, pretre. No
priest shall ever handle my money, Aurore."

490 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

Aurora sighed and went on with her knitting. Madame
turned to speak to a customer who had entered.

Jean met his friend.

Ned Barnes' hands were thrust into his pockets ; he wore no
overcoat, and this partly accounted for the vigor with which he
whistled and danced clog-steps on the sidewalk. Ned was a
rough-looking boy, for he had just come from work.

" Halloo, Johnny ! " he said. " Thought you'd never come ! "

" You're early. Had your supper yet? "

"No."

" So much the worse for you. Which shall it be, Niblo's or
the Grand Opera House ? There's a boss show at the Grand
Opera."

The boys shuffled along aimlessly, making a shrill duet of
the popular " Voici le wSabre," and exchanging snow-balls at
various corners with friends or enemies. Jean had a copious
vocabulary of slang, which he used unsparingly.

" Haven't seen you out at night lately, Ned. What have
you been doing? Did your mother bar the door?"

" Been studying."

" Studying ? "

"Yes;' Latin."

Jean gave a prolonged whistle. Ned turned up the steps of
St. Alphonsus' Church.

" What's that for? " asked Jean. " Let us turn back. Why
are you going in there ? "

" Because I think I ought to go and you ought to come with
me."

Jean hung back. " Say, Ned, don't let us go to-night.
Some other night. I've got the chink and we can have a good
time. Besides, I'll get blazes if I go ; I have not been for an
awful long time."

Ned gently pushed him up the steps. Once inside Jean said
to himself that he was " dished." The boys entered a pew and
knelt. Jean's heart felt like lead, and he looked longingly to-
wards the door. Ned had thoughtfully taken possession of the
end of the pew. The perennial light burning before the taber-
nacle seemed to Jean like an eye watching him. The dim lights
and the sight of bowed forms waiting for their turn to enter the
confessional made him gloomy. But the tranquil influence of
the place gradually benumbed his restlessness. There was an
old prayer-book lying in the pew. Jean, seeing by Ned's posi-
tion that there was no chance of escape, picked it up and be-

1 88 5-] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 491

gan to read. It happened to be one of those volumes, translated
with more zeal than discretion from the French, which contain
a most varied, minute, and scrupulous " examination of con-
science."

" I an't so bad, after all," he whispered to Ned. " I've never
done more than half of them things." There was a little of the
Pharisaical in the tone in which he added: "Human respect?
What's human respect ? Is it a sin?"

" Mind your own sins, Johnny, and don't be looking after
other people's."

" He II give me h ; oh ! blazes, there's another cuss-word ! "

Jean knelt down again and beat his breast vigorously. " Say,
Ned, let's put it off for to-night. I can't remember anything.
And there's an old crow just gone into the box. She'll keep the
priest all night. Come ! "

Ned was immovable. Jean nudged him in vain. For a time
Jean listlessly watched the light before the tabernacle and the
shadows of some kneeling figures, veiled in semi-gloom, waiting
for a confessor who had not yet come. He found it hard to
contemplate the dreadful task before him without a tremor of
the nerves. He recalled several important transgressions; he
said the Act of Contrition ; but a phantasm of the theatre, with its
Saturday-night crowds and glittering lights, arose before his
eyes. A priest, from whose confessional the old woman al-
luded to in expressive Bowery dialect as the " old crow " had
come, opened the door, looked over a group of kneeling
women, and beckoned to the two boys. Jean shrank back. Ned
pulled and pushed him. Hardly before he knew it Jean knelt
in the dark box before the grating. Xhe slide flew back and
the priest spoke in an encouraging voice. It was all over in a
few minutes.

Jean was soon kneeling near Ned in the pew.

After a while they stood on the steps and simultaneously
drew a long breath.

"It's awful easy when it's over," said Jean.

" Was he hard?"

" I should smile," answered Jean. " I feel as clean as a
whistle ! "

Jean ran home, all thought of the theatre gone. He told
Aurore, and she kissed him.

492 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

Ned Barnes, after leaving Jean with a promise to meet him
oYi Sunday afternoon, ran for some distance along South Fifth
Avenue until he came to a dingy shop-window. There were
ancient pistols in it, labelled with low " cash " prices, a collec-
tion of unpolished silverware, diamonds in settings more or less
damaged, a shawl or two, a big Bible, a little child's frock, all
marked with a price in black and white. It was a pawn-shop.
The space in front of the counter was filled by anxious, draggled
women and unwashed men, just from their work, exchanging
tickets for necessary articles they had pawned during the week.

In one case it was a good coat ; in another, pillows and
sheets; in another, a woman's gown. The only luxury drawn
out while Ned was there on this Saturday night was an old
violin. Ned waited, jingling some coins in his pockets, until it
came to his turn. He gave his ticket for a bundle which con-
tained a blanket shawl ; then he left. The crowd of eager appli-
cants increased. Those who were waiting to redeem articles
were generally sad-looking people, but not dissipated. Those
who came to deposit things were wretched and dissipated. It
was plain from their faces that the pittance thus gained would
be spent during the night in drink.

Ned stopped at a shop to buy some sausages, a loaf of bread,
and a little tea.

Whistling cheerfully, he plunged into a narrow street where
the snow melted on sidewalks encrusted with the dirt of many
summers and winters. On the coal-box at the corner of this
street three young men two keeping in a sitting position
the third, who was drunk were singing. Two young girls
waiting at the same corner joined their voices in the song, and
then accepted the invitation of the young men to enter the
grocery for a drink. This grocery-shop was evidently a resort
for the neighborhood ; people with baskets were entering, but
more especially children carried pitchers and cans. The
principal traffic of the place was not in solids.

Ned paused at the door of a tall house. His entrance was
intercepted by the body of a woman, whose tin can lay empty
beside her. She had evidently fallen in the act of going to get
it refilled. A young man was trying to pull her into the hall.
She was a middle-aged woman, the mother of the man. She
resisted stupidly, trying to seize the handle of the can.

" Halloo, Barnes ! Give us a hand. Mom's on another spree

1885.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 493

and I want to get her into the hall. I've got an engagement
down town and I can't afford to fool away my time here. We'll
move her inside. She'll be sobered off by the time I get back."

" All right, Mack," said Ned.

Together they lifted the woman or the semblance of a
woman into the hall. Her face was distorted and bloated ;
she opened her lips, and from them issued a strain of foul impre-
cations, mingled with the smell of stale beer.

Neither Ned nor her son noticed thi%. They were used to it.
Mack, when the woman had been put in a sitting posture against
the wall, invited Ned to join him in a " racket " at the ball of the
Grand Moguls. Ned shook his head and ran through the hall-
way to a court in the rear of the house. This court was filled
with piles of ashes and refuse, mercifully whitened by the snow.
There was another house, a six-story building. Each story had
what looked like a small balcony with an iron railing. Each of
these fire-escapes was filled with flower-pots, cooking utensils,
old pieces of carpet floating in the wind. They gave the house
a very ragged appearance. In all the windows of all the six
stories lights shone. The house seemed as full as a bee-hive.
There was a great deal of noise, showing that the inhabitants
were active.

Against the background of a bed-post a man could be seen
shaving himself in one window, stopping occasionally to refresh
himself from a beer-can. Children, some of them shivering and
half-dressed, were climbing the stairs, pitchers or cans in hand.
It was Saturday night, and the beverage of Gambrinus flowed
the milk and honey of this miserable, unknown land. The dread-
ful dirt and dilapidation of this rear tenement-house were masked
in the day-time by the house in front of it.

It was Ned's home. He ran up the narrow stairs with a light
heart. There were sounds of laughter and of wrath ; evil words
and curses came from out open doors. From other rooms came
savory odors and a clatter of dishes. A young girl, dressed in
light silk and gauze for few of these people were too poor to
have gay clothes when occasion required was being admired
by a group of neighbors on a landing, she holding a kerosene-
lamp over her head. Two women on the landing above were
fighting about lighting the corridor. The place was a Babel ;
yet it was Ned's home, and it is the home of many like him,
where lilies grow and bloom in the company of poison-bearing
weeds.

Here Virtue and Vice jostle each other, meet each other on

494 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

the stairs, speak to each other day after day. Here the libertine
is one of the household with the pure of heart. Strangers
breathing corruption and contamination live within these gates ;
and here Vice becomes so familiar that Virtue does not even
blush in her presence. The little children learn the language of
blasphemy before they can utter their own names ; and to the
young those things which Christians veil in mystery are as open
books. Here the prayer and the curse are heard side by side,
and the saint dies in the rtx>m next to the despairing sinner. It
is a wonderful microcosm. And those who ought know so little
of it ! The animalcules that exist in a drop of Mediterranean
water are as unknown to some of us as those people who are
forced by poverty to have such strange companions.

Ned knocked at a door on the fifth floor. It was opened at
once by his mother. Her face, which was pale and stamped
with the imprint of many trials, brightened as she kissed him.
He gave her a hearty smack in return, and stepped back into the
passage to shake the snow from his shoes. She watched him
with a look of the deepest affection in her dark blue eyes those
Irish eyes that are never without sadness after the first sparkle
of mirth has passed out of them. She was not old, and yet she
seemed old. There was no gray hair in the brown bands
smoothed over her wrinkled brow, and there was a look of
serenity in her face as her eyes rested on Ned, and at this
moment it was plain that she was not much over fifty ; but trials
and privations had made her old-looking and frail.

" I've "brought your shawl, mother."

" Dear boy !" she said, closing the door and filling a basin of
water for him to wash with. " I can go to Mass now. How I
missed that shawl !"

She wore a faded but scrupulously clean calico gown, with a
little collar of the same stuff at the neck.

Ned plunged his head into the basin with a splash.

"Suppose you had not been paid to-night, Ned, what a
difference it would have made to us ! And Monday Christmas,
too. I could not have gone to Mass in this dress ; it would kill
me in this weather. I wonder if the people who pay for work
ever think what a difference the time of paying out a little money
makes to the poor? "

" The people around here wouldn't have so much beer to-
night if they hadn't been paid," said Ned out of the folds of the
towel.

" Poor creatures ! "

1885.] . LILIES AMONG THORNS. 495

She set about frying the sausages and some potatoes at a
cooking-stove. The well-trimmed and scrupulously clean kero-
sene-lamp lit a room which was sparsely furnished, yet cheerful,
Ned had a bed in a sort of closet off the room. The floor was
white ; it had been scrubbed and rescrubbed. The walls were
white, too; a picture of the Sacred Heart over the lounge which
served for Mrs. Barnes" bed, and a scarlet geranium .in the
window, showing against a white shade, were the only patches
of positive color. There was a patch of worn carpet in the
centre of the room, and a packing-box covered with muslin, sur-
mounted by a scrap of looking-glass. A table, two chairs, and
a stool completed the furniture. Ned's face was cheerful and
ruddy as he took down a few pages which had been torn from a
book, and began to study them, while his mother prepared
supper.

Years ago Mrs. Barnes had come from Ireland in possession
of all the good which fortunate young girls get in the nuns'
schools in Ireland. She was deft, industrious ; she was intelli-
gent and well instructed. She served in a family as half house-
maid, half seamstress ; then she married Tom Barnes. Tom
Barnes was a giant of a North Carolinian, long- bearded and long-
legged. He had come to New York because he knew that
skilled labor commanded the highest wages there. Having
nothing to do on Sundays, he wandered into Catholic churches,
and in a year's time entered the Church. He saw his future
wife in St. Peter's one morning at Mass. He asked the priest to
introduce him. The wooing was not long a-doing. It was a
very happy marriage. Tom lived in a populous neighborhood.
He was open-handed and open-hearted. He was a machinist
earning good wages, and there was nothing niggardly about
him. , He was of such a sunny temperament that he could not
foresee a rainy day. When he died there was intense grief
in his neighborhood. His wife's countrymen were particularly
sorrow-stricken. He had been a good friend to many of them.

" Many's the job of work he's got for me," said one of them,
" and if I spend my last cent I'll follow him in a coach to Cal-
vary the morning."

And he did spend his last cent, and more too; for the family
clock found its way to the pawn-shop, and was not redeemed
until several months after Tom Barnes' grand funeral.

It was a grand funeral. The priest of the parish permitted
only ten carriages at any funeral ; but seventy-six, by actual
count, kept around the corner. The wreaths, anchors, crosses,

496 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

scythes, etc., done in flowers, had to be drawn in a separate
carriage to the grave. It was generally said that Tom Barnes'
friends had done their duty most handsomely.

A little more than a year had passed since this great ebulli-
tion of gratitude and admiration, and Mrs. Barnes pawned her
shawl to help pay a month's rent which would not have reached
the sum paid by sorrowing friends for two of the carriages in
that now-forgotten cortege ! " Tal es la vida ! " said the Span-
ish woman across the passage, who remembered the great floral
display. .

Ned was " general utility " in an office down town. His
mother sewed when she could see; but her eyes were not
always to be depended upon. Ned's education had stopped
short when his father died. He had learned to read, write, and
cipher. It was intended by both his parents that he should
have a great chance. And this great chance they talked of,
dreamed of, but said little of it to Ned. They hoped and prayed
that he might one day become a priest. How closely the
mother watched him ; how happy the father was when he found
Ned, when a little boy, imitating the chant and swinging an
imaginary censer ! Nothing was said to the boy about it ; but
the father and mother prayed much.

Ned was a cheerful, boisterous boy, always ready for fun,
never- still, not particularly fond of study. He had never missed
a baseball match, if he could help it ; but no day had passed,
since he had been taught to say it, that he had omitted his
rosary. He was outwardly a rough-and-tumble fellow, ready
with his tongue and his fist, but also ready to say or do a kind
thing, and never afraid to do what he thought was his duty.

The office-work, after his days at home and school, was hard.
But he " pitched into it " with all his might. It was a great blow
he felt it more and more every day to lose a hope which of
late had become more and more defined. This was the hope his
parents had secretly cherished the hope of becoming a priest.
He had served Mass and he knew the pronunciation of Latin.
He had found, among the waste paper that fell to his share at the
office, a few leaves from a Latin grammar. They contained
only the declensions of "mensa" and "dominus," with other
nouns and notes. But he made the most of them. These leaves
were treasures to him. He pored over them every night. His
mother was obliged a delightful obligation ! to hear him recite
them over and over again.

He must work. His mother was dependent on him. Work,

1885.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 497

work, work stretched out before him until death. He could not
be idle a day : the rent must be paid, food found. Should his
work fail his only friend was the pawn-shop. Yet nothing, he
said over and over again, was impossible to God. His mother
had guessed what secrets of their sons' hearts do not mothers
guess? his aspiration. There was now no need of secrecy, and
they talked it over often. These were happy hours, as they sat
near the little cooking-stove and made this loving plan for the
glory of God. What if the house shook at times with the mad
and drunken revelry of the tenants around them? Here was an
oasis of peace and hope.

Ned had a good appetite. His mother smiled as she filled
his plate a second time ; she. asked him cheerful questions ; but,
nevertheless, this Saturday before Christmas had brought her a
great disappointment. In one of the second-hand book- stores
she had seen a Latin grammar. For months she had made little
economies to surprise Ned with this longed-for book on Christ-
mas morning. But Ned's employer had gone out of town the
week before and forgotten to pay him his weekly five dollars.
The rent came due that week, and to pay it for the landlord
never waited for very poor tenants she had been compelled to
sacrifice her little hoard and to pawn her shawl. It was a sore
disappointment to her.

Ned told her how he had got Jean Marquette to go to con-
fession. She was* pleased.

" It will bring a blessing on you, Ned."

"Just think, mother, the poor fellow had not been to confes-
sion for two or three years! It's because his associations are
bad."

Mrs. Barnes smiled a little. What were Ned's associations?
A quarrel in the passage between a man and a boy, each call-
ing the other unutterable names, answered her thought. The
mother and son said the rosary. To-morrow was Sunday, and
after that would come Christinas, so they could afford to chat
long into the night.

" Mother," said Ned, " I think you'll have to take a run out.
Mr. Marston gave me an extra dollar to-day, and I want you
to buy yourself a Christmas present something you don't want :
a bit of lace or a ribbon. I want you to be extravagant just
this once at Christmas, you know." He pressed a silver dollar
into her hand. Her eyes rnoistened. It was so like his father !

" What would an old woman like me do with ribbons or
laces, dear?" she asked in a low voice. " O dear boy ! I wish
VOL. XL. 32

498 LILIES AAIONG THORNS. [Jan.,

you had a chance ; I'd wear a calico dress all the rest of my life,
and be happy to shiver with cold, if I could see you on the way
to being a priest of God. If you had only a few years at
school before your father died ! If you were only fit to try for
the seminary I'd be willing to give you to God and go yes, I
would, Ned go into the almshouse myself."

"Hush, mother!" Ned said, with singular dignity. " Don't
talk that way. There's no hope of one, and no fear, while I
have my health, of the other. God knows I pray every day
for ' the chance ' ; God knows I believe I can best do his will as a
priest of God. This has grown stronger on me since father
died. It seems to me I was such a young boy before that. Don't
you remember what the Jesuit father at the Mass said the other
day, ' Obedience is better than sacrifice'? Let us be obedient,
mother, and wait."

His mother rocked herself to and fro with a sigh that was
very like a sob.

" Sure, Ned, we want so little and we want only the good,
and look at the people that work only for the devil and have
so much. Why, the least part of it would be more than enough
for us. It's hard to be patient, Ned, although I'm an old woman
and have seen your brothers and sisters die one by one. And
' there's nothing like death to teach a woman patience. I don't
complain of the dirt and the vileness of this place, Ned, though
it's far from what I've been used to ; but you you, dear boy-
She put up her fingers to her eyes and sobbed aloud.

Ned threw his arm around her neck and said : " And is it
richness we want at Christmas time, mother dear? Isn't that
queer at such a time, when He was born in a stable? Come,
dear old mother, let's go out and buy a Christmas gift, to make
you young again."

She kissed his red, rough hand and put her shawl around
her. " No, Ned, I'll go alone. There's no fear that anybody
will run away with me"

Ned humored her, and she left the room.

Would it be gone? Would some other anxious mother have
seized it before she could get it ? She need not have feared
so ; the inhabitants of that district did not thirst after Latin
grammars any more than they thirsted after fountains of water.

She almost ran through the court and hall into the street,
murky, snow-filled, and almost deserted now. She soon
reached the book-stand. It was closed ! No, there was the
keeper relighting his torch, which had just gone out. It flared

1885.1 LILIES AMONG THORNS. 499

up again. She read the legend : " Any book in this row for fifty
cents": The Art of Cooking, Tricks with Cards, Charlotte Temple,
Uncle Tom's Cabin. It had been there. Where was it? Mrs.
Barnes turned anxiously to the man.

-"I change 'em every three days," he said; "that is, 1 take
out the unattractive ones." And he gave her the Andrews and
Stoddard's Latin Grammar from a pile of "reduced forty
cents." Unattractive! How foolish the man was ! Who could
find a Latin grammar unattractive? She paid the money, took
her change, and almost ran homeward. She noticed the sky
was red in the direction of South Fifth Avenue. She heard
the clangor of a steam-engine and then of another. The tene-
ment-houses, both front and rear, were all alive. Excitement
of any kind was a boon to their inhabitants, and they made the
most of a fire.

" God help the poor folk this night ! " murmured Mrs. Barnes
as she hurried up-stairs with the precious book in her shawl.
How glad and surprised Ned would be! She pushed open the
door softly. The fire burned, the lamp was lit, his leaves lay
on the table ; but he was gone, and the horrible clangor of the
fire-alarm filled the street. An undefined fear took possession
of the mother.

III.

When Jean had come into the little office so unexpectedly
early Madame Marquette wanted to know why.

" I've been at church, ma mere, scraping the skillet," said
Jean, taking an old checker-board from the closet. " Play,
Aurora ? "

" Bah ! " said madame, " I ignore your banalites. I under-
stand not the scraping of the skillet. What is it, Aurore ? "

" Jean has confessed this evening; he will be a better boy."

Madame shrugged her shoulders. " He is good enough,"
she said. " But he might be more careful with his money. I
don't want him to be a church-mouse, Aurore, like you."

" It would be better if I were more like Aurore. Say,
Aurore, I saw James Connor at church. His hat was on the
floor at the end of the pew. I'd have hidden it, if I could; but
I hadn't time. You'd have liked to see him, wouldn't you,
Aurore ? I tell you, he is a craw-thumper. He prayed like a
steam-engine ! "

Madame frowned.

500 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

1 " Don't talk to your sister of that Irlandais sauvage. He is
nothing; he is poor, and the dot of your sister shall not be
wasted on him. And I want her," continued madame, pounding
the desk emphatically with her fist " I want her to be more
civil to Pierre Roule, who is rich, and most eloquent, your father
says, at the Cercle Voltaire. He shall be her affianced. We
have arranged."

" He is a mummy ! " said Jean. He would probably have
added something exceedingly impertinent ; but he recollected
himself. Aurore's face flushed and she bent her head over the
checker- board.

Jean became restless. Checkers was a stupid game after the
diversions he was accustomed to. It was too early to go to bed.
There was nothing in the room to read, except a copy of the
Courrier and a dog-eared novel, Les Belles Amies du Viable, a
favorite of madame.

He yawned. " I think I'll take a walk, Aurore."

Aurore trembled. If he went out alone in the gay streets
what might not happen ?

" May I go, too? " she asked timidly.

" Why, certainly," he said, quite gently. At other times he
would have laughed at such a proposition. Aurore put on her
hat and cloak. She never thought of the snow. It did not in-
convenience her at all. Madame made no opposition. She was
lost in thought. She was building her castle. Her father's
farm at home arose before her. Oh ! to regain it, to possess it,
to add to it ; to- see Jean reign rich and powerful among the rich
relatives and neighbors who had slighted her! To have him
take a wife from the proudest of them, to have them sue for
him, flatter and caress her son ! the ingrates, the upstarts who
had despised her ! Madame had the French peasant's mania for
land, but only for the land in France, in her native province.

If Marquette would let her sell the house she knew it would
.bring a good price she would draw a good round sum from the
bank and start with Jean for France in a week's time. Aurore
and Marquette could stay among the Americans for a while.
But Jean was becoming spoiled ; he hated to speak French ; he
was an American gamin. It must be stopped. Oh ! if Marquette
would only consent to sell the house she could buy the old farm
and add another to it at once. But Marquette was obstinate ;
she knew that she could not move him on this subject. He
cared very little for French land. Madame got angry thinking
of it. She thrust out her hand and hit the desk in a passion ; the

1885.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 501

lamp, which stood at the edge, fell over with a crash. Madame
sprang to her feet. But only the chimney had broken ; the
lamp was safe: it had fallen on a heap of unwashed linen.
Madame picked it up with a strange feeling. What if it had set
fire to the house? Marquette was out, Jean and Aurore were
out, the bachelor tenant on the fourth floor was out ; the two
servants of the laundry had gone to bed, but they were within
call. If ? Madame lit a candle and laid the lamp among the
clothes. The house was heavily insured. If ? ,The money in
hand in spite of Marquette, and away with Jean to France !
She examined the shutters and the door; then she replaced the
lamp on the desk, lit it, and, getting the can of kerosene, poured
the oil on the linen and on every inflammable object in the
room. She flung her shawl around her and put on her bonnet.
But she took the latter article off again ; it might look as if she
had premeditated. She thought of MarqueUe. Could he by
some chance have come home earlier, letting himself in with his
latch key as usual? No; it was too early. As to Manette and
Ninon, she would call them. It was all she could do without
risk.

" Manette ! Ninon ! " she shrieked.

There was silence. And again she called.

" What, madame?" came back faintly.

"Fire! "

Madame overturned the desk. The lamp was dashed to
pieces bv the force of its fall. Instantly the flames leaped from
the heap of clothes, like young serpents from a nest. Madame
rushed into the street, the two servants following her, one of
them singed a little. The house was old, the woodwork dry.
With some satisfaction, yet with fear in her heart, madame saw
the fire almost in the twinkling of an eye envelop all the lower
part of the house. She shrieked and wrung her hands. The
neighbors swarmed around her. She acted well the part of a
frenzied woman. The devil seemed to have taken possession of
her. Her screams were appalling ; she would not leave the
street, in spite of the efforts of kind neighbors to force her into a
house. When the engines arrived the whole front of the Mar-
quette house was covered by the flames, which quivered and
waved in the wind like a fiery veil. At times the gilt letters,
" L. Marquette,'' of the sign seemed to grin in derision through
the fire. The firemen got to work with almost superhuman
quickness.

Jean and Aurore stood near madame, stupefied by the sud-

502 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

denness of the calamity. Ned Barnes, who never could resist
an alarm of fire, stood near them, ready to help, if possible.

Suddenly there was a sort of groan from the crowd in the
street. A man had appeared on the fire-escape of the third
story. It was Louis Marquette. His face the face of a man
sobered as to his mental faculties by danger, yet physically
drunk and helpless wore an awful expression of horror. It
was the look of a man who saw a vision of death in the air the
look of a man in the presence of his Judge. He crouched down
on the narrow platform. The flames hid him from view for an
instant. Madame looked at him, and then stood up rigid and
silent.

There were a hundred cries from the street, which were as
nothing to Marquette. The firemen shot up their ladders. In
vain ! The horrified man clung to the railing of the fire-escape.

Jean had disappeared. He ran to the back of the house.

A cheer burst from the people below as his face appeared
beside that of his father. Madame now seemed possessed of
seven devils. She swore, she tore her hair, she tried to rush
into the fire. The scene below was as horrible as the scene
above.

The chief gave an order to clear a wide space around the
building. It was about to fall. The firemen renewed their
efforts to save the neighboring houses.

Jean was seen trying desperately to detach his father's hands
from the iron railings, which he held in a maniac's grip. Was
it the flames that wavered this time, or the house? People ran
away and covered their faces. It was the house ! It trembled,
and then, amid crushing sounds and crackling smoke, fell on its
own foundations ; and with it sank Jean Marquette and his father
to death.

A low murmur ran through the crowd of lookers-on, whose
faces were for a moment made visible, as in the light of day, by
the torrent of fire that swept down with the falling house.

Madame, who had been dragged away, and who was held
back by strong men, struggled and tried to bite like a wild
animal.

When the house fell a horrible cry, the like of which the
listeners had never heard before, rang out :

" Jean," she cried, " my son, my son I have killed him ! "

Then, like a heavy weight which the men could not hold, she
sank face foremost upon the trampled snow of the sidewalk.

They carried her into the nearest house, and among those

1885.] LILIES AMONG THORNS. 503

that followed her was Mrs. Barnes. She had come out in search
of Ned. Aurore, attracted by her kind, mild face, clung to her.
Aurore felt herself to be friendless, for when she approached her
mother, madame, with a convulsive motion, waved her away.

So all the dreary hours of that night, while the house smoul-
dered and flamed at intervals, and the jets of water sent up by
the steam-engines fell in icy spray, Madame Marquette lay on a
bed in stony, sullen silence, watched by Aurore and Mrs. Barnes ;
the rest of the neighbors withdrew from the room, which at in-
tervals was reddened by bursts of flame from the opposite side
of the street. Only once madame spoke. Mrs. Barnes had said :

" Thank God ! the other houses are safe at last."

" What matter? " asked madame in a harsh voice. "Jean is
dead, and I have killed -him."

Mrs. Barnes and Aurore looked at her with pity, and the
former said :

" It's no wonder she is out of her mind."

Mrs. Barnes once or twice had been inclined to envy the
Marquettes, and particularly the prospects of Jean, of which
madame continually boasted to all her customers. But now
now ! Mrs. Barnes shuddered and thought lovingly of the dear
boy at home, perhaps even now bending over that cherished
Latin grammar.

When the morning dawned neighbors came one by one to
ask for the stricken woman. She would not speak. A doctor,
who had been sent for, found her with her face turned to the
wall. She tore her hand from him when he tried to feel her
pulse.

Once she moved and spoke again. It was after Mrs. Barnes
had left, promising to return. Aurore had tried to take her
hand. She dashed it against the girl's face.

" Go ! " she said, with horrible bitterness. " Go ! 1 would it
had been ten such as thou instead of my boy Jean. Go, mise-
rable! "

Aurore shrank back, sobbing:

44 O mother! O my mother! "

In the quietness of early morning Aurore heard a manly
voice she knew asking for her mother. It was that of the " Irian-
dais sauvage," Pierre Roule's rival, James Connor. It gave her
comfort; and, worn out, she sank kneeling beside her mother's
bed in sleep.

When Mrs. Barnes came, having been refreshed by the sight
of Ned and his Latin grammar, and been kissed over and over

504 LILIES AMONG THORNS. [Jan.,

again, with many rapturous exclamations appropriate to Christ-
mas eve, having prayed very hard that morning at Mass, she
stepped lightly into the room. Aurore still slept the deep
sleep of weary youth, which sorrow and the presence of death
itself cannot break. Her head lay against the bed, but it was
empty.

Mrs. Barnes tapped Aurore on the shoulder. The girl start-
ed, bewildered ; and then, as the horror of the night arose before
her, she closed her eyes again and shivered.

" Where's Madame Marquette ?"

This question was never answered. A policeman had seen
her near the ruins of her house or somebody like her. Had
she wandered to the river and drowned herself? Nobody ever
knew. Her bank-book with some pages torn out, and a hand-
kerchief marked with Jean's name, were found on a dock.

Afterwards an acquaintance of the late L. Marquette said he
had caught a glimpse of madame hurrying towards the wharf
from which a French steamer was about to start, having been
delayed over Saturday. Nobody believed him, as he said this
after the insurance people began to suggest suspicions of arson.
But these suspicions, as well as madame's death, remained un-
proved. The insurance companies in time handed over to
Aurore the sum for which the house was insured. Aurore was
quite an heiress now. A change had come over her. She
trembled at the slightest sound ; her delicate color had faded ;
in her dreams she saw madame, with the face of a demon, smit-
ing her on the face and crying, " Va, miserable ! "

She clung to Ned's mother, and persuaded her to go to a
neat little cottage in Harlem with her.

It did not take Aurore long to find out the desire of the
hearts of this mother and son. Ever since Jean's death she had
tried to find some way of showing her gratitude to Ned, who,
under God, had saved Jean's soul. He, too, might have died in
his sins sins only too easily committed in the corruption around
him. But Ned had saved him and he had died in the grace of
God Jean, her own dear Jean, for whom she would have given
her life. Not very learned, not very much given to deep
thought, not even very refined in the conventional sense of the
term, Aurore had simple faith and deep gratitude. One day
she went to the bank and to a lawyer. A few days later she
went again, and, waiting until the mother and son were together
in the cosey sitting-room, she kissed Mrs. Barnes on the forehead
and put a packet and a roll of parchment on the table before her.

1885.] THE ANNUNCIATION. 505

The packet was a roll of bills; the parchment a deed convey-
ing a life interest in the pleasant cottage to Mrs. Barnes.

" I gave it not to you, but to God," Aurore said gravely.

After that there was no office-work for Ned, but much study;
and one happy day he entered the seminary at Troy.

Later in the summer evenings, when the terror of that Satur-
day before Christmas had somewhat faded out of Aurore's life,
James Connor, honest, faithful, and affectionate, was often seen
on the porch of the cottage. And when he asked a certain
question with some impatience again and again, Aurore always
gave him the same answer, which was invariably followed by
another question, " When will Ned be ordained ? "

The time came at last. After it was all over, with the joy of
ecstatic love and its awful solemnity, an old woman lay in the
quiet church, alone, before the high altar. Her bonnet had
fallen from her head and the light from a stained window bathed
her in purple and gold. She lay there in the attitude that
Madame Marquette had taken in the snow years ago, with her
face against the floor. Ned's mother had said her Nunc Dimittis.

Aurore's gift had indeed been given to God, and it was a fruit-
ful gift. The young priest who " saved Jean's soul " has saved
many others. He knows the people among whom he works. He
has all the firm faith of his Irish ancestors- and all the practi-
cal insight and -readiness and acuteness of his American life.
Authority and reason form in his mind that synthesis by which
faith shall yet add a new world, not to Castile and Leon, but to
Christ and Rome.

THE ANNUNCIATION.

AVE GRATIA PLENA.

POISED on the Well's mossed brink the unfilled ewer ;

And one dropped lily at her whiter feet

Unnoted. Does she listen ? What sound so sweet

Her soul from out the bosom's coverture

Into those raptured eyes could so allure?

Or with some vision unfolded there where meet

Wan sands and sky-line is her sense replete?

Nay, but not these, but lo ! God's time mature !

506 THE ANNUNCIATION. [Jan.,

Lo ! the lit air, the sudden glory poured

And fragrance shed ; and from the splendid space

Forth-issuing, as a passion-freighted chord

Midst some vast minster's echoing arches waking,

A voice, in wave on wave of sweetness breaking

Upon her spell-bound soul, " Hail, full of grace ! "

FIAT MIHI.

What tremor of delight thrills earth and sky,

And wakes the nested birds, and turns the air

From violet to gold ? and hark ! what rare

Sphere-music mingles with the numerous sigh

Of wind-swayed palms ? and mark how crimsoned lie

The lone and glimmering sands. Ah ! grown aware

Of God, the quickened earth is loath to fare

Into the joyless night. Thou shalt not die,

O crown of all days risen ! for ne'er since broke

The primal dawn when the stars of morning heard

God's voice and sang together, ne'er since woke

Its myriad life, has Nature so been stirred

To the great soul's deeps as when this maiden spoke

And in her womb incarnate lay the Word.

ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI.

Handmaiden but queen crowned and throned above

God's kingdoms and all hearts hence, nevermore

Shall one in dreams the hidden realms explore

Of absolute loveliness and know not of

This perfect face now radiant with new love,

Thy rare face unrecorded and before

Thy beauty shall not all his heart outpour

Transfigured, even as now, beneath the Dove

Beside thy ewer, beside the brimming well,

The bending palm o'erhead, and at thy feet

In the well's imaged heavens one tremulous star ;

While at thy heart that song oracular

Gathers to fulness, and inviolable

Sweet maidenhood and motherhood first meet.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 507

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER VI.
STRANGERS YET.

ALTHOUGH Ruth began to talk of her trip to the city in mid-
winter of that year, she made no preparations until midsummer.
They had heard previously of Florian's election to the legisla-
ture in the fall and were all elated over the event, while the
squire fretted a little over their separation, because it would
have been such a pleasure to face the rascally government as a
father-in-law of one of its representatives. When Ruth was
finally ready to leave Claybu^g it was so early in the season
that, instead of setting out at once to Mrs. Merrion's, they passed
through Brooklyn and went to a quiet resort on the ocean, where
they stayed until late in September. By that time the Merrions
had opened house for the fashionable season, and Ruth was re-
ceived with open arms by the vivacious Barbara.

" The first thing I shall do," said Mrs. Merrion " and oh !
how fortunate you came along as you did, Ruth, for I was mak-
ing my head ache with plans for something new and striking
for my first event, and couldn't find anything to suit the first
thing I shall do is to have a music-party and make it the earliest
and best of the season. How can it be otherwise with such a
star as you, so unique and so new ? "

Ruth looked at Mrs. Merrion to see if the lady was in earnest
in using such language, and found that she was. In earlier days,
when Barbara Merrion was a girl at Clayburg, she had been
noted for her beauty, brilliancy, and boldness. It was the pos-
session of these qualities which had won for her as a husband a
wealthy nonentity in the shape of Mr. Merrion, whose dull facul-
ties had been quickened under the spell of the girl's dashing
presence. Although a relative, Ruth had no affection for her
of a lasting nature. There seemed such a want of thoughtful-
ness, and even of good principle, in her disposition that no
amount of respectability and correct conduct could make up for
it in her eyes. And yet Mrs. Merrion was a model of behavior
and very popular. How any one could pretend to be the star
of an assemblage with her petite figure and shining face present
Ruth could not understand. Barbara's features were small, but

SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

of so fine and exquisite a type that they seemed unreal at times.
The delicate nose and dark eyes showed a high spirit and reck-
less though trained disposition. Beside her Ruth felt like a
slow, heavy being, a robin beside a humming-bird, and felt, in
looking at herself in the glass, that a plainer woman never
entered a ball-room. While preparations were being made for
her debut the squire set out to look for Florian and bring him
over to afternoon tea, if possible. Mrs. Merrion was not ac-
quainted with him, the squire discovered to his own intense dis-
gust and astonishment. She had known him in a distant way
as a good-looking boy in Clayburg, whom she had never patron-
ized or spoken to, simply because he was a boy of her own age
and not " eligible."

" Pshaw ! " said the squire, " you don't mean to tell me that
you've lived ten years in Brooklyn and are unacquainted with
the handsomest and smartest fellow in New York City ? Now, I
didn't think it of you, I didn't."

" Why, Mr. Pendleton, qu'en voulez-vous ? " She had a silly
habit, but a very pretty one in her mouth, of using French
phrases to any extent.

"Kan vully-voo ! " repeated the squire. "What nonsense!
Don't be flying yer nasty French at me. I say it's queer don't
you, Ruth ? not to know Florian, the best, the smartest "

"How can I know them all?" said Barbara plaintively.
"There are so many clever, desirable people come and go, and
these cities are so large. But if you will bring him to lunch at
three or dinner at six I shall be happy to know him."

" Of course you will," said the squire, with a loud sneer.
" But I won't bring him ; you won't know him, since you didn't
look him up before. Why, he and Ruth were going to be
married once."

"Why, father ! " said Ruth, with an emphasis that startled the
squire into such a consciousness of his blunder that he got angry.

" Are you ashamed of it ? " said he.

" No ; but then it's unnecessary to speak of such things to
every one," said Ruth disdainfully.

" Jest as you say," snapped the squire. " But I'll bring him
over, Barbery, and you can see jest what a fool Ruth can make
of herself once every five years."

"Not oftener?" said Ruth maliciously. "Now, if Barbara
could see "

" What a fool I can make of myself once a day, you want to
say ? Well, say it, and be hanged," said the squire. " But I know

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 509

a good man when I see him, and I'd hang on to him if I was a
woman. So I'll bring him, Barbery, shall I?"

" By all means," said Barbara sweetly ; "and perhaps we may
arrange matters so that Ruth may not be so hard-hearted an-
other time."

Florian had long been aware of Ruth's intention to visit
Brooklyn, although he had not yet learned of her presence in
the city. After Ruth had packed her trunks and stirred all
Clayburg to its depths by her calm announcement of being
absent a year or two, Mrs. Buck gave her reverend husband
no peace until he had arranged a business trip to New York for
himself and family. They had numerous invitations from cleri-
cal brethren there, and the bishop's wife in particular had urged
Mr. Buck to bring Sara into the spiritual circles of New York,
because of the edifying effect a Catholic convert would have on
the general brethren. Mr. Buck, knowing the exact calibre of
his convert, was not anxious that his friends should get too close
a view, for Mrs. Buck was given to disclosing details of domestic
life that reflected sadly on his rightful position in his own house-
hold. However, he felt obliged to grant her this favor, and they
transferred themselves in August to New York, and were domi-
ciled at his lordship's residence very pleasantly. She called on
Florian in state the very next day after her arrival, and was
received so kindly, and even tenderly, and was so delighted
with his very fashionable boarding-house and madame and her
daughter, that it went deeply to her heart not to be able to
accept his invitation to remain. However, she dined there with
her husband, and Florian found himself very high in the estima-
tion of certain of the boarders when it was known that he had a
sister an Episcopalian by conviction and the wife of a minister,
and that he seemed to think so highly of her and her husband
and his bright nephew. He felt a little pleasure in it, too. It
gave' the family the appearance of being liberal and added so
much to his popularity. Then he dined in turn at the bishop's
and was treated with the highest distinction ; and although it
was nothing new to him to receive such treatment, it was at
least new in that quarter. Sara was there a week before she
thought of Ruth.

" Oh ! " said she suddenly one day, " have you seen Ruth since
she came here ? I haven't, and never thought of her."

It was such a shock to Florian to know that she was in the
city that his color came and went like a school-boy's and he was
unable to speak for a moment.

510 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

" She left Clayburg at the beginning of August to come to
Mrs. Merrion's. She said she was to be gone a year or two.
Ever since she got literary notions and wrote a book or two
nothing would do her but New York, it seems ; and the squire
was willing to humor her, and didn't object himself, for he likes
a good time and thinks of getting it here without having every
soul in the town aware of it."

" And so Ruth is here," said Florian meditatively.

" Yes, yes," said Sara, " and she is to make her appearance in
polite society, her de" but ; and now I am sure she will create a
sensation beside that chit of a Barbara Merrion with her bold
ways. Ruth's eyes were always grand, and she looked one
through and through. Then she was so truthful, and it will be
splendid to see those big, truthful eyes piercing some little liar
of a flirt looking for a favor."

" Your language " said Mr. Buck reprovingly.

" Oh ! nonsense, Dunse." Mr. Buck was christened Dunstan,
and Sara thus abbreviated it. "We are in New York now, and
the warden's ears are miles away. I do envy her. Oh ! to come
out once, to make a debut in pink silk, lace, roses, and diamonds !
I' hate the humdrum life of Clay burg! I thought to get out of it
by marrying, but Mr. Buck will die there, and I too, I suppose."

"And so Ruth is really here," said Florian, with a heavy sigh.

He was face to face with his destiny, and it was not inviting.
He had not heard Sara's chatter.

" Why, yes," said the minister's wife, " she's here, though
why the squire has not been over is a mystery. He thinks so
much of you. And he has the idea that this trip is to bring
about your marriage with Ruth."

" Pshaw ! " said Florian, smiling, and oh ! so pleased. " That
matter is dead and buried, and monumented long ago."

" But this is a world of resurrections," said Mr. Buck cheer-
fully.

" You are not such a bad fellow, after all," thought Florian.

"And you're not the same Florian," said Sara. "Oh! you
can't imagine how you've changed for the better. But Ruth
has changed, too, and when she has society running after her, the
great and the handsome and the rich, you will find it hard to
overtake her. Lose no time, Florian, at the start, and look and
act and speak your best." At which advice Florian smiled.

" She isn't such a match for a great man like you, Florian,
after all," she said, " when you can have your pick, as Madame
Lynch told me, of the greatest and finest ladies ; and then you're

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 511

not rich, and women mostly take the rich men and leave the
poor ones for tight corners. I wouldn't be a tight-corner hus-
band for the whole world."

And she looked vindictively at Mr. Buck, who cowered and
trembled at her refined personality.

" But every one knows how much you did think of her,
Flory," continued Sara as she prepared to leave ; " and it wouldn't
be any surprise to know that you married her. Indeed, some
think she came down on purpose to arrange the matter, but I
know better. You wouldn't mind her religion now, of course.
You've got over that, as I always told Dunse you would when
you got older and saw more of religions that weren't your own."

Florian felt that this chatter was cutting him deeply some-
where and bringing blood, but he said nothing, and he was glad
when his visitors were gone and he could think over the matter
alone. Ruth was in Brooklyn, then? What was he going to do
about it, and why should his heart beat faster with a feeling of
dread and delight mingled? Her coming had no meaning for
him, as he had long ago determined. But he could not help
thinking of her, and picturing out the details of their first meet-
ing, and weaving visions of days to come. What a new thing
his life would be if the persuasions of old days should prevail
with her and their lives go on, as he had dreamed, together ! He
was not able to reason the matter calmly just at that time, and
when he happened to meet Frances in the sitting-room on his
return was more gracious to her than he had been since the pro-
duction of Paul's drama a year ago. .This was because of his
own exaltation of soul. There was a subdued brilliancy in his
manner and conversation, and he felt like the opium-eater, just
raised above the common things of the world, and yet seeing all
through so rare and beautiful a medium. Ruth was the medium,
and because of her this young woman of delicate feature and com-
mon mind seemed exalted into an angel. He remembered, too,
that she was Ruth's alternate. If Ruth failed him and was it not
likely? he would make an effort for this girl's heart and hand.

Inquiry showed that Ruth was not in the city and the Mer-
rions had returned from a summer tour only a day or two be-
fore. He could not hope to see her for a month yet, and in the
press of business he began to recover his old calculation and
was soon roaming over the ground on which he stood. It was
not safe. What did Ruth care for him now ? And how could
he with any consistency think of a marriage with her, a Pro-
testant, whom he had rejected once because of her Protestantism ?

512 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

The latter question he did not discuss with himself, because it
depended so much on the first, and really he did not think it a
matter of as much importance as formerly. It was done every
day among his fellow-Catholics. It was a sort of local necessity,
so few were his co-religionists and so many the other side. He
had been a little stiff and severe in these matters when in the
backwoods under Pere Rougevin's direction, and Ruth herself
had been no better. He really thought the question beyond dis-
cussion. Custom had already settled the matter. The real dif-
ficulty was Ruth's own feelings. Did she any longer care for
him? He was a different man from the young fellow of three
years ago, more polished, more cultivated, influential, looked up
to and flattered. These things might have an effect on Ruth,
and then she would, see how faithful he had been in spite of his
surroundings, how true to the old love, how hopeful ; and love
begets love, the poet says.

The squire, coming round in late September, found him in the
midst of a cloud of unsatisfactory thoughts.

" How do, boy ? " said he, poking through the half-open door
his red, jovial face, and speaking as unconcernedly as if he had
seen Florian an hour past. Florian jumped as if shot, and paled,
while the squire roared and squeezed his hands again and again,
and turned him around to look at him, and "was full of delight
and surprise at the changes he saw. The noise the old man
made attracted another red, jovial face to the door.

" Friends, b'y ? " said Peter, recognizing some affinity in the
squire. " May I come in? "

" Certainly," said the squire. " Friend of yours, Flory ? "

" Yes," said Florian, vexed, but glad of the intrusion, too.
" This is Peter Carter, journalist, a great man in his way."

" Not at all, man," said Peter, wringing the squire's hand
fiercely, while Pendleton said :

" You've heard of old Pendleton, if you're a journalist got
mixed up with the two governments in Mackenzie's rebellion."

"Didn't I report the whole thing?" said Peter with enthu-
siasm " the pursuit, the capture. Why, man, your life hung on
a thread."

" Hough ! yes," cried the delighted squire, hugging his thick
throat with both hands ; " but here was the thread, my boy here
was the thread."

" Right ye are, me hearty ! " roared Peter in return, " an' I'll
warrant there's a throat inside that won't stand drought long
hey, b'y ? "

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 513

" Right, by all creation, right ! " said the squire, seizing Peter's
hard hand again ; " you're the right sort, I see. But then I am
temperate, you know strictly."

'' Any one ud say so to see ye," said Peter, " and the same o*
me. Would ye mind taking a drink at Florian's expense? "

" Jes' as you say, sir." And Florian placed the bottles on the
table, rejoicing to hear the fearful coughing in which the two
old men indulged before scorching their throats with the brandy.

" Here's to ould Ireland," said Peter, raising his glass. " May
her blood never get thinner than her potheen."

" Good ! " answered the squire with a roar ; " and here's to
old England and be damned to her! "

" Better yet, begorra. Florian, this is quite an Irishman ye
have for a friend, if I might judge from his sentiments hey,
by ? "

" Irishman ! " said the squire. " More Irish than he is with his
cool, political blood that'll stand anything and smile. I've
known that boy, Carter, since he was born, almost, and he was
jes' as cool then as he is now. Not enough blood in him to like
anything weaker than liquid fire, and that only heated him. I
tried to marry him to a daughter of mine once, but she wouldn't
stand it no, sir, wouldn't stand it."

"'Twas a great pity, now," said Peter seriously, for it struck
him as being a handy way of getting rid of Florian's pretensions
to Frances. " He might be raisin' a family for the service of the
state by this time, and securing votes for himself when he runs
for the Presidency in twenty years or so. Ye missed it, b'y,
didn't ye, now ? "

" Rather," said Florian, with an inward groan. " Let me fill
your glass again."

" But never mind, Carter," said the squire, with a know-
ing wink of the highest confidence " never you mind ; I can ar-
range matters when I take 'em in hand, an' I'm going to take
'em."

" As Mr. Pendleton has but just arrived," said Florian in de-
spair, " and I have some matters to discuss with him, would you
mind leaving us alone for a while ? "

" Nonsense, b'y ! " said Peter gaily. " Never leave the bottle
half-full. It's not lucky to put back the cork until evaporation
ceases, an' I'm sure ye wouldn't send away an old friend in the
middle of the fun. Ye never had the heart for such a thing."

As there was no help for it, Florian put away the brandy
with a smile, and with the remark that at any time they would
VOL. XL. 33

5F4 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

be pleased to see Peter, and Mr. Pendleton would be happy to
improve his acquaintance.

" Happy ! " said the squire, " delighted ! Haven't met your
equal, Carter, since I came to New York. You shall have an in-
troduction to my daughter, and an invitation to Mrs. Merrion's
music-party ! We'll get in some quiet room and play whist and
drink punch till morning. Why do you say ? "

" Yer heart's in the right place, me b'y," said Peter, " and
yer throat too, an' both guide yer head. Same way with Peter.
I accept; I'll go if a thousand stood in the way, and I'll help ye
mend matters, an' give ye the benefit o' my experience in the
town ; an' if ye' want a hand in the little matter "

" Good-morning," said Florian abruptly, almost pushing
Peter outside the door, where he stood for some time indignant,
and thought of going back to fling defiance in Florian's face ; but
as that might peril his chances of improving the squire's ac-
quaintance, he refrained and withdrew.

" A first-class character," said the squire, " a real surprise.
Where did you pick him up ? A sort of Irish exile, hey ? "

" Yes ; but rather a spongy sort," said Florian, who was not at
all as patient with Peter as the poet was.

"Spongy that is, receptive. Ah ! I understand. I'm glad to
hear it. But then you're to come over to lunch, Mrs. Merrion
said, and you must be introduced to get a bid to the musicale,
you know. Ruth's just dying to see you, and so is Barbery, be-
cause she's surprised to know there's a famous man in New York
that doesn't bow down to her and attend her parties. Skittish
creature you recall her when she married Merrion, before she
got into long dresses but almighty nice if she wants to be. And
now, Flory, I just ache to see you use your points well. Ruth's
tired of things generally, and if you try rightly you are going to
win this time, if you want to. Why, I swear I never thought of
asking you that, but then of course you do of course you do."

" It's not well to think of it," said Florian, who did not wish
to give the garrulous squire even a hint of his own feelings.
" I am a politician ; love does not enter into my calculations of
marriage as it once did."

" No, I s'pose not," said the squire dubiously and grief-
stricken ; " but then I might have known you'd be changed and
more particular, now that you're famous."

" It isn't that," said Florian " oh ! no, not that. I think very
much of Ruth, but then I would not trouble her over again with
a suit that would not be to her liking."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 515

" If that's all we'll arrange it to her liking, my boy."

But for all his cheerfulness the squire felt more doubtful
about his pet project than he had at any time since its concep-
tion. They went at once to Brooklyn, and arrived in time for
lunch, and the meeting, which in Florian's mind was to have
been a masterpiece of subdued emotion and passion, turned out
as ordinary as could be desired.

" How do you do, Ruth ?" said the handsome politician, with
some relief in seeing how little changed Ruth was.

" I am very well, Florian, but I find it hard to recognize you,"
was the frank reply as she pressed his cold hands with her warm
ones and gazed so calmly into his twitching face. " It is Flo-
rian," she said again, " but oh ! how changed. Barbara, let me
introduce you to my friend Mr. Wallace. Florian, Mrs. Mer-
rion."

He hardly saw the beautiful fairy that bowed to him, but the
fairy saw him with all her eyes and pronounced him a perfect
man ; saw, too, what simple Ruth did not, that he was agitated at
this meeting, and judged, from the squire's beaming delight and
Ruth's ordinary manner, that the romance blurted out by the
squire was long ago ended much against the wishes of these
two men. But Ruth was susceptible, and Florian was society's
idea of a model man cold, impassioned, beautiful, and polished,
and a genius, perhaps with a great destiny. What might not
come of a new understanding, and the new lives that both had
entered on? Never was a meeting of old friends so ordinary.
The lunch had no brilliancy, save from that which Barbara lent
to it, and Florian's eyes were feasting on Ruth and his ears
drinking in her words, although he did not fail to pay that atten-
tion to Mrs. Merrion which habit gives to the true society man.
It piqued Barbara a little, and gave her the usual resolution
which the disappointed coquette makes on such occasions, that
Florian should pay with interest at some future time for his neg-
lect of her. When he was going he received his invitation to the
musical party.

" And there is a poet-dramatist in the same house with you,"
said Barbara, " that you must invite also. We leave out no
celebrities."

" Paul Rossiter," said Florian. " Do you know him ? "

" No," said Barbara archly ; " I depend on you for an intro-
duction."

"And there's Mr. Carter in the same house," said the squire
"a noted journalist. I must have an invitation for him."

516 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

" By all means," said Barbara. " Madame Lynch has a faculty
of getting around her the most unique people. I wish I had it."

" Good-morning," said Florian, and went away sad and dis-
appointed, and with a feeling that, in spite of fame, influence and
wealth, and increased beauty, Ruth was farther from him than
ever.

CHAPTER VII.
INTRIGUE.

" YE can't come in, Paul ; no use in knocking, me b'y. I'm in
the middle of me toylet for the musy-kale, an' I'm not to be dis-
turbed for an hour," said Peter's shrill voice in a high key.
" Bedad, but that's an elegant turnout for a journalist." And he
balanced himself carefully before the glass with the ardor of a
savage and the delight of a child. The knocking still continued,
for the person without could not hear Peter's mutterings.

" Well, come in," said he, " if ye'll have it so." And he pre-
sented himself in the door with his mouth crescent-shaped from
the effort of a smile. " Come in, b'y oh ! bedad, it's a girl !
Hey, Frances, what d'ye think of the old man now ? "

Frances uttered a cry of astonishment and delight.

" And are you going to the music-party?" said she.

" To the musy-kale," said Peter, correcting. " We don't con-
descend to English on occasions of this kind. I am going to
write the thing up for the dailies, an* in the topmost line I'll
'have ' Mr. Peter Carter, your correspondent, was present and
engaged the attention of a great number of young ladies by the
charms of his conversation and the power of his singin'.' Hoop-
la !" And Peter executed a dainty flourish, pirouetted, and bow-
ed with a roar of laughter that drove Frances' hands to her ears.

" You mustn't laugh like that with such a nice costume on,"
said she ; " people would be surprised to hear anything so vul-
gar from so nice-looking an old fellow."

" And d'ye think I'm nice-looking, now ?" said Peter in his
tenderest tones. " D'ye think they'll take me for the Grand
Turk or the Prince of Wales ? "

" You can't believe how it improves you," said she, alarmed
at this sudden manifestation of feeling, and moving off. "You
look very much like a gentleman. And mamma wishes to see
you before you go out. She doesn't know you're going to the
music-pa musicale."

1 88s.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 517

" Allow me, madame," said Peter, offering her his arm with
a low bow, and she, taking it with much seriousness, was escorted
down to her mother's private parlor, and seated with a flourish
of bows and polite sayings. Frances was really surprised at the
grace of the queer old man.

" You must have done this often," said she, " or you never
could do it so well."

" I was born and brought up to it, me dear," said Peter,
" as yer mother can tell ye, an* not a soul in New York has as
good a right to put ' gentleman ' after his name as Peter Carter,
Esq. See, now, won't the lady that I take to supper feel proud
to see herself so neatly tended, with stylish boys on all sides
falling over their ladies' trains ? "

" Oh ! but there's no supper at a musicale," said she.

" Ye'r right," said he, " and sure I had a right to know it ;
but there's a good deal of lunch, Frances, and that's the best part
of the music, I think. But where's your ma? "

" She was to be here directly, but I will go to look for her,
since you are in a hurry. Are you going with Mr. Wallace and
Mr. Rossiter?"

"Is it me go with them sprigs? Nonsense, girl! I'd be
ashamed o' meself to be caught in such company at a musy-kale.
An' then when men are head over ears in love with people they're
poor company. Whist ! Frank dear, an' I'll tell ye a secret.
The whole partyjs got up by Mrs. Merrion just to please a
young lady that's stoppin' wid her, an' that Mr. Wallace is crazy
after."

Poor Frank's head drooped slightly at these words and her
face grew a little pale.

" Oh ! where do you get so much gossip, Mr. Carter? You
are always so full of it."

" From her father, to be sure," said Peter cautiously. " Flo-
rian and she were engaged to be married wanst, an' got mad an'
broke off the match, and now the father's patchin* it up again,
for they're just dyin' o' love for one another, an' their looks ud
just freeze ye, ye'd think they were so cold. Didn't ye notice
how queer Mr. Wallace acted ever since she came to New York,
that was two weeks ago ? "

" Yes," said Frank faintly, " I did."

" There's the whole cause of it, then," said Peter, "an* I'll
tell ye there's goin' to be fun to-night at the musy-kale, an* no-
body's goin' to enjoy it more than Peter an' Paul, the two apos-
tles."

518 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Jan.,

' " What is Mr. Rossiter to enjoy ? " said Frances helplessly,
and wishing- to run away from this terrible old fellow, who had
stabbed her so cruelly at a moment when her hopes had been
very high.

" Just as if ye didn't know ! " said Peter, with a wink. "Just
as if ye didn't have his yellow hair and blue eyes, as well as his
poetry, by heart ! Ye deceivin' girl ! Just as if ye didn't know
that he stands lookin' at ye by the hour, an' sighin' an' dreamin'
about yer pretty face an' yer prettier foot "

" Mr. Carter," said she, with sharp indignation, " what do you
mean ? Of whom are you talking ? "

" Of Florian, to be sure," said he jocularly.

" Florian ! " she faintly gasped, feeling a sudden thrill of
delight.

" No, no ; Paul, of course," said Peter glibly. " Florian, is
it? That man with nothing but a gizzard? I'd shoot him if he
looked at ye. Oh ! no, he's safely landed at the feet of Ruth-
Ruth what the divil name is that she has oh ! Ruth Pendle-
ton."

" I hope you'll have a good time," said Frances, with as much
gayety as she could command ; and she fled away to hide her
sorrowful heart in the darkness.

Peter rubbed his fat hands in delight at the success of his
intriguing, and pirouetted once more before the mirrors, bow-
ing and scraping, until he became conscious that Madame
Lynch had entered and was surveying him with no little sur-
prise and unmistakable scorn.

" So you are entering society," she said, so coolly that Peter
saw his allowance frozen to death almost with every word.
" What is the idea of your crazy brain at this present moment ? "

" Fun, to be sure, rna'am, an' none o' yer impertinence," said
Peter, settling into one of his sullen moods, when his eyes grew
more like the eyes of an angry bull and his throat swelled be-
yond his collar.

" I have a little business for you to do," madame said, " but
I suppose it must stand over. I would prefer that you leave off
such notions as this musicale must give you ; otherwise your
allowance must suffer."

" I won't give 'em up," said Peter, " an' my allowance won't
suffer, madame. An" I want ye to understand that the quicker
ye get the nonsense o' marryin* Florian Wallace out o' your
child's head the better for her. It will never take place as long
as I live ! "

1 885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 519

Madame took up her accounts and began to examine them
with an air that cut off all further discussion ; and although
Peter felt disgusted with himself, he was too bitter at that mo-
ment to think of allaying his temp.er by soft words.
& " I'll tell ye wan thing," he said as he was going out. " In a
few weeks Florian will be married. He is going to-night to
meet an old flame, and they are to settle past difficulties. So
give up, wanst for all, yer manoeuvres in that direction."

And he went out leaving madame considerably moved and
astonished. For, to tell the truth, she had dreamed of an alli-
ance between Florian and Frances, and had so much hope in the
matter as to encourage in her daughter's heart her incipient
love for the politician.

Paul Rossiter was also bound for the music-party that even-
ing, much against his will, for he .was hard at work on a new
play, and there were matters of another kind demanding his
attention which Paul would not lay aside for an audience with
kings. Florian had brought him to see Mrs. Merrion, and the
little lady had pressed him so hard, and had made such extrava-
gant promises with regard to the new beauty whom she was to
introduce to society, that he consented at last. Ruth was not
at home that day, and his surprise was to be reserved until the
evening of the musicale. The two young men went off in the
same cab after a cursory view of Peter standing in the hall in
the full majesty -of evening dress and looking unutterably re-
spectable. That reminded Florian of the old fellow's invitation
to the musicale.

" Would you like to share our cab ? " said he. " There is more
room than either of us needs."

"What!" cried Paul, "art thou, old reveller, bound to the
haunts of Terpsichore ? When didst thou leave underground
bar-rooms and the shade of oyster-saloons to dance attendance
on goddesses like Mrs. Merrion ?"

Peter looked at both gentleman with undisturbed counte-
nance.

" Thank you," he said stiffly. " I have already engaged a car-
riage."

They replied with a shout of laughter, and Peter withdrew
into the next room with an air of dignity and without a word.
But it occurred to him that a carriage would cost a dollar and
his allowance was small. He ran out into the hall again with
his hat and overcoat in his hands, shouting:

" All right, Paul, I'll go, b'y." But the carnage had rolled

520 A TIRED HEART. [Jan.,

from the door. " I guess I'll walk," said Peter then ; " yez
needn't mind \vaitin'." But his inward comment on himself was,
" Yer a great fool, Peter, an' ye have only the consolation o'
knowin' that there are greater fools in the city than yerself."

" I rather think," said Paul when they were moving off, " that
if we wait a little Peter will come running after us. It's his
way."

" Having a carriage of his own, it's unlikely," said Florian, and
they went on their way in silence. Paul asked once if he knew
who the debutante of the evening was, and Florian stiffly be-
lieved it was a friend from his own native district who had never
been in New York before, and partly because she was talented,
and partly because her country ways had a delicious freshness
and charm about them, Mrs. Merrion was glad to bring her out
and have the credit of introducing to society a real wonder.
Paul began to think of the face that had so come and gone in his
dreams and wound itself up in his thoughts like a fantastic repe-
tition in frescoing, and while he was dreaming they had arrived
at their destination and were entering the great hall, of the Mer-
rion mansion, and a sound of a singing voice was echoing from
the rooms in a sweet new way that took Paul's ear by storm.

TO BE CONTINUED.

DEAR Lord I if one should some day come to Thee,

Weary exceedingly, and poor, and worn,

With bleeding feet sore pierced of many a thorn,

And lips athirst, and eyes too tired to see,

And, falling down before Thy face, should say,

" Lord, my day counts but as an idle day,

My hands have garnered fruit of no- fair tree,

Empty am I of stores of oil and corn,

Broken am I and utterly forlorn,

Yet in Thy vineyard hast Thou room for me ? "

Wouldst turn Thy face away ?
Nay, Thou wouldst lift Thy lost sheep tenderly.

1885.] A TIRED HEART. 521

" Lord ! Thou art pale, as one that travaileth,

And Thy wounds bleed where feet and hands were riven ;

Thou hast lain all these years in balms of Heaven

Since Thou wert broken in the arms of Death,

And these have healed not ! " " Child ! be comforted.

I trod the wine-press where thy feet have bled,

Yea, on the Cross I cried with mighty breath,

Thirsting for thee, whose love was elsewhere given ;

I, God, have followed thee from dawn to even,

With yearning heart, by many a moor and heath,

My sheep that wandered !
Now on My breast, Mine arm its head beneath."

Then if this stricken one cried out to Thee,
" Now mine eyes see that Thou art passing fair,
And Thy face marred of men, beyond compare,"
And so should fall to weeping bitterly,
With " Lord ! I longed for other love than Thine,
And my feet followed earthly lovers fine,
Turning from where Thy face entreated me ;
Now these grow cold and wander otherwhere,
And I, heart-empty, poor, and very bare,
Loved of no lover, turn at last to Thee "

Wouldst stretch Thine hand divine
And stroke the bowed head very pityingly ?

"Shall not My love suffice, though great thy pain ?"
" Ah, Lord ! all night without a lighted house,
While some within held revel and carouse,
My lost heart wandered in the wind and rain,
And moaned, unheard amid the tempest's din."
" Peace, peace ! If one had oped to let thee in,
Perchance this hour were lost for that hour's gain ;
Wouldst thou have sought Me then with thy new vows?
Ah, child ! I too, with bleeding feet and brows,
Knocked all the night at a heart's door in vain,

And saw the dawn begin ;
On My gold head the dews have left a stain."

522 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

BARBARA REDWOOD.

NESTLED among the sand-hills on the north shore of Barnegat
Bay, and about a mile west of Mosquito Cove, was a queer little
cabin patched with pieces of wreck : there were ribs and knees
and strips of keel ; to some of these pieces barnacles still ad-
hered, and in every nook and corner lingered the subtle odor of
the sea.

It was here that Barbara Redwood lived. Barbara was an
orphan, and when she was twelve years of age had been adopted
by Polly Browning, the widow of an old skipper, who, albeit
herself a hard-praying Baptist, never twitted the yOung woman
for what she deemed her outlandish religion for Barbara was a
Catholic. At the time our story opens April, 1777 Barbara
was probably the only member of the true church on the New
Jersey coast. But among the colony of whalemen who had
moved hither from Nantucket for the coast in those days
abounded in whales she was very much liked, and Ben Wins-
low, a skilful harpooner, declared that the Popisli Church could
not be so bad since Barbara Redwood belonged to it.

From her window Barbara could see the spot where she was
born. It was at the head of Mosquito Cove ; and she often
wondered why her dear father had been willing to sell his beau-
tiful homestead to the thrifty Dutchman, Hans van Hooven, who,
be it said, had lately taken a great fancy for Barbara, and
was never so pleased as when Polly Browning sent her to him
for butter and eggs. Strange things were whispered about the
big wooden mansion in which Van Hooven dwelt, surrounded
by wide-spreading sycamore-trees. Since he had come there
the fish-hawks in the trees had abandoned their nests ; it was
now a shadowy, silent place. Yet Barbara's memories of her
former home were all bright and cheerful. Her mother, a na-
tive of St. Mary's County, Maryland, had succeeded in making
a Catholic of her husband ; they had never breathed anything
but words of love to each other; their only child had been ten-
derly nurtured ; and once Barbara almost quarrelled with Ben
Winslow for telling her that the house where she had spent her
happy childhood was haunted. " Well, I promise not to say so
again," spoke bluff Ben, who would not have hurt her feelings
for all the world. " Still, it cannot be denied that sometimes

I885-J BARBARA REDWOOD. 523

when not a breath of wind is blowing not a breath down Van
Hooven's cavernous chimney the dense smoke pours until one's
eyes water ; I know mine did yesterday when I went there with
a mess of fish. And whenever this happens the Dutchman turns
quite pale, for along with the smoke come moans and rattling
sounds." "Why should he turn pale? Is not his conscience
at ease?" inquired Barbara, stopping her spinning-wheel.

" Ah ! that's more than I can answer," said Ben, twitching off
a peg an eelskin garter and twirling it round and round his
brown forefinger. Then presently he added : " We only know
that your father and mother disappeared ten years ago while
you were on a visit to friends up the country. When you re-
turned you found Van Hooven in possession of what had been
your home. You could not find your parents anywhere ; every
trace of them was lost. But Van Hooven showed a paper
signed with your father's name, which he declared was a deed
of the property to him. And that's all anybody knows about
the matter." After Ben had done speaking Barbara dropped
her forehead in her hands, and when by and by she looked up
her eyes were moistened with tears. " Well, I own," she said,
" that I do not like Van Hooven, and I cannot bear to see him
living in the old house. But his son Jack is a great improve-
ment on the father." " Yes, Jack is a good enough fellow,"
returned Ben. " But he is so completely under his father's
thumb; yet Jack js twenty-four. And I sometimes suspect that
the old man, who is a Tory, sends him to General Howe with
news of what we water-dogs are doing in this remote region."
"I don't believe Jack is a Tory," said Barbara. "I do," said
Ben. Here he replaced the eelskin garter on the peg, then, tak-
ing up his spy-glass, pointed it toward the sea. After gazing
through it a moment he said : " There are two frigates to-day, in-
stead of one, watching Barnegat Inlet."

" Indeed ! " exclaimed Barbara. " Well, 'tis fortunate that
they draw too much water to get in, or they'd quickly destroy
the pretty schooner you are building, and which I hope may
carry the stars and stripes even into the British Channel."
" Alas ! " sighed Ben, " I'm afraid my schooner will never be
finished. It has used up all my money to complete the hull;
she isn't painted, she isn't rigged, nor have I one eighteen-
pounder to arm her with." " Don't despair," said Barbara.
" Don't despair." Then, taking the glass out of his hand, she too
surveyed the enemy's frigates. After she had gazed at them
long enough Ben said : " 1 must go now ; time to haul in my net,

BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

and if before evening you receive a big blue-fish you will know
who sends it."

" Thank you," said Barbara. Ben moved toward the door.
But he had hardly reached it when Polly Browning entered with
a basket on her arm. " Look, Barbara," she said, " look what
Jack van Hooven sends you."

Barbara peeped into the basket, and lo ! half hidden in some
fresh grass at the bottom, lay three beautiful trout. While Bar-
bara was admiring them Ben passed out of the cabin muttering :
" Humph ! I guess you'll not care now for my blue-fish."

" Oh ! don't say that," exclaimed Barbara. " Why, these
trout will do for supper, and your fish for to-morrow's breakfast."
The young man made no response, but went away looking some-
what downcast.

Barbara Redwood possessed many winning qualities. She
was full of sprightliness and wit, yet she never indulged in un-
charitable remarks of other people, and she was quite as popular
with the women as with the men. Nor was she at all vain of
her large, hazel eyes and of her slender, graceful figure. Yet
Barbara could sail a boat and swim better than any fisherman's
daughter on the bay. She was likewise something of a scholar,
at least for those days, and in winter-time she taught the village
school. When a copy of the Declaration of Independence was
received in July, 1776, it was Barbara who had been chosen to
read it aloud, which she did in a clear, melodious voice, standing
on a whale-boat turned bottom up for a platform and surrounded
by a crowd of weather-beaten listeners. Then, before she de-
scended from the whale-boat, she spoke a few encouraging words,
telling her audience to stand by the noble men who had signed
the Declaration of Independence, one of whom, she was proud
to say, was a Catholic Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Her
little speech had wrought a deep impression on Ben Winslow,
who that very day made up his mind to build a privateer.

" Well, it is too bad I can't finish my schooner," thought Ben
as he hauled in his net. " If I could only put to sea and perform
some daring exploit Barbara might accept me." But presently
he determined to pop the question without much more delay.
For he knew that Jack van Hooven was also one of Barbara's
suitors, and she was strongly attached to her old home, and it
was natural that she should wish to live there again ; while Jack's
father, for some reason or other, had become in the last few years
very fond of the girl.

The sun had set, and Barbara was in her room reading by a

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 525

whale-oil lamp, when Ben appeared at the cabin-door with a five-
pound blue-fish. " Glad you've come, for she's given away
Jack's trout," spoke Mrs. Browning as he entered the part of the
cabin which served for kitchen and sitting-room. " Indeed !
Given 'em away ! " exclaimed Ben, his countenance brightening.
" Ay, she gave 'em all to the bed-ridden woman beyond the
Pine Knoll. But I'll make sure that this here fish isn't given
away. Charity, of course, is a virtue ; but I always calculate it
begins at home." At this moment Barbara made her appear-
ance, holding a little book in her hand which Ben had often
seen her reading : it was Thomas a Kempis. " Oh ! what a mag-
nificent fish, " she exclaimed, as Ben held it up before her.

" Well, please don't give my fish away," said Ben. Barbara
smiled and glanced at the widow, then promised that she and
Mrs. Browning would have it for next morning's meal. " But,
Ben," she added, " I have met with quite a misfortune since I
saw you : I have broken my crucifix." " Indeed ! Broken your
crucifix ! " said Ben. Then, after a pause, " Well, Barbara Red-
wood, I am glad of it." At these words, so unexpected and
cruel, her cheeks crimsoned with indignation ; then, as the blood
faded from them, a sad expression stole over her face and she
murmured: "How can you say such a thing to me?" Ben
shrugged his shoulders, and, muttering something about supersti-
tion, he turned and walked out of the cabin. " He's hard set
against popery, though he pretends he isn't," spoke the widow
after the door had closed with a slam. " And, Barbara, if I were
you I'd be wise." "And do what?" ejaculated Barbara, who
was almost ready to cry: " Why, I'd not keep young Van
Hooven any longer in suspense. His father likes you ; the
old man owns a good many acres of land. Be wise and favor
Jack."

Without answering, Barbara withdrew to her sleeping-cham-
ber, and, picking up the shattered crucifix, she gazed upon it
long and mournfully. Ben's rude speech had wounded her feel-
ings more than anything had done in many a year. Had the
new preacher, who had lately come to Mosquito Cove, preju-
diced him against her religion? She knew that he had warned
the young folk against being too much in her company. But
Ben had such a good heart and so much common sense ; it was
difficult to believe that he had been in earnest when he spoke.
She was still musing over what had happened when she heard
the outer door open and a voice cried out : " Ho, Barbara! come
and "see what I've brought you." Barbara recognized at once

526 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

Ben's lusty tones, and in another moment stood before him. She
found him in a fit of laughter, perhaps at Polly Browning, who
had retreated as if scared to the bottom of the fireplace, while he
was thrusting toward her a brand-new crucifix at which she was
making big eyes. " Why, it can't hurt you, dame," he said; "it
can't hurt you." Then, turning to Barbara, " I've been working
at this for the past five weeks, off and on. 1 have made it ex-
pressly for you, and that's why I said awhile ago that I was glad
the old crucifix had got broken, for it gave me the very chance I
have been waiting for. Now my present is a glorious surprise."
" Well, say a glorious present; but it's scarcely a surprise com-
ing from you. Why, you are always doing me kindnesses," an-
swered Barbara, whose visage was beaming with delight, and
she could not repress what was bubbling up from her innermost
heart. That night, before Barbara went to sleep, she stood a few
minutes by her open window. The full moon was shining on
the bay, and she could distinguish Ben's schooner resting on the
stocks at the water's edge half a mile distant. It was a beauti-
ful, peaceful scene. The stillness of the night was unbroken save
by the faint murmur of the surf on Squan beach and the shrill
cry of some belated fish-hawk that had not yet gone to roost.
While Barbara lingered by the window she wondered how she
might be able to get to Philadelphia so as to perform her Easter
duty. There had been no difficulty last year in driving the
sixty miles. Polly Browning and herself had easily managed the
skinny old nag, fed on salt grass, and which had never tasted a
grain of oats; and the widow had considered the journey a
wholesome change from her monotonous life among the sand-
hills. But things were very different now from what they had
been a twelvemonth since. The feeling between Tories and
patriots had grown very bitter; a lawless spirit was abroad, and
travelling would hardly be safe for two unprotected women.

How, then, was Barbara to go to Philadelphia ? where was
the nearest Catholic priest, good Father Farmer, who once a
year went on horseback as far as Boston, disguised as a Quaker
and practising medicine.

Barbara fell asleep asking herself this question, and by and
by in her sleep she had a dream about Ben's schooner. She saw
the Dolphin sailing toward the Inlet flying the stars and stripes;
and just as a British frigate started in pursuit Barbara awoke.
To her surprise it was already daybreak ; the fish-hawks and snipe
were all astir, and before long she heard the widow calling to
her to get up and go to Hans van Hooven's for some eggs and

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 527

honey. " For, Barbara," she said, " I know you're fond of honey,
and our jar is empty." Barbara's toilet was soon made, and,
after kneeling awhile before her new crucifix, she sallied forth on
her errand. Early as it was, Jack was already in the fields
ploughing when she arrived, and so she did not see him. But his
father, who had not slept well of late, was still indoors. Bar-
bara found him in the spacious room on the ground-floor what
happy hours she had passed in this very room ! Where the old
man was now sitting in the high-backed chair she used to sit
listening to her father telling stories, while the rain pattered
against the windows and the watch-dog whined to be let in.

Van Hooven's hands were clasped, his eyes were glued to
the hearthstone, when Barbara entered. At the sound of her
voice he started to his feet ; then with a frightened look he
motioned her away.

" Are you ill ? " inquired Barbara, stepping backwards as he
advanced hurriedly toward her. "111? 111? Oh ! yes, I am."
And as he spoke he struck his forehead with his palm. Then
closing the door behind himj " But, Barbara Redwood," he
added, " perhaps you may drive the horror from me. Perhaps
you may bring back my sleep. Come often to visit me. Give
me as many occasions as possible to be kind to you."

Barbara, who felt awed by his singular expression, told him
briefly what she had come for, and she was very glad when in a
little while her steps were turned toward the sand-hills again.
Yet she could not help thinking that the old Dutchman was
anything but niggardly : he had not charged her>a penny for the
eggs and honey, and he had urged her to come back soon for
more. When Barbara had gone about a hundred steps she
entered a meadow spangled with dandelions. In this meadow
she had often chased butterflies and watched her dear father
mowing. And now she paused to gather a nosegay of these lit-
tle flowers ; for she loved them on account of the memories they
awakened. They had not much perfume, yet she pressed them
again and again to her nose, and, shutting her eyes, fancied for a
moment that bygone days had come back.

" Barbara," cried Jack van Hooven from the other side of
the fence, " good-morning ! I've been running hard to overtake
you."

" Well, you have caught me, thanks to these dandelions," an-
swered Barbara, looking round at him with a smile. As soon as
Jack had climbed over the fence he said : " Barbara, I have come
to ask if you would like to go to Philadelphia. I remember that

528 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

last year, and year before, you went to church there at about
this time o' year ; and I have a saddle with a good pillion to it.
You might ride behind me very comfortably, and if we set out
very, very early we could reach the city by nightfall."

" You are exceedingly kind," answered Barbara, her own
face growing serious. " I have indeed been wondering how I
might get to Philadelphia this spring, and " But here she
paused, for coming toward her with giant strides through the
clover, and swinging his spy-glass he always carried it, and
made good use of it too was Ben Winslow, somewhat out of
breath, for he had been running nearly the whole distance from
the water's edge.

" Well, I am sure our friend Winslow would say that there
was no danger in such a journey," continued Jack, innocently
appealing to his rival, who, the moment he recovered his breath,
asked him to explain what he meant. " Humph ! " answered Ben
presently, when Jack had explained himself " humph ! there
was a murder on the high-road a week ago, you know. These
are troublous times, and there's no telling when a bullet mayn't
whiz by one's ears."

" Well, I should go armed," said Jack, his broad, Dutch face
turned earnestly toward Barbara, who made believe that she was
a little timid, and when she glanced at Ben the latter said :
" Barbara, if you wish to go to Philadelphia I'll take you and
Polly Browning there in my sail-boat ; we'll keep nigh the shore,
just outside the breakers, and you'll say when you get back :
' What a jolly voyage we had up Delaware Bay ! ' !

" Well, you remember that a small boat like yours was cap-
sized lately on its way down the coast," observed Jack.

" But I wasn't sailing her," answered Ben. " And I can
swim," put in Barbara, smiling. " Well, well, it's time to go
back to the plough," said poor Jack, with downcast mien. And so
saying he turned and walked away. But after going a few steps
he halted and said : " Barbara, I hope you may have a favorable
wind going and coming, and may the sea not be rough." The
girl smiled and waved her hand to him ; at the same time she
inwardly murmured : " O Jack! what a noble fellow you are."

When Barbara got back to the widow's cabin the latter, after
a hast)' glance at the eggs and honey, took her hand and asked
how she had found Jack van Hooven. " He was in good
spirits, wasn't he? And what did he say to you, Barbara?"
" Why, how do you know that I met Jack? " inquired Barbara,
faintly blushing.

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 529

" Oh ! I could tell by the way Ben Win slow was pointing
his glass in that direction," replied Polly Browning, "as well as
by the speed he made toward Van Hooven's farm ; ay, I knew
by those signs that Jack and you were together." Then lifting
her forefinger, "O Barbara!" she added, " Ben is a sly fellow;;
he follows you ever)' where with that long glass of his'n. But,
Barbara, be wise. The whaling business has gone to the dogs
since this dreadful war began, and Ben '11 never be half so well
off as Van Hooven's son. Only think how pleasant it would be
to go back to your birthplace, and to have lots of chickens and
cows, and to be mistress of by all odds the biggest house on
Barnegat Bay ! " "I have pledged my hand and heart to Ben
Winslow," said Barbara, in a voice which betokened that she
was thoroughly in earnest.

"Have you, indeed?" This was all the widow said; then
her jaw dropped. Presently she fetched a sigh and wondered
how many more eggs and how much more honey Hans van
Hooven would let her have for nothing. "Alas!" she mur-
mured, " here is the brightest lass in this neighborhood going
to throw herself away on a young man who has been fool
enough to begin a schooner which he hasn't the money to finish.
But even if Ben did launch her and sail away his privateer
would be gobbled up in no time by one of those fine frigates
that keep watching our Inlet as cats watch a mouse-hole."

Three days after Barbara's betrothal to Ben Winslow the
news of it had reached the loneliest hut on the bay. Nor was
anybody surprised, for all admired the girl, while Ben's manly
looks and his fame as a harpooner had made him a great favor-
ite with the fair sex. But when Van Hooven heard of it he
grieved very much and passed a whole night wandering about
the farm. And when morning came his son observed his hag-
gard looks and said: "Father, father! what is troubling you?
1 am beginning to be sleepless myself since you cannot rest
peacefully in bed."

" My son," answered the other, " I am a wretched being.
More than tongue can tell 1 am suffering. Only one thing might
have lifted the burden off my soul: Barbara Redwood has not
chosen to help me."

Jack did not understand what his father meant, and when he
asked to be enlightened Van Hooven began to moan anew,
while at the same time a big ball of smoke issued from the chim-
ney, accompanied by an odd, rattling noise. Immediately Van
VOL. XL. 34

530 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

Hooven clutched Jack's arm and drew him into the open air,
where, after trembling a moment and wiping 1 the dampness from
his brow, he betook himself to a distant corner of the farm, and
in this remote spot strove to chase away the thoughts which
haunted him by working at the plough. At the same time in
another field Jack commenced to sow rye. But while he was
thus engaged he discovered two people standing under a beech-
tree not very far off, and he paused to watch them ; it was Ben
and his betrothed. The former seemed to be cutting something
on the bark of the tree ; and so he was, and long years after-
ward the letters " B. W. B. R., 1777 " were still to be seen upon
this ancient beech. " Well, never mind," said Jack, sighing.
" If Barbara will not marry me, at least she can never make me
forget her. I will love her truly all my life." In a little while
he espied the lovers sauntering toward him, and quickly Jack
hid himself behind a clump of cat-briars, for he felt shy and did
not like to meet Barbara so soon after she had refused him.

As the happy couple walked by his hiding-place he heard
Ben lamenting that his privateer was not yet launched. " Over
the whole Atlantic I'd carry our beautiful flag," said Ben ; " and
where the British least expected me, there my cannon should
be heard. Oh ! would that I could finish my schooner."

" Pardon me for having overheard what you were saying,"
exclaimed Jack, suddenly emerging from behind the briars.
Then, while Ben and his fair companion were staring at him in
wide eyed amazement, he went on in a lower tone, as if he feared
lest unwelcome ears might be listening. " I'll give you my last
dollar, Ben Winslow," he said, " to fit out your privateer. Only
don't tell my father where the money comes from. And you,
too, Barbara, keep as mum as a tombstone about it."

" Are you in earnest ? " said the latter, who was utterly
taken aback at so much generosity ; nor was Ben less surprised
than herself. " Well, come either of you, or come both together,
to the bee-hives back of our orchard to-night before the moon
rises, and I'll prove that I am in downright earnest," answered
Jack. Still Ben could not but believe that he was jesting, and,
twitching Barbara's sleeve, " Come, come," he said impatiently ;
" 'tis too grave a matter to make sport of. He cannot dupe me.
Come along ! " And with this he and Barbara pursued their
way, leaving poor Jack crestfallen.

" Well, now, I am going to that place by Van Hooven's bee-
hives to-night," spoke Barbara, when they returned to the
widow's cabin. " Who knows but Jack may haye meant what

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 531

he said ? And if he isn't there I'll go in search of him, and I'll
remind him of his promise."

" Well, be careful not to let the old man see you," said Ben,
" for we must not get Jack into trouble. His father is a violent
Tory."

That evening, while Polly Browning had gone to a gossips'
meeting, Barbara was hovering round Van Hooven's house,
hoping that Jack might come out of the firelit chamber where
she saw him sitting. But he did not appear, and Barbara finally
turned her steps homeward. Presently, as she was stealing
through the orchard, a dull, hollow sound reached her ear. She
paused, and in a moment she heard somebody digging. Advanc-
ing cautiously in the direction of the sound, she again halted and
peered into the shadows.

" Who goes there? Is it you, Jack?" cried the keen-eared
Van Hooven. While Barbara was hesitating what to do Van
Hooven came rapidly toward her. "My God! Is it you, Bar-
bara Redwood?" gasped the conscience-stricken man, dropping
on his knees and seizing her gown. " O Barbara Redwood !
stay. Do not run away. Have pity on me!" Believing that
Van Hooven had gone mad, Barbara was trying to escape. But
his grip was the grip of despair, and he held her fast. Then he
went on to tell her a tale which made her blood run cold, and
had she been in possession of a dagger she might, before he got
to the end, have plunged it into his heart. But at last pity for
the remorse-stricken wretch took the place of vengeance in her
bosom, and when the harrowing story had been all told Bar-
bara and Van Hooven were weeping together. " Rise up ; I
forgive you," she said, after a long, tearful silence. " But now
tell me where you buried my father and mother. Is it anywhere
on the farm? Or did you cast their bodies into the sea?"

" Spare me from answering that question," said Van Hooven.
" One day you may discover their last resting-place. But from
this time forth you must call this property yours, for it does of
right belong to you. And the buried treasure, which I dig up
twice a year to count, is all yours too."

" Well, you and Jack Jack, who has always been a good
friend of mine must not quit this pjace immediately," replied
Barbara. " Let it continue to be your abode for some time
longer. The terrible secret which you have just revealed shall
never escape my lips, and I will pray Almighty God to restore
to you your lost peace of mind."

That night the murderer slept better than he had for a long

532 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

time, and his son was surprised and delighted at the change in
his appearance the following morning. But Barbara scarcely
closed her eyes. The ghastly confession which Van.Hooven
had made to her kept ringing in her ears for hours, and there
were moments when she half-regretted that she had forgiven
him. " One word from me," she muttered, " one word, and dire
would be the punishment meted out to him. But no, no ; I will
not break my solemn promise. 1 will not. reveal what he told
me." Then, shading the moonbeams from her eyes, she began
to think of poor Jack, and wondered what would become of him
when by and by his father surrendered the property to her.
Where would Jack go to?

Several things happened during the coming fortnight which
caused Polly Browning and her sister-gossips to open their eyes
very wide and to make certain guesses which were far from the
truth. It had been given out that Ben Winslow was to take
his betrothed in a fishing-smack to Philadelphia, where, for one
Sabbath at least, she might pray in a popish meeting-house. But
although the weather was fine and the wind propitious, to every-
body's surprise Barbara mounted a pillion behind Jack van Hoo-
ven and rode away with him to Philadelphia, after giving Ben a
Idss in the presence of the widow. And during her absence work
was resumed on Ben's schooner: from some mysterious hiding-
place a good many Spanish doubloons were brought to light ;
Ben had suddenly got plenty of money.

And when Barbara came back, looking never so handsome
having performed her Easter duty, as well as thoroughly en-
joyed her brief visit to the big city the first person who greeted
her was Hans van Hooven. " I told you my Jack would take
good care of you," he said. Then, dropping his voice, " But
the whole settlement is agog to discover where Ben Winslow
got his money from. O Barbara ! I implore you " " Fear no-
thing," interrupted Barbara in a whisper. " Nobody shall ever
wring the secret from me ; and I repeat, you and Jack must
not quit the farm just yet." " Noble girl ! " ejaculated Van
Hooven in accents faltering with emotion. " Thanks to you,
life is now worth living; and while I deeply regret that you
are not to be my son's bride, I wish you every happiness, and
Ben Winslow too."

From this time forth Barbara and Ben made frequent visits
to the Dutchman's house, and Polly Browning inwardly said :
"The girl has thrown a wonderful spell over the old man; her
refusing to wed his son seems to make no difference in his feel-

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 533

ings toward her. He still gives her eggs and butter and honey
for nothing, and he always begs her to come back for more.
Verily, Barbara is a great charmer."

From his treasure-place at the back of the bee-hives Van
Hooven continued to unearth as much gold and silver as Bar-
bara said would be needed to fit out the privateer, which the
British frigates could espy from a distance. He was now, seem-
ingly at least, a heart-whole patriot, and the widow maintained at
every gossips' meeting that it was Barbara who had converted
him to the cause of independence. A month later the schooner,
which had been christened the Dolphin, was ready to put to sea
at the first favorable opportunity. It was Ben's intention to
steer first for Marblehead, where he would arm her with two
eighteen-pounders, after which she would spread her sails for
the English coast.

" Well, I'll remember you night and morning in my prayers,"
spoke Barbara when Ben came to bid her good-by. "And, dear
boy, you must pray too. Often kneel before the crucifix which
I brought you from Philadelphia, and ask Almighty God to
bring you safely home to me."

"I will, I will," Ben solemnly promised. "And unless I'm
under water you'll have me back for Christmas."

The evening Ben weighed anchor a fleet of small boats
might have been seen making for the south end of Squan beach;
for the denizens of Mosquito Town were all anxious to see the
Dolphin escape through the Inlet. Barbara and Polly Brown-
ing went in the same skiff with Van Hooven and Jack ; and the
old man took a seat next to Barbara, who talked with him in
undertones and put him in such good spirits that when they
reached the landing-place the widow could not help saying
aloud : " Barbara, everybody is in love with you/' On which
Jack, who was helping his father out of the boat, leaned toward
her and whispered : " You speak what is true, Dame Browning."
The widow returned him a smiling glance and thought to her-
self for she always kept an eye open to windward "Well, if
anything happens to Ben and 'tis an even chance if he ever re-
turns Barbara will have Jack van Hooven ready to wed her ;
and Jack will inherit a good many acres."

The day after the enemy's cruisers disappeared from the
offing ; and ere long several whalemen manned their vessels and
ventured out in quest of whales. But whenever any of them re-
turned to the bay they eagerly inquired for hews of the Dol-
phin. In the meanwhile, thanks to Hans van Hooven, Barbara

534 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

received a good deal of information about the Continental army,
as well as about the movements of the British : he told her how
General Burgoyne with a well-appointed force was marching
from Canada to Lake Champlain and the Hudson. But Barbara
did not despair, and it was said that more than one fisherman's
son was persuaded by her to leave home and enlist under the
American general, Philip Schuyler, who was endeavoring to
check Burgoyne's advance. Even the fanatic preacher ceased at
last to inveigh against the popish religion when he discovered
how ardent a patriot she was.

While Barbara was mourning for her absent Ben she out-
wardly maintained a cheerful countenance, and it afforded her
not a little consolation to have Jack ask her questions about the
faith ; the visit which he had made to Father Farmer when they
were in Philadelphia had wrought a deep impression on the
young man. " And who knows," she would say, " what the
grace of God may bring forth? "

Of his own accord, too, Jack would sometimes speak to her
about Ben Winslow. " Whenever it blows hard I always think
of him," he would say.

" So do I, and the wind makes me tremble," Barbara would
answer.

Indeed, she and Jack were so much together after Ben's de-
parture that Polly Browning began to hope that something
good might come of their intimacy. For she did not believe
that the Dolphin could escape the many ships of King George,
and were Ben taken prisoner short would be his shrift.

" Ben will be home for Christmas ; he said he would, and I
never knew him to break his word," spoke Barbara one stormy
day toward the end of September, as she and the widow stood
by the little cabin-window which fronted to the sea.

" Let us hope so," answered Dame Browning. Then after
a pause, " But look," she added, handing Barbara the glass,
" look how the breakers are pounding on Squan beach. This
must be the equinoctial. I never saw such breakers." " Well,
give her plenty of sea-room," said Barbara, " and the Dolphin
would weather even worse tempests than this."

That day, when the storm had sensibly abated in its fury, she
sallied forth to Hans van Hooveti's in quest of some sweet
potatoes.

At a short distance from his house the path ran close to the
north side of the barn, and as she tripped past it Barbara heard
loud voices within ; it was Jack and his father. She was too late

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 535

to hear what the latter had been saying ; but his words had evi-
dently aroused his son's indignation. " No, no, father," spoke
Jack. " I will not hope that Ben Winslow may be taken
prisoner ; on the contrary, I hope with all my heart that he may
escape every danger and be back for Christmas, as he promised
he would."

" Dear, noble Jack ! " murmured Barbara, when in another
moment she opened the barn-door. " How few there are like
you ! How few! " And when presently the young man began
to fill her basket with his father's largest sweet potatoes a pang
shot through her breast at the thought that mayhap in another
twelvemonth he would have moved to a distant part of the coun-
try ; perhaps she might never see him again.

"But, alas! what can I do?" sighed Barbara. "This pro-
perty belongs to me, and when Ben comes home I want him to
give up the sea and take to raising corn and pumpkins on this
dear farm where I was born." When the basket was filled Jack
would not let Barbara carry it. " No, no," said he, " let me take
it. It isn't heavy, and I have something to tell you as we walk
along." Accordingly they bent their steps toward the sand-
hills; but so slowly did they proceed that one might have
thought they were trying to be as long as possible making the
distance. The wind by this time had changed. Out of the blue
nor' west it was now coming with a loud, cheery whistle, sweep-
ing befo're it the angry clouds, while innumerable flocks of wild-
fowl shaped like gigantic V's and W"s might have been seen
far overhead, flying in the direction of the bay. They were
new-comers from the Arctic Circle, and as soon as Jack perceived
them he said that cold weather was near. Whereupon Barbara
clapped her hands and smiled, for cold weather made her think of
Christmas. But Jack's countenance fell, and when she asked him
why he looked so serious, " Because," he answered, " I had deter-
mined to go away as soon as the storm ended, and now it is ended."

" Going away ! " ejaculated Barbara, stopping short and star-
ing at him. "O Jack! where are you going to?" "To join
the Continental army." " Indeed ! " Here Barbara took his
hand in hers, and, pressing it, she added : " Yes, yes, go and fight
for independence ; and, if my prayers can bring you safely back,
you will surely return covered with honors."

" And if I pass through Philadelphia I will call on Father
Farmer and give him your regards," said Jack. " Ay, by all
means," answered Barbara. " And before you bid the priest
adieu ask him for his blessing."

536 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

"Verily, Barbara Redwood," said the widow a few days
later, as she and Barbara were seated in the big room on the
ground-floor of Van Hooven's ghostly dwelling " verily, you
wield a mysterious power over folks: you got Ben the money
wherewith to launch and arm his privateer ; you persuaded Tory
Jack though you say you didn't to enlist with the Continen-
tals ; and now you have secured a comfortable home for yourself
and me in this roomy house." " Well, I am glad to be here once
more," said Barbara. " And I am never going away again
never."

"What! Do you intend to abide here always? Really?
Truly? Why, Barbara, what has happened?" "Before Jack
departed he urged me to come and keep house for his father
that is all," replied Barbara, who was sorry that she had told as
much as she had to the inquisitive dame.

" No, no, that is not all," said Polly Browning. " There must
be something else that you haven't told me." " Well, are you
not pleased to dwell here with me?" inquired Barbara, who
hoped to turn aside the widow's thoughts. " Pleased? Oh ! yes,
indeed I am. But I'd be much better pleased if we were all
alone by ourselves. For haven't you observed the singular
change that has come over Van Hooven since his boy left him ?
What a wild look he has ! "

" His sleeplessness has returned," said Barbara, shaking her
head. " And he ran out of the room awhile ago," said Mrs*. Brown-
ing, "as if something was chasing him. And yet you and I
couldn't see anything." " Poor man ! " sighed Barbara. " Poor
man ! " " Well, they say this house is haunted," continued the
other, dropping her voice. "Do you believe it?" "It is a
falsehood ! " cried Barbara. Then, after a moment's silence,
" But hark ! " she added. " How the wind is howling ! 'Twill
be a rough night at sea. Oh ! I wonder where dear Ben is to-
day?"

" Well, the last news we had of the Dolphin said that she had
sailed clear around England," replied the widow, "and that the
saucy schooner had captured a merchantman within sight of
Bristol." " O Ben, Ben ! don't be too venturesome," murmured
Barbara. Then, after crossing herself and breathing a prayer,
"Well, even if he is now- a thousand leagues from me," she said,
" Christmas will soon arrive, and Ben will be home for Christ-
mas." " If he isn't hanged," spoke a hollow voice behind her;
and, turning round with a shudder, Barbara discovered Van
Hooven standing in a dusky passage-way which led to the rear

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 537

of the building. He held a flickering lamp, which trembled in
his hand ; his gray hair was dishevelled, and he looked ten years
older than before his son left him. "And my Jack, too, may be
hanged," he went on. "And then, O Barbara Redwood! then
I I may swing from a gibbet too ; and then how many ghosts
will haunt this house ! Oh ! how many." Here the unhappy
man made Barbara a sign to approach.

" Don't go," whispered the widow, clutching her sleeve.
" His face is unearthly."

" I am not afraid," said Barbara, rising up. And presently
she followed Van Hooven into the dim hall, where in undertones
he again besought her to faithfully keep the promise which she
had once made him. Whereupon she bade him anew not to
fear. " Nobody besides myself," said Barbara, " shall ever know
of the murder. And I will pray for you every day every day."

At this moment Polly Browning uttered a shriek and ran out
of the room, pursued by a dense cloud of smoke, and her face was
as 'white as Van Hooven's face. Nor did she pause in the hall,
but hastened into the open air by the rear of the building, still
shrieking.

"She has seen it!" gasped Van Hooven, and with this he
drew Barbara out of the house, nor would he answer her when
she said to him : " What mean you ? What has Dame Browning
seen? "

But the latter .did not stop when she got out o' doors : through
the orchard and fields she sped, not once daring to look behind,
nor did she stay her headlong flight until she reached her cabin,
where in awe-stricken accents she said to her friends : " 1 have
seen the ghost in Van Hooven's house. With my own eyes I
have seen it."

An hour later, most surprising to relate, Polly Browning
might have been seen returning to the haunted abode with her
arm locked in Barbara Redwood's.

" Well, there's nobody in the whole land, except yourself,
could persuade me to go back there," spoke the widow, whose
voice had not yet recovered its wonted composure. " But I
vow not to enter that gloomy chamber again ; therefore don't
ask me to. The very thought of that ugly, skeleton hand stick-
ing out of the chimney makes my heart quake, and I don't won-
der Van Hooven looks so wan and troubled." " Well, you may
stay in my little apartment in the second story," answered Bar-
bara. " Let us abide there together, where my crucifix is and
vase of holy water."

538 BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

" Tis what I'll do," said the widow. " I shall feel safe with
you. The ghost will not molest me if I am with you."

And so saying they continued their way arm-in-arm to Hans
van Hooven's.

The anxious days which followed would have been even more
trying than they were to Barbara Redwood except for her in-
dustry and religious devotions. From cellar to garret she tidied
and put things to rights ; her spinning-wheel was often hum-
ming, and Van Hooven declared that she was the best house-
keeper he had ever known since he left Amsterdam.

" Dear Ben, where are you ?" was a question which Barbara
often asked herself as the autumn months passed away ; and
sometimes at night, when the wind blew very hard, she would
lie awake praying for Ben.

" They say our poor soldiers are suffering terribly in their
camp at Valley Forge," spoke Barbara. "God help them in
such weather as this ! " These words she addressed to Van
Hooven on the afternoon of Christmas eve, while a furious storm
was raging.

" Well, it. makes me cry to think of Jack," answered Van
Hooven, bowing his head. " I do wish I could send my boy a
supply of food and some blankets. Like enough he'll freeze or
starve to death."

" Well, don't despair. Jack, too, may come home to-morrow,"
said Barbara, who, unlikely as it seemed, still cherished the hope
that Ben would be with her on Christmas day. Not for several
winters had there been such a tempest as this. Even the land-
locked waters of Barnegat Bay were covered with dangerous
white-caps, while across the narrow beach which separates the
bay from the ocean the waves were running mountains high.

"Hark! didn't somebody rap on the door?" exclaimed Van
Hooven, presently rising to his feet. He had scarcely spoken
when a veteran whaleman entered, his shaggy beard covered
with icicles, and hugging a spy-glass under his arm.

" I've come to tell you," he said, addressing Barbara "I've
come to .tell you that there's a vessel off shore that may be the
Dolphin. Good as my glass is, the scud's so thick it's only now
and then I can catch a fair glimpse of her; but I do believe it's
the Dolphin. Her mizzen-mast's gone a fine spar it was; I cut
it myself and she's trying hard to reach the Inlet. And she
may reach it-' she may." " But if she doesn't?" said Barbara,
turning pale. " 'Twon't do to contemplate what may happen
if the Dolphin gets ashore in such weather as this," answered the

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 539

whaleman solemnly. Barbara now hastened to the topmost
story, followed by the others, who were speaking in undertones
to each other ; and, sure enough, about half a mile outside the
breakers only half a mile she perceived a one-masted vessel
rolling as if she might roll bottom up ; and the waves were
sweeping clear over her. At the wheel stood a man ; it might
be Ben ! " Well, whoever he is, he's lashed fast," spoke the
whaleman. " And if he doesn't freeze to death, and if the jib
isn't blown to ribbons, he may be able to keep out of the break-
ers he may ; but she's drifting mighty close to 'em."

"And the Inlet is ten miles down the coast," said Barbara,
wringing her hands.

"Ay, ten miles. She can hardly make it," said the other.
"Well, mightn't Ben anchor?" asked Barbara, clinging to this
last hope. " No. A dozen anchors couldn't hold her in this gale."

Here Barbara crossed herself and murmured a prayer, and
while she was praying the whaleman, who had taken the glass
from her, exclaimed : " By the Eternal ! I saw an immense break-
er just now roll clear across the beach. Look! look! there goes
another."

" Not possible !" ejaculated Polly Browning. " Why, Squan
beach is a good quarter of a mile wide over yonder."

" Well, look for yourself," he answered, handing her the glass.
The widow put it to her eye ; but the scud had suddenly thick-
ened and Squan ^each was no longer visible. "Alas! what can
be done ? She may drift ashore. Oh ! I'm sure it's the Dolphin,"
cried Barbara, trembling with excitement.

" Well, I'll get a boat's crew and row over to the beach. But
as for saving any lives in those breakers " The whaleman did
not finish the sentence, but shook his head and hurried down-
stairs, followed by Barbara in tears; and Dame Browning, too,
was weeping, for she liked Ben Winslow for Barbara's sake;
and Van Hooven, who came last, was muttering to himself,
"Jack, dear Jack, what are you doing in this terrible weather?
Are you really freezing and starving at Valley Forge ? O Jack !
come back to me."

The skipper had been gone only a few
drove up to the door, and lo ! who should
house, wrapped in a blood-stained blanket, but
His father tossed up his arms, uttered a wa
tered toward him. A painful scene followed
dier had received a mortal wound while escap
Hessian troopers ; but he was still able to whisper a few words.

54O BARBARA REDWOOD. [Jan.,

" I am come home, father, to die," he murmured ; " kiss me."
"Oh! would that I might die, too !" ejaculated Van Hooven,
striking his forehead. " But I'll not live without you. No,
no ! " Here he turned and looked toward the chimney. His
expression frightened Polly Browning, who immediately quitted
the room. But Barbara stayed, and after drawing Jack closer
to the fire she took one of his icy hands in hers and commenced
to pray. " There is a crucifix round my neck," said Jack in a
scarcely audible whisper. She understood what he meant, and,
taking it from its hiding-place, she pressed the crucifix to his
lips. " I am happy because I die near you," he said as he fixed
his dim eyes upon her. " And, Barbara, I die a Catholic." The
tempest in the meanwhile had increased in violence ; the build-
ing was shaking as if it would fall to pieces, and, with a mien of
horror, old Van Hooven continued to gaze at the chimney. Of
a sudden there came a terrific crash, and Barbara could remem-
ber nothing more.

When she again opened her eyes Barbara found herself in
another house, in Polly Browning's humble dwelling. There
was a bandage tied round her head, and who should be standing
beside her couch but Ben Winslow ! " Dear Barbara," he said,
with a joyful smile, " you recognize me at last. And you look
dazed and bewildered, as well you may, for what do you think
happened ?"

" O Ben, Ben ! is it really you ? " ejaculated Barbara, rising
on her elbow. " Well, Ben, what did happen? Do tell me; was
it all a dream?" " Why, just as darkness was coming on," said
Ben, " and as the Dolphin was being blown ashore, where the
awful breakers would have pounded the life out of me and my
crew, lo ! the ocean in the very nick of time it was like a mira-
cle ploughed a channel right through Squan beach ; it did,
upon my honor! Don't smile; I'm telling the downright truth.
And through the new inlet thus formed the sea swept us safely
into the bay." " Well, is to-day Christmas?" inquired Barbara.
"Yes, to-day is Christmas. I kept my promise, didn't I? And,
Barbara, I am come home to you a Catholic. I can't tell you
now all my adventures, my narrow escapes; but after leaving
the British Channel I steered for ' Bilbo,' an old town on the
coast of Spain ; and there one day I strolled into a church a
church large enough to hold twenty of our meeting-houses.
And while I was admiring the beautiful altar the spirit moved
me to go and see a priest. I went ; he baptized me : and this,
Barbara, is the Christmas gift I have brought you." "You

1885.] BARBARA REDWOOD. 541

could not have brought me a more precious gift," answered
Barbara, smiling and stroking his sunburnt hand. Then after a
pause, " But Jack," she added, " where is Jack? Did he die, or
was that a dream ? "

"Alas! poor Jack van Hooven is dead. And within a few
feet of him, on the broad hearthstone, his father was found dead,
too ; bricks from the fallen chimney had crushed his skull."

" Then the chimney fell, did it? " exclaimed Barbara. " Yes,
and the whole house is pretty badly shattered ; 'twas a terrible
gale." " Well, tell her what else tumbled down the chimney
besides bricks and stones," put in Polly Browning, who was
standing on the other side of the couch. " O Ben ! is it any
wonder that the chimney smoked and groaned as it did, when
such horrible things were hidden up it?" Ben threw the widow
a frowning glance which she understood, and she did not again
interrupt him.

As soon as Barbara recovered from her injuries she and Ben
made a visit to Father Farmer, who united them in the holy
bond of wedlock. After which, having refitted his privateer,
he sailed on another cruise, leaving his young wife in the care
of Polly Browning, who was no longer afraid to inhabit the big
mansion at the head of Mosquito Cove ; for the new chimney
sent down no mysterious puffs of smoke, it gave forth no rat-
tling, moaning sounds. The draught up it was perfect. The
fish-hawks, too, came back to their nests on the sycamore-trees,
and bands of children used to visit Barbara's home, where they
made every nook and corner ring with their merry voices.

When the War of Independence was brought to a happy end
Ben turned husbandman and succeeded very well at raising corn
and pumpkins. But he always had a hankering for the sea ; and
once he and Barbara went by water to St. Mary's County,
Maryland, where Barbara's mother had hailed from. Several
times a year they rode to Philadelphia to assist at Mass; and the
honest folks on Barnegat Bay used to say that papists could not
be so bad, since Ben Winslow and his wife were papists.

Before we end our tale let us say that the new channel which
the ocean made through Squan beach in December, 1777, was
called Cranberry Inlet. It remained open until the war of 1812,
when it was closed as suddenly as it had been opened.

" No wonder," an old surfman once said to us "no wonder
we beachmen's a trifle sooperstitious. There's changes in these
sands book-larnin' can't explain ; they're soopernatural."

542 KA THARINE. [Jan.,

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XXI.

A CAMP in the New York wilderness. A clearing some fifty
or sixty feet square, fringed on three sides by pines, spruces, and
a variety of hard-Wood trees, and extending on the fourth to the
brow of a rocky cliff, at whose base lie the smooth, lustrous
waters of a mountain lake. The ground is brown and fragrant
with the accumulated leafy debris of countless autumns. Two
rough log shanties, which, by dispensing entirely with front
walls, manage to obviate any necessity for doors and windows,
stand at right angles to each other, but with a spacious interval
between. The rays of the afternoon sun, striking the inner side
of the birch bark with which they are lined and roofed, turns
them a soft red, and lights up in one of them the shining barrel of
a rifle and some tin cups and other utensils flung carelessly in a
corner. A huge rock in front of this one serves as a fireplace,
and not far from it a couple of planks, nailed fast to four tree-
stumps left at convenient distances apart, show that the camp
has at some time or other been tenanted by sybarites unable to
dispense with that luxury of civilized life, a dinner-table. A fire
of hickory logs has been allowed to sink into a mass of glowing
coals, and a haunch of fat venison suspended above it from cross-
poles gives out an appetizing odor, responded to amicably by
some speckled trout and potatoes sizzling together in company
with a slice of salt pork in an immense frying-pan with a long
handle. A battered and blackened coffee-pot of generous dimen-
sions flanks these on the other side of the rocky hearth, and the
guide, a short, heavy, loose-jointed 'York State Yankee, seated
on a stump at the entrance of the shanty, has a tin basin on his
knees, in which he is vigorously beating up with a wooden
spoon a mixture of flour, water, and saleratus, to which, when
fried, he gives the name of choke-dogs. Part of the carcass of a
deer, enveloped in its skin, hangs from a neighboring branch,
and a couple of hounds, tired from the chase and gorged with
the results of it, are lying in uneasy slumbers to windward of the
fire.

In the other shanty a young fellow of some two or three and
twenty is stretched upon a bed of evergreen boughs, with a

1885.] KA THA RINE. 5 43

folded gray blanket by way of pillow. He came in an hour
ago from a successful hunt which began before .daylight, and his
heavy breathing shows that the volume of anatomical surgery to
which he virtuously betook himself on his return, and which
still lies beside him with the two forefingers of his right hand
inserted between its leaves, has speedily acted as a soporific. An
older, yet still young, man, in a Scotch tweed suit and a broad-
brimmed, soft felt hat drawn down over his eyes to shelter them
from the slanting rays, stands at the edge of the cliff, with his
back against a superb yellow birch, regarding the scene before
him. The serenity, the loneliness of the virgin wilderness brood
over it. A mile or so to the northwest the long arm of Indian
Point stretches into the lake, its thinned-out timber and a little,
deserted clearing near the extremity showing that man has at
some time essayed to subdue it ; but on the farther shore, beyond
the Point, the sombre, unbroken forest ascends from the water's
edge to the undulating sky-line formed by distant mountain-tops.
Plane after plane of varying blue and gray and rose, they fade
into a sky so full of light as to be almost colorless. In sheltered
coves beds of lily-pads lie dark in shadow or flushing into opaline
tints where the light glances on their broad leaves. The multi-
tudinous murmur of bird and beast and insect, which makes the
silence of the woods vocal and audible to sensitive ears, alone
breaks the stillness.

Presently the. guide leaves his place near the fire and also
approaches the edge of the cliff, inclining his ear to the left, as
he does so, with the look that denotes intense attention. In an-
other moment he raises it with an air of satisfaction.

" Thought I heared the dip of an oar while I was settin' yon-
der," he says. " They're comin' round here at the left of the
island."

His companion, whose senses have not been sharpened by
woodcraft, also inclines his ear, but some seconds elapse before
he catches the sound.

" Who is coming ? " he asks.

"Seein's tellin'. Hold on, though! That's Bill Wood's
voice, if ever I heared it. That means petticoats, I'm afeard."

" What do you mean by that ? "

" He took old man Warren up into the Black River country
last week. He comes once in a while by himself, the old man
does, to look after lumber, but this time he's got two of his
women folks along. I reckon Bill counts on finding this camp
empty."

544 KATHARINE. [Jan.,

" What are you going to do about it ? "

"Crowd up! There's plenty of grub and plenty of room.
We don't stand on ceremony at this hotel. I camped sixteen
once in these two shanties." Saying which he returns to his
venison. The other stands frowning, with eyes bent in the direc-
tion from which the rhythmic splash of the oars is now plainly
audible, until the boat, sweeping into sight around the end of the
island on which the camp is situated, shows that the guide's
penetration has not been at fault. He turns back then, with a
hasty movement, into the cabin where his friend is still lying.

"Wake up, Dick!" he says in a tone which opens the
sleeper's eyes at once. " Of all unlooked-for nuisances here is
the worst."

" What is the matter now ? " asks his friend, yawning and
stretching his limbs, but not yet rising.

" Get up and look down yonder at the landing. I move we
take the boat, row over to Wood's to-night, and go back to
Palmer's and civilization to-morrow."

" Before we have been here two days ! " exclaims the other,
now thoroughly roused and springing to his feet. " That would
be rather too much of a good thing, it seems to me. What's up ? "

The boat is beaching as he speaks, and as he looks down the
decline leading to the landing his eyes fall upon a party of three
whom their guide is assisting to disembark. All have their backs
turned to him, but the cause of his friend's displeasure is evident.
One is a buxom, comfortable, middle-aged matron, if one may
judge from her ample, well-corseted contours; another a tall,
thin gentleman, whose rasping tones are heard in some distinctly
marital remarks addressed to the lady concerning the absurdity
of carrying hooped skirts and long petticoats into the woods ;
the third is a slender, graceful, girlish figure in a short water-
proof gown and a broad-leafed straw hat, with a bundle of shawls
strapped across her shoulders and a leather wallet in one hand.
She turns and glances in his direction while he is looking, and
her familiar voice floats upward to his attentive and astonished
ear.

" I'm afraid there's some one here, Wood. I see smoke and
smell meat roasting."

" That's nothing," drawls the guide, a fac-simile of his brother
up above, only a trifle taller, a trifle heavier, a trifle more like a
grizzly bear in his shambling, loose-jointed gait and the impres-
sion he gives of immense muscular strength. " There's lots of
room to pitch the tents, to say nothing of the shanties. Hullo !

1885.] KA THARINE. 545

Mought that be Lon Wood up yonder? Lend us a hand here
with the duffle."

" ' Duffle ' is vernacular for their traps," says Richard Norton
to his friend. " Come down and make yourself useful. I know
that party. There will be no occasion for running away on their
account."

He is down on the landing himself in another minute, his
friend following more leisurely and after a pause, with an air
half-reluctant, half-indifferent. There is a. rapid interchange of
greetings, the freemasonry of the wilderness making that of the
elders less stiff and formal than it would have been elsewhere,
while that of the two young people is unembarrassed gayety
itself.

" Kitty ! " Richard says when he turns to her again after these
are over, and offers to relieve her of her burdens, " if ever by
accident I find myself at the antipodes or wrecked on an iceberg
near the pole, I shall at once turn around and begin to look for
you."

" No," the girl answers, with a laugh and a shake of the head,
" take auntie's things, if you like. Mine are strapped too tight to
make it worth while; and as to my bag, it really does not incom-
mode me in the least. Uncle Horace's shoulders are stiff. He
took the oars at the last carry, so that we should be able to get
into camp here before nightfall, and he has been aching ever
since."

While Norton is possessing himself of Mrs. Warren's light
impedimenta his friend approaches and he presents him. Some
accident of the ascent brings the latter into line at Katharine's
side just as a projecting bramble, pushing out from the thick
underbrush, catches in her drapery and impedes her progress.
They have barely interchanged a word, or more than a passing
glance,. as yet, though each has heard the other's name with a
certain interest born of reminiscence ; but now, as he stoops to
free her from the tangled mass of greenery, their eyes meet full,
and for an instant rest each in each with a candid, unconscious
self-revelation from which both draw back with the quick cer-
tainty that something new and unexpected has befallen them.
Katharine's emotions have been rare thus far, and, though they
have comprised both joy and grief, they have always worn fa-
miliar, well-known faces. This one is wholly new, and she is
not given to self-analysis, although she broods much on other
things. No thought formulates itself at alT, but she feels that her
life has somehow broadened all at once, and that the present
VOL. XL. 35

546 KA THARINE. [Jan.,

is, and the future will be, something 1 entirely different from the
past.

Louis Giddings, too, to his immense surprise, has suddenly
felt the stroke of the enchanter's wand. Certain springs that
have been frozen or dried up within him overflow again with the
ripple and chime of youth, or, rather, new ones open and clearer
waters flood all his being. But he is a man and past his first
youth, taught by bitter experience, and given to observation of
others as well as to much self-depreciative introspection. What
had been written for a moment on her ingenuous face, as inno-
cent and unguarded in its first response as Eve's might have
been when Adam looked upon her in the garden, or as if they
were two disembodied spirits meeting in upper ether, has
graven itself on his mind and heart at once, and he keeps it
there, wholly without vanity ; with some sadness rather, and a
touch of quick remorse. But his tone is light as he finally tears
away the bramble with its clinging thorns, and then holds out
his hand for the wallet, which the girl resigns as naturally and
readily as she had just refused it to the friend of her child-
hood.

" This is an enchanted wood, Miss Danforth," he says ; " the
spirits of it are already putting out their arms to bar your
entrance."

" What a pity ! " she answers. " I hoped it was to keep me
in it."

In front of them Mrs. Warren is toiling up the path with
some difficulty and many sighs, unburdening her mind as she
does so to a listener who is certainly new, and whose sympathy,
therefore, though doubtless problematic, may for the moment be
taken for granted.

"We go to Saratoga usually," she says, punctuating her re-
marks with much audible respiration, " and Mr. Warren's sis-
ter Clarissa goes with us. But he has been coughing some
lately, and the doctor persuaded him that camping out would be
good for his lungs. There couldn't be a more foolish notion,
it seems to me. Sleeping out of doors in all sorts of weather,
tramping about and carrying loads like a mule, eating out ot tin
plates, and putting maple sugar and no milk in your coffee !
How that is to do any good, unless it is good to get your bones
full of rheumatism, I can't make out. Clarissa wouldn't go, and
that's where she showed her wisdom. So we asked my niece,
for I couldn't bear "the thought of being all alone here with
guides and that sort of people. She is as wild as a hawk about

1885.] KA THARINE. 5 47

it, though what pleasure she finds in it is more than I can see.
Thank goodness ! we start for home to-morrow."

" So soon ? " answers Norton, with a touch of genuine regret
in his voice. " Why not 'stay here a day or two longer, when the
weather is so perfect? As you say, solitude is too good a thing
to be shared entirely with guides, though ours is an amusing
fellow in his way."

" Did 1 say anything about solitude? I couldn't have meant
it, I am sure, for I never could bear to be alone. As to the
guides, I suppose that depends on what you find amusing. Ours
has kept Mr. Warren and my niece laughing. I must say I
couldn't half the time make out what it was about. It sounded
to me much like the ' crackling of thorns under a pot.' "

" That is severe," says Richard, with a laugh. But Mrs.
Warren has apparently forgotten the other end of her quotation
and is plainly innocent of all malice in its application.

" We brought good appetites with us," Mr. Warren remarks
as dinner is ending. " It took us a day and a half to come
through the Eight Lakes to the Roquette, and we could not
have done it even in that time if we had stopped to make a fire
and do any cooking on the road to-day. I don't pretend to be
an old Camper from Campersville myself, though I have slept
in a tent once or twice before, but my wife is just no woodsman
at all."

" When I was a young 'un," says the elder of the two guides,
depositing a final platter of steaming choke-dogs on the board,
" my mother thought nothin' of rowin' down from here to First
Lake, to spend the day with her sister, and comin' back before
night. When she crossed the carries she strapped me on her
back, took the boat on her head, and slipped the stockin' she was
knittin' in her pocket."

" How can you tell such shocking stories, Wood ? " remon-
strates Mrs. Warren. " Why, there are eight of those lakes and
seven carries, some of them over a mile long ! "

"Fact, mum," retorts the guide solemnly. "That makes six-
teen lakes and fourteen carries between night and morning, don't
it ? She was one o* them strong women they tell about in Scrip-
ter. Her name warn't Sapphiry, neither."

Propped against a convenient stump after dinner, an air-
pillow intervening between it and her own well-cushioned shoul-
ders, Mrs. Warren loses her sense of general discomfort in one
of present ease. Flaming pine-knots light up the faces of the
group against the dark wall of forest. The dogs bark in their

548 KATHARINE. [Jan.,

sleep, pursuing a phantom deer through dreamland. Katharine
is close beside her aunt, the most silent member of a circle
where all are gay and given to ready laughter.

"What ails you, child?" Mrs. Warren asks. "You have
kept us all alive until now, and here you are as still as a mouse
just when the rest are beginning to enjoy things a little. If. we
had had such a lively party as this, Mr. Giddings," turning to
the young man as he approaches from the other side of the fire,
" I don't say that 1 might not have liked camping pretty well
myself. But how you and Mr. Norton can manage to content
yourselves all alone here with rough fellows like these guides
I can't imagine."

" They are not such a bad lot when you come to know them/'
he answers. " I'm not sure I haven't enjoyed Lon almost as
much as I have the lake and the mountains. When he puts on
ithat air of preternatural gravity he is assuming now the odds
are that he has something to say worth hearing. Have you
^noticed him, Miss Danforth ? "

"Yes," she answers, with a smile. "He has been on the
watch for an interval of silence for the last five minutes. There !
he has it now. He has been waiting for uncle to finish talking
with Mr. Norton."

" I dunno, squire," the guide begins, shifting his pipe from
his mouth to his hand and spitting into the middle of the fire,
" whether I ever told ye about the man I met up in Maine when
I was lumberin' thar the man that whistled? No? He had a
curus little whistle, like the wheep o' one of these 'ere chippin'-
birds used to spit it, like, out o' the corner of his mouth 'tween
every two or three words. He was a sort o' solemcolly-lookin'
customer, too didn't use to speak much 'cept when he was
spoken to. I was sittin' in the tavern all alone one night when
he came in an' planked himself down in a chair in a corner, an'
tilted it back an* sat with his head agin the wall, sayin' nothin'
to nobody. Bimeby I asked him to take a drink. ' Well, stran-
ger,' says he, * I \wheep\ don't care if I do.' So we liquored up,
an' then I says, ' My friend,' says I, ' what makes you whistle
so when you talk?' 'Didn't you ever [wheep] hear 'bout that?'
says he. ' You see, when I was [wheep] young I used to [wheep]
stutter. Well, I [wheep] fell in love with a girl named [wheep}
Sarah, an* I asked her if she'd [wheep] marry me, and she said
[wheep'}, " No ! " I was mighty [wheep] cut up 'bout it, an' I
\wheep\ asked her [wheep] brother if he knew why she [wheep~]
wouldn't, an' he said, " 'Cause you [wheep] stutter so." Well, I

I885-J KATHARINE. 549

couldn't \wheep\ stay 'round any longer where [wheep] she was,
so I went {wheep} West into the {wheep'} Rockies. I met an old
[wheep] Indian chief thar one {wheep} day, an' he says to me,
" Friend " [wheep], says he, " if you'll gimme a [wheep~\ bottle o'
[wheep'] whiskey I'll cure you o' [wheep] stutterin'." So I give
it to him, an' he {wheep'} says, " Every time you want to [wheep}
stutter you [wheep'] whistle." So I tried it an' I got [wheep]
cured. Then I started back {wheep} home. Sarah was thar
still an' she wasn't [wheep'] married. So I paddled [wheep'] right
up to her [wheep] house, an' I says [wheep'], *' Sarah, I don't [wheep']
stutter no more. Will you [wheep] have me now?" An' she
says [wheep], " No ! I think your new {wheep'} habit is a {wheep'}
thunderin' sight worse than the [wheep'] other one."

In the general burst of laughter that greets the end of this
story, told with an inimitable droll gravity, the positions of the
group change somewhat, and Richard Norton finds himself for
the first time by Katharine's side.

" I haven't yet got over my astonishment at seeing you here,"
he says. " We called or rather I called at your mother's house
one clay last week, but she was out : gone to class, Hannah said.
The old girl looks as young as ever, don't she? She told me
you were out in the country wjth your uncle and aunt, so I gave
up all hope of seeing you, not supposing you would return so
soon. My vacation is rather limited. I want to stay here as
long as possible, and I must give them a day or two at home
afterward. We shall see you then, perhaps? "

" I hope so. We go home to-morrow. I doubt whether
your surprise at seeing me is as great as my own at finding my-
self here. The whole thing was arranged so suddenly, at least
my part of it and auntie's. And then it is all so strange and so
charming."

" You find it so ? "

" Don't you?"

" The fishing and the hunting, yes. But you do neither, I
suppose. No more does Giddings, who also finds the life agree-
able. I approve of it on sanitary grounds, and I gratify an old
passion of my boyhood, when I longed in vain to be a hunter
with a rifle and leggings, like Leatherstocking. But it has a
thousand discomforts. What pleases you about it? "

"Oh! everything. Our camp last night, for instance, was
pitched so that it faced a pile of mountains rising from the op-
posite shore much as they lie over yonder, only that the sun
came up behind them. I woke very early, while the sky was all

550 KATHARINE. [Jan.,

gray and cool, and the mists rising off the lake and curling into
the hollows of the hills, and burning up afterward when the
dawn came. I lay still and looked until all was in a rosy flush,
and could hardly persuade myself that I was not yet dreaming."

" One's dreams are seldom quite so pleasant. Must you
really go back to-morrow ? "

" I really must, not having any option in the matter. We
coaxed Aunt Anne through from Fourth Lake to-day on the
solemn promise that she should have only one more night to
spend in the woods. Besides, I am anxious about mother."

" She was quite well last Wednesday, Hannah said."

"Yes, but still she needs and misses me. She has grown old
very fast since last summer. The thought of her is the one
thing that interferes with my pleasure here, and the most aston-
ishing part of the whole affair is that she ever consented to what
seemed to her an utter absurdity in the way of an excursion."

" She took pity on me," says Aunt Anne, " knowing that I
was quite of her mind about it and unable to help myself. Kitty !
would you mind going into the tent and seeing in what manner
of shape Wood has disposed our pillows and blankets? You
can't trust him," she adds to Mr. Giddings, who has been sitting
on her other hand, " with anything but rowing, and carrying
loads, and cooking, and things of that sort. When it comes to a
question of real comfort you have to attend to it yourself."

The tent is on the other side of the clearing, opposite the
shanty which the friends have occupied and which Mr. Warren
will for this night share with them. As she leaves it Katharine
turns toward the water-side. The full moon is midway in the
sky, and the night is as bright almost as the day. The group
around the fire is breaking up, and as the good-nights are being
said Louis Giddings once more approaches her.

" And so your life in the wilderness comes to an end to-mor-
row," he says, after a word or two evoked by the scene before
them. " I have an old friend who must be living near you."

" Yes," with another unconscious self avowal Katharine an-
swers. " He married a cousin of mine this summer. I know
him very well."

" Ah ! Norton has been telling you about him ? "

" No," says Candor, suddenly self-conscious, and turning
back to Mrs. Warren with a blush that the moonlight only half-
veils. " I have heard my cousin speak of you herself."

It is late that night before Louis Giddings throws himself
down beside the others on their bed of fir-twigs. He paddles

1885.] KA THARINE. 5 5 1

about in the moonlight for a while, watching the drops of light
fall from the oar-blades as he lifts them, listening to the loons
calling through the silence, listening, too, to the voices of his
heart, his memory, and his conscience, as he has not often lis-
tened of late years.

" ' Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments," "

he muses half-inaudibly as he stands at last on the edge of the
clearing before turning in. He is not given to quotations, either
in public or in private, but this snatch from a favorite sonnet
matches just now with his mood.

"What eyes the child has!" his thoughts go on, although
this time they do not reach his lips. " If ever I saw a soul look
out from behind its prison, I saw it when I caught them first
below there. What gave my own the right to meet it? For
that it did meet it, and was recognized, I know as I know- that
I exist."

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. FRANK RECTOR, late junior of the firm of Crawford A
Rector, flourishing solicitors in the city of Montreal, but now
sole heir io the honors and emoluments arising from several
years of joint practice, was sitting alone in his private office in
St. Francis Xavier Street one morning about a week later than
the incidents just recorded. He was a middle-aged Englishman
of the florid type, with a high, aquiline nose, a pair of promi-
nent, blue, short-sighted eyes, smooth, round cheeks to which no
persuasion of the razor had ever been able to bring a beard, al-
though his upper lip boasted a rather straggling moustache, and
a general appearance of bonhomie and generosity which had a
curious way of wearing off on prolonged acquaintance, and was
said to be frequently belied by the nature of his business trans-
actions. The time was drawing toward noon, and he was be-
ginning to think of deferring further study of. the brief he was
preparing for an eminent Queen's Counsel until after breakfast.
He had married a French lady not long before, and adopted
from her the fashion of calling by that name the second of the
three substantial meals which agreeably varied the monotony
of his days. He was still occupied with his papers, however,
when his clerk entered, bearing a visiting-card, and announcing
that the owner of it was awaiting an audience in the outer office.

552 KA THA RINE. [Jan.,

" Show him in," he said, rising himself and meeting his visitor
near the door with an effusive air of cordiality which met with a
rather cool response.

" This is a curious coincidence, Mr. Giddings," he went on,
.bringing his greetings to a close, and offering a chair near the
desk, at which he immediately resumed his own. " I was con-
sidering only yesterday what steps I could take to learn your
whereabouts."

" Mine ? " returned the other, with a look in which unmis-
takable surprise was blended with another less easily read, which
might be disappointment or irritation, but was certainly not
pleasure. " The}' are easily ascertained. I don't live incognito.
Could not Crawford have told you?"

" Crawford is in China. Didn't you observe that the firm
name was changed ? "

" I noticed it, of course, which is why I inquired for you.
What is he doing in China ? Is there any special occasion for
forensic eloquence among the mandarins just now ? "

" Oh ! Crawford is one of those people who are always falling
on their feet. A poor devil like me can plod on all his days at
his desk, but he had a judgeship in Shanghai offered him, with
a fat salary and opportunities for making money outside of his
profession, without any great risk, they say, of soiling his
ermine. He hesitated, too, afoout accepting it. I only wish
such a piece of luck had fallen to my share."

"When did he go?"

" Early last spring. Can I be of any service to you in his
absence ? "

" I don't know," Giddings answered with a slight hesitation,
as> if balancing something in his mind. " You had some business
with me yourself, I inferred from what you said just now.
What interest had you in learning my address?"

" To be sure ; I was forgetting it. Absolutely none for my
own part, but one of the fathers from the college round in^
Bleury Street was in fyere yesterday to inquire for it. He had
been advised that you were a friend of Crawford's, and thought
he might find here some means of communicating with you. I
drink confusion to the Jesuits every 5th of November," he went
on with a laugh, " but on all other days of the year I have no
manner of unwillingness to do any good turn that lies in my
power for them. This one didn't, and so I told him, much to
his regret apparently. Mais, vous void / "

Louis Giddings looked completely mystified.

1885.] KA THARINE.

" He gave you no hint as to what he wanted of me ? "

"Not the slightest. They keep their own counsel, those
priests. You are npt going, surely?" he went on, seeing the
other preparing to move. "Come home to breakfast with me.
Our acquaintance was of the slightest, but I knew you pretty
well through Crawford. You haven't told me, by the way,
whether I can do anything for you."

" I think not unless, perhaps, you could tell me where to
find the Lavvtons. There is no trace of them in their old
quarters."

"You might possibly find the old lady in the cemetery at
Joliette, but hardly in presentable condition. She moved out of
town some five or six years ago shortly after her daughter went
away and died and was buried there later on. We had her
affairs on hand have them still, for that matter, though they
are nearly settled now. The daughter is dead, too."

" Also at Joliette ? "

"No. I don't know where. I had nothing to do with the
matter personally. It was Crawford's affair, not mine. He had
always been on friendly terms with them." ,

" But you are certain she is dead ? "

" Well, live people don't usually allow all their inheritance to
be handed over to charitable institutions, and that is what has
been done with hers a better disposition, I don't doubt, than
what she would have made herself, if all the stories told about
her were true."

" 1 wasn't aware she had any. They were poor enough six
years ago."

"Yes, but they belonged to a good family on the other side.
A very considerable estate fell in to the old lady about six.
months after Miss Lawton's disappearance. When she came to
make her will she told Crawford that the girl had been dead
for several years. The news surprised him, i know, because
he made some further inquiries and was in no great hurry at
first about bringing things to a close. I believe he was quite
satisfied about it in the end, however. The hospitals and
orphan asylums have been the gainers, and McGill College got
a very fair slice into the bargain. Here ! we shall be late^for
dtffcnncr. Come up and see my wife and baby, and give us the
latest news from the States."

But this hospitable invitation was refused, under the plea of
an engagement and the need of leaving the city before nightfall.

" You had better go around to Bleury Street, then," Mr.

5 54 K* THARINE. [Jan.,

.x"

Rector ad-vised as they parted. " Or shall I send Pere Baptist
your address and let him communicate with you by letter? "

"Oh ! I will go and interview him. Whom must. I ask for,
by the way ? "

" The superior, probably. Show him your strawberry-mark
and tell him you are the long-sought-for. Do you know any of
the fathers?"

" Never met one in my life."

" Take my card, then here, I'll make an introduction of it.
I don't know them very well myself, but it is always safe to look
up a Jesuit who has put himself out to make inquiries for you.
They don't usually trouble themselves for nothing. Sorry you
won't go home with me. Au revoir ! "

The priest who presented himself in the parlor of St. Mary's
when Mr. Giddings called there an hour or two later in the
afternoon was a person who gained at first glance the latter's
instinctive liking, and that in spite of a well-marked predisposi-
tion against all men of his cloth. He appeared to be about mid-
way between fifty and sixty, his thick gray hair, surmounted by
the black beretta, giving him an appearance of age greater than
would have been inferred from his robust, upright figure and
smooth, unwrinkled face. Beneath a good but not noticeable
forehead shone a pair of mild, sympathetic, kindly eyes, their
irises curiously mottled with infinitesimal light specks which just
saved them from being black, though they could lay claim to no
other color. The face was strongly modelled, the lower part
giving unmistakable tokens of that firmness of will to be looked
for in one who had learned both to obey and to command in the
school of St. Ignatius. That was a reflection, however, which
certainly did not occur to his present visitor as he arose to greet
him. Louis Giddings was a man open to impressions and sen-
sitive to an unusual degree to the slight tokens which betray
character. His morning's encounter with the lawyer, not as
satisfactory as he had hoped in other respects, had been, on
purely personal grounds, thoroughly the reverse of pleasant.

" I detest the fellow's fishy eyes and his wet hands," he had
said to himself'as he left him. " Eat with him ? I would as lief
take dinner in an aquarium."

Father Baptist spoke very fair English, beginning conversa-
tion in that tongue, but afterward relapsing into his own when
he found it understood.

" Properly speaking, though," he said, " I have no language
nowadays that I can claim to speak well. I am a French Swiss

1885.] KA THARINE. 555

by birth ; but I came over to the United States so long ago that
for years my French fell into disuse. I never studied English
picked it up as I could among my flock, Irish and German for
the most part. I have taught very little in our colleges, having
been set most often to more active work, so that my Latin is
also somewhat rusty; and now since I have been here in Mon-
treal I find my French is considered to lack some academic
graces. We shall perhaps be able to understand each other by
resorting to a medley of the three."

Mr. Giddings laughed. He found himself thoroughly at his
ease, not a little to his surprise. For an hour or more he had
been looking forward to this meeting with an irritation which
seemed now to have been absurdly misplaced. Even his curi-
osity as to what it could possibly signify had yielded to a pre-
sent feeling of well-being which for the moment did not look be-
yond itself.

" We are not likely to deal in abstractions, I suppose," he
said.

" With them, perhaps," the priest answered, with another
laugh. "You will pardon me if I question you a little, but I
have a matter of identity to settle first of all. Mr. Rector's
card and your own are proof enough that you are the person
I was seeking yesterday, but there is something back of that.
Do you know anything of your mother's family? "

" Not much beyond her name. She married my father when
very young. I was born here ; perhaps it may interest you to
know that 1 was baptized here also in this very church of
yours, in fact, I have heard my mother say. But she removed to
Massachusetts shortly after with my father. She seldom spoke
of her own people."

" And her name ? "

" Marie Gascoigne."

" That is sufficient. I have had occasion already to examine
the baptismal register concerning the affair, and your account
tallies with it sufficiently to make further questions needless.
There is nothing more to say except that a certain sum of
money has been forwarded to me with instructions to pay it
over to your mother's son. In what shape will you take it ? "

" You come to the point with admirable brevity," Giddings
answered, holding out his open palm. " If it isn't too burden-
some I might take it in small change and drop it in your poor-
box."

" It won't overload you with this world's goods, I hope,"

55 6 KATHARINE. [Jan.,

Father Baptist retorted, with a smile. " But you will hardly
enrich our poor-box with it, either. It is ten thousand pounds."

" You are not in earnest ? "

" Absolutely. The money is deposited at present to my
order in the Bank of Montreal. I have no further concern with
it but that of transferring it to yours."

" I beg your pardon, but it seems to me that you have one
other duty in the matter that of explaining to me what all this
means. My mother had no expectations that I knew of, and
after my father's death she lived, as she died, in a condition
not far removed from poverty. Where does this money come
from ? Is it a case of restitution ? "

"So much I can answer," said the priest, "but nothing fur-
ther. It was sent to me by one of ours in England, as a debt of
justice from one of his penitents. Such things are not abso-
lutely uncommon, as you probably may know. When they do
occur it is quite safe, I think, to accept them without further
question. Men are not apt to despoil themselves in that manner
except under the prompting of an imperative sense of duty.
You look dissatisfied."

" I am too old to enter fairyland," the other answered, his
face clearing up, however, as he spoke, '' but the fact is that I
seem to have been under the spell for a week or so. Fairy gold,
if I recollect right, has a way of disappearing when the sun
shines on it."

" I don't warrant this from disappearing if you give it time
enough, but for the present I think you will find it available for
ordinary uses. If you are pressed for time I can go to the bank
with you at once. If not, perhaps you will like to visit the
church and go over our house and grounds with me. The
young men are away at present, but classes reopen next week."

" You dismiss an important matter very lightly," said Gid-
dings, relapsing into perplexed gravity. " I cannot accept in
this manner a gift as unexpected ancl as unreasonable as if it had
dropped out of the skies. I must, for the sake of my own self-
respect, insist upon some further explanation."

The priest shrugged his shoulders and spread out his two
hands in front of him with a significant gesture, as if casting off
all further responsibility.

" I can show you, if you like," he said, " the letter which
conveyed my instructions, but if you can learn from it more
than I have told you your perspicacity is greater than my own.
I was to search out the son of Marie Gascoigne, born in Mont-

1885.] KATHARINE. 557

real of Louis Gascoigne and Marie Lesceur, and married thirty
years ago to John Giddings. You haven't told me, by the way,
if that was your father's name ? "

Giddings nodded, and the priest went on :
" In case this son could not be found, were dead, without
heirs, or refused for any reason to accept it, the money is to be
applied to charitable bequests, the chief of which regards our
house here in Montreal. You see," he ended, laughing, " I have
no further interest in persuading you. If your scruples are in-
surmountable I can assure you that we shall prove less delicate.
Take to-night to think it over, if you like," he added, seeing that
the other's hesitation was not yet dispelled : " la nuit porte conseil,
vous savez. Meanwhile come into the church with me. The
high altar is not finished yet, for funds come in but slowly.
Your money, if you leave it in my hands, will be likely to go a
long way towards its completion. Your devotion will not, per-
haps, carry you so far? "

They were passing through the long corridor leading to the
recreation-grounds as he spoke, leaving them afterwards for the
church, which they entered by the door of the sacristy.

"My devotion is a minus quantity, I fear," Giddings an-
swered, as lightly as the other had spoken, "and on other
grounds I don't know that I should care to assist in church-
building. Your order has a rather shaky reputation as to taste
in architecture, J have been told. I don't pretend to be a judge
myself."

He took off his hat as they entered, and while the priest left
him, to kneel for a moment before the altar, he stood near the
chancel, looking about him with an air of not specially engross-
ing interest. The church was large and light, with immense
pillars, rather bare-looking in the alternoon glow, which fell on
empty pews and illuminated just at his right hand a picture
representing a youth receiving the Holy Communion from the
hands of an angel. Here and there in the side aisles small knots
of women were seated near the confessionals, and two or three
were -kneeling near the altar. One old man, poverty-stricken
and in tatters, was making the Stations of the Cross a fact
which Giddings observed, but for which he knew no name. A
certain look on the man's face as he prayed before the nearest
Station bore its own interpretation with it. He remarked on
it when, after making the round of the building, they again
emerged into the grounds. They had passed the man once or
twice while engaged in their examination, and each time he had

558 KA THA RitfE. [ Jan. ,

looked at him with an interest more personal than was awak-
ened by anything else which met his eyes.

" The old man looks as if he had found it," he said, with an
abruptness which to any one who knew him well would have
marked his instinctive sense that he would be understood with-
out need of further explanation. Father Baptist, who had been
observing him with the comprehension born of natural sympa-
thy, responded at once, going as directly to the point as Gid-
dings himself had done.

"Peace, you mean?"

" Perhaps repose, satisfaction, at all events. You will par-
don me if I suggest that money might be as profitably spent in
exchanging his rags for something more presentable as in add-
ing further to the decorations of your altar."

"Very well," answered the priest, smiling; "give him the
money, if you cannot decide to keep it for yourself. I warn you,
though, that it will probably amount to the same thing in the
end. He is our pensioner in the present, it is true, but he has
been our most generous benefactor in the past, and both condi-
tions were the result of the free election of his own will. You
look mystified, from which 1 conclude that in spite of your bap-
tism you are not of our faith."

" 1 am of my century," returned the other. " Faith of any
sort is an exotic nowadays, and certainly I was not reared in
yours."

" But your mother was a Catholic ? "

" Like myself by baptism. By early training also in her
case. But the plant, as 1 tell you, is exotic. You may cultivate it
in hot-houses with some success, as I am very willing to admit
on such evidence as I have seen here to-day. Hers got into the
open air and died there."

" Poor woman ! " the priest said, with a sigh which was
echoed by his listener. " She was not the happier on that
account, I fancy."

" As I recollect her in my childhood and up to the period of
my father's death, I should call her the happiest person I have
ever known. She had the true womanly faculty of merging
herself completely in what she loved. My father and I appa-
rently filled her existence to its limits. She was as gay as a bird
and as light-hearted."

" And afterwards? "

" What would you have? If you cut a man he bleeds. You
can't avoid the knife in any case. Some of us can pretend we

1885.] THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. 559

have not felt it some of us, no doubt, have such tough hides
that no stroke goes very deep. Truth is the best plaster in any
case."

"Drop metaphor," said the priest, "and tell me, did she
never regret her lost belief? "

" I don't say that she did not. I tell you only that her eyes
had been opened to see both good and evil, and she was not
able to resume her bandage. Frankly speaking, I regretted it
for her sake."

" Ah ! yes," said Father Baptist, with another sigh. " When
our eyes are opened in that manner the angel and the,flaming
sword are close at hand to drive us out of Paradise."

They had reached the front entrance as he spoke, and as they
parted he said, with a return to his lighter manner, " To-morrow
at eleven I shall be ready for your visit. Your hesitation be-
comes you," he added, smiling, " but I will have your check
all ready for you."

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT.*

IT would be but sheer platitude to indulge in reflections on
the importance of the sense of seeing. We all admit, in the ab-
stract at least, that our eyes perform most important work in the
economy of life ; that seeing is the most valuable of all the senses,
and that by its means we acquire most knowledge. Neverthe-
less it is true that no members of the human body receive less
intelligent care than those which are exercised in this important
faculty.

The casual observer in the street or at any public or private
entertainment cannot but notice the very large number of per-
sons of all ages wearing spectacles or eye-glasses. The greater
number thus equipped must undoubtedly need the help, while
the few silly ones thus encumbered for style are more than out-
numbered by those who, from a variety of causes, need glasses
but do not wear them.

Those whose memory extends back twenty years or more
will recall how few, relatively speaking, wore glasses then.

* Read before the Medical Society, Yonkers, N. Y.

560 THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. [Jan.,

Those few were as a rule foreigners, or at least considered such.
This suggests a question : Why are so many now obliged to
wear spectacles or glasses, when formerly the number was so
few ? Has this great change taken place only in our midst, or
has it affected the whole civilized world ? I propose to show
that we are not so badly off at present as some of the older
nations, but that, at our present rate of progress, we shall equal
them in the near future.

We have all read how the wealthy class in China treat the
feet of their young females. When but mere infants the feet are
tightly Bandaged, a'nd this compression is kept up for years, until
the desired result is obtained small feet; so small that as a means
of locomotion they are to their possessors of little or no service.
The theory of education most favored in this country is a
Chinese shoe. As our bodies grow, so do our eyes, and we must
look for any changes that take place in eyesight to causes operat-
ing for good or evil on the eyes during their period of develop-
ment. It is the schools that are chiefly responsible for impaired
eyesight.

Education has been turned, in the United States, into a species
of Moloch, and every year a hecatomb of young victims are
sacrificed on its altars. In the eagerness to perfect education
tasks are multiplied for the pupils until the last straw is often
laid on the load, under which the unformed organization totters.
Cast-iron systems are devised in good faith, and all are expected
to toe the mark, large and small, the strong and the weak, the
precocious and the dullard.

There may be a certain grim comfort in the fact that many
of the older nations are worse off in this respect than we are.
Germany, for instance, stands forth prominent as an educated
nation and at the same time as a spectacled one. In no other
country is the percentage of persons wearing glasses so large,
and at the same time nowhere else has the subject of impaired
sight in schools received so much attention. Schools of all
grades, from those in the villages attended by peasant children
to the universities, have been thoroughly examined with regard
to the effect of study on the scholars' eyes. The following are
the results found : Peasant schools showed 99 per cent, of nor-
mal eyes and only i per cent, near-sight. This I per cent, gradu-
ally increases in the higher schools, where labor is proportionally
greater, until the universities are reache'd, where in some classes
only 20 per cent, normal eyes were found, and 80 per cent, of all
the pupils had near-sight.

1885.] THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. 561

The examinations in other European countries agree in the
main with the statistics given viz., a steady increase, from the
lowest to the highest classes, of near-sight.

In this country examinations have been made in several cities
of the school-children's eyes. The highest percentage of near-
sight viz., 50 percent. was found in some classes of the New
York College.

In 1874 I examined the eyes of the scholars attending two
negro schools over 500 pupils. Their ages ranged from five to
nineteen years. One of these schools showed 3! per cent, near-
sight, the other only 1} near-sight. The first school was a supe-
rior one as to teachers and requirements, and still only 3| per
cent, of impaired eyes was found ; the latter school did not rate
so high and was only attended by a local constituency, while the
former drew pupils from all over the city. From a report
which I published at the time I quote the following :

" The selection of colored scholars was not made without good rea-
sons. Heretofore nearly all the examinations have been made in Ger-
many, and, needless to remark, on whites. It is to most of us familiar, that
there is a very large percentage of myopia amongst the students in the
gymnasia and universities of Germany, the percentage being much greater
there than in the other countries of Europe. The Germans acquire myopia
by long years of study, having perhaps inherited a predisposition to it, or
inherited it already developed and increased it in attaining their manhood.
Our colored brethren as a rule never did enjoy a thorough system of edu-
cation. The present generation in New York may be said to enjoy as
thorough as the city affords, but their forefathers did not; neither have
they been raised to such pursuits as demand a very close application of the
eye, such as engraving, etc. Cceteris paribus, the negro's eye should ap-
proach nearest to a natural eye i.e., normal eye. The very best material
for examinations of this kind could be obtained in the Southern States,
where, until of late years, the negro was unjustly debarred the luxury of
spoiling his eyes i.e., a modern education.''

There exists a very general idea that the human eye ought to
stand any amount of work and not suffer any ill effects. Persons
with indifferent health are surprised that their eyes sympathize
with their bodily ailments. The gravity of near-sight is unfor-
tunately but little understood and appreciated.. A near-sighted
eye is a diseased eye. Near-sight is that condition when all
distant objects are indistinct, and clear sight confined to a few
feet at best, often but a few inches. Such an eyeball is too long.
The oerebro-posterior diameter is longer than normal. The
affected part of the eyeball is hidden in the orbit, and consists
in a thinning of the membranes that make up the posterior
VOL. XL. 36

562 THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. [Jan.,

walls of the ball. By means of the ophthalmoscope we are able
to see these changes. It is during the growing period of life
that the eye changes most, when the tissues are soft and pli-
able. Up to the twenty-fifth year a near-sighted eye gradually
becomes more short-sighted, even when used but moderately ;
that is the natural tendency. On the other hand, Avhen such an
eye is severely taxed a dangerously high degree of near-sight
is developed, and vision itself may be reduced to mere light-per-
ception. A near-sighted eye remains always so. All human
eyes undergo senile changes, and when the majority of persons
with normal eyes reach their forty-fifth year they are obliged
to resort to glasses in order to enable them to read with ease and
comfort. The near-sighted eye has likewise undergone senile
changes, and the object is not held quite so close to the eye as
formerly ; but to say such an eye had improved would be as fal-
lacious as to say that the persons taking to glasses in their forty-
fifth year had better sight than when younger. The changes
brought about by age on the eye are loss of transparency in the
mean and a hardening of the lens; rays of light entering such
an eye are not refracted to the same extent as in the youthful eye.

What is the proper age to admit children to school? The
legal age for the public schools varies somewhat in the different
States and Territories. Children are eligible for school in Con-
necticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Montana, Utah, and
Washington Territories, when only four years old. The remain-
ing States and Territories make five or six the age for admittance.
It is safe to say that a child of four years of age should not be
admitted to an ordinary school. Five years should be the
youngest age for general admittance, and only then if the child
physically represents its years. Six is young enough to begin
study. (In this connection we do not include the schools ar-
ranged on the Kindergarten system.)

School-teachers are not dry-nurses, and it was never in-
tended that schools should be converted into nurseries. The
majority of teachers are in accord that children who have not
been sent to school too young, when they do enter are very
quickly on a par mentally with those who entered in advance,
with the very great advantage of a better physique. School-
attendance up to the eighth year should not exceed three
hours daily, with a "recess" of five to ten minutes at least
every hour better every half-hour gradually increasing the
hours for school attendance in accordance with the age of the
pupils. In some quarters all recesses are done away with,

THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. 563

ind wonderful results are given as to greater application of
scholars on account of this step no interruption to steady work,
etc. No doubt these enthusiasts would increase the school-
hours, were they not thus punishing themselves. Thus his-
tory repeats itself. We have all read how the silly fellow in
/Esop's fable attempted to have his horse live without eating,
and as he thought his experiment was in a fair way to succeed
the horse died. Such will be the experience of those who now
advocate the doing away with all recesses during school-hours.
In this connection I will quote Dr. L. B. Tuckerman, of Cleve-
land, Ohio, who was requested to make an examination of all the
pupils who withdrew from the Cleveland High-School, leaving
their term unfinished. He reported as follows :

"Whole number entered in Central High-School during term beginning
September, 1880, and ending June, 1881 : boys, 316; girls, 440 total, 756;
withdrawn during the year: boys, 56; girls, 108. Fifty per cent, of the
boys were in poorer health than when they entered ; thirty-three per cent,
were compelled to leave on account of impaired health ; while seventy-five
per cent, of the girls who withdrew were obliged to do so on account of
poor health."

These figures speak for themselves, and comment is unneces-
sary. Were similar examinations made in other large cities 1
doubt very much if any better results would be found.

Much depends on the construction and the appointments of
schools. It is the exception to find a school-building con-
structed according to our present knowledge of sanitary mat-
ters. The ventilation, heating, and light are too often made
subservient to a poor economy. In country districts it is an
easy matter to secure a location with proper soil, elevation,,
drainage, and light. In a large city the problem is a much
more difficult one. The erection of very large apartment-houses
close to schools sadly interferes with both light and ventilation.

Heating and ventilation are problems that are anything but
easy of solution. If our climate were mild and equable, not pre-
senting the contrast of an arctic winter and a tropical summer,
the task would not be so difficult. School-houses are ventilated
by the opening of doors and windows a crude and unsatisfac-
tory means. The heating is by stoves or portable furnaces, and
occasionally steam. Imagine a school, full to overcrowding,
heated by furnace or stoves, and the weather too severe to per-
mit either doors or windows open, the atmosphere rilled, per-
haps, with coal-gas and the expired air from the children's
lungs, and this continuously breathed for hours I This is far

564 THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. [Jan.,

from being an overdrawn picture of the condition existing in
many of our schools, at least during the winter season.

Schools should be so constructed that there are no dark
rooms for class purposes. The light should come from the left
of each pupil when seated at the desk. In this way no shadow
is cast by hand or arm in reading or writing. Each pupil should
have separate desk and seat, the seats and desk corresponding
to the varying heights of the pupils. Desks should have tops
inclined at least twenty degrees. When the angle is too great
objects slide off. There should exist no space between a seat
and the corresponding desk ; a small overlapping of the vertical
line is even better. The scats should be so constructed that the
back of each scholar be sustained in an easy and comfortable
manner. With suitable seats and desks the bending forward of
the head is avoided. This bending forward congests the head
and eyes, and at the same time interferes with the free play of
heart and lungs.

The type used in text-books should be of good size and never
small. In the books published fifty years ago the print was of
good, large size ; and at the present day there should be no diffi-
culty in obtaining from publishers the proper type, owing to the
-competition in school-books.

Artificial light is a source of great danger to the eyes. When
possible there should be very little work done outside of the
school. Preparing and reciting lessons properly belongs to the
school house. When, however, as under existing circumstances,
work must be done at home, the two illuminating agents in
general use are gas and petroleum. The former gives the best
result when consumed in an Argand burner. A single fish-tail
jet is not enough light to read or study by. The light should
be at a convenient distance, not to exceed eighteen inches, from
table or desk. The lights from a chandelier are too high to be
used for any length of time with safety to eyesight. Petroleum
prepared for illuminating purposes and with a flash-test of 115
Fahr. affords an excellent light when burned in a good form of
lamp. The light is clear and steady, and not too hot to be un-
pleasant. A poor quality of oil is explosive, and untrimmed
wicks speak for themselves. The greatest objection to the use
of petroleum is the trouble in keeping the lamps in proper con-
dition, but as a light to read or study by I consider it much
superior to gas.

We must all admit that education is very necessary both for
the individual welfare and the continuance of good government.

1885.] THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL-LIFE ON EYESIGHT. 565

Taking- for granted that all must be educated, what should
constitute a common-school education? Here we enter upon
debatable ground. Is the standard of the common schools
too high or too low ? Are the proper methods pursued ? In
other words, are our children physically and mentally pre-
pared in the best manner to care and provide for themselves in
the future and exercise the prerogatives of good citizenship? To
this I answer, No. Too much is expected from the scholar. The
tasks are more than the immature mind can grasp. The sub-
jects studied are too numerous and varied, so that but little is
thoroughly mastered and retained. So far as mental and phy-
sical training is concerned, the result is not fortunate. Were the
youthful body and mind proof against overwork this system
might be indefinitely continued.

To my mind the remedy would be not to attempt so much.
Teach in our schools that which is most useful for the scholar
and which will enable him to gain a livelihood when employed at
some useful occupation. The "three R's " thoroughly taught,
besides history and geography, especially of our own country,
is as much as the state should provide. I would sum up by
offering the following suggestions as helps to the preservation
of eyesight and general health in schools :

1. No child under six years of age to be admitted to a school.

2. All studies, when possible, to be made in school ; the less
work at home .the better.

3. Frequent recesses.

4. Teach elementary subjects and have pupils thoroughly
master them ; no cramming or rote-teaching in other words,
teach the pupils how to study; for the most complete system
consists in nothing more.

5. Medical inspection of schools should be insisted upon
with regard to overcrowding, ventilation, light, heating, plumb-
ing, and school furniture.

6. Instruct parents as to the dangers of near-sight; that such
eyes are diseased ; that virtually the near-sighted person is
heavily handicapped in life's race ; that many avocations are cut
off from such a person.

7. Remembering that at school the vision is the most exer-
cised of the senses, see that the pupils' eyes are tested at the
beginning and end of each term. The testing can easily be done
by the teachers when furnished with cards of test-type published
for that purpose.

8. Advise parents not to send their children back to school

566 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

too soon when convalescent from any of the exacerbescent or
severe types of illness, as the eyes are especially weak at that
time.

9. If reforms in school-life can be brought about it will be
mainly through the efforts of physicians. School commissioners
plead economy and lack of funds, and at the same time insist on
a general lifting-up of the school curriculum, spurring up the
teachers to do a little more cramming, so that their respective
pupils may excel in their competitive examinations.

10. "The aim of a true education is a sound mind in a sound
body mens sana in corpore sano. " This golden rule should be
constantly kept before the eyes of teachers.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE OF ST. CHARLES BORROMEO, CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF MILAN.
From the Italian of J. P. Giussiano. With Preface by Cardinal Manning.
London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society
Co. 1884. 2 vols. i2mo.

"Every saint," writes Cardinal Manning, " represents some ray of the
mind or life or work of our divine Master. St. Charles represents the
Good Shepherd; and this it is which has given to St Charles a place of
special authority. He is the saint of the Holy See, the source of all pasto-
ral authority ; of the episcopate, which is the pastoral body ; of the priest-
hood, which shares in all the world the pastoral care of the episcopate.
The name of St. Charles, therefore, reigns in the hearts of bishops and
priests."

The Life of St. Charles which has now been published in an English
translation, under the direction of the Oblate Fathers in the diocese of
Westminster, was written by a priest belonging to the household of the
saint, and it is a minute and accurate biography of St. Charles during the
period of his episcopate, preceded by a more succinct history of his ear-
lier life. There is a striking and correct portrait of the great cardinal at
the beginning of the first volume. Cardinal Manning's preface contains a
graphic portraiture of the period, the character, and the special mission of
St. Charles, with an application to the present time, on that line of thought
which he so frequently and so forcibly is wont to pursue : viz., the neces-
sity of perfection in the priesthood as the great means of effecting spiritual
renovation and progress in the church and in human society at large.

THE MIRACULOUS EPISODES OF LOURDES. By Henri Lasserre. Continua-
tion and second volume of Our Lady of Lourdes. Translated from the
seventeenth edition, with the express permission of the author, by M. E.
Martin. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co. 1884.

M. Lasserre's first book has had an immense circulation. It has been

1885.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. $6?

translated into English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Flemish,
Dutch, Breton, Polish, Hungarian, Slavonic, Chinese, and Tamoul. There
are two English translations, one by Father Sisk, published in England,
which we suppose is a good one ; another, published in New York, of very
inferior quality. A third, prior in time to the other two, exists in the earlier
volumes of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and is in every respect excellent. One-
half of it was made by the late gifted and lamented Father Rosecrans, C.S.P.,
a son of the celebrated General Rosecrans, and the rest by an equally com-
petent translator. But unfortunately this translation was never published
in book form.

The history of the apparition at Lourdes and of many miracles which
have been wrought there, or by the use of water brought from the mira-
culous fountain of the Grotto of Massabiella, is one which challenges and
defies scrutiny and criticism. Nothing has been brought forward against
it except gratuitous denials, supercilious sneers, and silent abstention
from recognition of, and attempts to account reasonably for, the well-au-
thenticated and attested facts in the case.

This second volume by M. Lasserre supplements and completes the
history of his own miraculous cure, which led to his becoming the historian
of Lourdes. He now informs us that the Protestant friend at whose instance
he determined to apply the water of Lourdes to his eyes was M. de Frey-
cinet, late prime minister of the French Republic ; that the young Polish
Count Wladimir with whom he had formed such an intimate friendship
was the late Cardinal Czacki, sometime papal nuncio at Paris ; and that M.
Dupont, of Tours, had a share in obtaining for him from God the signal
grace with which he was favored.

The histories of four other miraculous and remarkable cures are given,
and every one of the narratives is fortified with authentic and indisputable
attestations. Among these are certificates of several medical gentlemen.
The several accounts are minutely, graphically, and charmingly written.
The book is one to be read with great pleasure and profit, and we most
earnestly and cordially recommend it to all our readers, wishing that it
may have as wide a circulation and do as much good as its predecessor.

ANNUS SANCTUS : Hymns of the Church for the Ecclesiastical Year.
Selected and arranged by Orby Shipley, M.A. Vol. I. London : Burns
& Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

This collection comprises translations from the Sacred Offices with
modern original and other hymns and some earlier versions of ecclesiasti-
cal hymns. Some of these are anonymous. The names of the rest of the
contributors, alphabetically arranged, are as follows : Prior Aylward, Rev.
G. F. L. Bampfield, J. R. Beste, W. K. Blount, Miss Bowles, Alfred Lord
Braye, Matthew Bridges, Miss Caddell, Robert Campbell, Father Caswall,
Father Collins, Dryden, J. E. Earle, Faber, Lady G. Fullerton, R. S. Hawker,
Provost Husenbeth, Charles Kent, Mrs. F. G. Lee, H. W. Lloyd, D. Flor-
ence MacCarthy, R. Monteith, Miss Mulholkind, Newman, Oakeley, Justice
O'Hagan, Rev. H. N. Oxenham, Lady C. Petre, Ambrose L. Phillipps, Prof.
Potter. Adelaide Procter, Father Rawes, Father Russell. S.J., Father H. I.
D. Ryder, Rev. F. Stanfield, Aubrey de Vere, Rev. A. D. Wackerbarth, Dr.
Wallace, R. Dalton Williams, W. F. Wingfield.

"568 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

The enumeration of these names is more than an entire series of eulo-
gistic sentences. We are pleased to see that only the compositions of
Catholics have been admitted into the collection. Some of them are now
printed for the first time, and others have been rescued from oblivion by
being now reprinted. Besides the translations there are also many original
hymns. The preface is full of interesting information. The editor has had
two main objects in the publication of this volume which is to be followed
by another one devotional, the other literary. He has done his work
well, and a great many of the hymns he has published possess a high
degree of poetical merit, besides other titles, belonging more or less to all
of them, to preservation and the appreciation of Catholics.

GASTON DE SEGUR : A Biography condensed from the French Memoir of
the Marquis de Segur. By Father J. M. A. Partridge. London : Burns
& Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884. (Quar-
terly Series, vol. 47.)

Monseigneur De Segur is one of the most admirable and fascinating char-
acters in the group of illustrious French Catholics who adorn this century.
The condensed memoir now published in English is a welcome addition to
our biographical literature, and, like the other volumes of the excellent
Quarterly Series edited by the indefatigable Father Coleridge, is both de-
lightful and instructive reading.

MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR : Suited for the Practice called
"Quarter of an Hour's Solitude." Edited by Rev. R. Baxter, S.J. New
York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benzigers. 1884.

Archbishop Gibbons calls this a " previous book." It is a very old one,
having been written in Latin by an English religious in 1639, translated in
1669, and very much prized and made use of by English Catholics during the
age of persecution. Father Baxter's edition was published in the United
States in 1822, and the actual editor of this new and handsome edition,
which has been carefully revised, and as it now stands is free from the
peculiarities of the old English manner, is Father Neale, S.J., of St. Inigoes,
Maryland. There is no need of saying more than that it is an excellent
book for purposes of meditation and spiritual reading.

A PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM FOR BEGINNERS. By St. George Mivart,
F. R.S., etc. Second edition. London: Burns & Gates; New .York:
The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1884.

The Philosophical Catechism is small in size, but it is a chef-d"ceitvre. A
tiny German girl once said: " Ich bin zwar klein, aber Ich habe den vollen
Verstand." This little book has enough in it to give full understanding of
most essential things to those who can exhaust its contents. It is the
most difficult of all tasks to compose a perfect catechism. A catechism of
philosophy is something new and'perhaps more difficult of execution than
a catechism of religion. We have heard an able philosopher express
the opinion that a short, simple, easy philosophy for beginners cannot be
written. We can fancy that Father Harper would look on a catechism
with scorn. Mr. Mivart has done the task, and ab actu ad posse valet con-
sequentia. The writer of this notice has taught philosophy for several
years. He acknowledges cheerfully that he has learned something from
this catechism, and may venture to advise all, even teachers, not to disdain

1885.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 5 69

to study it and learn from it, though it is a book /or beginners. Particu-
larly we earnestly recommend it to all teachers who have classes of the
older pupils in schools, either of boys or of girls, who are studying the ele-
ments of philosophy, for their own use, and also for such of their scholars
as can profit by it. We recommend all others in general to make an act of
humility and rank themselves as among the "beginners" of Mr. Mivart's
catechetical school.

The Catechism is worth far more than some text-books of philosophy,
and in some respects is better than the best of them. This is true espe-
cially in this sense, that its doctrine is more sound than that of a great
many philosophical treatises, and that it puts the truths taught in the
best text-books more intelligibly before the modern English mind. One
marked success achieved by the author is that he has shown most briefly
but most lucidly that the denial of his principles knocks the bottom out of
all physical science. No one can understand the excellence and utility of
this little book without reading it attentively. It could be expanded into
a larger volume which would just meet a great want which np one has
hitherto supplied.

MONTCALM AND WOLF. By Francis Parkman. Vol. I. Boston : Little,
Brown & Co. 1884.

This important and valuable book is one of Mr. Parkman's series of his-
torical works entitled " France and England in America." The present work
is worthy of the series to which belong The Pioneers of France in the New
World, The Jesuits in North America^ La Salle and the Discovery of the Great
West, The Old Regime in Canada, and Count Frontenac and New France. In
this list of works the period between 1700 and 1748 has- been passed over;
it is no doubt Mr. Parkman's intention to fill this hiatus with another book,
and this will complete the continuous history of the French occupation in
America and its extinction.

The labor bestowed upon the present work, and the amount of new
materials secured for its preparation, have been immense. The public
offices in England and France have been ransacked for materials, and the
archives examined with unfaltering industry, and a vast amount of new
and heretofore unpublished matter has been used. The author has also
visited in person the scenes of the great drama he portrays, and verified
on the spot all local and topographical descriptions. This first volume
fully sustains Mr. Parkman's reputation for learning, research, and general
impartiality. The style is in his best vein, and we feel that little we could
say can enhance the appreciation of his countrymen for Mr. Parkman's
tabors and their splendid results. We will look for the second volume
with interest.

We notice that in this volume the unfortunate Acadians play a con-
spicuous part. Mr. Parkman is not without sympathy for their sufferings,
but says much towards justifying the course of England as rendered neces-
sary by the heartless and selfish policy ot the government ot Louis XV.
He thinks that modern writers of New England have done injustice to
their ancestors. " New England humanitarianism," he writes, " melting
into sentimentality at a tale of woe, has been unjust to its own." One
would scarcely agree with this view after reading the recent book of Mr.

570 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

Philip H. Smith, who reproduces the original documents and tells the story
of the Acadians from them. That religious bigotry and hatred of the
Catholic Church was the leading motive of the Puritans of New Eng-
land in wiping out Acadia and the Acadians cannot fairly be denied. Mr.
Parkman may show the necessity for English political thoroughness in
meeting the counter policy of France, but it cannot be denied that hu-
manity was outraged in the wrongs inflicted on the Acadians, nor that the
Puritans were the willing instruments of the disgraceful tragedy. It is
on such topics as this that Mr. Parkman's impartiality seems to fail him
and the cause of humanity.

MARYLAND : THE HISTORY OF A PALATINATE. By William Hand Brown.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; New York: u East Seventeenth
Street. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1884.

It is only five years since Mr. Scharf's elaborate History of Maryland \n
three large volumes appeared. All that is historical in Mr. Brown's new
book is also to be found in that of Mr. Scharf ; and yet we regard the for-
mer as an acceptable contribution to the historical literature of the country.
It is one of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s "Commonwealth Series," and it pre-
sents the essential and leading historical facts in a small compass and at a
comparatively trifling cost. For the general reader it is ample; for the
exact student of the history of Maryland it is too general and discursive.
On disputed questions it scarcely goes sufficiently into detail. And yet on
the much-mooted point as to the religious faith of a majority of the pas-
sengers in the Ark and Dove in 1633' a question much discussed in Mr.
Bancroft's last edition of his History of the United States and in the pages of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD Mr. Brown expresses the probable opinion that
most of the twenty "gentlemen adventurers" were Catholics, and most of
the laborers and servants Protestants. At the same time, in a foot-note at
page 22, he adverts to the fact that Watkins, the London ".searcher," only
found one hundred and twenty-eight emigrants to take the oath of alle-
giance, and he suggests that if these were all the Protestants, and the rest,
who embarked at the Isle of Wight, were all Catholics, in that case it is
" probable " that the Catholics constituted a majority of the entire body of
emigrants. It was shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD'S reviews of Mr. Ban-
croft's books that as the whole company in the Ark and Dove amounted to
about three hundred, and possibly three hundred and twenty, even if we
grant that all who took the oath from Watkins were Protestants, the Ca-
tholics were certainly in the majority ; but it was further shown that it was
not by any means certain that the one hundred and twenty-eight to whom
Watkins administered the oath of allegiance were Protestants, because
there was nothing in the oath itself which a Catholic might not have sub-
mitted to under such circumstances. Mr. Brown dismisses the question as
uncertain.

The style of the work is pleasant and easy, being rather the style of an
essayist than of an historian. Indeed, Mr. Brown frequently verges on
levity, though he generally manages to be caustic and piquant. He gives
an interesting narrative of the lives and characters of the proprietaries, and,
in fact, the book is merely the history of the Palatinate of the Lords Balti-
more. This noble family first appears prominent in the illustrious and

1885.1 NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. 5 7 1

honorable persons of George and Cecilius Calvert, and continues its line
of succession without reproach or dishonor until it unfortunately ends
with the disgraceful apostasy and immoral life and selfish administration of
Frederick, the sixth and last Lord Baltimore, and of his illegitimate son,
Henry Harford, whom he made his testamentary heir.

Mr. Brown gives full praise and honor to the Catholic founders of
Maryland for "The Freedom of Worship Bill " which they enacted, and for
the religious liberty which from the beginning formed the established cus-
tom and rule of practice of the colony. He shows, too, in a most striking
manner, how Catholics in the very home which they made free to all be-
came the victims of religious persecution at the hands of the very sects
which they had in their day of power permitted to enter the colony and
enjoy freedom of conscience. It is a credit to the Protestants of Mary-
land, ever since the Revolution of 1776, that they have sympathized with
the persecuted Catholics of the colonial period and condemned the in-
tolerance of their own Protestant ancestors. Mr. Brown is an honorable
exponent of this sentiment.

THE CENTENARY OF CATHOLICITY IN KENTUCKY. By Hon. Ben. J. Webb.
Louisville: C. A. Rogers. 1884. (For sale by the Catholic Publication
Society Co.)

The value of a book like this, which consists of biographical and his-
torical details belonging to local history, consists in the minuteness and
accuracy of its narrative. It is evident that Mr. Webb's quite bulky
volume does not lack minuteness and thoroughness, and we suppose that
it is accurate. Much of it has a general importance and interest, but for
Kentuckians, especially those who are Catholics, and for the relatives and
friends of the numerous persons mentioned, and all those who are ac-
quainted with the places and scenes described, all its details must possess
a vivid interest. There are several striking portraits of distinguished
clergymen and laymen, particularly one of M. Henri de Gallon, a French
emigrant of 1806, from a crayon drawing by the celebrated John James
Audubon.

LIFE OF ST. MARGARET, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. By Turgot, Bishop of St.
Andrews. Translated from the Latin by William Forbes-Leith, S.J.
Edinburgh : William Patterson. 1884.

The memoir of St. Margaret of Scotland by Bishop Turgot is one of the
most interesting pieces of personal and historical biography extant. No
more beautiful character ever sat upon a throne than Queen Margaret
she through whom the blood of the old Saxon dynasty was destined to
pass into the veins of the descendants of the Norman conqueror. " It was,"
says Mr. Freeman, the historian; " a good day for Malcolm and for Scotland
when Margaret was persuaded or constrained to exchange the easy self-
dedication of the cloister for the harder task of doing her duty in that state
of life to which it had pleased God to call her. Margaret became the
mirror of wives, mothers, and queens, and none ever more worthily earned
the honors of Saintship. Her gentle influence reformed whatever needed
to be reformed in her husband, and none labored more diligently for the
advance of temporal and spiritual enlightenment in her adopted country.
. . . There was indeed no need for Margaret to bring a new religion into

572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

Scotland, but she gave a new life to the religion which she found existing
there. She became the correspondent of Lanfranc, and her life was written
by the holy Prior and Bishop Turgot." It is this life by Bishop Turgot
which Father Forbes-Leith has translated from the Latin and issued in
the handsome volume before us.

Turgot's memoir of St. Margaret, as he says himself, is "especially
trustworthy, since (thanks to her great and familiar intercourse with me) I
am acquainted with the most part of her secrets." The narrative is per-
vaded by a placid air of truthfulness which there is no mistaking, and it
has borne every historical test to which it has been submitted. It ranges
over all the events of that beneficent reign in which Margaret had been
specially concerned. It gives a notable account of the state of the Scottish
church and kingdom at the time of the Norman conquest, and it admittedly
supplies " the first really authentic history of Scotland after the notices
in Adamnan and Baeda, The Pictish Chronicle, and the Book of Deer."

Father Forbes- Leith's translation is done with scholarship and literary
skill, while as a piece of book-making his volume is a gem. It is bound in
white boards, printed on toned, rough-edged paper, and accompanied by
several illustrations reproduced by an expensive process.

HISTORICAL RESEARCHES IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA, PRINCIPALLY
CATHOLIC. By Rev. A. A. Lambing, A.M. Oct., 1884. Pittsburgh :
Myers, Shinkle & Co.

This handsomely-published quarterly magazine of Pennsylvania history
is in every respect most creditable to Father Lambing, and deserving of
support and encouragement.

PHILIPS' HISTORICAL READERS. England : Four Books. Boston : Boston
School Supply Co. 1884.

The aim of this series of readers, according to the publishers, is to
" present clearly and accurately all that children can well understand of
the events which led to the founding and making of the English nation."
The publishers' portion of the work is certainly well done. The illus-
trations are the best we have seen accompanying so cheap a series, and
have the merit of being really an educative help to the text. For the
rest the books are written in a fresh and simple literary style which
suits itself to the child's comprehension without being " written down
to " it. The narrative honestly endeavors to be impartial, and in the
main succeeds, though it does not always escape untainted from the dis-
torted versions of important events with which English history abounds.
The author is evidently an ardent Anglophile without being an Anglo-
maniac, and he sometimes goes so far as to speak of "our" policy (as
In Zululand, for instance) when he means the British policy. He refers to
the people of Ireland as " that unfortunate people " who " unhappily " do
not receive English concessions in the proper spirit notably the conces-
sion of the Land Act of 1870, which, he says, gave " security of tenure and
moderate rents to the tenants, and may be said to have made them part
proprietors of the soil with their landlords." If the Land Act of 1870 did
all this the Irish indeed were wrong in being discontented ; but where, then,
was the necessity for the Land Act of 1881 ? In a note this act is casually

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 573

alluded to as an " amendment " of the act of 1870. It is not ; it is a sepa-
rate act of far wider scope and graver importance. In spite of such inac-
curacies as this the spirit of this historical series is commendable; and we
could wish to see a set of readers compiled for Catholic schools on a
similar plan.

AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN. A novel. By F. Marion Crawford. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884.

The admirers of Mr. Marion Crawford have reason to complain. They
said he was " producing too fast " when, a few months ago, he discharged a
fourth novel at them. What will they say now ? In that most entertaining
of all his books, his Autobiography, Anthony Trollope mentions the disgust
with which a firm of publishers told him of an author who " spawned " upon
them three novels a year. Mr. Crawford evidently has not the fear before
his eyes of having his literary fecundity thus characterized. Nor does he
seem to dread that his poor admirers may one day be brought to regard
him in the light of that most dreaded shade from the literary Hades, the
man who wants to read a manuscript to you. Mr. Crawford's friends ought
to warn him. The interesting young writer is in great danger.

His latest " novel," An American Politician, is a grave symptom. When
reviewing his Roman Singer we expressed high hopes for Mr. Crawford,
notwithstanding the discouraging evidences of a " fatal facility for pro-
duction." We never thought it would come to this. As to his previous
novels, it could be indulgently said that he at least wrote because he had
some screed of a story to tell. Now he has deliberately set himself to
write because he has to tell a story. Worse : he has laid himself open to
the charge of writing on the merest catch-penny principles. His " novel"
with the catching title, An American Politician, appears suspiciously in the
height of the excitement of the Presidential election. The nature of the
thing itself strengthens the worst suspicions. It is the poorest, tawdriest,
most shameless penny-a-lining, spun out to the requisite number of pages
without skill or care a book "knocked up " for the sole purpose of ex-
ploiting the sensation of the hour, just as publishers of a certain class get
out " lives" of Sarah Bernhardt when that actress is starring in the coun-
try a book for both the publishers and the author to be ashamed of. It
is not even an honest attempt to do the author's best hastily. . The inci-
dents, the dialogue, the love-making are eked out with the stock-pro-
perties of the " story "-factory. Even the "international episode," be-
cause it has had a recent vogue with Henry James and his genus, is re-
sorted to. The wretched thing is beneath contempt. Its perpetrator, if
he have any regard for his reputation, ought to bury it and all trace of it
out of sight like a crime.

But perhaps Mr. Crawford has already "produced" the best that is in
him. Perhaps he means An American Politician seriously. If so, that set-
tles it, and we beg his pardon if we have said anything disparaging of his
legitimate occupation.

MAURICE TYRONE ; or, The Fair Saxon. A novel. By Justin McCarthy,
M.P. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1884.

This is a handsomely bound American reprint of A Fair Saxon, which

5 74 Ate w PUB LIC A TIONS. [Jan.,

is undoubtedly the best of Mr. Justin McCarthy's novels. Mr. McCarthy
as a novelist has a pleasant, lucid manner, a considerable power of pictur-
esque description, and a skill in delineating characters that do not startle
by excessive originality or dramatic contrasts. Maurice Tyrone, however,
is a figure of unusual interest that of the descendant of Irish chieftains
carrying the hierarchical sentiment of his race into these degenerate days
and into the English Parliament, where he finds, disguised in the methods
of the nineteenth century, duties, prejudices, and temptations confronting
him essentially like what his forbears had to face in the days when political
questions were settled by hackbut and battle-axe. It is a figure romantic,
picturesque, and Irish ; qualities which appeal to all that is strongest in
the Irish romancer, and which so few of Mr. McCarthy's heroes or heroines
possess. The story through which Maurice Tyrone moves is strongly con-
ceived, and the minor characters are happily contrasted, and are drawn
with an excellent touch. The American widow and her son are truth-
ful sketches. The heroine is fresh, pure, and lovable ; and the novel is
pervaded all through with that healthy tone which gives Mr. McCarthy's
novels their highest claim to be admitted into the family circle.

THE MOWBRAYS AND HARRINGTONS : A Novel of American Life. By
Mary M. Meline, author of The Montarges Legacy, In Six Months,
Charteris, etc. Baltimore : The Baltimore Pub. Co., 174 West Balti-
more Street. 1884.

Miss Meline has written several readable stories, of which this is thus
far the latest. The literary style of the author is pure and good. She has
the knowledge acquired by personal experience of that class of society in
which her chief dramatis persona are supposed to move, and they are dis-
tinctly-outlined, individual characters. In this story two of our old friends,
the late Archbishop Purcell and the late Mrs. Peter, are portrayed in a
very recognizable manner. Perhaps some of the other characters also
are drawn from real life. The plot and the interest of the story mostly
turn upon the not infrequent occurrence of the intermarriage of Catholic
with Protestant, with the domestic and social sequences of conversions,
and other events not so desirable. There is a vein here which has been
frequently and assiduously worked since persons of the two religions
have come into closer contact than formerly, and it does not seem to be
yet exhausted. We wish the author ample success, and hope many of our
young readers will find pleasure in reading her story, as we did, although
not young.

JOHN BULL'S DAUGHTERS. By Max O'Rell. Translated by F. C. Valen-
tine. New York : Richard A. Saalfield.

John Bull and his Island, though displaying much ignorance and flip-
pancy, was well worth reading. The author wrote it because he had some-
thing to say. He put into it the outcome of many years of cogitation on the
features of English life which most strike a foreigner by their divergence
from the Continental standard. He gave John Bull in it not a few well-
deserved raps over the knuckles for failings which are pretty apparent to
all the world but John himself. But \njohn Bull and his Island the writer
who calls himself Max O'Rell said all he had to say on his subject, or at

1 885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 575

least all he had to say on it that was worth putting into print. His present
work is given to the world because the first was a great pecuniary success.
The publishers felt that the nom de plume Max O'Rell would sell any book,
good or bad, that might be issued in connection with it. They encouraged
the author to try his hand at making bricks without straw, and the result
is that/0^# Bull's Daughters is a failure. The title, to begin with, is mis-
leading. Through the greater part of the work Max O'Rell seems to be
merely trying to add a number of new chapters to the book that made his
fame. He appears to be conscious himself of deserting his proper theme,
and he makes frequent abrupt attempts to return to it. He has really very
little to say about John Bull's womankind, and that little is mostly libellous.
Smart Max O'Rell is, but it is not hard to be smart at the expense of truth.
And worse than the falsities of the book (which may, after all, be due to im-
perfect vision) are the flagrant indecency which marks some portions of it
and the mockery of holy things in which the author elsewhere seeks the
elements of piquancy. The translator has been obliged to alter some pas-
sages to make them printable in America. The American publisher would
have been better advised if he had altogether excised a couple of chapters
which are distinctly immoral, and left the readers of the French edition
the monopoly of the section in which the Salvation Army are intro-
duced into heaven.

THE THREE PROPHETS: Chinese Gordon, Mohammed-Ahmed (El Mahdi),
Arabi Pasha. By Colonel C. Chaille Long. New York : D. Appleton
& Co. i2tno, paper, 236 pp.

Colonel Long was Gordon's chief-of-staff in 1874, and was in Alexandria
during the massacres and after the bombardment. His knowledge of
Egyptian affairs is extensive. In the progress of events he sees the occult
policy of Great Britain. The three prophets, according to him, have been
the automata with which she has sought to conceal her purpose to annex
Egypt and the Soudan and thus found an African India. When the author
writes as an eye-witness his narrative is interesting, and the book, although
disjointed, is full of facts. His theory, however, seems to be a product of
a bold imagination. Evidently he believes in four prophets, Gordon, the
Mahdi, Arabi, and Colonel Longi the last the greatest of them all.

CATHOLIC CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN UNBELIEF. By the Rt. Rev. J. D.
Ricards, D.D., Bishop of Retimo and V. A. of the Eastern Vicariate of
the Cape Colony. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Benzigers.
1884.

It is very curious, and significant of the progress of events, to receive a
book from South Africa, accompanied by several critical notices of the
South-African Press, extracted from no less than eight newspapers. It is
evident from these notices that Bishop Ricards is highly esteemed and
that his volume has been well received at Cape Colony. He is an Irish-
man, and has been for thirty-five years a laborious missionary. His argu-
ment is plain, straightforward, logically and clearly expressed, and well
adapted to do the good which the author has intended to those who will
read it carefully.

576 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan., 1885.

THE HUMAN BODY AND ITS HEALTH : A text-book for schools, having
special reference to the effects of stimulants and narcotics on the human
system. By William Thayer Smith, M.D. New York and Chicago :
Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co. 1884.

The value of a'n intelligent general knowledge of the principles of
physiology and the laws of hygiene as a portion of a good education is be-
coming more widely appreciated. Several text-books dealing with this
branch have already appeared. The above-named is one of these little
books, and it seems to fulfil its purpose well. The author says in his pre-
face :

" I have tried to give to the student a definite impression, in outline, of the structure and
functions of the human body. To this end I have tried to omit all statements that would con-
fuse the picture by overloading it, and all statements that could not be understood by those
who will be its most numerous readers. I have not told them, for example, that the reaction
of the saliva is alkaline, and that of the gastric juice acid, because for many of them that state-
ment would have no meaning. I have not mentioned the names of many of the muscles, be-
cause it is difficult and unnecessary to remember them. The laws of hygiene are given in con-
nection with the facts of anatomy and physiology from which they are derived. Learned in this
way, they will remain in the mind as guiding principles, and not simply as the dicta of au-
thority."

The author has the proper qualifications for his task : he is associate
professor of anatomy and physiology in Dartmouth Medical Co-llege. A
special feature of the book is the demonstration of the injurious effects of
stimulants and narcotics on the human system ; and next to the methods
of religion we do not know a better way of making intelligent temperance
recruits than the diffusion of the knowledge thus conveyed.

THE TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE. By F. Druzbicki, S.J. (Quarterly Series,
vol. 48.) London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publi-
cation Society Co. 1884.

This is a small treatise by a distinguished Polish Jesuit of the seven-
teenth century, containing rules and instructions for the general and par-
ticular examination of the conscience. It was written for the use of reli-
gious, and will be specially useful to that class of Christians, but it is
recommended by Father Coleridge as also a work of general utility.
/

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION CONSIDERED IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE HIGHER
EDUCATION OF PRIESTS. A Discourse delivered by the Rt. Rev. J. L.
Spalding, D.D., Bishop of Peoria, at the Cathedral, Baltimore, Sunday,
November 16, 1884. Baltimore : J. Murphy & Co. 1884.

This eloquent discourse relates to a topic of great importance and in-
terest. We trust that practical and energetic measures are about to be
taken to carry into effect a projected work which is so earnestly recom-
mended by Bishop Spalding. We should like to see put upon paper by
one or more competent hands a distinct and detailed conspectus of the
courses of study which ought to be followed in a theological college of
higher studies, as well as of desirable improvements in the studies of semi-
naries, colleges, and preparatory schools.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XL. FEBRUARY, 1885. No. 239.

THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND.*

THE question of national education in England, as in other
countries, is one that is becoming every day of more and more
vital importance. The necessity of education as a means of im-
proving both the present and future condition of the masses has
long been recognized by practical politicians of all shades of
opinion ; while the utter inability of the poorer class of parents
to provide for the efficient instruction of their offspring has ren-
dered it imperative that that education of which they would other-
wise be deprived should be supplied at the expense of the state.
This theory is but just, and, taken in the abstract, is simple
enough. But the issues involved in imparting this education
are surrounded by innumerable and apparently insurmountable
difficulties. The consideration of some of these difficulties,
which are engrossing the attention of all serious politicians, is
the object of this article.

The first decisive step in the direction of state education was
taken, as is universally known, in the year 1870, when Mr. W. E.

* The lines of explanation and defence of the "school question" in Great Britain are
nearly identical, if not the same, as in the United States, though the circumstances of the two
countries are very different. England, led by a few despotic and infidel agents, is departing
from denominational education and favoring the exclusive secular system which now mostly
reigns here. Let us hope that the religious sense of our people will soon see the baneful influ-
ence exerted by the exclusive secular education of our so-called public schools, and favor the
other. This would be favoring religious liberty, equal rights, and fair play, and would be more in
harmony with the spirit of Christian civilization and the genius of our republican institutions.
There is much in the zeal and self-sacrifice of Catholics in England, in their struggle for reli-
gious liberty, which might serve us as an example. EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD.

5/8 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

Forster, on the part of the Liberal government, which was then
in power, introduced the now historical Education Act. This
measure, which naturally gave rise to a lengthy, though by no
means exhaustive, discussion, having passed through its various
stages in both Houses of Parliament, became law on August 9,
1870. Its more sanguine and optimist supporters saw, or ima-
gined that they saw, in it the final and complete solution of all
difficulties, and therefore hailed its advent with no little enthu-
siasm.

The more thoughtful and far-seeing critics of the measure,
however, while recognizing its undoubted good qualities and the
unmistakable demand there was for legislation on the subject,
were forced to acknowledge that there were many and vital ques-
tions with which it utterly failed to cope. An experience of
fourteen years has proved this view to have been a sound one ;
for. so far from being a fait accompli, the education question in
England is still harassing the very centre of the social system
and is demanding the immediate attention of Parliament.

The act of 1870 was, necessarily, an experimental measure.
It could hardly have been expected that a question of such vast
social and political importance, affecting, as it did, every class and
section in the community, could possibly be decided off-hand by
a single act of Parliament. Such an expectation would have
been both futile and unreasonable. A government, in attempting
to decide the difficult and knotty question of state education,
undoubtedly assumes for itself a grave responsibility. Its la-
bors are big with the fate of future generations. Its legislation,
if just, may be productive of much good ; but if unjust, unneces-
sary, or indiscreet, it may be the cause of immense and incal-
culable harm. Now, we do not in the least pretend to assert
that the Education Act of 1870 was unnecessary. On the con-
trary, it was most necessary and was imperatively demanded.
Nor do we hold that it was wholly unjust. In many respects it
was, we admit, a good and reasonable measure ; but a thing that
is intrinsically good may be rendered evil in its results if carried
to an undue excess. And we contend that the educational sys-
tem in England is, in some points, being carried to an excess which
is altogether unnecessary and may prove in the highest degree
prejudicial to the interests of society ; while in other respects
which are of far greater and deeper importance the system is
actually suffered to languish and stagnate. We refer, in the first
place, to the lavish expenditure of public money by the School
Board authorities and to the excessive over-pressure exercised in

1885.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 579

many of the schools ; while, in the second place (and this subject
is of such infinite consequence that it reduces the other to com-
parative insignificance), \ve refer to the momentous and all-en-
grossing question of religion. With the last question only we ir-
tend now to deal.

In referring to the subject of religion we have sounded the
key-note (or what should be the key-note) of every civilized sys-
tem of education. The supremacy of religion, and the necessity
of its influence as the groundwork of all secular instruction, has
been a recognized truth since the earliest days of Christianity ;
and this doctrine (which is but the doctrine of common sense)
was promulgated and this system rigidly enforced all through
those times of enlightenment which, in the present days of arro-
gant agnosticism and overbearing pedantry, have been paradoxi-
cally designated " the dark ages." The system that was practised
in those ages of darkness, and even up to a recent date in this
era of enlightenment, is still supported and approved of by all
who regard religion with any degree of respect. But Liberal-
ism, which is fast degenerating into Radicalism, sees no necessity
for the bond of union. It acknowledges the necessity for educa-
tion as the best means of ameliorating the temporal condition of
the present and future generations, but it sees absolutely no
necessity whatever for religious instruction ; and, therefore, the
link of connection has been severed and religion and education
have been divorced. The baneful results that will be brought

about by this insane disunion are but too painfully evident to all
who have the interests of morality at heart. It is, therefore, with
persistent and unswerving energy that the religious population
of England are striving to avert what, in the existing state of the
law, appears to be inevitable. And the Catholic body, headed by
Cardinal Manning (who has done more, perhaps, than any man
living to further the cause of religious instruction), are in the fore-
most phalanx of the army of attack.

The Education Act of 1870 was brought forward to meet a
want the existence of which no one, we believe, is prepared to
deny. But, whether it met that want or not (and we do not in-
tend now to argue the point), it is a fact that the measure, if it
did not actually create, certainly increased and aggravated, an-
other want of a far more pressing and urgent nature, which now
demands to be supplied. Previous to the act in question the
education of the country that is, of course, the education of the
poorer classes of the population was derived entirely from those
voluntary schools which were from time to time established by

5 So THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

the various religious bodies in the country, and whose mainte-
nance depended solely upon the subscriptions of the members of
such bodies. And in the schools thus carried on the dogmas of
Christianity were instilled into the minds of the children together
with the ordinary branches of education. There were, of course,
numerous small private institutions (such as, for instance, the
dame schools) started by the proprietors, partly, it may be, in
furtherance of the ends of philanthropy, though chiefly as a
means of subsistence ; but in all of these, however meagre may
have been the amount of learning imparted, the homely truths of
religion were never neglected or forgotten. The system was an
insufficient one, certainly ; but, such as it was, it was based upon
a stable foundation. It familiarized children from their earliest
years with religious doctrines, and thus formed the groundwork
of their moral characters. At one time, no doubt, this system
may have been sufficient, but long before the year 1870 it had
become quite inadequate and utterly incompetent to meet the
pressing demands of the times. The wide increase of the popu-
lation and the rapid progress of the age called for a more ex-
tensive and far more comprehensive system of education. The
duty of providing instruction for those who were unable to pay
for it themselves had been left for far too long a time to the un-
assisted hands of charity. The voluntary schools, though at the
best only struggling and hampered institutions, nevertheless pro-
vided instruction for considerably over a million of the children
of the country. Yet the scope of their labors was but small com-
pared with the vastness of the population. Indeed, by far the
greater portion of the children were beyond the reach of the vol-
untary schools. Thus it will be seen that legislation on the sub-
ject of education, which was not provided until 1870, had been
urgently demanded long before that year.

It cannot, then, for a moment be questioned, even, we imagine,
by the agnostics of the present day, that the voluntary schools
(putting aside the good they have done in the cause of religion,
and regarding the matter from a purely secular point of view)
have been of inestimable service to the country at large. But
for them education, even of the most rudimentary and superficial
character, would have been almost entirely withheld from the
lower classes of the community; and thus the intellectual pro-
gress of the masses would have been hopelessly retarded. Indeed,
Mr. Forster himself, in introducing the Education Act, bore tes-
timony to the good service done by the voluntary schools.

"While alluding," he said, "to voluntary zeal I must be allowed to state

1 88$.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 581

that I think no one could occupy my office without being fully aware of
what the country owes to the managers of the schools at present in receipt
of government grants. Both before and during my tenure of that office I
have had many opportunities of seeing those gentlemen at work, par-
ticularly ministers of religion of all denominations, though perhaps it has
been my lot to see more of the clergy of the Church of England than of
others. I have seen them at their work and tried to help them occasion-
ally." I know the sacrifices they have made, and not for a moment do I
believe it possible that any one who considers this question will disregard
what they have already done or will wish to do without their aid in the
future."

Remembering, then, the benefits that' these voluntary schools
had bestowed upon the country in general at a time when it was
denied all other assistance, and bearing also in mind Mr. Forster's
words, it was surely not unreasonable to expect that, pursuant of
the dictates of common justice, not to mention any natural senti-
ments of gratitude, in whatever legislation might be proposed on
the subject the interests of the voluntary schools would be
jealously cared for, and the claims of those who had hitherto been
the sole instructors of the poor would at least receive every con-
sideration. But no. Experience is a hard school, certainly, and
in it must we learn how to measure man's sense of gratitude or
justice. So far from what we have suggested being the case, so
far from the professions of Mr. Forster being carried into effect,
the voluntary schools are now placed in a far more difficult
position than they were previous to the passing of the act.
They are laboring under the severest and most unjust oppres-
sion. Instead of being assisted by the legislation of 1870 they
are, as a consequence of that legislation, threatened with ultimate
and total extinction ; and it is only by the unabating zeal of the
members of the various religious bodies in the country and the
self-denial of religiously-disposed individuals that the voluntary
schools still manage to main-tain a struggling existence.

The difficulties that the government had to encounter in
framing the act of 1870 were certainty not few. And we are
fully convinced that they entered upon those difficulties with the
best possible intentions, and whatever evils have resulted from
their measure (and we are guilty of no exaggeration when \ve
say that they are many) are due not so much to a want of sin-
cerity on the part of the government as to mistaken motives and
an utter absence of foresight. Education, irrespective of creed,
had to be provided for the whole of the poorer class of the com-
munity, who were as yet beyond the reach of the existing system.
The chief difficulty, therefore, that presented itself to the framers

582 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

of the act was the question of religious instruction. They could
not establish a system of national education under which children
would be instructed in the doctrines of religion in a form that
would not be in harmony with the views of the parents, or would
be, perhaps, positively distasteful to them. Such a step would
have been greeted with public disapproval as a direct violation
of the much-boasted principles of civil and religious liberty.
Nor, on the other hand, could they possibly provide separate
religious instruction for the children belonging to each of the
various sects attending their schools. Both courses were equally
objectionable, and, if adopted, would have raised a strong feeling
in the country. What, then, did the government do? There
was yet one other way out of the dilemma, and it is certainly
strange that it did not present itself to the flexible mind of Mr.
Gladstone, who seldom fails to see three courses open. The ad-
vocates of religious education would naturally have been the first
to object to any proposition for establishing a system in which
one form of religious teaching would have been enforced indis-
criminately upon all children alike. They were equally alive
to the impossibility of providing in the state schools separate
religious instruction for the children of every denomination.
This, they knew, would be impossible and impracticable, even
though it were needed. But was it needed ? The whole aim,
or at least the professed aim, of the act of 1870 was to complete
the system already in existence, or, as Mr. Forster put it, " to fill
up gaps." Why, then, should there be any difficulty about reli-
gious instruction ? Surely the duty of the government was clear
enough ? They could carry out their own theories, if they liked ;
they could establish the school-board system and preclude from
it religious instruction of any kind whatsoever ; but while form-
ing a purely secular system of education they should at the same
time have provided for the religious convictions of the people by
treating the state schools and those belonging to the various re-
ligious denominations with a perfect and unbending equality.
They would thus have given a rigid observance to the principle
of religious liberty, while at the same time they would have pre-
served intact the Christianity of England. This was the third
course that was open to the government, and the course which
they ought in justice to have pursued. Nevertheless the idea
did not present itself to the cabinet' of 1870, or, if it did, was
wholly and unaccountably disregarded. Feeling, or professing
to feel, keenly the difficulties of their position in regard to reli-
gious instruction, and believing themselves to be hampered and

1885.3 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 583

hemmed in all round, while in reality they turned their back on
the only conscientious mode of exit and escape, the government
adopted a neutral course which placed religious education in
England in a scarcely less degraded position than it now holds in
France. In France religion is openly assailed by the govern-
ment ; in England it is treated with a contemptuous indifference
and is regarded as a thing of only secondary importance. Reli-
gious instruction is entirely excluded from its national schools.
It is true that the Bible is read in many institutions, but anything
in the shape of dogmatic explanation is strictly prohibited, so
that children are left to put their own construction upon the doc-
trines it unfolds. The very fact that allowing the Bible to be
read is a concession made subsequent to the passing of the act
only serves to prove that the English people are in favor of reli-
gious instruction. Religious teaching, then, being prohibited in
school, the duty of providing it is thrown entirely upon the
parents, who, by reason of their occupations, or perhaps from an
indifference inspired by the evil example of the state, neglect to
fulfil it. Another cause also that renders the teaching of reli-
gious knowledge after school-hours almost impossible is that,
having been shut up in the school room for the greater part of
the day, the children are naturally eager, on being released, to
devote what little leisure they have to their well-earned though
scanty amusements. In most of the schools, too, home lessons
are set, and in this way the already feeble chance of imparting
religious knowledge after school is hopelessly diminished.

Thus the majority of the children educated. at the board
schools grow up in comparative ignorance of the truths of reli-
gion, or, if they manage to learn anything of its doctrines, they
learn also, by force of example, to treat them with indifference
if not with contempt. We cannot believe that the originators oi
the act of 1870 had any idea that the present deplorable state of
things would be the natural outcome of their measure. Indeed,
Mr. Forster, in his speech introducing the scheme, betrayed a
commendable anxiety respecting the question of religion. But
there is a wide and striking difference between that speech of
Mr. Forster and the legislation that has grown out of the bill it
introduced. " We must take care," said the member for Brad-
ford in 1870, " not to destroy in building up not to destroy the
existing system in introducing a new one." " Our object," he
declared, " is to complete the present voluntary system, to fill up
gaps, sparing the public money when it can be done without,
procuring as much as we can the assistance of parents, and wel-

584 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

coming as much as we rightly can the co-operation and aid of
those benevolent men who desire to assist their neighbors."
How many of these fair promises have been fulfilled ? The ques-
tion is a 'Simple one to ask, but it is a difficult one to answer.
For the government measure, so far from assisting, has cast a
thousand obstacles in the way to impede the progress of the
voluntary schools. If by the phrase " complete the voluntary
system " Mr. Forster meant to imply that the government in-
tended to " finish " it, or, in other words, to bring it to an end,
then we must own that they have certainly done their utmost to
achieve success ; and if their endeavors in this instance have been
baffled and frustrated, we may truly say (and it is, perhaps, the
only thing in connection with the bill of which the same may be
said) that the failure is due to no fault of theirs.

One. passage in particular in Mr. Forster's speech was most
ingeniously constructed, and doubtless had the effect of silencing
the scruples of many honorable members. It ran thus :

"I confess that, on further examination of the question, we did not
think it right as the House will perceive from the provisions I have
already explained to insist on the School Board assisting the present
schools. We give them, however, power to do so if they please. They
have a certain educational destitution to supply. They may do it either by
setting up their own public elementary schools or by assisting the present
public elementary schools ; those schools, I need not remind the House,
being efficient up to a certain standard of secular efficiency and having
the Conscience Clause, as I have described. They may either provide
schools themselves or assist the present schools, or they may do both.
But there is this condition, that if they do go on the principle of assisting
they must assist all schools on equal terms."

Were we not already convinced of the sincerity of Mr. Fors-
ter we should at once set this passage down as a shrewd and
subtle artifice, a discreet and deceptive stroke of political leger-
demain. As it is, we can only wonder at the hopeless want of
forethought and the apparent ignorance of the merest rudiments
of worldly knowledge betrayed by Mr. Forster and his col-
leagues. To place the voluntary schools at the mercy of a cor-
porate body of men whose chief aim is naturally to secure their
own interests, and to expect them, at the sacrifice of those inte-
rests, to vote assistance to the voluntary schools, speaks either
of a callous indifference to facts or an utter inexperience of men
and public bodies. The idea of placing the religious schools
under the protection of the School Board was, no doubt, good in
theory and answered the purpose of removing, to all appear-

1885.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 585

ance, from the shoulders of the government the responsibility of
neglecting the interests of that class which had hitherto been
the sole instruments for educating the poor. But the idea, good
in theory, was utterly incapable of being carried into effect, and
the power that was given to the School Board has proved in
every way damaging to the interests of the voluntary schools.
For instance, a religious school may have been established in a
certain district that was hitherto destitute of the means of edu-
cation. It may, perhaps, by reason of the unflagging energy
and perseverance of the religious body to which it belongs, have
so far prospered as to have collected sufficient funds to enable
it to erect a school-building. The new building, however, is
not large enough to meet the requirements of the place. The
School Board perceive the deficiency, and, instead of assisting
the voluntary school, take the matter into their own hands, and
relieved, by reason of the large sums of money at their disposal,
of all those irksome delays and anxieties which never fail to
harass the promoters of voluntary education, are able in a very
short time to build a large school and thus become, not the
assistants, but the rivals, and in the majority of. cases the suc-
cessful rivals, of the voluntary institutions.

There is yet one other passage from Mr. Forster's speech
which we cannot refrain from quoting here. It is pregnant
throughout with a painful significance. It sounds more like a
reproach hurled at the existing educational system than an argu
ment brought forward in support of the government measure.
This is what Mr. Fonster said :

'' We all know that ignorance is weakness, and that weakness, in this
hard-struggling world, generally brings misfortune often leads to vice.
Let us, then, each of us think of our own homes, of the villages in which
we have to live, of the towns in which it is our lot to be busy ; and do we
not know child after child, boys or girls, growing up to probable crime,
to still more probable misery, because badly taught or utterly untaught ?
Dare we, then, take on ourselves the responsibility of allowing this igno~
ranee, this weakness, to continue one year longer than we can help ? "

We have certainly no intention of dissenting from Mr. Fors-
ter. His words, if we give them their true and full application,
are undeniable; in fact, they very accurately sum up the case
of those who advocate religious education. But unfortunately
Mr. Forster did not give them their full application. They were
uttered by him in support of a system which was practically to
deprive children of the means of acquiring religious knowledge,
and therefore were intended to apply exclusively to the secular

586 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

branches of education. Regarded, then, in this light, his words
are entirely deprived of their force, or rather they are invested
with a new and far greater significance and become nothing less
than a sweeping condemnation of the policy they were intended
to uphold. There is, perhaps, a certain amount of truth in the
assertion that secular education alone would, in some cases,
prove an antidote to vice. In some cases, certainly, it might
have the effect, by adding power to the intellect, of lessening the
more animal faculties. But while such cases would doubtlessly
be few. there would be a far larger number in which education,
if unaccompanied by religion, would have precisely the opposite
effect. In bringing children up in comparative ignorance of
God we allow them to grow in the impression that worldly
prosperity and success are the great objects of life ; while by
suppressing religion we stifle conscience and shatter for ever
those nicely-balanced scales that tremble between right and
wrong. Secular education may and will lift the intellectual
status of the country, but secular education, unassisted by the
teachings of religion, cannot possibly improve or elevate the
moral condition of the people. On the contrary, a state can-
not but suffer from the enforced exclusion of religion from its
schools.

Thus the Education Act of 1870 has already been disastrous in
its effects upon the Christianity of England. Unconsciously and
unintentionally, it may be, the originators of that act have given
a considerable stimulus to those baneful materialistic and sec-
tarian principles which are now, unhappily, pervading every
section of society. What wonder if sentiments of scepticism
which were formerly professed only by a clique are now adopted
by a considerable portion of the population? What wonder,
either, th'at a man has only to come forward and publicly pro-
claim himself an atheist, and give utterance to the foulest blas-
phemies, to be hailed with enthusiasm by the populace ? We do
not at all pretend to say that the principles of atheism are the
outcome of the act of 1870, for such a statement, if it were no-
thing worse, would at least be a serious anachronism. Neither
do we consider the lamentable spread of those principles to be
entirely owing to the passing of that act. The whole tendency
of the age, as is well known, is directed towards agnosticism and
unbelief; and the first duty of all Christian states, therefore, is
to arrest the spread of those pernicious doctrines. Now, the
charge that we do bring against the act of 1870 is that it has not
only failed and refused to check but has actually stimulated and

1885.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 587

encouraged the evil tendency of the age. It has given, on the
one hand, every assistance to the cause of unbelief, while on the
other it has repressed and considerably diminished the counter-
acting influence of religion. The state is surfeiting the rising
generation with intellectual knowledge, while it allows it- to
languish in a most degrading ignorance concerning the very
alphabet of religion and morality. While strengthening the
minds of children with every kind of mental acquirement it
allows conscience to slumber or sink into weakness and decrepi-
tude. How do the words of Mr. Forster come home to him
and to his colleagues now ? " Dare we," he said in 1870, " take on
ourselves the responsibility of allowing this ignorance, this weak-
ness, to continue one year longer than we can help?"

We have spoken at some length of the educational system as
it exists in England under the board schools, and from what we
have said our readers may, perhaps, have been led to imagine
that English children are entirely deprived of religious instruc-
tion. Though this is, happily, a misconception, or at least an
exaggeration of the present state of things, it is practically true
so far as the government is concerned. There is still, however, a
large amount of that individual zeal among the religious bodies
in England upon which the people had formerly to depend for
their education, and to which we have already referred; and
those bodies, stimulated by threatened extinction, have strained
every nerve in order to extend their influence. So far, indeed,
have they succeeded in their aim, although laboring under the
severest injustice, that it is a fact, and an encouraging fact in
these days of secular teaching, that the number of schools in
which religion is taught has considerably increased. It is all very
well for the authorities of the Education Department, when ex-
postulated with by the advocates of religious instruction, to take
credit to the Education Act for the progress that has been made
by the religious schools. Mr. Mundella, in moving the educa-
tional estimates in the House of Commons this year, declared
that, so far from the introduction of secular having prevented the
spread of religious education, evidence showed the reverse to be
the case ; and he contended, therefore, " that school boards had
done more for religious education in this country than any other
institution which had been set up, for without them the children
never would have been forced into the voluntary day and Sunday
schools, which they were now filling." Though we admit that
Mr. Mundella's assertions are partially correct, they prove little,
if anything, in favor of the existing system. The introduction

588 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

of a method of education which was directly opposed to the re-
ligious convictions of the country may have stirred up and in-
vigorated the zeal of Christians, but surely that fact can in no
way prove that the system which produced it was a good one.
A peaceful state may view with consternation the advent of a
hostile army ; the knowledge of impending danger and threatened
destruction may awaken the dormant energies of its people and
call forth a band of patriots and heroes to do battle with the ap-
proaching host. But does the fact of the zeal and patriotism it
has inadvertently, unwittingly invoked for a moment justify or
palliate the evil intentions of the invader ? Christianity flourished
under oppression and rose triumphant from the fiercest and most
malignant persecution ; but was the oppressor for that reason
less culpable, his deeds less odious and repulsive? In fact.it
would be almost as absurd to look upon such men as Nero,
Decius, or Diocletian as champions for the propagation of Chris-
tianity as it would be were we to express our gratitude to the
Education Department for the progress that has been made in the
cause of religious education. The arguments of Mr. Mundella
are in every way deceptive. The real effects of a system such
as the present system of education cannot possibly be seen while
the generation which saw its introduction (a generation brought
up in the teachings of Christianity) is still in existence. The work
of demoralization is in this case slow and, to the majority,
almost imperceptible. The alienation of a Christian and a God-
loving people from a belief in Christianity and a recognition of a
God is a work that one, or even two, generations cannot possibly
effect. But that it is the end that is looked for by many of the
Radical supporters of the system is unquestionable. Were it not,
indeed, for the belief that religion would ultimately suffer from
it, the system would hardly have gained the eager support and
approval of that ever-increasing class of men who consent, with
a degrading cheerfulness, to be locked in the fetters of " free
thought."

Let us now turn to a more practical discussion of the ques-
tion ; and in order to do this it will be necessary to expose the
gross injustice under which the voluntary schools are struggling.
Previous to the passing of the Education Act of 1870, and dating
as far back as 1838, the voluntary schools throughout the country
were in receipt of a yearly grant from the Consolidated Fund ;
and, while this grant afforded them a meagre assistance, they were
otherwise entirely dependent for their support upon voluntary
effort. Now, upon the formation of the new system in 1870 the

1885.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 589

board schools were made to participate equally with the volun-
tary schools in the benefits derived from the government grant.
So far and only so far are the two systems placed on an equal
footing-. But let us see where the inequality begins. Whereas
the voluntary schools are solely dependent for their existence
upon charity, the board schools are raised far above the necessity
of trusting in so precarious a source of revenue. By the Educa-
tion Act a rate was levied upon the taxpayers throughout the
country, and thus a large sum of money is yearly placed at the
disposal of the School Board. With the extravagance of the
board authorities and the unnecessary outlay of public money we
do not intend now to deal, for it is a question irrelevant to the
subject in hand. But we think it necessary to say in passing
that that extravagance is rendered even more pressing upon the
people than it would otherwise be by the fact that their money
is squandered upon a system of which a large portion of them
cannot conscientiously take advantage. Now, Mr. Forster said
in 1870 :

" In taking money from the taxpayer to give his children secular edu-
cation we have no right to interfere with his feelings as a parent or to
oblige him to accept for his children religious education to which he objects.
Therefore, in voting public money or making public provision for elemen-
tary schools we hold that they ought not to be schools from which the pub-
lic would be excluded. ''

This is another of the many instances in which the professions
of the government have been belied by the measure they intro-
duced. In spite of the anxiety betrayed by Mr. Forster in the
last portion of the passage quoted, the system established by the
act of 1870 is practically and emphatically a system of which a
large number of those who contribute to its support are abso-
lutely precluded from availing themselves. As to the truth of the
first part of the passage cited namely, that in taking money from
the taxpayer the government have no right to enforce upon his
children religious education to which he objects we have no ob-
jection to offer. But may it not with equal truth be said that
the government have no right to take the taxpayer's money in
order to support a system of secular education which is repug-
nant and offensive to his moral feelings, and the acceptance of
which would be a direct violation of his conscience?

Having, we believe, thus clearly demonstrated that the reli-
gious population are unable to avail themselves of the system es-
tablished by the Education Act, it is almost superfluous to say

590 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb ,

that they are therefore compelled to fall back on the old system
of voluntary schools. But if these institutions were poor before
1870, what must they be now? The exacting rate levied by the
School Board has to a considerable extent drained the educational
resources of the country. Taxation comes first and has to be
complied with, and there is but little room left afterwards for
charity. And yet, remembering that the members of the various
religious denominations have to contribute to the support of tzvo
systems, the fact that the voluntary schools are increasing in num-
ber and efficiency is one which redounds to their honor. So far,
indeed, from the originators of the secular system taking credit
to themselves for the spread of denominational schools, the fact
should be to them an everlasting and silent reproach. Let us
turn now to another phase in the unfair and needless dispa-
rity that exists between the condition of secular and religious
schools. Both systems are, as we have said, entitled to receive
the government grant ; but though in this they are, nominally
and to all appearance, placed on an equal footing, the inequality
is practically as great and immeasurable as in any other aspect
of the case. And for this reason : The government grant is al-
lowed to all schools alike, but on two conditions namely, that
they should have attained a certain stipulated standard of profi-
ciency, and that they should have accepted what is oddly enough
designated " the Conscience Clause." Now, in the first place, it is
perhaps needless to say that a system that possesses an almost
unlimited source of revenue has a great advantage over, and can
easily outstrip, its poorer rival which has to rely on a very
limited exchequer. And as a proof of this we may mention the
fact that, while the board schools are able to obtain a better class
of teachers by paying an average salary of ^250 a year, the vol-
untary schools can with the greatest difficulty manage to pay
.150. Thus the schools that have a superfluity of money have
every facility accorded to them for obtaining more, while the
voluntary schools, which most need assistance, are placed at a
great and unfair disadvantage. But this is not all. The govern-
ment, not satisfied with having excluded the religious schools from
the education rate, . must go yet further ; and the Conscience
Clause, without compliance with which they are unable to receive
the government grant, practically reduces the voluntary schools
to the condition of the board schools by prohibiting religious
instruction during the stipulated school-hours.

There is yet another inequality in the existing system, and it
is the one, perhaps, that most deeply affects the cause of religious

1885.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 591

education. The School Board, as \ve have seen, possesses the
power to erect one of their schools in any district where, in their
opinion, there is an insufficient accommodation, and the inequality
complained of is that, a board school having once been opened, no
new voluntary school can be formed without the permission of
the board. Taking advantage of this privilege and of their large
resources, the School Board are buying sites in numerous places
that are as yet uninhabited, so that they will thus be in posses-
sion of the field when the districts are built over, with power to
exclude all other schools.

Having pictured the difficulty as it exists, we will now con-
sider the best means of solving it ; and to do this we will quote
the words of Cardinal Manning, who is the one person most
competent to speak with authority on the question. His emi-
nence proposes to relieve the voluntary system of all injustice
and to remedy the existing inequality in this way:

" i. Let a school rate or tax be levied over the whole population as a
part of the general taxation of the country.

"2. Let all schools, with or without religious teaching, partake of the
school rate, as they partake now of the grants of the Consolidated Fund,
under all the conditions of the statute law and of the minutes and codes of
the Committee of Privy Council."

This proposal is simple, yet at the same time it is complete.
It would relieve, the religious schools from the trammels that
now hold them back ; it would insure a fair and equitable division
of the moneys raised by the education rate, as well as of the
benefits derived from the government grant. The system of
" payment by results " could be carried out quite as exten-
sively as, and with far greater equality than, it is at present. If
the education rate were fairly divided among all schools, whether
secular or religious, then the taxpayer would be receiving a fair
and just return for the money he has expended.

There is an objection, however, that may be, and we think
has been, made to this proposal by certain unthinking persons
namely, that if one denomination possesses more schools than
another it would claim a larger share of the rate, and in this
way a Baptist or Methodist taxpayer might be contributing,
although indirectly, to a Catholic school, or vice versa. Now,
this strikes us as a very flimsy objection ; for if there be more
Catholic schools than those belonging to other denominations it
only proves that the Catholic demand is greater and the Catholic
population more numerous; and as, in the majority of cases,

592 THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. [Feb.,

where there are children there also are the parents, it may safely
be assumed that the Catholic body have paid a greater proper-
tion of the rate and are, therefore, entitled to a larger share of
the profits. Thus, in the same way, may it be said of the Bap-
tists, the Wesleyans, or any other of the innumerable dissenting
creeds in England.

But there is another proposed solution of the difficulty which
may, perhaps, appear more simple to the comprehension of those
who think that by Cardinal Manning's plan they would be
supporting the schools of other denominations than their own.
The proposal we refer to is this : that every taxpayer in paying
the rate should specify to which class of school he wishes the
money to be given ; so that every member of each religious
body would be supporting his own schools, while those who
profess no religion at all would be supporting the purely secular
institutions. In theory and on paper this scheme appears to
be the one that is most directly to the point, but we very much
doubt whether, to say the least of it, it would be practicable.
Remembering that there are now in England considerably more
than one hundred and fifty known forms of religion, it is not im-
probable that the scheme we have mentioned would leave things
in a somewhat chaotic condition. Moreover, if there are now
one hundred and fifty known religions, how many more hitherto
unknown religions would this scheme bring to light ? The satel-
lites of each of those numerous individuals who station them-
selves at the corners of London streets on Sabbath evenings
and proclaim their well-meaning though erratic doctrines would
doubtless raise themselves to the dignity of " a religious body,"
and the " Thompsonians " and " Smithites " (although, perhaps,
boasting of scarce half a dozen members) would be laying equal
claim to the rate with the Catholics and the more prominent of
the Nonconformist bodies. Therefore we think that the pro-
posal of Cardinal Manning is the right one both in the logical
and the practical sense.

Having detailed the grievance under which the voluntary
schools are suffering, and the schemes suggested for removing it,
let us now, in conclusion, cast a glance at the prospect they have
of obtaining redress. Though we should sincerely regret it were
this question of the voluntary schools to become a party ques-
tion, it is nevertheless gratifying in every way to find prominent
politicians (though for the most part, unfortunately, men belong-
ing to the same party) taking the matter seriously in hand. The
first, we believe, of the leading public men to own the justice

1885.] THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION IN ENGLAND. 593

of the claim made by the voluntary schools was Lord Randolph
Churchill ; and the supporters of religious education are to be
congratulated on having gained as a champion a man who is cer-
tain to play an important part in the political history of the
future. This is how Lord R. Churchill expresses his views :

" I am of opinion that the cost of popular elementary education should
be borne entirely by the state, and that all schools, whether voluntary or
board schools, should be entitled to be paid in full from the imperial taxes
expenses incurred by them for the diffusion of the rudiments of know-
ledge."

After going into other details which are foreign to the subject
now under consideration, Lord R. Churchill continues :

"Under the system which I have endeavored to draw the outline of
voluntary schools would flourish and increase. Their methods and the
associations, historical and sentimental, inseparably connected with them
are, I am convinced, far more pleasing and attractive to the English mind
than the precise, cut-and-dried, rigid, and somewhat tyrannical ideas which
seem to animate our school boards and to be dear to the hearts of the
educational ' Gradgrinds ' of the present day. I submit that the plan I have
ventured to suggest is intelligible, comprehensive, and broad. . . . Let the
voluntary schools and the school boards continue their efforts in the cause
of national education independently of and competingly with each other,
the state awarding to each with the utmost impartiality those pecuniary
endowments which either may honestly and fairly earn."

From this it is evident that Lord R. Churchill has, to a great
extent, grasped the difficulty of the situation ; and when we find
the question also engaging the earnest consideration of Lord
Salisbury and other prominent men, we think the advocates of
religious instruction may look not without hope into* the future.
But they should not be satisfied with having obtained this ex-
ternal support. There is yet much to be done by internal or-
ganization, and the CatHolic body in England, under the guidance
of Cardinal Manning, has set an example to members of other
denominations by establishing a society called " The Voluntary
School Association" for the purpose of promoting the cause of
the voluntary schools. Could the more important of the Non-
conformist bodies, together with the members ot the Established
Church, be induced to follow this example, hope would be
changed into certainty. Could bigotry be mastered and long-
rooted prejudice subdued; could Anglicans, Methodists, Bap-
tists, Wesleyans, and all the other religious sects in the country
forget for once their old dissensions and work in harmony with
the Catholic body and with each other, then the demand of the
VOL. XL. 38

594 WIKWEMIKONG. [Feb.,

voluntary schools could not long be ignored and their aim
would be soon achieved. Let them sink fanaticism, and, while
they remember that the cause they all have at heart is practically
identical, let them remember also that, as they share in the
struggle, they will also participate in the good fruits of success.

WIKWEMIKONG.

ONE afternoon in last August we left Collingwood, Canada
a place at the head of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron on a
pretty little steamer, a propeller, with a very high prow (for
the waves of our inland seas are sometimes very high indeed).
After coasting along the south shore and calling at several
places for -passengers and freight, we struck across the lake,
lost sight of land, and were at sea. The weather was just agree-
ably cool and calm. Next morning we began to come in sight
of some of the twenty-seven thousand islands which Captain
Bayfield's survey noted in these waters. Talk about your " Thou-
sand Islands" in the St. Lawrence! which was for us, as it
is doubtless for many, a mere figure of speech. Here was some-
thing real and outside of all metaphor. Large and small, barren
and wooded, rocky and high, or flat and green, they present
themselves ahead and abaft, to port and to starboard, endlessly
succeeding one another, in beauty of form as various as their
number is endless. You have besides tar more than twenty-
seven thousand bays and sounds and channels, of every shape
that the eye delights to rest upon, all the wondrous beauty of
wood and stream surprising you at every turn ; the great blue
mountains stretching away back on the distant mainland ; the
cool, fresh water deep in the steamer's channel, shallow on the
low bars joining neighboring islets ; and dark-green trees spring-
ing from clefts in the iron rocks, bending down to kiss the waves
and shade the retreats of the monster sturgeon or the sparkling
trout. Skilful indeed must the pilot be that guides us safely
through this more than fabled labyrinth. Except an occasional
light-house or a surveyor's mark on a headland, and sometimes
an Indian wigwam or the tent of a camper-out, no signs of human
life met our gaze, but the sea-fowl in myriads seemed to possess
these beautiful abodes in peace. Nearing Killarney about noon,
we saw a bark canoe, paddled by its single occupant, leaving the

1885.] WIKWEMIKONG. 595

village, and our curiosity was at once excited to the highest de-
gree and almost as completely satisfied ; for word went round
that the solitary sailor was none other than the man whom
chiefly we had come all this way to see, the successor of those
apostolic men who during the last two hundred and fifty years
have ever been foremost both as explorers and as heralds of the
Gospel in that vast region comprising Canada and the Western
vStates, and formerly known as New France. Need we name
them? "Not a cape was turned, not a bay was entered, but
a Jesuit led the way," says Bancroft. O noble Frenchmen,
flower of the church's chivalry ! Truly the mantle of the apos-
tles has fallen on your shoulders. When will that Homer arise
who will depict your immortal deeds in fitting manner, that the
race of man may be lifted once more to a realization of the
greatness whereof it is capable?

All eyes were fastened on the canoe and its occupant. He
swings his paddle slowly, for the labor of years has told on him,
and the snows of seventy winters whiten the thin locks that hang
down on his curved shoulders. A large straw hat covers his
head, and beneath it the silvery beard makes striking contrast
with the full bronze of his weather-stained countenance. As he
looks up to return our salutation the gentle gray eyes beam
sweetly forth and a smile like that of childhood illumines his
face. His dress is that consecrated by the sons of Ignatius and
Xavier in every-clime, while the loss of its original color, and its
threadbare look, tell of the spirit of holy poverty that fills its
wearer's heart. Common moccasins completing his attire are
visible as he passes, seated Indian or Turkish fashion in the
narrow, eggshell-like craft, which tosses violently in the rollers
caused by our steamer. As he disappears on his watery path, to
visit some of the score or s*o of stations where his red and white
children reside, either in permanent settlements or in the tran-
sient pursuit of fish or game, our eyes still follow and our heart-
felt admiration. " Those canoes are very shaky things to navi-
gate," says one of the passengers ; " I wonder how Father D

can travel in them without risk." " Oh ! he's a man of God," re-
plied a Protestant minister ; " there's not water enough in Lake
Huron to drown him ! "

Touching at Killarney, on the north shore of Huron a place
appropriately called after the proverb of Irish scenery, and which
is a fishing station of a couple of dozen houses and as many
Indian wigwams posted on the rocks and islands thereabouts, the
inhabitants being of Irish, English, Scotch, Canadian, and abori-

596 WIKWEMIKONG. [Feb.,

ginal blood, and nearly all Catholics, and having a neat little church
we entered later on one of the great bays of Grand Manitoulin
Island, the " home of the Great Spirit " (Manitou). Our place
of landing was Manitouaning, a Protestant white settlement, on
reaching which we entered a miserable-looking sail-boat manned
by Indian ferrymen, and, with genuine American fellow-passen-
gers, set out alone for the Indian village which was our destina-
tion. Our course was across the bay to the peninsula which
alone exclusively remains in the possession of the Indians, the
greater part of the beautiful island having been ceded to the
whites. The Canadians have escaped the danger and disgrace
of savage wars in their dealing with the Red Man, but they are
not the less surely conquering his territory, and the plebiscites
of Ontario may rank with similar exercises of popular voting in
more advanced regions. Of those tribes which thus " volunta-
rily " ceded the Grand Manitou, as well as Penetang, etc., every
individual, or at least every male adult, receives an annuity of four
dollars, which gives many of them a grand opportunity for an
annual spree, the whites pushing their settlements to the very
line of division, and, despite the positive prohibition, selling
whiskey to their foolish, improvident neighbors. The first object
that attracted our notice in this ferry-boat was an old Indian,
drunk and dirty, who carried a half-filled bottle of liquor in his
daughter's market-basket. The team that received us on the
opposite shore was in the main good, the wagon being a sound
one and the ponies very spirited, but their harness patched and
eked out with various pieces of rope and twine. Scarce a word
of English or French could we get out of these red Stoics. In-
deed, they are too proud to speak these languages, as we after-
wards understood, for they feel that they are being gradually
but rapidly swindled by the whites, and bury their feeling of in-
feriority to their sharper white brethren in a reserve that cannot
be called sullen, simply because it is so impenetrable. It is only
when they get drunk and noisy that their acquaintance with
those idioms shows itself, and then in very voluble curses and
name-callings, for which they have no equivalent, as we were
assured, in their own simple, straight tongues, the briefest, plainest
declaration sufficing for interchange of thought amongst them-
selves.

A fair road of five miles brought us to the great naked cross,
about twenty feet high, which told the stranger that he was
entering on the immediate bounds of the Mission. It was truly
a striking feature in the landscape, and we ourselves, as well

1885.] WlKWEMIKONG. 597

as our dumb companions, saluted it in silence. Hail, holy
Cross, sign of redemption, standard of civilization, type of
progress, symbol of that self-subjugation which is the necessary
condition for subduing depraved human passions and advancing
in true liberty to universal brotherhood and the enjoyment of
the equal rights purchased for us all by the Son of God !

The Church of the Holy Cross, with the school rebuilt a couple
of years ago by the alms of charitable New York, the residence
of the priests, and the convent further up on the slope, are the
most prominent edifices in the village of about one hundred and
fifty frame and log houses, that stand on the sides and at the foot
of beautiful Wikwemikong Beaver Bay which.gives the place its
name. Hospitably received by the pastor and his little commu-
nity, we spent ten days very agreeably at the mission. On the
Sunday following our arrival we sang Mass with the accom-
paniment of an Indian choir, which, aided by the people, ren-
dered one of Lambillotte's compositions with much energy and
devotion, but without any of the graces of execution demanded
by professional taste. We preached to the congregation also,
but with the conviction that, apart from the Nameless Sisters
who were in charge of the girls' asylum, of the Jesuit Brothers,
and one Scottish-American boy the only white one in the male
school our sermon was almost wholly unintelligible, and we
were fain to make up in gesticulation for the obscurity of our
speech. The children sat to the front, the chiefs in raised
pews at the rear, the men and women on either side of the
spacious, gaudily-painted, and many-statued church. All were
attired in plain, dark-colored, and inexpensive dress of the pat-
tern of the whites'. We were forcibly reminded then of a some-
what similar experience in Nova Scotia years ago, when we
innocently accepted an invitation to address a Gaelic audience,
the thought never entering our head that they " had no English."
After preaching to the best of our ability, and with additional
fervor, perhaps, on account of the strange congregation and the
presence of several clerical hearers, what was our astonishment
to see the pastor get up and tell his flock what we had been
talking about!

While we attended to the needs of the home church at the
Indian village the pastor took advantage of our presence to set
off for Killarney (having first said Mass at six o'clock at home),
in order that that settlement might have the blessing (an occa-
sional one for them) of the Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments.
The journey was seventeen miles by water, but, as the wind was

59^ WIKWEMIKONG. [Feb.,

favorable, he set out. On the way the breeze went down, and
the still fasting priest did not reach his destination till eleven
o'clock. Having finished his duties there, he set out to return,
but, the wind again failing, he and his Indian companions, as well
as two children coming to the sisters' school, were obliged to
endure the inconvenient accommodation of the ill-smelling fish-
ing-smack for five hours. As they passed one of the other boats
they cried out for some assistance in the way of provisions, for
their healthy appetites craved satisfaction. Two fine fish were at
once heaved over the side, and the second boat sped on its lee-
ward way. " Now we're all right," said Father . " Make for

one of the islands, and we'll have an excellent Sunday dinner,
although without table-service and neither bread nor salt." As
the craft was headed for the shore the priest searched for his
match-box, preparing to light a fire on the beach, and already
anticipating the exquisite flavor of the freshly caught fish. With
some little consternation he found that he had for once forgotten
it at home, and hastily asked the others if they had any. Not a
match, as it happened, was to be found, and the hungry travel-
lers were obliged to forego their needed banquet, and arrived,
wearied and hungry, late at the village. This dining at fresco,
however, is quite an ordinary occurrence with the missionaries,
who are sometimes for months engaged in the visitation of their
scattered flock, and always go prepared not only to cook a hastj
meal but to camp out wherever the setting sun may find them.

Next morning we said Mass at the convent, and were e'dified
by the sight of those wonderful women who, bound by all the
vows of regular observance, nevertheless in their humility forego
the customary name of sister and content themselves with the
appellation of friend ; but, what is of far greater account, wear no
sacramental habit, but dress each according to her own taste, but
in the plainest manner, in the ordinary garb of persons in the
world. One could not conceive a more exquisite plan for sub-
duing all self-conceit and feminine vanity. Little known as they
are, they are the seniors in point of foundation of many or most
of the religious orders of women in America, dating from the
French Revolution a time when the monastic as well as profes-
sion dress was proscribed.

The children, chiefly orphans collected by the missionaries
from a vast extent of country and many tribes, sang hymns dur-
ing the Mass, in Latin, English, and Ojibway ; and while their
voices were little musical, their innocence and simplicity were
most affecting. There were forty-two of them, besides thirty-

1885.] WlKWEMIKONG. 599

four others who live in the village and attend the school daily.
Besides the ordinary English branches they are taught wash-
ing, sewing, knitting, cooking, weaving, and spinning. They are
exceedingly timid, like young fawns lately caught, and their
literary ability seems to be far inferior to that of white children;
but much of their dulness must be attributed to the fact that
they are obliged to learn in English according to the government
regulations a language which of course is very obscure to those
who never use it except at school. Take them in woodcraft,
however, ask them, in their own tongue, of the beaver, the
meadow-lark, the wild goose, the sassafras, the canoe, or the
fish in the lake, and their eyes sparkle with interest and intelli-
gence.

One of the nuns, Miss X (thus they are known to out-
siders), told us of one of their huckleberry gatherings ; and we
think the account will interest you almost as much as it did our-
selves. A troop of girls set out in one of the fishing-boats, stow-
ing themselves miscellaneously over and under the half-deck,
crowded together, but full of delight at their excursion, and,
sailing with their teacher twenty miles across Lake Huron,
reached a point where the fruit grows in a plenty and excellence
unknown to more southerly latitudes. Like deer let loose in
their native pastures, the little ones cast aside hats and shoes
and joyously scattered through the copse. Having filled their
cans and baskets, they at once improvised a tripod with branches
of trees, upon which the pot was hung, and their dinner soon was
cooking over a blazing fire, while the pleasant sunshine beautified
the scene and the waves on the beach danced and sparkled.
After eating they amused themselves with various games, and
performed feats of swiftness and agility with which their white
sisters could not compete, and which would no doubt slightly
shock their notions of propriety. Meanwhile it was time to

return, and Miss X was for gathering the little ones, who

seemed willing to remain for ever in the woods. As it happened,
however, the wind had gone completely down, and their Ojibway
sailor informed her that it was useless to try to get home that
night. This was embarrassing news for the lady, who had never
camped out before; but her little companions were enchanted
with the prospect, and, after further play and a joyous supper,
the vounger ones sat about the fire and listened to their mistress,
or told her their legends of spirits of wind and wave and forest,
while the elders set about making a wigwam for her. It cost
them little trouble. A few young trees cut down by the Indian

6oo WIKWEMIKONG. [Feb.,

and set up like a stack of muskets, and this covered with leafy
branches and a shawl or two to keep off the wind, made the

edifice complete. This was Miss X 's shelter, other branches

forming her bed, while the stars shone in through the opening
at the top. As for the girls, after night-prayers they simply
tucked their dresses about them and lay down under the trees
near the fire like so many rabbits, and at once were sleeping
under the glorious firmament of God. Next morning Miss

X was awakened by the rising sun, and found that the girls

had already risen and were cooking breakfast. She tried to
make us sharers of the exquisite sensations accompanying the
opening of one's eyes in the fresh, clear air in that delightful
spot, and having no walls about or no roof overhead; but, alas!
civilization had made us such strangers to nature that we could
hardly realize how pleasant it must have been.

The boys' school numbers about thirty boarders and as many
day-scholars, and is taught by two Jesuit scholastics and one lay
brother. They also sing Latin, English, and Chippevva hymns,
and pursue the same studies as their sisters. In the building
occupied by them they also learn trades : shoemaking, weaving,
and tailoring, besides blacksmithing, carpentry, and wagon-mak-
ing, as well as all the craft of the farmer, for which the well-
stocked lands of the mission give full opportunity. They, too,
are very different from their pale-faced brethren. The elder
boys prefer to sit and talk rather than play ; the younger ones
cannot be taught the mysteries of base-ball, but amuse them-
selves in less systematic ways. All the children go to Mass
every day, plunging through the snow in winter with a reckless-
ness that regards neither clothes nor health. The elder boys,
moreover, are all well acquainted with the management of sail-
boats, and go out frequently for fish and berries, like the girls.

The mission is supported by its farm-produce, as well as by
the alms of the Propagation of the Faith and other charitable
sources, and by a government allowance for every Indian child.
It is on a limited scale indeed, and yet, if we may believe Sena-
tor Vest,* it succeeds be.tter than those splendid establishments

*On Monday, May 12, 1884, the Indian Appropriation Bill being under consideration in the
Senate of the United States, Mr. Vest, of Missouri, said :

"... Now, as to education, in all my wanderings in Montana last summer I saw but one
ray of light on the subject of Indian education. I am a Protestant, born one, educated one, expect
to die one ; but I say now that the system adopted by the Jesuits is the only practical system
for the education of the Indians, and the only one which has resulted in anything approaching
success.

" When the senator from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs,
said the other day that the reason of the success of the Jesuits, more than any other sect, with

1885.] WlKWEMIKONG. 6oi

at Hampton and Carlisle, which we visited with much interest.
Why is' this? The senator gives several reasons. Several
others will suggest themselves to Catholic reader?. For our
part, we think that one essential point of difference, one of the
highest practical importance, lies in the fact that these Jesuit
schools are on the spot, right in among the people to be edu-
cated. Half the pupils go home every night to their families ; the
rest associate with those, and constantly reside among their own,
and when they go forth from the school are not at all strangers
to the clothing, food, language, nor manners of their people.
We have always held that a day-school is generally better than a
boarding one for forming the character of children, more than
half whose education is lost if they are taken away from home.
If such a system has a very marked influence on white children,
how much more must the Indian be demoralized if, taken from

the Indians was that they devoted their whole lives to the work, he struck the key-note of the
entire situation. Take a Protestant clergyman and send him to the West. I do not care how
active and zealous he may be, he goes there with his family ties ; he goes tliere looking back
to civilization ; he goes there half devoting himself, from a sense of duty, to this ungenial life.
Take a Jesuit, and what does he do ? He is a semi-military preacher. He belongs to the
Company of Jesus. He owns nothing but the robe upon his back. If he receives an order
from the commander of the company to arise at the dead hour of midnight and go to Asia, he
goes without a question. He is a number, he is not a man. He is segregated from the vrorld.
I talked with Father Ravalli at Saint Mary's Mission, who had been forty-two years among the
Indians in Montana, had devoted his whole life to them, had been sent there from Italy, an
accomplished physician ; and when I visited him at his little room in the mission he was
lying; there, having been bed-ridden for five years, and still administering medicines and per-
forming surgical operations on each recurring day. This man's whole life was given up to the
work and what is the result ? To day the Flathead Indians are a hundred per cent, advanced
over any other Indians in point of civilization, at least in Montana. Fifty years ago the Jesuits
went amongst them, and to-day you see the result. Among all those tribes, commencing with
the Shoshones, the Arapahoes, the Gros-Ventres, the Rlackfeet, the Piegans, the River Crows,
the Bloods and Assiniboines, the only ray of light I saw was on the Flathead Reservation at
the Jesuit mission schools, and there were boys and girls fifty boys and fifty girls. Thej
raise cattle ; the Indian boys herd them. They have mills ; the Indian boys attend them.
They have blacksmith-shops ; the Indian boys work in them. When I was there they were
building two school-houses, all the work done by the scholars at the mission. They cannot
raise corn to any extent in that climate, but they raise enough vegetables and enough oats to
support the whole school, and I never saw in my life a finer herd of cattle or horses than thej
had at that mission.

" Five nuns, sisters, and five fathers constitute the teachers in the respective schools. We
had a school examination there which lasted through two.days. I undertake to say now that
never in the States was there a better examination- than I heard at that mission, of children of
the same age with those I saw there. The girls are taught needlework ; they are taught to sew
and to teach ; they are taught music ; they are taught to keep house. The young men are
taught to work upon the farm, to herd cattle, to be blacksmiths and carpenters and millwrights.
Here is the whole of it in one single sentence : I asked Father Van Corp. the father in charge
of the mission, to give me his experience as an Indian teacher, and to state what had given
the school its remarkable success. He said that for twenty years the Jesuits had only a male
school. I call the attention of the senators who are interested in this question to this single
point. He said when they had educated the boys and graduated them at the school they went
back to the tribe ; they were immediately received with jeers and reproaches, told that they had

602 WlKWEMIKONG. [Feb.,

the half-wild, natural society of his own, he is placed near the
habitations of cultivated ladies and gentlemen, dressed like them,
given a palace to live in, and gardens to stroll in. All this is
verified as little as may be in the prairie missions.

Add to this the fact that at Hampton, for instance, his ideas
of religious authority and moral unity are very likely to be dis-
turbed rather than developed ; for though the president of that
beautiful institution is a Congregationalist (if we err not), the
service is conducted by an Episcopalian, against whose High-
Church practices one of the masters (belonging to still another
sect) seemed indirectly to protest. Religious training of such
a kind may leave the pupil worse than it found him. He hears,
too, about the peculation in public office, about the divorces in
Connecticut and Indiana, about the honor and influence enjoyed
by the do-nothing rich, about the perjury of the Custom-house
and the ballot-box, the scandalous stories circulated regarding
candidates for the highest places in the republic ; above all, he
knows by experience the luxury and opportunities for money-
making in the East. How can you be surprised, then, if he will
not consent to live again with his people, or becomes ashamed
of them, or if, excluded from the advantages of white society,
he -should even take to "horse-thieving" for lack of other
chance to make money? For conscience that is, an enlightened,
sure conscience and a fixed and pure rule of faith and code of
morals are things that Hampton and Carlisle cannot give ; and

white blood in their veins, that they talked like the white people, that they dressed like th
white people, and that they were apostates to their race. The result was that the Indian, in
order to maintain his position with his fellows, became a worse barbarian than he had ever
been before.

" I do not want to say anything against the schools at Hampton or Carlisle. I undertook
on that expedition to use one or two of those scholars as interpreters. All, it seemed to me,
they had advanced in was to deplete the plains of running horses, and General Sheridan agreed
with me that they were the most expert horse-thieves on the top of the earth. They go back,
and, instead of teaching the other Indians, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they relapse
into barbarism.

"I do not speak with any sort of denominational prejudice in favor of Jesuits. I was
taught to abhor the whole sect ; I was raised in that good Old-School Presbyterian Church that
looked upon a Jesuit as very much akin to the devil ; but I now say, if the senator from Massa-
chusetts, the chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, will find me any tribe of ' blanket '
Indians on the continent of North America I do not speak of the five civilized tribes, because
they got their civilization in Georgia and Alabama, and by immediate contact with the whites
but if he will find me a single tribe of Indians on the plains, ' blanket ' Indians, that approximate
In civilization to the Flatheads who have been under control of the Jesuits for fifty years, I
will abandon my entire theory on this subject. I say that out of eleven tribes that I saw and I
say this as a Protestant where they had had Protestant missionaries they had not made a
single, solitary advance towards civilization, not one. And yet among the Flatheads, where
there were two Jesuit missions, you find farms, you find civilization, you find Christianity, you
find the relation of husband and wife, and of father and child, scrupulously observed. I saw
that one ounce of experience is worth a ton of theory at any time, and this I say and know."

1885.] WlKWEMlKOXG. 603

without them his other acquirements are worse than useless
they are hurtful.

How different the surroundings of the Indian boy in a mission
like Wikwemikong, in the heart of his own race, with not a white
man except his teachers in the whole territory, and those
teachers speaking his own tongue and living and dying as if they
were members of his people ; with shelter, food, and clothing
little better than that he will be able, when he leaves school, to
earn by honest labor; with girls of his own race receiving a
training to qualify them for sharing his home, his toil, and his
enjoyments; with a religious education, above all, and conse-
crated advisers in whose counsel there shall be no variety, who,
by their voluntary poverty and obedience and life-long exile
from native land, encourage him to bear the cares of existence,
reconcile him to his simple state, and guarantee him friendship
and paternal assistance throughout his life.

There are about seven hundred Indians at Wikwemikong, all
Catholics. They are poor generally, but are improving in their
buildings, farm-implements, stock, etc., and if the whites did not
sell them whiskey and invade their fishing-grounds they would
probably continue to increase and to become more and more in-
dependent and at length entirely civilized. But the whites do
both these things, despite the law ; for the Indian has no vote,
hence no friend, except some priest or sentimental layman. No
vote / Have we s.tumbled on the solution of the Indian ques-
tion? We have no space to discuss the matter here, but will
simply say that a man or a class or race of men in the United
States or Canada that has no political representation is very
likely to be left out in the cold. We hailed with satisfaction
the news, lately received from a Seminole Baptist preacher of the
Indian Territory, that there is a project on foot to organize all
the tribes of that rich and fair region into a State, and, as such, to
demand admission into the Union. We welcome this idea. The
glory of our constitution and our age is in the recognition of the
equality, brotherhood, and freedom of all those men, at least, who
make their home under the stars and stripes and are willing to
identify themselves with our country and its fortunes. What a
shame it is that we have not tried heretofore to bring the noble
savage into our circle of human fellowship! Is it because we
cannot forgive those whom we have wronged? But we have
pardoned the African. Let us hope and pray that the American
may be rescued in time from the condition of disunion and
anarchy in which he is still found, so that he may be enabled to

604' ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. [Feb.,

make a last and successful stand against the waves of progress
that threaten, speedily and finally, to engulf him, unless he be
ready with his " ship of state " to ride victorious and peaceful on
their crest !

ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS.

No well informed biologist would venture to affirm that any
kind of animal or plant which had once become extinct could
ever be again evolved. No competent politician would deny
that any attempt to restore a past social state must be but a
waste of energy. Yet there have been many so-called restora-
tionsas with the Stuarts, the Bourbons, and a hundred other
instances. The fact is that in either science it is often difficult to
discriminate between a new existence and a mere survival. It
was long thought that scorpions and efts were creatures, geologi-
cally speaking, of yesterday, and that certain tertiary fossils were
relics of the earliest members of those races. But it now turns out
that such rarely preserved individuals were but modified survivors
of a prodigious past, extending back to the periods of deposition
of many of our primary rocks, wherein the remains of their ances-
tors are found to lie entombed. So it is with social institutions
which seem at first to be new creations or sudden restorations.
Careful study will generally show them to be instances of sur-
vival with modification due to a combination of old tendencies
and novel circumstances, In the case either of the Stuarts or the
Bourbons there must, of course, have been a great survival of old
sentiments to render the so-called "restorations" possible, while
circumstances necessitated such differences between what was
reaily old and what was said to be " restored " that no such so-
called " restoration " could be a real one. Continuity combined
with continuous change is the necessary condition of all that
lives upon this earth. Apparent " restoration " is the proof of
the past existence of unnoticed "survivals," as apparently sudden
"destructions" are themselves sufficient evidence of the past
unnoticed existence of efficient modifying agencies. De Tocque-
ville has taught us how the French Revolutionists, when they
thought they were reversing the spirit and action of the ancien
regime, were in fact but carrying out certain of its principles and
practices to their more complete development. Thus nothing

1 88 5-] ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. 605

really persists unchanged, and nothing which has in fact passed
away even truly reappears.

It is none the less true, however, that there are wonderful
differences between the powers of survival possessed by both
different social and different animal organisms. How vast a
procession of varying kinds of life must have passed over this
earth during the existence of the still surviving nautilus or the
lingula of our New Zealand seas ! During that long lapse of
ages innumerable shoals of dolphin-like reptiles first came into
the ocean and then finally died out within it. During that time
the air began and ceased to be agitated by the wings of innumer-
able pterodactyls of all sizes, and forest lands saw both the advent
and the departure of dragons more strange than those of fable.
Coming near our own times, the vast megatheria and mylodons
of South America had their little geological day, and came and
went like huge ephemera. Yet the nautilus and the lingula still
live !

Parallel, though indefinitely less extensive, inequalities are
presented by the durations of human societies. The civilization
of China has left its relics within some of the most ancient monu-
ments of Egypt. It saw that most lovely product of human
nature Attic culture bud, blossom, and decay. When our
British ancestors were only known but as barbarian inhabitants
of the tin-islands in the world's remotest corner it went on
flourishing, and it still flourishes while the children of those
islands have made their tongue the universal language of com-
merce, in anticipation (according to De Candolle) of its becoming
the tongue of civilized mankind.

There are similar diversities with respect to the endurance of
social habits and customs. Some of these, as many forms of
salutation, are but local ; others, as many fashions of dress, are
notoriously but of short duration. From the nature of the case
certain customs are exceptionally wide-spread and continuous.
And such must be the case with all that directly concerns the
wants of man's animal nature. His higher nature has also its
universal requirements, and there is no race of man which is
destitute of language. Again, man is also almost universally a
religious being using that term in its widest possible significa-
tion. Whatever may have been his mode of attaining to such
conceptions, man has almost universally some curiosity, suspi-
cion, or belief respecting supernatural existences, and observances
connected therewith are very widely practised.

It is religious practices, whether of the rudest or most highly

606 ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. [Feb.,

developed kinds, which supply us with some of the most inte-
resting cases of survival and unsuspected continuity. It is in
religion especially that we meet, on the one hand, with forms
which are taken to be novelties, but which are in truth but modi-
fied survivals ; and, on the other hand, with supposed " restora-
tions" which are, in fact, but the carrying further onwards of in-
cipient processes of change. It may probably surprise not a few
Christians to be told that at the institution of the Lord's Supper
Christ did not introduce a new rite, but gave to an old one a new
significance. He only continued that practice of the solemn bless-
ing and distribution of bread and wine which had existed with the
Jews from time immemorial, which was connected with the sac-
rificial rites of the Temple, and which is continued to this day,
on the eve of each Sabbath, in every pious Hebrew family.

The study of Jewish ritual, combined with that of the most
ancient Christian liturgies, serves to show how mistaken modern
Dissenters are in thinking that their bald and unceremonious
communion is a return to the practice of the early Christians a
mistake into which no evolutionist could possibly fall. An oppo-
site error leads some Catholics to suppose that a much greater
change in public worship was made in the time of Edward VI.
than, in fact, took place. They suppose that up to the death of
Henry VIII. the service in English parish churches was like that
which may be seen in any Catholic church to-day. Whereas, in
fact, the service consisted then, as afterwards, of Matins, Com-
munion (Mass), and Even-song. Until of late years, on the other
hand, very many Anglican churchmen supposed that the
"Prayer-Book" was the invention of the Reformers, and never
suspected- that, with some trifling exceptions, its " Matins" and
" Even-song " were but translations of English pre-Reformation
breviary services. The Prayer-Book is a survival, and a most
noble and fortunate survival, of " common prayers" which else-
where in the West, as in the East, have unhappily all but disap-
peared. Love for these services is, however, far from extinct
amongst the Catholics of England and America, though their
opportunities of enjoying them are scanty indeed a fact in great
measure due to the poverty of the clergy, the paucity of their
numbers, and the overwhelming calls made upon their time by
their pastoral duties and pecuniary needs.

The co-existence of this love of breviary services and the
scanty means existing for its gratification has an important
bearing on a certain question of religious survival and revival

1885.] ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. 607

which requires to be considered from a point of view taking in
as wide a prospect as possible.

Putting aside the less developed sections of mankind, we can-
not deny that amongst the higher races many individuals have
aspired to- live a much more religious life than the bulk of their
countrymen and contemporaries, and have yearned after a closer
communion with what they deemed holiest, practising to that
end different degrees of asceticism and self-denial.

Such aspirations have peopled and continue to people the
many Llamasaries of Thibet and underlie the marvellous aus-
terities of the devotees of Hindostan. A more developed spirit
of the kind changed what were at first the " solitaries " of the
Thebais into crowds. Somewhat later it became a powerful
agent in effecting the cultivation, material and mental, of west-
ern Europe, while it still continues to replenish the solitudes of
Mount Athos and Mount Carmel.

But the Reformation dispersed the convents and emptied the
monasteries of northern Europe. May we not, then, expect that
the spread of enlightenment will also empty by degrees such
monasteries as yet remain, and render impossible any new em-
bodiments of the old ascetic spirit ?

Experience so far hardly justifies any such expectation.
Even in the United States analogous aspirations have given birth
not only to new institutions, such as " Brook Farm." " Fruit-
lands," with other more recent and more eccentric experiments,
but also to communities practising either the oldest forms of
Western asceticism or the quite new ones, such as the Paulists of
New York.

In Europe, on the banks of the Danube and in the mountains
and cities of Bohemia, ancient monastic institutions yet survive
possessing much of their ancient wealth and handing down to-
wards the twentieth century the traditions of the tenth. But
these material survivals are but a trifling index of the survival of
the old spirit. That is shown by the many new institutions of
the kind which have arisen in Belgium and in. France, and are
arising even in Italy, where their dissolution dates but from yes-
terday.

In France they were in a state of vigorous growth when
arbitrary government dispersed their members ; and there can be
but little doubt that as soon as the first and most fundamental of
all freedoms freedom of conscience is restored in that country
they will once more reappear. For no such communities could
have thus spontaneously arisen, had they not supplied a need

6o8 ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. [Feb.,

and gratified cravings of the heart strong enough to persist
through many a man's lifetime. Not only has the choice of
such a state of life been in each case voluntary, but nothing hin-
ders its abandonment by any who chooses to follow the example
of Pere Hyacinthe. The existence of the supply demonstrates
the pre-existence and continuance of the demand.

Experience also makes it evident that it is by no means only
disappointed men, who feel that their careers have been failures
(whether from adverse circumstances or misused opportunities),
who enter these retreats, though it is surely well that such ha-
vens of refuge should exist for some such men ! Not a few
souls embrace such a career in the generous ardor of youth and
persist in it throughout manhood's vigor and the decay of age.
This is a phenomenon which no rational mind will seek to ignore,
and the study of it as it exists at present must be one of our
best means of understanding monasticism as it existed in the
past. Unquestionably in such a life there has been and there is
a subtle charm, hidden to many eyes. What is that charm, and
what are the probabilities as to monasticism in the future ?

The Rev. Dr. Jessop has recently given us * much correct
and interesting information respecting life in a mediaeval Bene-
dictine monastery, such as one of those which nestled in so many
a shady and well-watered valley of old England. Have such
really gone from us for ever, as Dr. Jessop would have us sup-
pose, or may we hope to look upon their like again ?

Now, as before pointed out, all absolute restoration is utterly
impossible. Never again can any abbot and convent of any
monastery be quite like those of five centuries ago or fill a pre-
cisely corresponding place to theirs in English life. Still, as has
just been shown, religious establishments, in the main similar to
the old, have reappeared in several countries in Europe, and, in-
deed, such is the case in our own also ; so that the possibility of
some degree of revival cannot be denied. As to whether the
sort of order to which Dr. Jessop has referred is more or less
capable of such revival than other similar institutions is another
question.

We have already noted how unequal has been the power of
survival possessed by different organisms, both animal and social ;
and similar inequality has been shown by experience to have
existed in religious orders apparently not very dissimilar. The
Knights of the Sword endured but for a few decades. The
grand order of Knights Templars fell with the first ebbing wave

* In an article in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1884.

1885.] ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. 609

of the receding tide of Christendom's theocracy, while the
Knights Hospitalers, in a modified form, continue to exist.
Some orders, like our " Little Sisters of the Poor " or the " Ma-
rist Fathers," date from but yesterday, whilst others may lay
claim to ancestors of very early centuries.

Amongst all the orders none is so distinguished as that of
St. Benedict, none can boast a continuity so unbroken. Stretch-
ing back into the fifth century, the most venerable monastery
of Monte Casino was in existence long ere St. Augustine visited
England, yet it continues to exist still a fact partly due to our
present Prime Minister's generously-exerted influence in its be-
half. The Benedictines have ever retained a savor of learning,
and not only have they never been mixed up with the Inquisi-
tion, but have a deserved reputation for breadth and liberality.
Our last actual abbot of Westminster, Feckenham, withstood to
the best of his ability the tide of Marian persecution and be-
friended the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey. There are besides
special considerations (as we shall see) of history, ritual, and
art which endear this order to great numbers of Englishmen.
What wonder, then, if such an order revived amongst us once
more ? But, indeed, there is no need of '' revival," for our old
English Benedictines have never entirely died out. Before the
last of those expelled from our old abbeys were laid to their
rest fresh novices had joined themselves to the expiring " Eng-
lish congregation?" and the very names of the old dignitaries
have been retained. There are still titular abbots of Westmin-
ster, Glastonbury, and St. Alban's, and flourishing communities
at Downside, Belmont, and elsewhere dwell amongst us. But
they yet further represent to us the ancient past. By the action
of the late pope the ancient hierarchy of England ceased, in 1851,
to exist in the eyes of the whole Catholic world, not a few of
whom felt many a pang at such extinction. But the Bene-
dictines continued to maintain the older titular archiepiscopal
designations. They, at least, still belong to the two " provinces "
of " Canterbury " and " York." Their right thus to perpetuate
cherished memories of former days has been, of course, contested,
but has nevertheless been successfully and definitively maintained.
There are considerations of ritual also which help to endear the
Benedictines to Englishmen of more than a single communion.
Dr. Jessop has made one great omission in his paper. He has
said nothing as to the services of the monastic church save the
misleading expression, " Matins Mass." It may be well to try
here to supply this defect by saying a few words as to breviary
VOL. XL. 39

6ro ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. [Feb.,

services generally, and those of the Benedictines in particular.
To do this may throw some light on one of the many hidden
charms of monastic life.

As has been said, Anglican churchmen have the privilege of
joining, if they please, in a noble form of " common prayer "
elsewhere too generally altogether abandoned. But that form
of prayer is a mutilated survival of the far richer " common
prayer " of the older church, which failed not, seven times a day,
to present its common praises, thanksgivings, and supplications
to the Almighty. As most Catholics know, the seven services
were and are: (i) Matins and Lauds, (2) Prime, (3) Tierce,
(4) Sext, (5) None, (6) Vespers, and (7) Compline. Many per-
sons, both Catholics and Protestants, however, do not know
that the " Matins " of the English '. Prayer-Book are formed
mainly from the Matins and Lauds of the breviary. In both
we find the " Venite exultemus," Psalms, Lessons, the " Te
Deum," and the " Benedictus." The Anglican service of Even-
song is formed by an abridged combination of Vespers and
Compline with a few additions.

How glorious must have been the sevenfold service in Eng-
land's earlier days, when Wells had its ninety vicars choral and
when hundreds of canons, in person or by deputy, filled our
cathedral stalls! Of such noble worship the existing service of
our national cathedrals affords no doubt a faint and distant re-
miniscence.

Of the various religious communities of men which now
exist, it is by no means all which say or sing breviary services in
common. Jesuits, Redemptorists,* Oratorians, and most other
more modern societies of the kind, say it singly and in private,
like secular priests. It is almost exclusively the orders which
date from mediaeval times which recite it together in choir, and
only a few of those sing it in a solemn manner. Speaking
broadly, it is only members of the great order of Benedict f
including its Cistercian offshoot who represent fully in our own
day what was once so customary in our land. These were the
monks who filled our now ruined abbeys and priories with sweet
melody and not only with daily but also with nightly singing
of the divine praises.

Some of our readers may perhaps care to know that those
praises are still so sung in England. Already in two places the

* This is a mistake. Redemptorists recite the office in common. ED. C. W.
t The Carthusians recite only part of the office in choir. The rest is said by each monk
alone in his own cell.

1885.] ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. 611

old choral worship fully lives again such as once was at Cluny
and at Citeaux.

The actual monastic life may be studied in full vigor in
central and in southwestern England and in the United States.
In Leicestershire* we have true Cistercians staining the white
wool of St. Bernard with their honorable labor. In Devon
the black-robed monks of St. Benedict have labored and laid bare
the foundations of the ancient abbey of Buckfast, on the Dart, and
now its venerable walls are once more fast rising on the old lines,
with the hope that ultimately their abbey church may rise again
and be filled with choral harmony.f The life led at Buckfast
Abbey is passed as follows : At two o'clock each morning the
monks rise to recite their service of Matins and Lauds. At four
they rest again till six, when they rise for half an hour's silent
meditation in choir before the solemn office of Prime. After
Prime they proceed to their temporary chapter-house to hear
the martyrology and part of their rule, to publicly confess in-
fractions thereof (for which penances are similarly imposed), and
to listen to exhortation, reproof, and encouragement from the
prior. At a quarter-past eight is breakfast (when it is not a fast-
day), and at half-past eight Tierce is solemnly sung, followed by
Mass. Then study and labor occupy the time till midday, at
which hour Sext is sung; then follows dinner always without
meat, and with water or milk and water for drink and at one
o'clock None. " At half-past two come Vespers, then labor and
study till six, when meditation in choir precedes supper, followed
at eight (or half-past eight, according to the season) by Com-
pline, after which all retire to the common dormitory.

Such is the daily round of services. How tedious, how in-
sufferably monotonous a life ! not a few readers will exclaim.
And so it would be to all but those who feel a special attraction
for it and enjoy therein a foretaste of the perpetual worship they
look forward to as the summit of their future felicity. The pre-
sent writer remembers a few years ago to have been present
alone in the church of St. Bernard's Abbey, Leicestershire,
before the service of Prime began. Scarcely the faintest hint of
dawn glimmered through the eastern windows, and the single
lamp of the sanctuary hardly revealed the outlines of the choir.
Suddenly a peculiar and shortly-reiterated sound aroused his

* St. Bernard's Abbey, founded by the late Ambrose Phillips De Lisle, and built by Augustus
\Velby Pugin.

t The worthy prior to whose enlightened zeal the happy inauguration of Buckfast Abbey i
due has now left for America to carry on the same good work in the United States. His name
is Father Thomas DepSrou.

612 ECCLESIASTICAL SURVIVALS AND REVIVALS. [Feb.,

curiosity. It proved to be due to the incoming of an aged
monk, dragging along his partly paralyzed limbs with the help of
crutches. Fifty years had passed over his head as a Cistercian
religious, and yet that life was not adopted by him before the
mature age of thirty-four ! Here is one instance of the per-
sistent charm of such a life for certain natures. One need not be
a believer in Christianity to understand that many a man who
does believe in it may continue to feel the charm of a life given
wholly to direct communion -with his Lord, and to repeating
again and again, day after day, those venerable praises and thanks-
givings of the Hebrew Psalmist which have for so many centu-
ries given articulate expression to the highest emotions of the
best men of so many nations. There surely is, then, some solid
ground for believing that England may see again a few religious
houses in the main resembling, though in some matters differing
from, those which were in our land in pre-Reformation times. It
is but a few such houses, however, which can live again, for the
need for them is unquestionably far less. The process of the
division of labor, which has been carried so much further since
the tenth century, would account for this, even if all England
were in communion with Rome. At one time all who desired a
Jife of study, or of quiet repose, or of artistic culture were
driven to the cloister. Our doctors, our lawyers, our men of
letters, our poets, and our artists were almost necessarily monks.
.Still, though so many fields of uncloistered activity now exist
which once were not, there are, and, as it seems, there will long
be, certain stirrings of the soul, certain yearnings of the heart
and convictions of the intellect, which find their satisfaction only
in the realization of the monastic ideal. Generous minds who
desire that all legitimate aspirations should obtain their satisfac-
tion, who would give to others that liberty which they demand
with justice for themselves, cannot but view with satisfaction the
opening once more of an old English monastic house for centu-
ries suppressed. Long a desolate and useless ruin, it now affords
an opportunity for practical acquaintance with a mode of life and
a religious ideal which has played so great and so continuous a part
in the past history of our native land. Those persons, moreover,
of whatever " obedience," who desire to witness, if not to join in,
the richer and fuller "common prayer" of the olden days, must
feel a real satisfaction in the opening of one more Benedictine
house a house of that order which has preserved to our own
time so much of the past, and whose breviary, free from many of
the changes introduced into that of Rome, is still enriched by

1885.] FANCHETTE'S FRIEND. 613

many a lovely mediaeval hymn which elsewhere has disappeared.
Such a ritualistic revival is also a survival which recommends
itself to the poet, the artist, the antiquary, and the historian, no
less than to every Christian to whom the solemnity and dignity
of divine worship are especially sacred and precious. Nor is it
for the Christian or the antiquary alone that such an institution
may have charms. The non-Christian theist, the pure agnostic,
may gain a not unwelcome repose through a visit for a few days
or weeks to such an institution. There, far from worldly inter-
ruptions, in the very abode of contemplation, he may find time
to think out to a profitable issue some of the deepest of life's
many problems problems which, while they remain utterly un-
solved, tend to chill the heart, to fetter the intellect, and to sadly
weaken the will. Men who have not tried it can have little idea
of the soothing charm of such a home of peace, or of the benefit
to be sometimes obtained all religious controversies apart
through a short residence in one of these revived embodiments
of the still vigorously surviving spirit of mediaeval monasticism.

FANCHETTE'S FRIEND.

FANCH.ETTB stood in the market-place under the shadow of
the cathedral. The white-capped little French girl looked as
neat as a daisy ; nobody could have guessed how sad a plight
she was in. But under that dainty white head-dress, and under
the shade of her black hair, there was a too delicate clearness
about the brunette face, a darkness about her wistful eyes, a
piquancy in the features, as if they were not only fine but some-
what pinched. Poor Fanchette ! For many days she had exist-
ed half-starved, warding off hunger with sou after sou ; and here
she was, out in the early morning, looking round her, bewildered,
homeless, friendless, almost hopeless, with only one franc in her
pocket. Only one coin in the world ! Where was she to hire
shelter to-night ? And how could she venture to change her
only coin to break her fast with a cup of coffee and a morsel
of bread ? So there she stood, envying the market-women sell-
ing their wares and emptying their baskets of green vegetables ;
envying the busy housewives who were out betimes marketing,
cheapening everything, as the sellers expected, and carrying off
purchases pleasantly after much noisy haggling ; envying the

6 14 FANCHEJTE'S FRIEND. [Feb.,

small shopkeepers in the little sheds and shanties that nestled
round the cathedral's base envying everybody who had work
to do, .no matter how hard. Why, even the chiffonieres, who had
gone round at dawn with their big baskets and their pointed
sticks to search the dust and pick rags even they were better
off than this sweet and trim little maiden. They had work ;
they would not starve. But she, poor child of fifteen years,
had no means of earning her bread. She had neither father,
nor mother, nor home, nor employment since she was sent
adrift when her old employers left the town. It seemed im-
possible for her ever to find a situation again. Who could
have imagined that this pretty figure was such a child of misery ?
A white cap, a little shoulder-shawl, and a blue short skirt and
peasant apron may make up a picturesque rustic costume, and
a young brunette face may look romantic under snowy muslin,
but poverty and hunger are more real than the picturesque and
the romantic, and Fanchette, who had never dreamed of cos-
tume and beauty, was all awake to the hard facts that the coin
in her pocket this morning was the very last, and that she was
weary, hungry, and frightened of the great, strange world, with
nothing to eat when this coin would be spent, no chance of earn-
ing any more, no roof to shelter her to-night.

She went wearily up the cathedral steps after much bewil-
dered thinking, and the lonely, white-capped figure disappeared
through the dark portal under the carvings of the Gothic door-
way under the stone angels, the dragons and the monsters'
heads, and all the gray and hoary multitude of figures that had
guarded the sacred entrance while four centuries of worshippers
were wearing the threshold stone away.

The morning light was filling the chancel with all the glory
of the eastern windows, and poor Fanchette knelt down on the
pavement among the simple townsfolk among the multitude of
the weary and heavy burdened. There was a sense of rest and
home. It was her Father's house.

Suddenly a thought troubled the mind of Fanchette. This
was the one day of the year when, ever since early childhood,
there had been a Mass said at her desire for the holy souls.
Long ago her mother had given into her childish hand each year
on this very morning a franc to carry to the cur6 of their vil-
lage church ; and afterwards out of her own earnings she had
kept up the custom faithfully. But here she was with only one
franc in the world. How could she get a Mass said to-day ?
That poor little pocket of her apron would be quite empty at last.

1885.] FANCHETTE' s FRIEND. 615

There would be no money for a taste of coffee, and she was
already weak and faint ; there would be nothing but homeless
starvation.

The little maiden's hand stole into the apron pocket and be-
gan to feel the solitary coin while she was thinking. The dark
eyes became more wistful, softened with a liquid brightness; but
in that pair of dark eyes there was a certain ardor of purpose,
and in the young face, for all its piquancy, a natural expression
of confiding, childlike simplicity. One saw in the peasant girl's
face the end of the trouble and struggle of those few moments,
the destiny of the last franc. Generous and simple heart! The
hand came out of the poor little apron pocket and left the
pocket empty. The small wooden shoes went as lightly as
they could, making straight for the sacristy-door, and their next
course was away to a side-chapel where the Mass was said,
while a few worshippers gathered to kneel there. When the
Mass was over the little white-capped maiden tripped away
down the cathedral steps, feeling somehow lighter-hearted,
but trying very hard to keep the tears out of that pair of dark
eyes.

Not knowing where to go in her utterly destitute state, she
wandered through the quaint old streets of the little town, under
wooden walls and carven gables, almost stumbling in her weak-
ness over the round stones of the pavement. She had wandered
thus for a long time, unable even to think how to find work, when
a gentleman stopped her with the question :

" Are you in want of employment?"

" Yes, sir," said poor little Fanchette eagerly, looking- up at
him.

He was a man of some thirty years, with a marked dignity
and gravity about his whole person, and with a dark olive face
so grand in features and so noble in expression that to see him
once was to remember him always. There was something busi-
ness-like in his courteous manner; he did not speak in a hurry,
but he did not wish to lose time. His very tone was kind so
kind that the helpless girl added to her brief answer the further
plea : " O sir! for the sake of the good God, tell me how shall
I get work to do? M

" That is why I spoke to you," he said quietly. " Go at once
to the Rue de la Porte Vieille, to the last house in that street
on the right-hand side a house with gray stone pillars to its
courtyard."

Fanchette thanked him with a word warm from her heart

616 FANCHETTE' s FRIEND. [Feb.,

and a look all tearful with gratitude. And then she hurried
away as fast as the wooden shoes could carry her over the
paving-stones away without losing a minute to the Street of the
Old Gateway, and to the last house on the right-hand side. She
found it easily. It was an old house, with a courtyard wall
hiding it from the road. But just as she reached the first gray
pillar of the courtyard door the clamor of a rough, angry voice
almost startled her, and a servant-maid burst out into the road
in a whirlwind of rage, scolding all the way like the roughest of
market-women, and banging the door after her till the Street of
the Old Gateway echoed again.

Fanchette, weak and nervous, stood there frightened till the
woman was gone out of sight and hearing. She was almost
afraid to ring after so startling an incident at the gate with the
gray pillars. But fortunately an old woman opened the court-
yard door to look out into the street.

" Ah ! well," said this stooping, gray-haired dame, nodding
her hooked nose and chin, after she had looked down the street
in vain from under the screen of a wrinkled hand, " if you would
go, Barbe, there was no stopping you. You won't find such a
mistress again, wherever you go ; but it will be ten years added
to my life to have heard the last of that tongue of yours. The
last of it, indeed ! It is in my ears yet as it used to sound in the
kitchen all day like all the rusty knives in the world sharpen-
ing their edges at once. What a still day! We shall hear the
clocks ticking now." Then all at once she caught sight of the
timid face of the girl, who had stepped forward to speak.
" What house do you want ? Can I tell you your way ? "

" I have been sent here to look for work," said Fanchette.
" I thought there was a servant wanted at this house. Is it so?"

The old woman, with sharp eyes, looked at her from the
white cap down to the little sabots. " How lucky ! Come in
and see the mistress. Our maid, Barbe, has just gone off with
herself in a red hot temper. We did not want a servant till this
minute. But we do want one now. Come along ! "

They crossed the courtyard and entered the house. The girl
was told to wait in the square, oak-panelled hall while the old
dame, with jingling keys at her side, went away to seek her
mistress. From the seat in the broad hall Fanchette had a full
view into a large room with windows opening on a garden ter-
race. On the wall of this room, full in the light, and evidently
in a place of honor, there was the portrait of the gentleman who
had told her to come here.

1885.] FANCHETTE'S FRIEND. 617

" I hope they will take me," she thought ; " he will be a kind
master in the house."

And, in truth, it was a most winning face, at once so gravely
earnest and so full of sympathy. It was the face of one of those
men who are brilliant and learned before the world, but above
all lovable at home. The little peasant girl could not read all
this in the portrait, but the same impression came to her : the
master looked kind, and she hoped she would be taken. Yet the
picture could never have told her how kind he was but for that
look of his, that unforgotten look, when he met her in the street.

" Come this way," said the voice of the stooping old house-
keeper suddenly in the midst of Fanchette's reflections, and she
hastened up the broad, polished staircase to where the old woman
stood beckoning. She was ushered into a little room with a
window looking upon the courtyard ; and there she made a deep
curtsey to a white-haired lady, and was left alone to answer the
questions of the mistress of the house.

" You have come to offer yourself as a servant. It is for-
tunate for me. But how did you know I wanted one ? "

" The master met me in the street, madame, and told me to
come."

" The master ! " with a smile.

" Yes, madame. A gentleman met me."

" But there is no gentleman here. You have made a mistake,
my good girl, and you have come to the wrong house. As it
happens, you have come where there is a servant wanting, for
our maid went away this morning suddenly without giving me
any notice."

Then followed a few questions. How old was Fanchette?
Fifteen ! Very young for this situation. Had she served in any
other place? Yes: for a year, since her mother's death. Where
was her father? He, too, was dead. " Fifteen is very young for
my house," said the lady gently and with regret.

" But, madame, do take me. I am so anxious to work."

" Poor little girl ! Well, suppose you come after to-morrow,
and then if I cannot take you I shall try to get you a situation
elsewhere."

Tears came into the homeless girl's eyes, and her voice trem-
bled. " Oh ! is there no work that I could do here to-day ?
Madame, I have nowhere to go, I have no money, I have no
friends, I have had no food."

" My poor girl, you are nearly fainting ! " exclaimed the
white-haired lady, rising suddenly in pity and fear at the sight

6i8 FANCHETTE" s FRIEND. [Feb.,

of the blanched face and tearful eyes. " Of course I could not
have dreamed of this. You must have your breakfast before I
say another word about working." She led her down the stair-
case, talking all the way. "And so you had not anything this
morning to buy a bit of bread. God help us, what a world ! "

" Yes, I had money," stammered Fanchette, with a blush of
faint color, " but but "

"But what?"

" I thought it better to it was necessary I couldn't help
madame, it was only a little, and I gave it away ! "

The mistress of the house stopped suddenly on the stairs.
" Gave it away ! What! How was that?"

" It was one franc, madame." And, under pressure of ques-
tions, poor Fanchette with blushes and assurances that she felt
as if she could not help it stammered out her story.

The lady with the white hair laid her hand on the little
peasant's shoulder, and seemed to whisper to herself something
that sounded like " she, of her want, hath given all she had."
Then she said kindly : " Never fear; you shall have a situation.
I will take you as my servant. We shall not leave it till to-
morrow ; it is settled now. I have no doubt but that you will
work well. And, after all, as to your age, child " with a plea-
sant laugh " why, that is a thing that will improve every
day."

" Ah ! madame, how I thank you ! "

" No, not now. It is not the time for thanks now. It is the
time for your breakfast. Come quickly. What is your name? "

" Fanchette."

" Very well, Fanchette, the first order I give you is that you
shall eat heartily and then rest all the morning, while my house-
keeper explains to you what your duties will be. You will work
all the better afterwards."

Down-stairs, as they passed the open door of the large room
into which Fanchette had seen from her seat in the hall, the lady
noticed that her new maid turned for a moment and looked in
at the picture.

" What do you see there, Fanchette ? Why do you look so
puzzled ? "

" Pardon me, madame. I was only looking at that picture.
It was your friend who was so good as to send me here ; he
must have known you would want a servant."

" My friend ! What friend ? What picture ? Where ? "

" Well, madame, if there is no master of the house, it must

1885.] FANCHETTE' s FRIEND. 619

have been your friend, who thought you might want me. And
when I saw his portrait I knew I had found the right house."

" Come in here ! " The lady led the little maid into the
room to look at the picture before passing on. " Now see your
mistake, Fanchette. Look again. That could not have been the
gentleman you met in the street."

Fanchette looked up at the picture with irresistible truth in
her grateful eyes, and in her simple voice she repeated slowly :
" Yes, madame, I am quite sure : he met me in the street this
morning ; he sent me to you."

Silence for a few moments.

" You shall not be my servant."

Fanchette looked up, startled, grieved.

" That is the portrait of one who died ten years ago," said
the white-haired lady, with tears in her eyes and with a voice
trembling with emotion. " It is the portrait of my son. No,
you shall not be my servant."

Fanchette looked up, still in amazement and in sorrow. But
the arms of the mother were around her. Had not this starv-
ing girl out of her poverty given him, perhaps, this very day the
heaven of heavens? Had he not sent her to his mother's roof?
At last the voice could speak to the wondering girl held yet in a
close embrace : " Poor homeless little one, come to my heart.
You shall not be my servant : you shall be my child."

From that day Fanchette had a home in the Rue de la Porte
Vieille. Her peasant dress was laid aside, and she entered upon
a new life with a new name and a happy future, the daughter of
the house.*

* The above story is true in all its main incidents the last franc, the apparition, the oc-
currences at the house, the portrait, and the adoption.

620 GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE.

A MOST interesting brief biography of Marian Evans has
lately been published by Mathilde Blind. A generous tongue
has herein told of the struggles, early and late, of that sensitive
spirit. The fervor of the Methodists, contrasted with the de-
corous, solemn, yet unexciting ritual which she ever had been
accustomed to hear, attracted her mind even in childhood.
Among the Methodists of that day many of the preachers were
women, of whom one was an aunt of this thoughtful child.' As
she grew older the contemplation of one and another, that
seemed to her an extravagance, whether of dogma or deport-
ment, drove the friendless orphan to suspect that ever-sustaining
and ever-continuing religious hope was neither in the form of
faith that she had renounced nor among the Methodists nor
any other organization with which she had any acquaintance.
Alas! then, whither must she resort for the support without
which such a spirit must famish in despair?

It is a great misfortune for a thoughtful, earnest mind to lose
the form of religious faith in which, even though in early child-
hood, it had humbly, lovingly, and hopefully trusted, and yet find
no other on which to rely as the journey to the grave, especially
in the midst of saddening circumstances, draws nearer and nearer
to its end. If ever there was a spirit that evinced special need of
training in an authoritative discipline of religious faith, a disci-
pline that is competent to save both from defiance of religious
obligations and from despair when they have been violated,
it surely was Marian Evans. For her own happiness, for all the
important exigencies of her own being, it would have been better
had she been less gifted, or more prone to the tendencies of
feebler natures, and with less of charity the sort of charity that
she had for the wants of the needy and the lapses of the frail
among mankind. As it was, besides being the greatest of her
sex her aspirations were for the highest' attainable good in all
government, in civil, social, and domestic life ; and her charities
were so large that they included not only the most squalid and
abject of the human race, but lesser animals which man some-
times, as if for no other cause but having received the gift of
reason, loves either to wantonly destroy or whimsically maltreat.

1885.] GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. 621

Marian Evans was a woman who not only gave of her slender
purse as much as it could spare for the alleviation of human suf-
fering, but she would have stopped a traveller upon the high-
way and begged permission to put Her handkerchief or her
mantle under the collar that galled the shoulder of his jade ; and
she would have gone to the woods to fetch a green bough and
extend it to a worm that, the winds having blown away from its
native tree, she would find writhing its frail, moist body in the
sand.

Such a girl was she when, now twenty years old, she went to
her new home near the old town of Coventry, and, while giv-
ing lessons in several departments of education, occupied what
leisure time she could find in translating the Leben Jtsu, by
Strauss.

It is entertaining to read the account given by her generous
biographer of this sojourn and the subsequent removal out of the
society of the Brays to the coterie of free-thinkers that used to
meet in the editorial rooms of the Westminster Review. These
were rooms wherein a man might exist and appear to thrive.
But they were no proper resort for a woman, especially one with
the spirit and what once had been the yearnings of Marian
Evans. Yet this was all she had, and it was the best, as she be-
lieved, she could obtain ; and out of the society of the positivists
whom she met there habitually she must get, what was obliged
to be gotten from -some source, the intellectual and religious sus-
tenance without some portion of which such a being must lapse
either into inanity or desperation.

Yet the habit of free-thinking had begun quite before she
repaired to the society of its great leaders in London, and already,
and upon a subject on which it is unfortunate for all, but fatal
for a woman, to make mistakes, her mind had come to a judg-
ment that was sadly prophetic and that made her access to the
Westminster Review sufficiently natural an.d easy. Some years
before she had read that intensely serious and exciting novel,
Jane Eyre, and with a bounding heart she had dwelt upon the
recital of the misery and the shame of the poor governess when
she found that the Rochester who had conquered her heart had a
wife who was yet alive. " They had the right to marry, in the
circumstances," exclaimed Marian Evans, and these bold words
showed how far she had wandered from the faith of her fathers,
and even from respect for her country's social laws and those
of all civilized countries. If she could thus believe respect-
ing the obligation of the marriage-bond when the wife, by the

622 GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

visitation of Heaven, had been rendered unfit for the behests of
conjugal union, it was not difficult to foresee her conclusions
when such incompetency would be produced by dishonorable
action.

Among this coterie of free-thinkers in the rooms of the West-
minster Review was George Henry Lewes. He was not an Ado-
nis nor an Apollo. He was not even a gifted Rochester, who,
from mourning for his maniac wife, turned for relief to the petite
governess and dreamed and dreamed how he might make her
supply the place in a heart left destitute. No ; George Henry
Lewes was the very ugliest man that had ever been in those
rooms, so defiant as they had become in all the solemnest and
most beautiful concerns of humanity. George Henry Lewes was
the very impersonation of ugliness. He was, or seemed to be,
of the race of the satyrs, half-man, half-goat, for whose origin
even mythology never undertook to account, and to whom man-
kind, in horror of what evils they might inflict upon them, were
accustomed to offer the first-fruits of the earth. Men did not
say of him that he had the horn of a rhinoceros, but they did say
that he had the head of a dog, and that of a dog one of the ugli-
est of its kind a Scotch terrier. Yet we know that some of the
satyrs won the love of women in one way and another.

George Henry Lewes, however much like a Scotch terrier,
had persuaded a woman to marry .him. The wife that had
borne him three children ruined irretrievably both herself and
him. Then he spurned from his house and his breast one whom
he never ought to have taken to either, and invited Marian Evans
to assume her place in both ; and she, now thirty-five years of age,
consented. At this union there were none even of the condi-
tions that attended the unhappy Dido when, driven by the re-
sistless influences of the two goddesses, she fled with the Trojan
to the grotto wherein

" Pronuba et Tellus et pronuba Juno
Dant signum : fulsere ignes, et conscius aether
Connubiis ; summoque ulularunt nymphse."

But it was yet more emphatically a " day of death " because
of the deliberateness with which it was entered into and the de-
fiant casting out of all remorse and all shame. This man and
this woman, regarding not what God had forbidden, and regard-
ing only those forms which the laws had enjoined from violation,
came together with as little ceremony as the beasts that mate

1885.] GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. 623

in the forest ; and perhaps they had persuaded themselves that
such a union was as innocent.

Yet be it known that this woman, who fortunately was to
bear no offspring of her own, if she did not become warmly at-
tached to the children of her predecessor, made them attached
to her, tended them in health and sickness, and at the dying-bed
of one of them watched and waited with a devotion that the
child never had had and never could have had from the poor
creature who had given him birth ; and she ever seemed as faith-
ful to every behest both of wife and mother as any upon whom
the blessing of the church had descended at the nuptial altar.
Marian Evans believed, or she imagined, that the bond with
which she was bound to this man was of more binding obliga-
tion because it was one that, without the sanction of Heaven and
her country's laws, had nothing to hold it sacred but her own
plighted word. Then this man with the face of a dog and the
shape of a satyr showed the affectionateness of a grateful lover,
and, sooner than she did, found out where lay the greatest gifts
of her who had made such sacrifices to join her being with his
own. Until he told her she had not suspected that she was able
to write a novel.

" My dear," said he one day, " I think you could write a
story." She made no answer the while. But, partly encouraged
by these words, and partly obeying impulses of which thitherto
she had been unconscious, she broke forth suddenly into describ-
ing " Scenes of Clerical Life " for Blackivood 's Magazine, using
the nom de plume of" George Eliot." Before this essay she had be-
lieved, and so expressed her opinion, that no Englishwoman was
capable of anything like a great intellectual creation ; and in con-
trasting English with those French literary women who had felt
and evinced the courage of their sex, and so, when they wrote,
" their books became the fullest expression of their womanhood,"
she was wont to ridicule the former, dubbing their endeavors in
that line " usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine style,
like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire." Re-
membering what she had said, and perhaps from the conscious-
ness of a sort of masculinity of intellect and character, she was
led to assume the name of a man when she went forth upon the task
of rivalling the distinguished women of France. At all events, the
whole world was astounded, as well her publishers as the rest,
when it was discovered that the George Eliot who had aroused
a greater interest in the reading public than any other person
of her generation was a woman.

624 GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

By this time she had wandered, except in instinctive feeling,
entirely from the religious faith of her childhood. Such must
have been the case, otherwise every moment of her waking ex-
istence must have been beset by fears that would have received
little relief from such a society with any person of the male sex,
however gifted he may have been in the graces that win the love
of women. Among the things in her experience that she remem-
bered, and upon which her mind habitually dwelt with fondness,
was the first visit which she made to the Continent. What was
most pleasing of the reminiscences of this visit was a sojourn on
the Lake of Geneva, wherein she read over and over again that
wonderful book, the Confessions of Rousseau. It is bad to have
read this book of one who next to Voltaire, and in some respects
beyond even him, was the most reprobate of all the men of genius
whom the earth has produced ; but in a woman it was audacious
to have confessed to a pleasing recollection of the almost incredi-
ble foulnesses which it contains. Not that George Eliot had a
love of foulness in action or in words, but she drank into her
being without painful reluctance all the foulness because it was
in the same cup that contained the voluptuous sentimentality
which distinguished above all mankind this strange, wayward
being.

Such reading, together with other agencies, had led her, some
time before her connection with Mr. Lewes, to entertain strange
and rather independent views of married life, and that there was
a liberty and a happiness to which, in spite of word of priest and
sanction of the church, a brave spirit, striving ever with sin-
gleness of heart and integrity of purpose, might aspire. This is
apparent from an article written for the Westminster Review in
1854, when she was only five-and-twenty years of age. It was
about Mme. de Sable. Discussing what was alleged to be the
" laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage-tie
in France," she said :

"Heaven forbid that we should enter on a defence of French morals,
most of all in reference to marriage ! But it is undeniable that unions
formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, and grounded only on in-
herent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more
intelligent sympathy with men and to heighten and complicate their share
in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the conjugal rela-
tion are doubtless favorable to the manifestation of the highest qualities
by persons who have already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely
foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or re-
taining its beloved object to convert indolence into activity, indifference
into ardent partisanship, dulness into perspicuity."

1885.] GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. 625

These words were a prophecy destined to fulfilment ten years
afterwards.

The man that wrote to her his request, who was without any
sort of religious faith himself, had none of the apprehension that
an anxious, true-hearted, honorable lover feels when he does not
know, but can only hope, that his suit of a modest, shrinking,
blushing, lovely woman will be graciously received ; nor was his
mind disturbed by any fears of resentment on account of a pro-
posal so sounding in dishonor. He had long known the temper
and the tone of the woman whom he sought, and that her deci-
sion would be guided by reflections mainly upon the " inherent
fitness " of acceptance or rejection. Her mind for years had
been taking on preparation for that condition wherein it is
probable that she preferred the kind of union now proposed to
one that had any other sanction than that of her own heart. Oi
such a union the fruit must be bitter in the lapse of time. We
shall see some of this bitterness at the last.

It is interesting to follow a literary career thus begun with
the Scenes of Clerical Life. How they did set the world to read-
ing and thinking and sympathizing in this provincial life, so
different from that of London, yet so fraught with unexpected
interest as well to the indwellers of the city as those of the
province ! It was seen full soon that the author had not much
admiration for the mild-mannered country clergyman, neither
hot nor yet notably cold, who punctiliously complied with the
written demands of his office, got for himself as comfortable
living as possible, and addicted himself in private to a moderate
dalliance with the flute. But they heard far different words
when the novelist came to talk of those spirits who, however
fanatical, were believed by her to be striving after a more earnest
spiritual life than that which they beheld in their midst. Few
can read the exhortations of Dinah Morris without feeling that
such words came from the mouth of one who felt intensely that
some becoming worship ot God was of pressing importance, and
that her spirit was wailing in the anguish of uncertainty in
regard to what were the appointed ways, if any, in which such
worship should be rendered. The mind of Marian Evans was
eminently, passionately serious. The exquisite humor that ap-
pears with sufficient frequency in her writings, instead of sub-
tracting from the evidence that the serious predominated over
the sportive in her being, as it did in that of Shakspere, enhanced
it. For humor goes hand-in-hand with sadness in minds that are
most gifted and sympathetic, and these are the only minds that
VOL. XL. 40

626 GEORGE ELIOT 's MARRIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

are able to create interesting ctoncretes out of the lives of man-
kind.

Marian Evans, serious in childhood, more serious in young-
womanhood, was to become most serious now, when, after hav-
ing parted from what she had known of religious obligations and
hopes, she entered upon an existence that .cannot bring peace in
this world, except that sort of peace that may come to those
who are destitute of all religious faith other than a faith that
excludes all idea of responsibility for personal conduct and all
thought of judgment upon it hereafter. Such a person, indeed,
was the man to whom she had given herself, and there can be no
doubt that as long as he lived she endeavored to persuade her-
self that the life that she was leading, if regarded by Heaven
at all, was regarded, if not with favor, at .least with forgiveness,
and that the first wrong, if a wrong, was condoned by a fidelity
that the lawful wife had dishonored, and that could not have
been more sincere had every requisite of legitimate marriage
been observed. Yet this man could never lead her entirely
away from religious convictions. The doubts that in youth had
so beset her mind were not followed by any contemplations that
were more cheerful, and the shadows upon her spirit became
only deeper and deeper.

Among the Wesleyans were near relatives. Prominent
among these was an aunt who had been a preacher, but who,
when women were allowed no longer to speak in public, had left
the society. In the year 1859 Miss Evans gave an account of
this aunt in a letter to a friend. After telling of some things
that led to the creation of the character of Hettie Sorel in Adam
Bede, and other things, she concluded thus :

" You see how my aunt suggested Dinah ; but it is not possible you
should see, as 1 do, how entirely her individuality differed from Dinah's.
How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's sermon,
prayers, and speeches were copied, when they were written with hot tears as
they surged up in my own mind ! "

Of all married lovers that we have ever read of in books
those of George Eliot are least to be congratulated. It is as
mournful as it is wonderful to contemplate the sarcasm which
she poured upon married life. Her husbands and wives gene-
rally intermarried in greater or less want of consideration for
that " inherent fitness " of which she was wont to speak with
such confidence in the Westminster Review, and with greater or
less ignorance of the imagined superior purposes of matrimony

1885.] GEORGE ELIOT* s MARRIED PEOPLE, 627

compared with those simple purposes of God, comfort and fruit,
with such preservation of honor and love as is possible to an
estate so fallen. Except in the case of the Poysers and their
likes, she has generally made them petulant, exacting, suspi-
cious, and, wherever possible, oppressive.

For the purposes of this article the Mill on the Floss is the
most interesting of George Eliot's novels, for, according to the
Biography, it contains a history of the author and her family. In
Maggie Tulliver we read the life of Marian Evans' childhood
and young-womanhood, and we foresaw that something out of
the usual course was to attend the career of a girl who was wont
to keep in an attic, with its worm-eaten floors and rafters, " a
fetich she punished for all her misfortunes," and drove nails into
the head of a hideous wooden doll in imitation of the vengeance
of Jael upon Sisera. Maggie Tulliver has been styled "the most
adorable of George Eliot's women." True to the author's views
of such matters, she gave to this young woman so adorable a
vulgarian for a lover; and of the adorable woman herself she
wrote that, with all her charming qualities, she had " more affinity
with poets and artists than with saints and martyrs." and that
she yielded her heart to an " attraction lying entirely in the
magnetism of passion." Strange words for a woman to write
about one of her own creation, who was to be styled the most
adorable of them all ! What would have become of Maggie had
she not died we can only conjecture by considering the fate of
the girl she represented, and who, unfortunately for herself, did
not die in her youth.

And now as to the married experiences of the three Dodsons,
Maggie Tulliver's mother, ana her two aunts, Mrs. Pullet and
Mrs. Glegg. In all literature there is nothing so ludicrous and
yet so melancholy. It is sad, in the midst of the gushing laugh-
ter in which we are made to indulge, to think of the lesson that
we are expected to learn or the moral that we may deduce.
Mrs. Pullet, whose claim to extreme gentility was founded
mainly upon the delicacy of her health, must try, and try in vain,
to find in her husband the "inherent fitness" so needed by a
woman of extreme gentility. Instead of marrying a man this
delicate creature found that she had married a little old maid.
In this couple there was little disposition on the part of either to
prey upon the other, and if there had been there was nothing
upon which to prey, or even to pick. But what shall we say of
Mrs. Glegg, with her dictatorial ways, her small economies, her
anxiety to make a handsome figure in her will, and her invariable

628 GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

reference to what was " the way in our family " ? But Mr.
Glegg was not like his brother-in law, Mr. Pullet. He was pos-
sessed of a salutary sullenness that sometimes served the purpose
of the power of aggression which he lacked. When the wife of
his bosom had put upon Mr. Tulliver indignities upon indignities,
until he at last, like a worm that has been teased ruthlessly and
beyond endurance, made a feeble, resentful stroke at his persecu-
tor, she went to her husband, not for sympathy, but in order to
have his forces joined with hers for the sake of effectually crush-
ing the little insect. Now, Mr. Glegg had not the heart for any
such warfare. One may read (twelfth chapter), in a scene at the
breakfast-table, a specimen of a considerable portion of the con-
jugal life of this aunt which will not be forgotten. As for Mag-
gie's parents, let us see what were the prospects of the holy state
of matrimony with them. The description of this lady is briefly
given on the occasion of a remark she made to her husband after
the quarrel with Sister Glegg, and while the poor debtor's wife,
troubled by the fear of his being called upon to pay, was affec-
tionately endeavoring to suggest a more prudent course than
giving up to resentment :

" Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she re-
tained with all of the freshness of her early married life a faculty of saying
things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired.
Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a pa-
triarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it
can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs. Tulliver was
an amiable fish of this kind, and, after running her head against the same
resisting medium for thirteen years, would go at it again to-day with un-
idulled alacrity."

If the young life of Marian Evans was like that of Maggie
Tulliver among these parents and these aunts, no wonder that
she grew up with the free opinions that led to such free action.
As for her courtship by Stephen Guest, it was like that of the
savage for the unprotected girl whom he chances to find wan-
dering too far from home lower, indeed, because to the pur-
sued was imparted some of the fierceness of the pursuer which
made the former sometimes almost wish to be overtaken. The
poor girl was saved from ruin by accidental death. Perhaps,
indeed, we almost think that she who indited her history some-
times wished that she also in youth had gone down beneath the
flood.

As the married lovers of George Eliot grow in intelligence,
in the opportunities of culture, in the occupation of higher social

[885.] GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. 629

positions, they are made to illustrate seriously, as those we have
described illustrated ludicrously, the author's ideas of the insuffi-
ciency of marriage to produce the happiness which it always
promises. It makes the heart sick to read of the disappointment
of Dorothea in the lofty yet innocent expectations she had in-
dulged from the society of such a husband as Casaubon, wherein
every religious aspiration of her heart is turned back upon and
made to rend it. Then the punishment of Lydgate, who, though
a gentleman born and bred, took to wife a woman who had
nothing to commend herself except physical beauty how such
punishment tends to make a gentleman recoil with fear from
women who are notedly beautiful ! It seems like cruelty to read
in this wonderful book how this woman knows so well both to
drive her husband almost to despair from shame for her selfish-
ness, meanness, and duplicity, and then lure him back again by
presenting in new phases and attitudes the charms that, in spite
of his great manhood, had won him at the outset, and still pre-
served, though ever trifling with and abusing, their sway.

It is specially remarkable in the married lovers of George
Eliot that they are made to refrain from violation of the letter
of the bond which has bound them, although the spirit may have
long been broken and hopeless of amendment. This fact saved
her from being one of the evilest of the teachers of mankind.
She did not mean to be an evil teacher. Her heart \yas too
charitable and,- according to her ideas of purity, too pure for
that. So she made her married lovers faithful to the letter of
their bonds. In reading Middlemarch we are constantly expect-
ing Dorothea, ardent as religious, to leave the vain, pompous,
jealous autocrat who, though not bloody-minded like Bluebeard,
has no more, if as much, regard for a wife's individuality or
Lydgate to withdraw from one so wholly unfit for the society of a
good, brave man. No. There is that fatal bond which, unlike
Shylock, these obligors interpret against themselves and wait
for death or madness to release them.

One of the most affecting scenes illustrating this characteristic
is that wherein is told of the meeting between Mrs. Bulstrode
and her husband, whose early knavery, unsuspected during
twenty years of married life, is at last detected, and the uncov-
ered felon sits in his study and awaits, as a murderer awaits the
announcement of the verdict of a jury, the conduct of his wife,
who in her chamber above is reflecting upon the news she has
just heard and upon what sort of bosom her trusting head has
rested so long. We do not envy the one who without tears can

630 GEORGE ELIOT'S MARKIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

see that proud woman, after having put off the finery in which
yesterday she had flaunted in disdain of the lesser women of
her acquaintance, and put on the plain thing's she knows she is
doomed to wear henceforth, she descends, goes to her husband
bowed down with shame and terror, and, standing over him
awhile in silence, at last calmly says : " Nicholas, look up."

Now, what could have been the motive of this strange woman
to pay such respect to an institution which in her philosophical
writings she had sneered at, and whose behests her own life had
dishonored? She had read over and over, and many times over,
the Confessions of Rousseau. Then she had admired eagerly the
female novelists of France who had felt and exerted the " courage
of their sex." Yet she could not pass to the point of the boldest
among these, and make marriage a covert for the resort of un-
lawful loves instead of a sweet, clean bower for the lawful, or at
least- a shelter for the sorely tempted. She must follow these
precedents as far as a mind that, though perverted, was yet gen-
erous and kindly could follow without doing violence to in-
stincts that were ineradicable and to traditions of home and
country that could not be wholly ignored. Here she must pause.
Her married lovers are not happy. The most cultured and in-
teresting among them either are miserable or they have grown
to despise themselves for having had so little forethought as to
bind themselves irrevocably to those whom they have found to
be more unfit than any others would have been for the superior
purposes for which union with them was sought and consum-
mated. Yet they forbear from violation, the possible results of
which seem as evil as the present and only more horrible. These
husbands and wives are alternately like the lepers who, while
they saw death for themselves in the city from which the)' had
been cast out, see death more terrible among the enemies who
were advancing in wrath against their whole nation. They are
made to shrink from violation of the marriage-vows, as well as to
hate it for its inadequacy to fulfil its promises. The marriage-
vow is like the oath by the Styx, the dark, slow-moving river
of hell, from which neither men nor gods could absolve. Men
and women may forbear to make it, and hold on to the freedom
from which how perilous it is to part George Eliot will tell them
in words and pictures that make one sometimes shout with
laughter and sometimes shudder to hear and behold ; but when
one has entered upon that estate one has gone upon a bourne
almost like that from which no traveller returns.

Thus it is that, in spite of her own free-thinking principles

1885.] GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. 631

and her own eccentric life, the creations of George Eliot's imagi-
nation, like the curse of the weak, unfaithful prophet, become a
blessing in so far as they evince that in the great heart of hu-
manity the assurance is ineradicable that marriage is an institu-
tion of God and that its bonds are indissoluble by human means.
We had often suspected that this gifted woman had such
purpose, among others, in view while engaged in her wonderful
work, as if impelled, by the instinctive delicacy of her sex, to
hope thus to make some compensation for what, in her heart,
she must fear to have been a mistake in her own career ; and we
are confirmed in this view by the fact of her marriage after the
death of Mr. Lewes. It has been said that on that occasion she
was prostrated by grief nigh unto despair. That such a woman,
had she been young, had married would have been most natu-
ral. When such a loss occurs, the more anguishing its recol-
lection the more apt a despairing heart to look around for the
means of support ; and of all such means the most natural is
the diversion to another love. Of all seasons for a lover, if he
be both delicate and artful, to approach the object of pursuit,
that is most favorable when the beloved object is forlorn with
the sense of bereavement of a love that is dead and buried in the
grave. "The Lady of Ephesus " in the Satyricon of Petronius
Arbiter is a satire, but it was founded upon a principle of our
being that Heaven implanted there for purposes not less wise
than benignant. Extravagant as are the things told of the
Roman soldier and the young widow watching by the bier of
her husband, yet some of the thoughts therein described are far
more natural and more common than a lifetime yearning for the
dead and refusal to be comforted by the living. Seldom, indeed,
does this seem to be the case with women, except the young or
those not past the period of middle age ; for, besides that love
with them has been a greater part of existence than with, men,
they are in greater dread of the charge of levity, are generally
more religious-minded, and therefore more able to endure mis-
fortune and more capable to find resignation. But how often
do we see an old man, who has been bereft of the companion of
all the years since the inception of his manhood, after the first
season of wailing given to the sense of overwhelming loss, sud-
denly rise from his lowliness, straighten his bent shoulders, trim
himself in youthful garments, and strive to move with easy
gayety among women of whom he might have been the grand-
father ! Such deportment, ludicrous as it appears to the young
and reprehensible to the aged, is an assertion of the instinct of

632 GEORGE ELIOT'S MARRIED PEOPLE. [Feb.,

self-preservation which is common to all periods of human
life, and, instead of indicating disrespect for the dead, is often,
pitiful though it be, the most convincing evidence of how dearly
the dead were prized while yet alive. To Hebron "Abraham
came to mourn for Sara and to weep for her. And Abraham
stood up before his dead and spake unto the sons of Heth, say-
ing : I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me a
possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead
out of my sight." And in the same chapter it is written : " Then
again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Ceturah." Some
persons may say, " Alas, that this is so !." but thousands upon
thousands, after saying so, have done likewise, and thousands
and thousands who will make such ejaculation hereafter will do
likewise. The very best men, even more often than the worst,
after having lost those whom they loved better than life, have
thus sought, when it was not possible to restore, to simulate a
condition that during its continuance was so fruitful of good.

This seldom happens with women who are advanced in life.
The great apostle in his letters puts widows among the poor and
the afflicted. Not that women need companionship less than
men, but that, especially in advanced age, they are less subject
to be led astray by deceitful promises of this kind, and so are
usually left in the desolation that has befallen them. In one
case impulses sometimes may be as strong, but they are also
more under control.

Now, what of this woman, who at sixty years of age was left
to a widowhood perhaps more desolate than if she had had a
right to him whose name she bore ? Upon her face, even in
youth, had never been a single trace of the beauty that delights
men's eyes. Now she was wrinkled with age and sickness and
sorrow. Why must she marry ? Ah ! we must ask that ques-
tion of Heaven. Only Heaven knows all the thoughts and the
longings of such a spirit. Only Heaven can answer why, in the
being of woman, young or old, is the undying sense of necessity
to lean upon some support external to herself. It may be the
church. It may be one of the multifold charities which none so
well as she know how to dispense to the suffering of all condi-
tions. If not here she can find the support which she needs,
then she must lean her head upon the breast of a man. And yet
and yet can we suppose that this old woman, broken down with
sickness and disappointments and incurable griefs, hoped to
have her youth renewed and put into a condition of felicity that
in its prime it had never known, by placing orange-blossoms

1885.] GEORGE ELWI'S MARRIED PEOPLE. 633

among her gray, withered locks, going tottering along the aisle
in St. George's Chapel in Hanover Square, and having the
symbolic ring put upon her wrinkled finger by a young man, her
junior by thirty years ? Had she become so superannuated as not
to know that old December can neither impart nor receive the
sweet influences of the young May? Ah! no. In the case of
Marian Evans, we doubt not, there was a wish, when dying, to
seek another name with which to descend into the grave than
the one she had usurped from another of her sex who, in spite of
all else that she had forfeited, was entitled to this until death had
put an end to the claim. For even with the most abject of earth
there are belongings that are as sacred as any property of any
others until death.

With such views of Marian Evans we are led to compassion-
ate whenever we think of her strange, unhappy career. Aside
from our gratitude for the delight we get from her almost match-
less creations, we must be profoundly touched by the contem-
plation of what must have been the sadness of her who could not
believe that happiness was to be found in the married state, and
who had no experience of happiness without, and who, though
without any ascertained principles of religious belief, and with
an ineffaceable blot upon her own life, yet shrank from imparting
any precept that would have led others to their ruin. It is
pleasing to notice her sympathy with every form of suffering
and her perpetual desire to alleviate it. It was as if she would
make all possible amends for the errors of her own life. She
had undervalued the sacredness of marriage, and, in her condi-
tion, perhaps it was impossible to describe it otherwise than it
appeared to her own eyes. Yet if unwittingly or unintention-
ally she paid her reverence to that state of life, she taught that
there was no hope of escape from its miseries on this side of the
grave. She made her husbands and wives dispute and quarr*el,
inflict and suffer, until death put an end both to infliction and
suffering ; then at last, when youth and strength and health
gone, and what had once been plainness of feature had
lapsed into the wrinkles of eld, when she had laid aside her work
and\n the solitude of her spirit looked back upon the past and
forth^upon the future, it is touching to contemplate how, when
aged, tired, alone, she yearned for an honorable name to be writ-
ten upon her tomb. Mme. de Stael concealed from the world
the marriage that had been consummated in her old age, both
because she was afraid of the ridicule and of any subtraction
from the name that she had made so renowned. It was not until

634 GEORGE ELIOT' s MARRIED PEOPLE, [Feb.,

her will was opened that the fact was made known that she had
taken to her aged bosom a Genoese boy, when the ridicule that
must follow, following late, made no impression upon the "dull,
cold ear of death." How unlike her was the Englishwoman
who piteously desired that the blessings she had not sought in
life heretofore might descend upon her grave ! To bind herself
in old age with the bond she had desecrated, not expecting, per-
haps not even desiring, the good the hope of which impels the
young to take its obligations, seemed to her the only apology she
could make for the wrong done both to herself and the world.
The world accepted it gladly, partly sympathizing with the
motive that prompted it, and partly in consideration of her excel-
lent greatness.

Doubtless it was well for Marian Evans that the man who
had ruined her life died before her. Henceforward, though in-
expressibly sad, yet it is consoling to contemplate how she tried
to expiate the past. The companion who had gone before could
never seduce her from all religious conviction, and now, when his
voice was no longer heard and his example was removed, per-
haps her awakening concern for her own immortal interests was
enhanced by regretful memories of the wrongs done by him to
which herself was party, without condonement of which, even by
repentance, he had gone upon his last journey. The marriage
of herself with another man would at least seem to consummate
the severance that death had already made. If such were her
motives for this last action, in it there is a pathos like that when
CEdipus was led to Athens after the suicide of Jocasta, where he
was to " turn the goal of wearisome existence," and where, seated
in the grove hard by the temples of the gods, lifting his sightless
eyes towards heaven, he prayed for " some accomplishment and
end of life."

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 635

SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS.

No. IV.

LIBERTY OF THEORIZING ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN UNIVER-
SALITY OF THE DELUGE THE CONFUSION OF BABEL THE
TRUE SCIENTIFIC METHOD CONCLUSION.

LIBERTY OF THEORIZING ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

LET us recall to mind the precise point at which we left off
in our last number, and restate the exact question we are consid-
ering. It is, briefly, whether there is, doctrinally speaking, a
boundless liberty of theorizing respecting the antiquity of the
Adamic race, or a liberty which has limits. We have seen that
this liberty is claimed in general terms by some respectable
writers whom we have quoted. Other writers of greater name
and of established reputation as authors in sacred science have
been referred to as giving their sanction to the thesis that there
is no biblical chronology, and that consequently it belongs to the
human, sciences to ascertain the date of the appearance of man
on the earth. From this position the inference is drawn that
"the greatest latitude " must be allowed to theory, and that
"every Scriptural criterion for measuring doctrinally" theories of
the sort referred to is lacking.

For this inference we do not think such authors as the Abbe
Le Hir, Cardinal Manning, and others of similar authority can
be held responsible. It is too wide and general for any premises
which are sanctioned by their authority. Any appearance of a
general consent of the authors whom we have quoted, in favor
of this unlimited latitude in theorizing, which may present itself
to the minds of our readers is illusory. What is really established
with great probability by weighty reasons and the concurrent
judgment of a number of competent scholars is, that there is no
complete and detailed chronology in the Scriptures, especially in
the present condition of their text, and therefore no precise and
exact criterion for measuring doctrinally the systems of chronolo-
gists. This is not to say that there is no chronology at all to be
found in Scripture, and that it furnishes no chronological data
whatsoever, and no, even negative, doctrinal criterion. Father de
Valroger, in a passage quoted in our last number, makes a state-
ment which seems to express the intention of all the authors

636 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

alluded to, one in which Dr. Schaefer explicitly concurs : " The
Bible indicates in a measure which suffices for its divine scope the
chronological order of the facts which it relates. . . . We should
not seek in it a detailed and precise chronology" This is the view
which we hold to be the correct one in respect to the original
and authentic indications of the chronological order of events in
the earliest history of mankind. Obscurity is cast upon these
authentic indications by the doubtful state of the present text.
Yet, so far as the text is not obscured, or can be by sound criti-
cism partially cleared from obscurity, we can avail ourselves of
the certain or probable data which it furnishes.

When we inquire what is the measure which suffices for the
divine scope of the Bible, and investigate in a more particular
manner the divine scope itself of that part of the Bible which is
contained in the earlier chapters of Genesis, we find a wide field
opening before us. We cannot attempt to traverse this whole
field, yet we must take some survey of it, or else keep silence
altogether about the measure or criterion of chronological order
in the Scripture. So long as we confine ourselves to the direct
and principal scope of the earlier part of Genesis, which is that
portion of the Bible with which alone we are immediately con-
cerned, there is no difficulty and no difference of opinion in our
way. It is to teach what St. Thomas calls the doctrine which
per se belongs to faith. But there is also an indirect and subor-
dinate scope, the teaching of what per accidens belongs to faith,
under which head some things are found concerning which, as
the same doctor says, " holy men have held diverse opinions." *
In a general way we may say that the subordinate divine scope
of the Scripture is to teach us the history of God's providence
over the human race in respect to those essential matters of
faith viz., the creation, the original state, and the restitution of
man. Christianity is an historical religion. So was Judaism.
So were the pre-Mosaic and pre-Abrahamic and pre-Noachian dis-
pensations. The historic stream has carried on its surface and
floated down to us the divine doctrine and law. The written
tradition, which is an outcome from the larger unwritten tradition,
is therefore largely historical and prophetic. Its source must
be traced to Noah and Adam, one the restorer, the other the
founder, under God, of the patriarchal church. They cannot;
therefore, either of them be relegated to an absolutely prehis-
torical antiquity, without cutting off the stream of sacred tradi-
tion, which is the bearer of the divine doctrine and law received

* In 2 Dist, 12, q. i, a. a.

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 637

from God by revelation at the beginning, preserved in pure and
uninterrupted continuity, increased by the oral and written
teaching of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, prophets, and inspired men,
down to St. John, the last of the apostles.

It is our conviction, therefore, in which we are sure of being
supported by the sanction of all Catholic theologians of the
highest class and many non-Catholic scholars of eminence, that
any theory of the antiquity of the Adamic race which destroys
this continuity of historical tradition is irreconcilable with the
truth of the Sacred Scripture. We cannot admit that there is
no doctrinal criterion whatever for measuring such theories. The
chronological indications which sufficed for the divine scope
of the inspired book of Genesis must have been known and
understood in their genuine and authentic state when the book
was first promulgated. That relative value, at least, which
the best scholars who deny an absolute value to numerical
figures in the sacred books in many cases ascribe to them, must
have attached to these figures in the genealogies of the patri-
archs. We will not attempt a complete exposition of the whole
import of this notion of relative truth and value which occurs
in some of the passages we have quoted in the course of these
articles. But a part of its meaning is certainly this: that an
approximative, if not a precise, notation is given, which an-
swers the writer's purpose. An inspired writer's purpose is
one suggested and controlled by the Holy Spirit in view of
the divine scope for the sake of which he was moved to write.
The divine scope of the genealogy from Adam to Judah, and
fhence to David and his royal line, is evidently, first of all,
to give the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Besides this another
end can be assigned, as Bossuet and the eminent modern
scholar Delitzsch insist with emphasis viz., to show in the
succession of patriarchs the validity and credibility of the tra-
dition which came down through them to moses. They ac-
credit Moses; Moses and the prophets accredit Jesus Christ,
who accredits the apostles and their successors to the end of
time. The church received and preserves the apostolic writ-
ings and traditions, the synagogue had the scriptures and the
traditions which went back to Moses. What had Moses and
his predecessors to fall back upon? Tradition of the primitive
revelation given to Adam, most undoubtedly ; and of later reve-
lations to the patriarchs; and, probably, written documents in
which these revelations, together with historical registers and
genealogies, were recorded. We do not fancy that the Holy

638 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

Spirit dictated to Moses that early part of Genesis which covers
several thousands of years before his divine legation, word by
word and sentence by sentence, as an author dictates to his aman-
uensis. It is far more reasonable to suppose indeed, for our
own part we have not the least doubt that the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit moved him to arrange and edit ancient documents
and reduce to writing unwritten traditions, so as to prepare and
hand down an epitome or summary of the sacred memoirs of the
people of God and their chief patriarchs, thus bridging the vast
chasm between himself and Adam. The earlier part of Genesis
gives evidence, which to our mind has been convincing ever
since we began to study it more than forty years ago, of being a
collection of distinct, archaic documents whose antiquity is lost
in the night of time. We are disposed to refer the first of these
to Adam himself as its author and the relator of a divine reve-
lation made to him perhaps in a vision, perhaps by some other
mode of intellectual illumination concerning the creation of the
world. This is the opinion of Dr. Schaefer.

The genius, education, and position of Moses gave him, more-
over, the best opportunities and the most admirable fitness for
acquiring all the knowledge attainable, at the time when he lived,
of the past history of the world ; that is, of the world which is
included within the scope of the sacred history. Apart from his
inspiration, the value of the historical records which he com-
piled into the book of Genesis far excels that of any memorials
of the dim period before the deluge, or next following that
great cataclysm, which have survived among other nations. It
is not reasonable or a truly scientific method of procedure to put
in a plea in bar against the Mosaic documents, when an attempt
is made by means of the sciences to recover the date of the be-
ginning of the human face on the earth, and the chronology of
its history from Adam to Abraham. They should be taken into
the account, even in regard to their human and historical autho-
rity, among the other data from which the investigation is made.

The " higher criticism," indeed, attempts to pull in pieces the
Pentateuch and the entire Old Testament. But the sentence of
Edgar Quinet on this " higher criticism " is just :

"At first sight everything seems to be changed by its discoveries; but
when you recover from the shock and really look into it you find such a
medley of visionary conjecture and reckless theorizing that you despair of
founding anything thereupon."*

* Quoted from Le Ginie des Religions in Lilly's Ancient Religion and Modern Thought,
p. 276.

1 885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 639

After the " higher criticism " comes the highest criticism, which
despoils its predecessor of whatever it has worth taking, and re-
habilitates the sacred books.

Virchow, the eminent modern scientist, has made another
protest against " the arbitrariness of personal speculation which
is now rampant in the several branches of physical science." *

Those who think to escape from difficulties and obtain scien-
tific certitude by throwing over the divine and human authority
of sacred history will find that they have drifted out of a sea
with land in sight on all sides, though veiled in mist, into a
boundless ocean.

If the divine scope of the book of Genesis required that the
chronology of the facts related in it should be given with suffi-
cient exactness to serve that divine scope, there can be no doubt
that the control and assistance of the Holy Spirit guided the
mind of Moses to the knowledge of the truth, guarded it from
error, and determined him to make an accurate written record.
That scope may have been partly temporary and long since ful-
filled. Certainly it was not so important to future ages to have
the numerical figures in the original text accurately and certainly
preserved that God should supernaturally secure them from
alteration. Having had, in the authentic text of Moses, only a
relative value i.e., one which gave a sufficient approximation to
a chronology to answer the doctrinal scope they have now only
a lesser relative, value, on account of accidental or perhaps also
intentional alterations. Gaps in the succession of generations,
from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, in the original
text, would certainly deprive the genealogical tables of an abso-
lute value as a foundation for a complete chronology. The
omission of some names by transcribers, and the change of letters
having a certain numerical value for other letters of a different
value, through the same fault of transcribers, would equally
detract from the worth of the table as a rule of chronological
measurement. The suspicion of other changes which may have
occurred renders the measuring rule still more uncertain.

Notwithstanding all this, we venture to express the opinion
that the gaps in the genealogical succession cannot have been out
of all proportion to the names mentioned. Neither can we, ac-
cording to the laws of probability and the rules of sound criti-
cism, suppose that accidental or intentional alterations in figures
have made an extravagant divergence from the authentic text in
all three recensions in matters of grave importance. Conjectural

* The same, p. a8z.

640 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

emendations of the text, ingenious as some of them are, cannot be
taken into serious account. After making- all due deductions the
remainder which is left as a factor in calculations based on all
accessible data, respecting the antiquity of the Adamic race and
the creation of Adam, has the character of a doctrinal criterion,
in a large sense, because and in so far as it comes within the
scope of the divinely inspired Scripture.

In view of all foregoing considerations, we prefer to say that
" a great latitude," rather than " the greatest latitude," must be
allowed to theory. We will not pretend to say what is its ex-
treme limit. So far as we know at present, ail biblical chrono-
meters, all chronometers of profane history, and all geological
chronometers leave the chronology of the human race in a float-
ing and undecided state. Probably it never will be and cannot
be determined with precision and certainty. It may be, how-
ever, that a closer approximation to definite certainty will become
possible hereafter than is now within the reach of science.

UNIVERSALITY OF THE DELUGE.

The ancient and common opinion that the deluge of Noah
was universal, in the sense of extending over the surface of the
globe and destroying all animal life except what was preserved
within the ark, is still maintained by respectable Catholic writers.
It cannot be either proved or disproved with positive certainty
by scientific arguments. As a merely historical topic there is
nothing in any ancient documents or monuments to determine
with certainty whether the deluge was universal or partial in its
extent, unless such clear and unmistakable information is con-
tained in the book of Genesis. This is the question we are
proposing now to consider. First, and chiefly, we have to
inquire whether the thesis that the deluge was absolutely uni-
versal is one belonging to faith in respect to ourselves i.e., is a
part of the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. Then, if
we find that the question of the true sense of the language of
Scripture on this head is left open to discussion and difference of
interpretation, we may inquire into the probable reasons alleged
for and against the universal extent of the deluge, in respect to
the surface of the earth, in respect to animals, and in respect
to the human race. Admitting the universality of local extent,
universality in respect to the destruction of animal and human life
necessarily follows. But if this universality is denied it may
still be maintained that all men and animals perished except those

1-885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 641

which were saved in the ark of Noah. For it can be asserted
that only that part of the earth which was submerged was at
that time inhabited. And, again, it can be held that the earth
was generally inhabited by animals, but not by men, so that all
men, eight only excepted, perished in the flood, but not all ani-
mals. It is in this modified form that the theory of the univer-
sality of the deluge has been in recent times and is now gene-
rally advocated viz., that it was universal in respect to the
human race, but not in any other sense. The inquiry at once
suggests itself whether, if we are free to doubt or deny the uni-
versality of the deluge in those other respects, we are still bound
to believe it to have been universal in this modified sense, or are
at liberty to question even this without infringing upon doctrine ;
and may hold the opinion, if we see cause, that the deluge was
partial even in respect to mankind. Several Catholic authors of
good repute have of late advanced the opinion that the deluge in
point of fact destroyed only one portion of the human race. The
real interest of the matter is concentrated upon this point, and
the only important part of the discussion concerning the univer-
sality or non-universality of the deluge relates to man, the other
parts being quite indifferent except in so far as they have a bear-
ing upon this one.

Looking at the various theories which have been and are now
advocated by men who are sincere believers and are also de-
voted to the study of sacred and secular science in their doc-
trinal aspect, it is easy to show that the universality of the
deluge, in a general sense, is an open question. It is, moreover,
not difficult to show that the question is open in respect also to
the total or partial destruction of the human race.

Among many names of Catholic authors who have maintained
the non-universality of the deluge in respect to its extension over
the surface of the globe, it suffices to mention Pianciani, Bel-
lynck, Glaire, Vigouroux, and Schouppe. M. Lamy, who is a
professor of Sacred Scripture in the University of Louvain, the
author of a text-book in. high repute, and a strong defender of
the theory of universality, admits, as do the generality of good
authorities, the tenability and orthodoxy of the non-universal
theory;

" A good number of interpreters of the Scriptures teach that the deluge
did not extend over the whole earth, but only to the portion inhabited by
man, and that those only of the animals which lived in the regions occupied
by the posterity of Adam and were mixed up with their criminal life per-

VOL. XL. 41

642 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

ished in the cataclysm. But, admitting this opinion, all the difficulties
opposed by the incredulous vanish of themselves." *

Voss was complained of to the Congregation of the Index for
maintaining the local non-universality of the deluge. He was de-
fended by Mabillon, and the complaint was dismissed.

The language of the Holy Scripture is, however, just as
strong in asserting the local universality of the deluge as it is in
asserting the extension of its destructive action to the entire hu-
man race. That kind of exegesis which demands a strictly lite-
ral interpretation of its universal expressions cannot make excep-
tions. On the other hand, if one part of these expressions can
be interpreted of a relative universality, there is no reason, so far
as purely verbal criticism is concerned, why all may not receive
the same interpretation. The one and only question is, Can they
fairly admit such an interpretation ? If they can it follows, not,
indeed, that such an interpretation must be the true one, but that
it may be held as probably true, if there are good reasons for
it, with a safe conscience, so long as there is no ecclesiastical
decision to the contrary.

So far as the mere terms are concerned, it is perfectly certain
that there was an elasticity of thought and language among the
Hebrews which permitted great latitude in their use, in respect
to their extension and restriction. " The whole, earth," "under
the whole heaven," "all nations," "all men," "all living crea-
tures," and similar terms, may be absolutely universal, may be
indefinite, may be definite but limited, according to the scope
and intention of the writer, which must be determined by vari-
ous considerations and not by the lexicon alone. A few exam-
ples will prove this conclusively :

" The seven years of scarcity, which Joseph had foretold, began to come :
and the famine prevailed in the -whole world"

" And the Lord said unto me (Moses) : This day will I begin to send the
dread and fear of thee upon the nations that dwell under the whole heaven."

" Their sound (the sound of the preaching of the apostles) went over all
the earth, and their words unto the ends of th* whole world."

" Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every
nation under heaven" \

In order to estimate the absolute or relative sense of the
terms of universality contained in the written record of Moses,
which we are convinced was received by him through Abraham
and his ancestors directly from Noah himself, we must first de-
termine the horizon and the point -of view of that great patriarch.

* Introd. t. u, p. 49. t Gen. xli. 54. Deut. ii. 25. Rom. x. 18. Acts ii. 5.

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 643

His heaven and his world, with all the men and animals under
that heaven and dwelling on the surface of that world, in a reli-
gious and moral aspect, was a universal and a whole, with which
the deluge was co-extensive; whether physically and numerically
universal or limited to one portion of the globe and its inhabi-
tants. We may take either side of this last dilemma without in-
fringing upon the doctrine of faith.

Mgr. De Harlez, of the University of Louvain, one of the first
scholars in Europe, has given his judgment to this effect, and it
carries great weight :

" i. It is certain that the Bible in nowise directly favors the opinion
which restricts the destruction of mankind by the deluge to the race of
Seth ; the other opinion is evidently the safest. But I am bound to ac-
knowledge that there are no texts which put an absolute barrier against
the thesis of the non-universality of the deluge. The arguments opposed
to this thesis are not decisive. . . .

" 2. The opinion which holds for the non-universality has its origin from
desires and sentiments which are very Christian, and not from a spirit of
innovation or rashness. Therefore it is not reprehensible in itself.

" To say that the church keeps silence solely from indulgence, while
nevertheless tacitly reprobating the opinion, is to assume the very point
in question. Not only laymen but theologians have sustained this opinion
and there are many who do so. See on this subject M. Hamard's article,
Controverse, Dec. i, 1881.

" As for tradition, the unanimity of which I was the first to signalize,
the case is identically the same with that of the miracle of Josue or of the
age of the world. It is, namely, the case in which a constant and universal
tradition is modified by the consequences of a discovery; the particular
object is of small importance. Moreover, the tradition is only negatively-
contrary.

" The supposition of the non-destruction of the race of Cain has some-
thing in it which is very suitable in this respect, that God should have re-
served to our times the confirmation of the veracity of the Mosaic narra-
tive concerning the first fratricide, and that it would explain the singular
degeneracy of the black race, and its state of inferiority to the other races,
as the discoveries of geology attested the authenticity of the first chapter
of Genesis, and anthropology has placed that of the fourth in a clear light.
The cursed race of Cain had already received its punishment, and the de-
struction of the race of Seth might be a sufficient lesson.

" I expose these reasons, not because I adopt the opinion which rejects
the universality of the deluge in respect to man, but because, in my eyes,
it is the duty of a theologian not to strangle by his own private autho-
rity, and on account of his own doctrinal preferences, an opinion which
can be very useful to apologetics and to the salvation of souls. It would
be very unwise to reject a priori every novelty, even when it is very useful,
because there may be novelties which are dangerous. One ought to appre-
ciate each one by itself, and not anticipate the judgment of the church." *
* La Contraver se, October i, 1883.

644 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

We find ourselves compelled to omit all discussion of the rea-
sons for and against the universality of the deluge either in re-
spect to the earth or the human race, at least in this place. Let
us pass on, then, to another topic.

THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

The commonly-received interpretation of the account given
in Genesis of the confusion of Babel has been that the one, origi-
nal language hitherto common to all mankind was then and there
suddenly changed by miracle into several languages. There is
another opinion which is at the present time advocated by some
viz., that the disturbance which divided and dispersed the tower-
builders was a violent dissension and clamorous dispute which
arose among the different families.

The Abbe Motais undertakes to show that, according to the
rules of strict exegesis, this opinion is admissible and probable.
He argues that the phrase which is literally in the Hebrew, "of
one lip and of the same speeches," can mean oneness of language
among the tower-builders in respect to agreement of the ideas
and intentions which they expressed in their speeches and con-
versations. When the agreement of minds and wills ceased they
could no longer understand one another's speech i.e., they could
not settle their mutual and violent disputes by coming to a com-
mon understanding with one another. M. Motais gives the fol-
lowing illustration :

" Suppose I should say : The Republic, during the first years of its exist-
ence, saw all the differences which separated its adherents melt away in a
perfect unity. In the Chamber one would have said that they had but one
lip ; they spoke but one and the same language. In their pride they
dreamed of immortalizing themselves by making their republic last for
ever. God saw it ; departing from his apparent non-intervention, he came
down among them and said : They have at present but one language, and
they all have such a mutual understanding among themselves that they are
like one man. Behold ! I will cast disturbance into their speech, and I will
sow discord among them. And the discord came, and they understood
one .another no longer : their assembly was transformed into a second
Babel, so that their dispersion was unavoidable and their work resulted in
confusion and failure."*

The reader can make the application for himself. We have
said enough to show all we aim at showing that an interpreta-
tion which has some reason in its favor, and is defended as
admissible by such a respectable writer as the Abbe Motais, in a

* La Controverse. July i, 1883, art. iv.

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 645

periodical of the highest character for its learning and orthodoxy,
is in nowise contrary to faith.

The question #bout the nature and extent of the fact of the
confusion of tongues and the dispersion of families at Babel is
connected with other matters of chronology, ethnology, the
time and extent of the general dispersion of mankind over the
globe, the division of races, the origin of languages, etc., which
are too extensive and complicated to be treated briefly, and
which we must abstain from discussing. This is the case also
with the topic of the universality of the deluge, upon which, for
the same reason just given, we have only touched lightly.

THE TRUE SCIENTIFIC METHOD CONCLUSION.

The pivotal centre around which a whole system of topics
turns is the topic of the antiquity of the human race. The date
of the creation of Adam, that of the deluge, the length of time
which lies between the year 2000 B.C. and these prior epochs,
and that which separates them from each other all these,
summed up under the one head of the antiquity of mankind
and of its distinct races, need to be approximative^ determined
by a theory which is sufficiently probable to receive the assent
of the generality of competent Christian scholars, before the
general system can be well understood and adequately ex-
plained.

For instance, if the deluge is placed at a quite early period
after the creation of Adam, it is not so difficult to adjust its
historical relations as it is if the distance between these two
events is widened. A comparatively small increase and limited
diffusion of mankind can be more reasonably maintained, and
thus the theory of a locally restricted deluge which was universal
only in respect to the human family is freed from some serious
objections. Besides, the other hypothesis, that some minor and
inferior portion of Adam's descendants escaped the deluge, is
likewise more easily tenable. For if a long series of centuries
had given time for a great multiplication and a wide diffusion of
men over the whole globe, the population of the world ought to
have been far greater than the earliest historical records show it
to have been, and the origins of the principal nations ought not
to converge, as they do, towards the deluge and the dispersion
which took place afterwards.

It is needless to enlarge upon the vast importance of the
period between B.C. 2000 and the deluge, and the great interest

646 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

which attaches to all historical questions respecting those cen-
turies.

The genuine and truly historical and scientific examination
and discussion of these early antediluvian and postdiluvian ages
of humanity concerns, as to chronology, the number of thousands
of years which can be admitted, and which ought to be admitted,
between Adam and Noah, and between Noah and Abraham.
The minimum of the number of years between Adam and Abra-
ham is, roughly stated, 2,000. The maximum, admissible accord-
ing to the sum of all the probabilities, has been placed, and still
continues to be placed, by several respectable authorities at 4,000 ;
and there are various computations ranging between these two
extremes. The principal arguments in favor of those who advo-
cate the number which is called by some the maximum, and of
those who go beyond it, are derived from the certain or con-
jectural human remains assigned to the quaternary ages, or even,
in the case of a few, to the tertiary period. We have touched
upon this matter in our previous articles. In closing this article,
and with it the whole series, we wish only to make a few addi-
tions.

S.everal writers, professedly competent and well informed in
science, have maintained in a very positive manner, and quite
recently, that the relics and vestiges of man in the quaternary
deposits can be fully accounted for without giving to mankind
an antiquity of more than eight thousand years, or even less by
several centuries. We do not profess to be able to estimate the
genuine scientific worth of these authors and their conclusions.
But we have found some very late utterances, from a perfectly
trustworthy source, looking in the, same direction.

F. Van den Ghuyn, in the Revue des Questions Scientifiques for
October, 1884, signalizes "one more peremptory refutation of
the tertiary man and of the transformist systems of the initial
degradation of humanity," in one of the recent publications of
the " School of the Louvre," by M. Bertrand, member of the
Institute and Conservator of the Museum of National Antiqui-
ties at Paris. He says also :

"Nothing remains of the proofs adduced in favor of the tertiary man,
and new facts will be required to restore to him among serious minds the
credit which he has enjoyed." Further : M. Bertrand exclaims against
" the exaggerations of certain geologists who have given too considerable
an extension to the glacial phenomena in France." And " in view of the
insufficiency of proofs, M. Bertrand concludes that it will perhaps be pru-
dent to suspend all judgment concerning the quaternary man" "At what

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 647

epoch was Gaul first peopled? M. Bertrand does not fear to break here
openly with the fantastic chronology of prehistoric archaeologists. He re-
fers these origins of Gallic civilization to d period touching on the ninth
century before our era." "Happily, the reaction against the fantastic cal-
culations of prehistory has begun with vigor. May the authority of M.
Alexandre Bertrand give them their death-blow, and replace the history of
the earliest European civilizations in the frame where it properly belongs !"*

In the same number M. Arcelin says :

'' In the actual state of science it appears to me equally premature to
affirm the reality of several glacial periods and the contemporaneousness
of this phenomenon in Europe and America. As for the existence of man
during the glacial epoch, it seems to me still more problematical, at least
in respect to Europe. It is very difficult to believe that man can have lived
upon or in the midst of glaciers. Wherefore, finding in one of our French
valleys traces of the quaternary man near glacial deposits, I regard these
traces as posterior to the retreat of the glaciers. If Mr. Abbott (an Ameri-
can scientist, who discovered in the glacial earth-layer, at depths varying
from three to forty feet numerous stone instruments of human manufac-
ture) finds among the glacial formation of the New World numerous re-
mains of human industry, must we conclude that the American quaternary
man was contemporary with the glacial period? Would it not be a more
probable supposition that we are in presence of a glacial earth-layer which
has been displaced at a more recent epoch, and that the discovered objects
date from this displacement? " f

Such indications as these, and numerous others of a similar
character found in the writings of scientists, run in the direction
of confirming the position taken by certain opponents of a chro-
nology which notably increases the antiquity of man viz., that
there are wanting chronometers determining the date and period
of the quaternary layers and the glacial and other phenomena of
the quaternary ages; and that, even supposing these to be com-
puted with lesser or greater probability, they do not furnish
chronometers for fixing the date of remains of the ancient flora
and fauna, much less of those which are vestiges of the human
race. Hence, it is argued, the antiquity of man is not to be set-
tled by geology with its fossil remains and vestiges, but by his-
tory.

We will not pretend to pronounce any categorical judgment on
the matter, much less to determine and apply a doctrinal crite-
rion. We may, however, express the opinion that in the actual
state of science it is quite reasonable and prudent to hold on to
the traditional interpretation of Moses and to the traditional
chronology. This allows us ample sea-room and a wide latitude

* Rev. des Qu. Scientif., October, 1884, pp. 590-601. t Same review, pp. 614, 615.

648 SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. [Feb.,

of computation for the ages before and after the deluge, for all the
purposes of that historical and ethnological, and archaeological,
and anthropological theorizing which is sober and rational.

We can cite the high authority of a scientist of the first class
viz., Mr. Mivart in favor of this procedure. The purely hypo-
thetical and frequently baseless and untenable nature of many
views put forth under the imposing name of science, in his opin-
ion, " justifies on the part of the laity (i.e., of disciples in science)
a greater tenacity in holding traditional views which common sense
justifies than we often find in the face of expert upholders of cos-
mological paradoxes." * We do not apply this latter opprobrious
epithet to the respectable writers whom we have referred to in
connection with the theories of the tertiary and quaternary man.
But the maxim of Mr. Mivart can be applied in an accommodated
sense to their hypotheses so long as they remain altogether pro-
blematical, as well as in a strict sense to those whom the author
of it is aiming at. These last are the retailers of " philosophical
superstitions/' the advocates of that " mechanical conception of
the universe "which Mr. Mivart declares to be "self contradic-
tory and untenable, even in the field of mere physics."

Let us repeat again the statement of M. Moigno, that the
prime question at issue is between an antiquity of man which
includes thousands of years and one which includes thousands of
ages. This last is a " cosmological paradox/' considered as a part
of the general "mechanical theory of the universe/' and in itself,
apart from any false theory of the origin and evolution of the
world, is contrary to common sense, as well as to every kind of
science a despicable "philosophical superstition/' It is certain
that man is the latest as well as the most perfect of God's crea-
tures in this world, that he has been on the earth during a rela-
tively short period, and that the regular and constant increase of
the human race will not permit its history to be prolonged very
far into the future. For the calculations we have given in our
second article, although they cannot be too tightly strained with-
out breaking, yet, taken in a looser and more flexible sense,
are irrefragable. Unless the period of human existence on the
earth have a relatively short duration, we cannot account for
the fact that mankind have not long ago become too numerous to
live on it ; and, unless the period assigned by God for the actual
state of h.uman probation be ended after a much briefer duration
than what has elapsed, mankind must become too numerous to be
able to live on the earth. We cannot determine the past or

* Br. Quart. Rev., April, 1884, Art. i, " The Mechanical Philosophy."

1885.] SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS. 649

future limits of this duration with precision, but we can do so
approximatively and negatively.

The truly scientific method avoids all narrowness and exclu-
siveness in the cultivation of the distinct branches of science, and
gives to each one due regard, so as to combine all together in
working out common and general results. Mr. Mivart, in the
same article which has just now been quoted, wisely remarks:
" The progress of science brings home to us more and more
plainly how close in truth the kinship is between seemingly unre-
lated branches of knowledge." How much closer, then, is it
between branches obviously related, although the kinship be
frequently ignored or disavowed ! It is, therefore, only by a
combined and harmonious cultivation of all, of theology, of phi-
losophy, of history, of the physical sciences, striving after a syn-
thesis through the highest and most comprehensive acts of rea-
son enlightened and directed by divine faith, that an approach
can be made toward a complete science of man and the universe
the goal of those who are running in this noble race, though it
can never be reached in the present state of existence.

In respect to all those questions in which science has some
important relation to faith, and which are at present wrapped in
some obscurity, it is a favorable augury for both religion and
human 'science that there is a considerable and increasing
phalanx of warriors in the cause of truth, who are at once able
and zealous investigators in science and loyal sons of the holy
church. In difficult and doubtful matters we may patiently
await the progress of the sciences and the final verdict of the
competent.

The thorough and comprehensive plan of education incul-
cated by the Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII., for aspirants to the
priesthood and other studious youth, is a sure road toward the
complete intellectual victory of the Catholic religion on the
present lines of conflict with pseudo-science and a base-born
philosophy. We hope to see our prelates, and all other leading
men of both the clergy and the laity, following with wisdom and
alacrity the counsels and commands of the Holy See, and taking
practical measures for carrying them into effect by their single
and their combined exertions. Great success, solid and durable
results from these measures can at last be achieved only in one
way : by long and patient study, the acquisition and employment
of deep learning, exact and extensive science, sound and accurate
scholarship, in all the branches of knowledge, though not by
each one in every branch. A " School of Higher Studies,"

650 GORDON AND THE MAHDI. [Feb.,

according to our notion, is a place where facilities for this kind
of study are provided for one class of students ; a university
provides the same facilities for several or all classes.

NOTE. In the last number a mistake was made in giving 20,000 years as M. d'Estienne's
maximum number, whereas it is only 14,500.

Since this article was written a session of the French Association for the Advancement of
the Sciences has been held at Blois, at which the famous flints of Thenay, M. Bourgeois' chief
evidence for the tertiary man, were examined and discussed. M. Hamard, referred to by M.
d'Estienne in the passage quoted in our last number, began a.series of articles last November in
the review La Contravene et Le Contemporain on this Congress of Blois. He says : " In spite
of the contrary prejudices of some prejudices which seemed to vanish away at the last moment
before the evidence of facts the tertiary man came out condemned by the congress. This is the
intimate sentiment of all. even, if I mistake not, of his ancient partisans." Also : "The exist-
ence of man at the quaternary epoch does not run counter to the biblical chronology ; but it
would be otherwise if man had lived, as some pretend, towards the beginning or middle of the
preceding epoch. In that case there could be no hesitation, but it would be necessary to bid
adieu to the biblical chronology even in its utmost supposable length, or to class the tertiary man
in a pre-Adamite species. ... In my opinion one cannot pass a certain number, 10,000 years
(.<?., 8000 B.C ), for example, without taxing the sacred writer with error. Other Catholics
think differently."

GORDON AND THE MAHDI.

SINCE it has become a favorite occupation for the telegraph
to kill men and restore them to life with an equally amazing dex-
terity, no son of Adam has used Charon's sculler as an excursion-
boat more often than that ubiquitous and illustrious " Chinese "
of the West, General Gordon. Yet Gordon is as alive as a lark
and still "holds the fort" at Khartoum, playing admirably the
foremost part in the grandest comedy ever produced by that in-
defatigable impresario known to amateurs under the picturesque
nickname of John Bull.

And no wonder that the whole world be so profoundly inte-
rested in the performances of both these absorbing personages
along the banks of the river Nile, for their corned}' is, after all,
nothing less than an important chapter of the history of Central
Africa's opening to civilization that is to say, to Catholicism ;
because modern mankind, as it is proved already to-day by our
own United States, is bound, wherever it builds anything, colo-
nies or kingdoms, empires or republics, to appeal sooner or later
to the true church's fecundifying influences, so that they may be
saved from premature decay, chaos, and dissolution.

As such the so-called Soudan question forces itself upon the

1885.] GORDON AND THE MAHDI. 651

attention of every Catholic thinker. Let us try, therefore, to
find out how it is that in Mussulman communities a man, yester-
day utterly unknown, may all of a sudden reveal himself to be
the formidable leader of millions of fanatical barbarians. Then
the somewhat mysterious personality of the puzzling Mahdi shall
appear to us in its true light, and, by way of consequence, we
will see clearer into the histrionic resources of General Gordon
and foresee the denouement aimed at by systematic England.

In order to understand the tremendous influence now exer-
cised in Africa by a hitherto obscure dervish, and the grave con-
sequences which might follow from the military and religious
movement of which he is the inspiring genius, it is necessary to
remember that, according to Arabian historians, in the very first
year of the Hegira ninety inhabitants of Medina-Talnari, the
burial-place of Mahomet, formed a kind of pious association to
practise in common and preach the new faith, so that the origin
of Mussulman religious orders goes as far back as the origin of
Islamism itself.

But the first soufis, or monks, were of no practical impor-
tance. It was only when Mahometanism went on the decline,
and more especially since the beginning of our century, that
thoughtful .men began to deplore the progressive ruin of the
political power of Islam through the criminal abuses of Orien-
tal despots, and joined into confraternities to wake up the dor-
mant fanaticism of their co-religionists. Once become reformers,
they waged an unrelenting war against modern manners and
innovations introduced in their states by Oriental sovereigns.
More than once they preached, at the same time, rebellion against
Mahometan princes who were paltering with the enemies of
Islamism, and the "holy war" against Christians sons of dogs,
as they call them, worthy of nothing but ignominious death, or
at least everlasting contempt. To better fulfil their mission
some of them entered religious orders already in existence, in
which they had no trouble to organize an army of disciples.
Others founded new societies more in conformity with their
whims, and always recruited, by thousands, fanatics ready to
swear by them. Hence the order which possesses the most re-
nowned chief draws to itself the majority of the faithful, thus ex-
plaining the otherwise astonishing fact that, from time to time
spring suddenly out gigantic associations covering an important
part of the Mussulman world and exercising a domination which,

652 GORDON AND THE MAHDI. [Feb.,

though short-lived, is as absolute as that of the most autocratic
monarchs.

In the simple and elastic frame of Islam's monotheism are to
be found at least twenty grand sects having nothing common
but the belief in God and his prophets. Besides, the gift of
prophecy, which anybody may claim to himself, is a never-empty
surprise-box. At any moment a new prophet may jump out of
it, and if he supplies acceptable proofs of his pretended mission
which is not a hard task with so ignorant and well-disposed
brethren there is no reason not to follow him as the patent re-
presentative of Mahomet on earth.

In the province of Tunis you find the mighty order of the
Tidjanians. In Morocco the cheick of Morocco, Sidi-el-Hadj-
Abd-es-Selam, is the prophet of the Moule'i Tayel, and comes
immediately after the emperor, who never feels comfortable on
his throne when he is on bad terms with the order. The first
thing done by a rebellious tribe is to proclaim that the chief has
deposed the emperor, but the next done by the emperor is to
march against the tribe with the chief by his side. That settles
the rebellion at once. Sidi-el-Hadj-Abd-es-Selam is a very tole-
rant man so tolerant, indeed, that he married an English lady,
with whom he walks daily in the streets arm-in-arm. And, not
to let any doubt exist about his profound admiration for the
nineteenth century, he allows himself, at least twice a week, to
get as tipsy as the most obdurate of Father Mathew's adversa-
ries. As a reformer he is, therefore, to be considered a lamen-
table failure. He is, nevertheless, such a good fellow that he man-
ages to retain his prestige" among degenerated Moroccans.

But the greatest religious power in Islam resides nowadays
in a sect founded by an Algerine jurist of the Medjaher tribe
Sidi-Mohammed-Ben-Ali-es-Senoussi. Although the last as to
date, this order has now several millions of adherents scattered
in the provinces of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, in Morocco, Sene-
gal, the Sahara, Soudan, Egypt, in the country of the Somalis,
on the banks of the Red Sea, in Mesopotamia, and in European
Turkey itself. It is easy to see that such a military and religious
order is a constant menace to France as an African power.
But its warlike motto is equally dreadful to all Christian na-
tionalities, as well as to the Turks, whom the Senoussians envelop
in the same inextinguishable hatred. The time may come, in a
more or less distant future, when France will be once more the
shield which will protect Europe against that great Mahom-
etan militia which dreams of a new Arabian empire, and shall

1885.] GORDON AND THE MAHDI. 653

surely pass, one day or another, from the period of an artful pre-
paration to that of action, and storm the Christian world. Then
the famous Gesta Dei per Francos shall be again a reality.
Let us see now who the Mahdi is.

II.

Very improperly indeed is Mohamed-Ahmed called the Mah-
di of Soudan, and the actual war between him and Egypt the war
in Soudan. Soudan proper or Nigritia, which is also called
Berr-es-Soodan, or Land of the Blacks is that extensive but
very indefinite tract of Central Africa, the area of which is gene-
rally estimated at 2,250,000 square miles, and expands itself be-
tween the twentieth and tenth degrees of latitude north and the
eighteenth and thirty-third degrees of longitude east, bounded
on the north by the Sahara, on the west by Senegambia, on the
south by Upper Guinea, and on the east by Kordofan. Of
course the aim of the Mahdi is to impose later on his religious
supremacy upon the numerous kingdoms and states into which
the country is divided, such as Bambarra, Masina, Gando,
Sokoto, Bornou, Bagirmi, Whidah, and Darfur ; but, as we will
see, he is a Nubian by birth, by education and social ties, and,
with the exception of an occasional campaign in Kordofan, the
principal town of which is El Obeid, he has heretofore confined
himself and his military operations against Egypt to rescuing
his own native country, Nubia, from the despotic and ruinous
oppression of the khedives. So he ought to be called the Nu-
bian Mahdi, and his war the war in Nubia.

Sad to say, the clearest result of the long Egyptian occupation
of Nubia has been to give a new activity to the foremost industry
of the country the slave-trade. Time out of mind the Upper
Nile has been the highway of powerful companies of hunters of
men, who ransack Central Africa and carry away every year a
million of human beings to sell them on the markets of Constanti-
nople, Samarkand, and Morocco. It is true that out of that mil-
lion but two h'undred thousand negroes at the most could reach the
markets ; the balance died on the way from sheer exhaustion,
isolation, or despair. But the profits were still large enough to
tempt speculators, and under the influence of the Egyptian ad-
ministration the infamous trade attained such proportions that
the aspect as well as the morals of Nubia were profoundly modi-
fied. Sir Samuel Baker asserts that in 1861 a European traveller
could wander without fear through the vast territory and was in

654 GORDON AND THE MAHDI. [Feb.,

no greater danger than a belated citizen promenading in Hyde
Park. The inhabitants were the mildest, the most easily gov-
erned he ever saw. In a few years Egyptian administrators had
changed all this. They had overloaded with taxes these poor,
inoffensive peasants. Everywhere appeared the most pitiful
signs of devastation and misery. Villages were in ruins, lands
remained untilled. The trade in human flesh alone went on
prosperously under the unobtrusive eye of Egyptian troops, so
much so that the slave-traders were becoming the real power in
the country.

Khedive Ismail became uneasy and appealed to Gordon's
sword to crush the companies which threatened to swallow up
his own authority. But it was too late ; the otherwise energetic
efforts of the British general practically destroyed little of the
crying evil, while they exasperated against Egypt the only
classes on which she still could lean in a case of emergency.
Thus the Nubians were already ripe for an insurrection when
the Egyptian machine went itself out of order. They did not
even wait for Arabi's pronunciamiento, and rushed to arms in 1881
under the direction of Mohamed-Ahmed, the Mahdi.

Imagine a man about forty years of age, of medium height, as
lean, as the saying is, as a shotten herring, with a mahogany
complexion, coal-black beard and eyes, and three vertical slashes
on his pallid cheeks ; add to this a long cotton shirt as a gar-
ment, a narrow turban as a head-dress, a pair of wooden sandals,
and in the hands dry as those of a mummy a string of ninety
beads, corresponding to an equal number of divine attributes, and
you have the Mahdi. Those who have seen him say that Mohamed-
Ahmed plays to perfection the part of a visionary dervish, waving
his head when walking, and murmuring constant prayers, his
eyes fixed on heaven. Hjs father was a carpenter on Naft
Island, in the Nubian province of Dongola, and about 1852 came,
with his four children, to Chindi, a small city on the banks of the
Nile south of Berber. When still very young he was placed as
an apprentice under the care of one of his uncles, ashipbuilder of
Chabakah, opposite Sennaar. It seems that the future prophet
was not without his failings, for one day his uncle thought well
of flogging him in a regular French style. The proceeding was
not appreciated, and the child ran away until he arrived in Khar-
toum, where he entered a sort of school or convent of begging
dervishes who were in charge of the monument erected over the
venerated remains of Cheick Hoghali, patron of the city. There
his life was a remarkable one for his piety ; but as to education,

1885.] GORDON AND THE MAHDI. 655

he never learned how to write or even how to read fluently. Later
he went to a similar institution in Berber, then to one in Aradup,
on the south of Kena. In the latter city he became, in 1870, the
favorite disciple of an eminent fakir, Cheick Nur-el-Daim, and
finally was ordained by him and went to Abbas Island, on the
White Nile. His fame as a saintly man was every year on the
increase. He lived in a kind of pit or subterranean repository
for grain, called silo, which he had dug up with his own hands;
and there he passed his life fasting and praying, burning incense
day and night, and repeating the name of Allah for hours at a
time until he would fall to the ground panting and exhausted.
If anybody spoke to him he gave back no answer except sen-
tences from the sacred books of Islam. Earthly things seemed
to inspire him only with disgust and pity. He had made a vow
to absorb himself in the contemplation of divine perfections and
to weep all his life for the sins of mankind. But his tears did not
destroy his powers of vision, and he kept his best eye wide open
to business; and the faithful coming by thousands and deposit-
ing rich offerings at the mouth of his silo, he never failed to see
the gifts nor to stow them away carefully for stormy days. In
1878 he had become so wealthy that he felt the necessity to de-
clare that Allah had ordered him to leave his silo and to take unto
himself a large collection of wives, whom, as a truly practical
man, he chose among the most influential families of the country,
especially that ef the Bagaras, the most opulent slave-traders on
the White Nile.

At last, in May, i88r, Mohamed- Ahmed dared to proclaim
himself the true Mahdi, the great Reformer, the mighty Con-
queror announced by prophecies attributed to Mahomet, and
which were to be fulfilled in the fourteenth century of the Hegira.
He declared that Allah had chosen him " to restore to Islam its
pristine splendor, to establish universal equality and community
of property among all men, to impose the laws and religion of
Islam on all nations, and exterminate any one, Mussulman, Chris-
tian, or pagan, who should refuse to acknowledge his divine mis-
sion as the Mahdi." These rather radical pretensions were sig-
nified, by means of a circular letter, to all the fakirs and religious
chiefs of Islam. But one of the most venerated fakirs of the pro-
vince of Dongola, Mohamed-Saleh, instead of going, on receipt
of Mohamed Ahmed's letter, and joining him in Abbas Island
with his disciples, forwarded the revolutionary document to the
Egyptian government; and in August, 1881, an expedition was
sent by Reouf-Pasha, then governor-general of Khartoum, to

656 GORDON AND THE MAHDI. [Feb.,

suppress at once an adversary who might, if left to himself,
quickly become a formidable one.

It was already too late. Everything was ready for rebellion.
Moreover, the khedive's soldiers were Mussulmans themselves,
and, as such, knew of the prophecies and felt great reluctance to
fight a " holy " man whose mission so strikingly corresponded with
the popular expectations. Then Mohamed-Ahmed belonged to
the powerful order of the illustrious Abd-el-Kader-el-Ghelani,
the seat of which is in Bagdad ; and at the time of the revolt
he held in the ecclesiastical hierarchy the rank of provincial of
the Nile's zaou'ia, or district, which assured to him an immense
prestige and the veneration, not to say the passive obedience,
of all faithful believers. On the other hand, his programme
answered all the aspirations of millions of helpless and down-
trodden negroes, and served at the same time the old grudges of
the slave-traders that is, the middle and ruling classes of Sou-
dan against the successors of Mehemet-Ali. Then, to crown all
this, the insurgents were to fight on their own soil, to defend
against a foreign enemy their fields, their cattle, and their in-
dependence; while, for the invader, the difficulties of a campaign
to be pursued under a torrid climate, at more than two thousand
miles from Cairo and beyond the Nubian Desert, could not but
be gigantic, not to say insurmountable, ones.

The progress of the Mahdi was, therefore, as withering as it
was rapid.

Every one has still fresh in his memory the appalling exter-
mination of Hicks Pasha's eleven thousand men, surrounded on
the 5th of November, 1883 the first day of the fourteenth cen-
tury of the Hegira! at Kasghil while marching on El Obeid.
This horrible butchery, happening on the threshold of the cen-
tury announced as the one of the Last Prophet, gave a bloody
consecration to Mohamed-Ahmed, who, after the three days'
battle, went all over the battle-field, piercing with his spear the
ghastly corpses of his enemies, and exclaiming : " It is I, I the
Prophet, who destroyed the heretics ! " Compared to him Ma-
homet was no more, in his mind, than a small prophet. He
alone was the only great and powerful Messiah announced by
Mahomet himself. The sultan of Constantinople was no more
the supreme caliph, the chief of Islamism ; it was he, Mohamed-
Ahmed, and he ordered his own name to be invoked in public
worship in the place of Mahomet's, right after the name of
Allah !

Alas ! to pull down that immensely great man from his self-

1885.] GORDON AND THE MAHDI. 657

constructed pedestal, to bring a sudden blush on the ever-pallid
cheeks of that self-made Commander of the Faithful, it took only
a little French Sister of St. Vincent de Paul. She had been
brought before him with a number of Catholic priests and nuns,
and he urged her to recognize him as the Messiah announced by
the Scriptures and then to enter his harem.

" I am ready," answered simply the servant of the Crucified ;
" but as you invoke the Scriptures, allow me, O mighty prophet !
to ask you only one favor before my abjuration."

" Speak, my child," said the Mahdi.

" Do not the Scriptures say that the Messiah shall make him-
self known by performing miracles?"

" Ah ! hem! yes," faltered the would-be caliph, who smelled
some rat under the pedestal above mentioned. " Well, what of
it, you daughter of Occidental dogs ? "

" Well," said she, without caring much about the rude apos-
trophe, " just perform one, if you please."

" One what ? " thundered the Mahdi, thinking his terrible roar
would crystallize the little sister.

" One miracle, monsieur, so that my companions and myself
may kiss your powerful hand and become your devout followers
in all safety of conscience."

Everybody was trembling at the audacity of the daughter
of St. Vincent de Paul, and already saw her head rolling under
the big sword of the Mahdi's favorite executioner. But no ; she
had spoken so humbly, and at the same time so earnestly, that
Mohamed-Ahmed bowed his head and, to conceal his emotion,
answered briefly that the time had not come yet for miracles, but
would surely, and very soon. And dismissing the priests and the
nuns, he gave orders that they should be left unmolested in the
various houses occupied by the Catholic mission in El Obeid.

I have said enough to show what kind of a man is the Nubian
Mahdi. Let us now see briefly what General Gordon has done
and what will be the result of his long but useless useless at
least to justice and civilization imprisonment in Khartoum.

III.

" An extremely intelligent-looking little man, about fifty years

old, with blonde hair, a florid although sunburnt complexion,

clear, piercing eyes as pure as those of a child, and motions of a

feminine sweetness little indicating the rock-like will enthroned

VOL. XL. 42

658 GORDON AND THE MAHDI. [Feb.,

in the large, lofty forehead such is General Gordon. After
thirty years of the most extraordinary wars and travels in China,
India, Zanzibar, Soudan, the Cape, and Jerusalem, he is as poor
as on the first day of his eventful career ; as chaste, they say, as
the eleven thousand virgins; as much a fatalist as a fakir; always
sparkling with strategical genius and unbridled energies. It
may be justly said of " Chinese Gordon " that he has entered
alive the realms of history and fame. On the i/th of January,
1884, when a terrible series of disasters was threatening with de-
struction the Egyptian troops garrisoned in eleven settlements
established by Sir Samuel Baker, Gordon himself, and Chaille-
Long, from 1871 to 1881, all along the Upper Nile and in Ber-
ber, Dongola, and Khartoum, Gordon left London as a deus ex
machina sent by the Gladstone ministry, and, after a most daring
march through the Nubian Desert, arrived in Khartoum on the
iSth of February. His instructions were summed up by himself
in a very few words : " I am going there to cut the tail of the
dog " which, in plain English, meant he was going to break
up the last ties between Soudan and Egypt, whose khedive
nad been forced by Sir Evelyn Baring to sign, towards the end
of December, 1883, a formal renunciation of all conquests made
in Nubia and Soudan by his ancestors and generals from 1819
to 1881.

Since then there has not been a moment when the name of Gor-
don was forgotten in the United Kingdom. Everywhere, from
the most luxurious homes and the humblest firesides, prayers
have gone up to heaven for the safe return of the hero. So
there was no need of the letter which a certain Dr. Schweinfurth
saw fit, a few months ago, to address to the British at large, beg-
ging them to interest themselves and send troops to Gordon's
rescue. But as long as there is a world there will be German
scientists assuming to themselves the monopoly of clear-sighted-
ness, and convinced in good faith that, were they averse to it,
Mother Earth could not waltz decently upon the ecliptic. After
Dr. Koch going to France to annihilate cholera and succeeding
only in " Barnumizing " the old and worn-out phenic acid, it was
reserved for his wonderful confrere, Dr. Schweinfurth, to discover
and inform Great Britain that her pet general was waiting to be
rescued from the Mahdi's clutches. This, however, shows a
tender heart. But why did the good doctor use such a melodra-
matic style, and especially why did he. indulge in so many errors
.as to facts? Why did he say that " the sufferings of the defend-
ers of Khartoum are horrible and challenge description " ? Why

1885.] GORDON AND THE MAHDI. 659

did he speak of " Gordon's cries of distress " ? Why did he pre-
tend that Gordon "is reduced to protect his fireside against ene-
mies every day increasing in numbers " ?

All these are romantic, inaccurate, " unscientific " statements.

Gordon is not, has never been, in a desperate situation. Gor-
don is quietly waiting, in an inexpugnable position, for the arrival
of Lord Wolseley and of a little army ot English and Franco-
Canadian braves whose sufferings are far more affecting than
those of the protSgt* of Dr. Schweinfurth. The last despatches
say that Lord Wolseley will reach Khartoum in February next,
perhaps on the i8th that is, on the very same day that Gordon
entered the capital of Soudan in 1884. There the noble lord
will find Gordon in high spirits, and both will duly celebrate, in
the very comfortable executive palace, such a glorious anniver-
sary, and laugh to their hearts' content at the ingenuity of the
simpletons who, the world over, wasted on Gordon's hardships
tears which would have been far more useful had they been shed
on their own sins. Should, on the contrary, the expedition fail
to reach him Gordon will do without it. When his position be-
comes untenable he will find very good roads open to him either
towards the Great Lakes and the Congo or towards Zanzibar or
Massouah.

The fact is that from the outset the whole story has been adul-
terated and the truth purposely concealed from the non-initiated.
Not only is the Khartoum garrison composed of six thousand
men armed with Remingtons, not only are the arsenals and store-
nouses filled with provisions and supplies of all kinds heaped up
there for the unfortunate General Hicks' army, but a flotilla of
fifteen steamers, well furnished with guns and ammunition, is con-
stantly cruising on both the Blue and the White Niles, and ren-
ders impossible any attempt to approach the city, which is built
precisely at the confluence of the two rivers. In the opinion of
Sir Samuel Baker there is no Mahdi who, given these conditions,
could prevent any intelligent chief from keeping Khartoum for
an indefinite period of years well supplied with meat and grains,
while the same chief can literally deprive his adversaries of bread
and water by keeping them far from the banks of the double river
with the aid of the flotilla. The famous blockade of Khartoum
by Mohamed-Ahmed is therefore a myth, and there is nothing to
wonder at in the wise slowness with which Lord Wolseley rushes
to the rescue of his clamorous but well-cared-for friend, the
Egyptian dog's-tail cutter.

As to England, mistress as she is on the African coast of the

66o GORDON AND THE MAHDI. [Feb.,

Red Sea, she knows well that no one but herself is able to in-
herit the provinces so foolishly abandoned by Tewfik. When
the Mahdi is tired of his part of Messiah she will accommodate
him with Darfur and Kordofan and make of him a most useful
ally ; and so it is that she so carefully discountenanced any solu-
tion tending to the speedy release of Gordon, when such solution
implicated the introduction of any embarrassing factor in the
business. No Turkish troops at Souakim ; no Belgian pavilion
in the equatorial provinces ; no co-laborer coming from Cairo to
Khartoum, such as Zebehr Pasha or the son of the dispossessed
sultan of Darfur, Prince Abdallah Chakour, who could have re-
newed the Egyptian tradition.

First of all, by all means let the scission between Soudan and
Egypt be complete ; and, next, let the scission profit England,
and England alone. But civilization may be the loser in the
bargain ? What does she care ? Gordon may succumb to the
task? Well, that is not probable ; but, after all, so much the
worse for him ! We are all mortal, and he is not the first to teach
that what is written is written and that no one perishes but when
his hour has come. In one way or another Oriental Soudan must
belong to England, and belong it shall. Then, having yester-
day allowed the anti-slaveryist Gordon to re-establish the slave-
trade on the regular scale, to-morrow practical England will be
too glad to come back to Christian principles and seemingly to
resume the persecution of the slave-traders. Moreover, she will
have proclaimed Soudan's independence by adding it to her own
domain.

And tfye business world, seeing once more the prodigious
power of words, will give, with a will, "three cheers and a tiger "
tor that superlatively " smart " community known as the British
people.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 661

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER VII. (continued}.

FLORIAN seized his arm with unnecessary violence, he thought,
and detained him.

" That's the debutante," said he. " See what you think of the
possessor of such a voice."

Paul listened dreamily and wished to remain indifferent ; but
there was something so new in that voice, something so natural
in its very imperfections, that he was compelled to show emotion.

" She is from the country, evidently," said he, " but there is
some strength of character in the singer."

" You will not reverse the judgment when you meet her,"
said Florian, so earnestly that Paul began to think that he was
about to meet the one woman of the hard political heart. When
they entered and had paid their respects to Mrs. Merrion, that
lively lady detained Florian at her own side, and, after intro-
ducing Paul to Ruth, sent them off together so naturally that
there seemed nothing out of place or incongruous in the
matter.

" Has your friend the poet and oh ! what a lovely face he
has ever met Miss Pendleton before ? " said she, as the pair went
off.

" I believe not," said Florian, sick at heart that he could not
have Ruth all to himself. " What reason have you to think so?"

" Where are your eyes ? " said Barbara. " Did you not see the
start and stare of the poet when he was introduced, or were you
looking at me so intently that you could see nothing else ? "

It required a good deal to throw Florian into confusion, but
between the announcement and the bold speech which followed
it he was quite bewildered. Then Mrs. Merrion's eyes were fixed
on him.

" O Mr. Wallace ! " she said, " are you politicians so easily
overthrown by woman's wit ? " for his confusion was evident.

" No," said he ungraciously, " it is not sharp enough. We
are oftener overthrown by woman's eyes."

SJie pretended that he was serious in the compliment, and

662 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

said : " I believe you. The eyes are everything to a woman.
See under what a spell my ox-eyed Juno has your poet. Don't
be afraid to look. They are so pleased with each other that the
company is forgotten."

Florian did not look, for the flame in his heart would have
surely leaped into his eyes to see how happy Paul and Ruth
were. He laughed and asked for the next musical wonder of the
evening.

" I heard Miss Pendleton saying "

r ' Pardon me : Miss Pendleton ?" said his tormentor. "And
you called her Ruth only yesterday. You have not given her to
Mr. Rossiter so soon ? "

" God ! " muttered Florian, "this creature will drive me mad.
I forgot that you are her relative," he said, smiling. " You
know yourself, I could not call her Ruth to every stranger."

" What a match they would make !" said Barbara dreamily
" he like a tawny Apollo and she like an Arcadian queen. I am
something of a matchmaker, do you know, Mr. Wallace, and
I have made some very successful ones."

" None more happy than that, which you made for Mr. Mer-
rion," said Florian.

" How very true ! But then that is personal, and others are
the best judge of my success in that instance."

Mrs. Merrion was unusually attractive that evening, and had
determined on winning away Florian's soberness after she had
pierced his heart through with the arrows of jealousy. The
young man was easily impressed by a woman. He liked Fran-
ces, he loved Ruth ; but here was a woman to admire a woman
who shone like a diamond well cut and polished among her less
favored kind. She sparkled in dress, look, and language, and
men followed her as their eyes would follow a meteor, and for-
got her as soon as she was out of sight. Poor Florian was no
exception. In five minutes he was totally oblivious of all man-
kind save that lovely being before him.

Paul was meanwhile passing through a simple but not less
tumultuous state of feeling. When Ruth was introduced to him
he saw for the first time the face of his dreams in its living image,
although its owner had laid aside the simple yachting dress for
the voluminous evening costume of the period ; and being un-
prepared, he had started, blustered, stammered, and not come to
himself rightly until he was sitting somewhere and the voice of
the lady was talking about Florian.

" And you are a friend of Florian ? I am so very glad to

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 663

know it, for I have never really heard who his friends were. Do
you not think him a very nice gentleman? And they tell me he
has considerable political influence for so young a man."

" Oh ! he's the best fellow in the world," said Paul, wonder-
ing all the time if he were really talking with the original of the
picture, " and his influence is simply boundless in the city. He
has been in the legislature, he will go to Congress, then the gov-
ernorship, and the presidency. There is nothing beyond that."

" So he finally comes to nothing," Ruth said, smiling. " What
an ending for so much greatness and influence ! And is it really
worth while struggling for all these things, when they come to so
little at last ? "

" Little and great are all alike," said Paul. " The nothingness
we come to, I suppose, makes the worthless earthly honor all the
more valuable."

" Florian's exact words," said Ruth. " Ah ! now I can see
you are very good friends, for you have his ideas, and he has
yours, no doubt."

" I have his, no doubt," said Paul ; " but if he has mine they
must be very useless, being mostly fancies about dreams. How
easily you recognize his sayings, Miss Pendleton ! You must
have known him very well."

" We lived in the same town and went to the same school for
years ; and then we were friends. Oh ! I know Florian as if he
were my brother. His sister" her voice faltered " was a dear
friend of mine ; and if you know him you must like him."

"And I do, and I shall like him all the more if his friendship
will place me higher in your favor."

He trembled at this boldness, but she received it as a matter
of course.

" It will indeed. Florian's friends must all be worth know-
ing, for they were ever of the choicest."

Paul thought dubiously of his political friends, but speedily
put the thought aside as unworthy of a friend. They were only
familiars, and not familiars in the sense in which Ruth meant.
They talked on very pleasantly for a half-hour, and then others
came to disturb the delightful tete-a-t6te and make him and her
miserable ; for Ruth had formed a sudden and strong liking for
this warm-hearted and warm-featured child of genius which fell
little short of the admiration he felt for her beauty.

If he knew just what relations existed between her and Flo-
rian, he thought, as his eyes followed her about the room, he
could let his fancy run riot dreaming of the possible, and the

664 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

evening would be a real pleasure to him. Perhaps it was better
to take it for granted that she was already betrothed to Florian,
for his name was so often on her lips, and she seemed to think
that he was the standard by which all men were to be judged.
While he stood in the shadow of a window moodily thinking
Mrs. Merrion came along to chide him for his retiring ways.

" Why, do you know," said she, " that there are twenty peo-
ple here dying to make the acquaintance of the author of For.
lorn ? You are almost as great a star on this side of the river
as Ruth Miss Pendleton. And now, Mr. Rossiter, please do
be agreeable, and give all these people the pleasure of talking
to you and inviting you to their musicales, won't you ?"

" I would grant more than that at your bidding," said he,
charmed by the sparkling manner. " And yet to leave me like
Prometheus bound, with twenty tortures instead of one, and
heaven in view you would not be so cruel."

" That's poetry, I suppose," said she. " But people must
attend to the demands of society, you know. Now, what do you
think of my cousin ? You were talking with her. She is very
learned and writes for the papers ; and has she not charming
ways ? "

" And then if I tell you what I think," said he, " you will tell
her every word I say to-morrow, and put me down as a con-
quest to her beauty. I have heard of you ladies."

" Evidently," said she ; " and aren't you a conquest ? "

" A willing one, but not in earnest, you know. It is not safe
to intrude where prior claims exist."

" I do not know of any claims on Miss Pendleton that would
prevent her giving her heart to any one ; do you ? "

" Well, not precisely ; but 1 have heard that Mr. Wallace, my
friend "

" Pardon me. Did he tell you so ? " said the astute lady in
her most innocent and convincing way.

" No, he did not ; but I inferred "

" Pardon me again ; never draw inferences that make you un-
happy. Miss Pendleton is heart-whole, and will be until well,
well, how freely I am talking ! You will think me bold, Mr. Ros-
siter, and so I am. But you will forgive me. It is a fault of
mine."

" A very sweet one," said the poet, turning a compliment.
When she went away he was happy and began to dream dreams
in his usual fashion, but the people who were dying for an
introduction to him came trooping up under Mrs. Merrion's

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 66$

guidance and laid siege to his attention for a long time. His
eyes constantly followed Ruth, and hers very often sought for
him in the crowd of guests, and looked pleased when his yellow
hair and fair face greeted them.

Florian had vainly tried, when once freed from the conversa-
tional charms of Barbara, to secure for himself the long-desired
confidential talk with Ruth. Fate, in the person of the guests or
of Mrs. Merrion, was against him. When one or the other did not
engage him they surrounded Ruth like a city's walls, for the fair
girl was become a general favorite that evening and was much
sought after. She was a little tired of so continuous an adula-
tion, and kept wishing that Paul would make his appearance
again, and wondering why Florian did not join those sitting
about her. Finding an opportunity to slip unobserved into a
recess of some kind, she threw herself on a sofa, relieved to be
free for a moment from the glare and heat and noise. When her
eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the place she per-
ceived that Florian was sitting opposite her.

"Is it you, Florian?" said she. "Oh! how I have tried to
see you and speak to you this evening."

" It is impossible on a first night," said he quietly. " There
are so many present, and your face is new to most of them. It's
not much like a musicale in Clayburg."

" I think Ours was much more pleasant, don't you ? "

" Well, I should hardly feel obliged to enjoy them as I used,"
he said, with the worn air of a man who had exhausted the plea-
sure contained in such entertainments. " It is so long since I
have been there that I have quite forgotten them."

" I can believe you," she said, with the gentlest reproach in
her voice. " You seem to have forgotten everything connected
with the poor little town and its glorious river."

" Not everything, Ruth. I remember Linda's grave, and how
the river looks when only the stars are shining at midnight and
the poor child lying there alone."

There was a sob in his voice, and the mention of Linda stirred
Ruth deeply. She had felt like an artificial woman moving in her
strange plumes through the brilliant company, and had wearied
by the unvarying round of formal compliments and praise; but
at this touch of feeling she became a Clayburg girl again, and
it was Ruth talking with Florian as in the old time.

" I would never suspect you of forgetting that, Florian, nor
the hermit, who sent so many kind regards to you."

" You saw him often, then ? "

666

SOLITARY ISLAND.

[Feb.,

" Not very often, but I presumed a little, perhaps, and he is
so obliging, if a little cold, and he spoke of you rarely, but it was
always something wise or good. Did you ever notice how pure
and true his thoughts are like water from a spring and how
he never offends against etiquette or good-breeding ? "

" I may have noticed it, but it did not impress me, although I
made it a point to study him. He has faded from my mind con-
siderably, and I would find it hard to reproduce his features ; but
I know what he must have said to you about me when you were
leaving."

" Do you?" she said in some alarm. " How can you know
that when I have not told you, Florian ? "

" See if I am right. ' You will find him changed for the worse,
my dear, and he will surely make love to you again,' said Scott."

" You are a magician," she answered, very much embarrassed.
But then, imagining that Florian's boldness must arise from his
indifference to their past state of feeling, she felt relieved and
happy, and laughed with him.

" I think he must have said something like it," she said, " but
I cannot recall the words used. I wonder how much of it is true?
I know you have not been guilty of the last charge, and will not
be; but are you much changed in heart, Florian?"

" What can you expect from the atmosphere in which I
move? "

" I should expect that if it were very bad you would go away
from it," she replied severely ; " you often told me to do that,
and common piety teaches it, too."

" Would you accuse a politician of piety ? " he demanded,
laughing.

Ruth was silent. There was something hard and forced in
his manner.

" You cannot be pious in politics," he went on, understanding
very well her feelings, " but one can keep from much evil. If
you are wealthy or influential, or married to a good woman, you
can keep from all."

" And as you are not wealthy "

" And only moderately influential "

" You ought to get married," said she; " and, indeed, rumor
connects your name with some ladies very closely. I hope they
suit you. You were always so particular, Florian."

" No doubt, no doubt," he answered vaguely, and felt a dumb
pain stealing over him at her perfect indifference, or rather the
friendly and sisterly interest she took in the matter.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 667

" Linda would be so pleased to know you were happily situ-
ated in every way," she went on, " and I am sure I would."

" No doubt, no doubt," said he, shaking off the stupor that
had seized upon him. " But we can talk of this again. You are
not altogether out of my life, Ruth, and you may have as much
to say as Linda herself in the matter before it is completed, per-
haps more."

With these ominous words they joined the company, and it
was at this moment Paul saw them and trembled, without know-
ing why, at the smiling look on Florian's face and the calm, un-
troubled surface of hers. He scarcely knew which way to turn
in the maze of doubt and distrust that folded itself about him.
Mrs. Merrion had declared Ruth's total freedom from any en-
tangling ties. Yet Peter had as distinctly asserted the contrary.
The manner of these two favored Peter's assertion.

" There is your friend yonder," said Ruth, as her eyes fell on
Paul. " You are very fortunate in having him for your friend.
I have never seen goodness and genius better impressed in any
man's face. Call him over, and we shall form a party of three
until the end comes."

Florian obeyed, and they sat down near the piano, and were
speedily surrounded by a mob which drove the young men away
and kept them away until they made their adieux. What pecu-
liar feelings agitated them on their way home it would be diffi-
cult to describe, since they did not speak during the journey.

CHAPTER VIII.

MORE INTRIGUE.

THE undercurrent which now set in to twist and toss the va-
rious characters plunged in the tide of love was so delicate and
complicated as almost to defy description, as it certainly defied
the intelligence and penetration of the persons concerned. The
two characters least thought of in the whole matter were the
very source of intrigue, and on their movements wholly depend-
ed the fate of Florian. How the influential lawyer would have
stared had he known that Peter Carter, journalist and tippler,
was leading him gently up to Ruth and making him the puppet
in the comedy ! How Paul and Ruth would have laughed to be

668 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

told that the butterfly Barbara was weaving the matrimonial
threads about them and drawing them tighter every day ! The
intrigues of a fool and a butterfly are not always worthy of the
pages of a book, but it becomes a real necessity in the present
case to follow Peter and Mrs. Merrion closely because of the im-
portant results which followed from their intermeddling. Bar-
bara was piqued with Ruth and,' Florian, and had taken it into
her match-making and match-marring head that they should not
marry each other. This was her motive in endeavoring to keep
them apart and engage Ruth's affections elsewhere. Peter had the
wild design of uniting Frances Lynch and Paul in matrimony, and
therefore endeavored to remove Paul's only rival and arrange
matters properly for the culminating event. He was not, as
we have seen, a man of large comprehension. The result was
all he kept his eyes upon, since he was utterly unable to rea-
son, or to connect his schemes, or be patient while they ma-
tured. Like a man sun-blind, he saw nothing but the sun, and
staggered towards the luminary without regard to the difficulties
that lay between. Naturally he played into his subtler oppo-
nent's hands. The squire, in his blunt way, gave a long narra-
tive of his hopes and fears concerning his daughter and Florian
to Barbara, and took occasion to mention the help he was receiv-
ing from the astute Peter.

" A great mind," said the squire knowingly " a great mind.
If any one can bring about this match he can ! Knows the whole
city and human nature in the same manner."

" How I would like to help you ! " said Barbara rapturously.
" And I always had a taste for such things."

" You had, by hokey, Barbery ! " roared the squire, slapping
his thigh. " You had, if any one ever had. I never saw a wo-
man who could hook in a man better, and land him every time,
by thunder ! Tell me, Barbery, is there any more like you in
this town ? "

" Why ? " said she archly.

" Oh ! because," said the squire, moodily ramming his hands
into his pockets, " if I thought there was, and that I was going
to cross 'em, I'd get for home. I'm a widower, you know.
They'd fish for me and land me, and that 'ud be worse than los-
ing my head."

" What a vain old fellow ! " said she, laughing. " As if a wo-
man would run after him ! "

" She'd be obliged to do some tall runnin'," said the squire
grimly, " to catch on to me; but when it comes to a matrimonial

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 669

race, woman's got the wind. It's her nature, I s'pose. It's all
she can do. Oh ! yes, I remember you, Barbery. Thank God !
you're married : I'm safe."

A ring at the bell announced a caller, and the squire left to
visit Peter and arrange for an afternoon interview. But our
sociable friend had already anticipated the squire, and it was his
card which the servant placed in Mrs. Merrion's hands.

Peter's interview with Mrs. Merrion was to his mind a brilliant
success. The wily little lady left him under the impression that
he was a prince of diplomatists; and an hour afterwards he was
still beaming with gratified vanity when he met Paul coming out
of a publisher's office and took him by the arm.

" I know by the look on yer sweet face, b'y," said Peter, " that
you've struck a mine o' money. An' now let me advise ye, ye
poor child. Go an' put every penny of it in the bank, an' keep
something back for your wedding-day."

" Plenty of money in the world, Peter," said the poet, mimick-
ing him, " and there will be more the day I am married than at
present. Be sure I'll have my share of it."

" Ay, an' the poor '11 have the biggest part of your share.
See now ! "

" I can't see your logic, Peter."
" Poor b'y ! is yer mind so far gone now ? "
Paul laughed. They went home together, for the dinner-
hour was approaching, and met Florian at the City Hall with a
bundle of papers in his hands. He looked paler than usual and
tired.

" I was wishing to meet you," said he ; " let us go over to
Mouquin's and dine instead of tramping over to madame's. It
will save time, and the claret is unexceptionable."

"So it is," said Peter, as his feet slipped suddenly from under
him and he came down on the icy sidewalk. The effects of this
fall were immediate. Without a word he darted into a side-
street and left the two young men to dine alone.

" He could not stand our chaffing," said Florian, as they en-
tered the restaurant.

" You look played out," said Paul, " worse than I have seen
you look for months."

" Work and pleasure," said Florian moodily, " don't agree.
These confounded soirees have upset me, and I think I shall
swear off."

" When Miss Pendleton goes home, I suppose," said Paul
cautiously.

670 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

" Ah ! you know that," said Florian quickly, for in all the win-
ter they had rarely spoken about Ruth.

" Who could help knowing it, my dear boy? A retired sort
of a young man begins suddenly to frequent society, and is
always seen at those places where a certain young lady is sure to
be. Is not the inference easy ? "

" Yes, yes ; and I never thought of that. Others, perhaps,
will talk about it. But then she has not favored me more espe-
cially than other young men."

" Myself, for instance. I should say not ! You are modest,
of course; a successful man is always. I wish you happiness,
Florian, for I think you are going to marry an excellent woman."

" I am not so near to that consummation," said the lawyer,
with ill-concealed disgust, " so your compliments are ill-timed.
Did I ever tell you that well, what need to tell it now ? I sup-
pose you are aware that Miss Pendleton is a Protestant ? "

" No," said Paul, in the highest astonishment. " I was not.
On the contrary, when I saw the attention you paid to her, and
how intimate you appeared to be, I thought naturally she was a
Catholic."

" Well, that was a queer blunder ! And have you been talk-
ing of the Mass and confession, and the Lenten services in
our church, and other such topics to a Methodist of the deepest
dye?"

" No," said Paul ; "society is such a hybrid thing that you can
talk only nonsense to avoid offending some one. But then isn't
this a returning on principle, Florian? Have I not heard you say
many times that you would never marry outside the faith, and
hinted that you had already made sacrifices that were very great
for a mere boy ? "

" Love," said Florian, concealing his confusion under a gay
exterior, " is universal and levels all distinctions."

" Or, rather, it is irresistible," said Paul, with a laugh. " It
can level the lawyer and the common man, not the distinctions.
The distinctions remain, the men do not. But really this is a
surprise to me, and, as I intended to push my fortunes there after
you had failed, it is a very wise and happy knowledge you have
given me. I shall steer wide of the Pendleton seas hencefor-
ward."

Florian could hardly congratulate himself on having a pos-
sible rival removed from the field, so very dark seemed his own
chances, and he became unpleasantly conscious of one circum-
stance before Paul left his company. The poet was disappointed

i88s.J SOLITARY ISLAND. 671

in him. Some high standard as to his friend's character Paul
had long ago formed in his own mind, and until this moment
Florian had acted up to it in word and deed. Now the standard
had fallen. The politician was only the idol of clay, and had
broken under its own weight. Florian felt very sad. He had
not yet formed the express resolution of offering himself to Ruth
a second time without the condition of the first proposal. He
had merely sailed off and on the dangerous coast, longing for
that dear harbor, yet ashamed to enter it and thus belie his own
past conduct and present principles. The dinner passed over
in complete silence until they rose to depart. Then Paul said
for he feared Florian had not rightly understood his last
words

" You won't let any misunderstanding come between us in re-
gard to Miss Pendleton? She is a beautiful girl, and I am really
glad to know that you are favored by her, and I hope one day to
congratulate you in her possession."

" Thank you, Paul," said Florian ; " but, as I hinted, your
opinions on this matter are a little wild. Miss Pendleton and I
are nothing more than school-friends, and I have even less claim
to her attentions than yourself. You are free to make as much
headway in her affection as you can or please."

"Thank you, too," said Paul, half- sad, half-laughing. "You
have told me enough to keep me out of dangerous vicinities.
She is a Protest-ant. I remain faithful to old beliefs."

Florian winced at the sharp reproof and was inclined to be
angry or vexed ; but as these passions never made their appear-
ance on his smiling face under any circumstances, he said no-
thing.

Paul went home in deep meditation, and its chief point was
the sweet face that for years had haunted him and was now to
vanish like a laid ghost. When he arrived at Madame Lynch 's,
Peter was evidently waiting for him in the hall, walking in a con-
fused sort of a way up and down, and looking under his eye-
brows, shame-faced.

" You have picked yourself up," said Paul, with a grin.

"Ah ! b'y, that was as bad a fall as ever a man got," said Peter,
stopping him at the parlor door. From within came the sound
of music like the moaning of winds at sea. " Shis in there,"
continued the journalist, with a wink, " poor thing, just broken-
hearted because o' the way ye are threatin' her."

Paul stared and seized his arm when he went to throw open
the door.

672 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

" What do you mean ? " he said angrily. " What blunders are
you preparing" for now ? "

"Blunders?" said Peter. "To the divil wid yer blunders!
Don't try to father them on me, me b'y. I have a mind to kick
ye, jist as ye stand, for yer impertinence, ye gossoon. After the
promise to take her to the cathedral last evening, an' not to make
yer appearance till after ten ! "

" Oh ! " said Paul, laughing, " it is Frances, then ; and do you
not remember how we agreed that if I were not at home you
were to take her to the cathedral, and I was to meet you both
and take her back again. You promised that, but if I had waited
there until this moment you would never have come."

" I didn't promise," said Peter sturdily. " I did promise, but
I said I'd reserve the right to consider if I was bound by the
promise."

" You deserve the kicking," said Paul, endeavoring to pass
him;, but Peter threw open the door and bawled that Paul
wished to come in and hear the music. What could the angry
poet do but obey ? And, with af look that promised future ven-
geance, Paul entered and begged Frances to excuse his intrusion.
Peter did not choose to enter, but remained without to prevent
strangers from disturbing the t6te-a-tete and to drive back either
of the two should they make an attempt to escape.

" Nothin' nicer could have happened," soliloquized he, as he
walked up and down the hall and commented on the sounds
heard in the parlor. " They're talking about the weather now
ordinary things in an ordinary voice. It takes me to fetch things
about in the quickest way. Now they're growin' sentimental ;
their tones are low : ' sweet an' low, now they go ; lovers always
*:0verse so ' I'm a poet, begob ! He'll ask her to play sweet music
directly. What a yalla-haired couple they'll make ! There's the
music now; didn't I know it would come? God bless ye, Paul,
b'y ! But it's you can draw the heart of a woman into her fingers !
That's meltin' ; that's heavenly ; that's oh ! my, soft as the po-
theen when it glides an* ripples an' soothers down the throat,
soft as silk or mush. I'd propose to any woman that could play
like that. I wonder how they're takin' it ? "

He peeped in cautiously and saw Paul seated with closed
eyes and hands clasped on his lap, while Frances drooped over
the piano, half-inclined to weep at her own melodies.

" Two or three more meetin's like that," said the delighted
Peter, " an' the thing's done ; then I snap me fingers at the law-
yer with his gizzard instead of a heart, an' he can marry the

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 673

heretic, the ould squire's single card she's a nate one, though.
Hush ! they're talkin' jist like the music raeltin' ; jist like lovers
ripplin' ! Oh ! to be young again, Peter."

The voices were still murmuring within, and Peter took
another peep. Paul sat in his old position, and Frances sat
beside him with one delicate hand on his arm. The poet's eyes
rested on it admiringly while she talked. At sight of this plea-
sant tableau Peter gave a silent leap into the air, and then burst
into the room in the manner of one making an awkward dis-
covery ; but there was no confusion on their part, and they looked
at him in quiet astonishment, as people always regarded the exits
and entrances of the journalist.

" Is it the cathedral to-night, Paul, b'y is it, me girl ? " he
shouted. " Ye'll find me on hand to-night, anyhow, an' for all
eternity afterwards."

" Pshaw ! " said Paul, rising, " we are heartily tired of you.
Miss Frances and I are going to the cathedral to-night, and com-
ing back again, and if you are seen within a block of us at any
time during the evening you must take the risk. What shall be
done to the old rascal ? "

" Whatever's to be done," said Peter, " I do it meself, b'y.
It is banishment, is it? Behold, I go."

He circled in the middle of the room, bowed low, and dis-
appeared through the door with a leap worthy of Harlequin and
a yell suited to th*e backwoods. Peter's promises, however, were
always made with the reserved right to decide whether he was to
be bound by them or not ; consequently the two figures which
walked slowly through the quiet streets that night were followed
at a distance by a round, bobbing form, whose head ducked and
danced above the crowd like a cork on the bay. Lenten services
at the cathedral did not attract a large number in those days, nor
were the devotions attended by any splendors of music or decora-
tion. Those who went to the church were drawn thither by their
own piety, and so few were they that Peter found it necessary to
hide in the shadows lest he should be seen. It did not add to his
pleasure to see Mrs. Merrion in the middle aisle with Ruth as a
companion ; but on second thought he concluded that it was quite
fortunate, left his seat, and joined the two ladies. Ruth did not
look at him ; Mrs. Merrion slightly inclined her head.

" Ye shouldn't have brought her here," said Peter anxiously.

"Why, Mr. Carter," whispered Barbara, "she will see him
in the company of that other girl, and besides will learn that he's
a Catholic. Nothing nicer could have happened."
VOL. XL. 43

674 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

" Yer right, be George ! " said he " always right."

" When the service is ended," said Barbara, " do you contrive
to bring them to the door when the people are almost gone, and
I shall be waiting there with Ruth. It will be such a shock."

" Oh ! ah !" Peter snickered, and was punished with a frown
from Barbara and a look of wonder from Ruth, whereupon he
subsided into the silence of simulated devotion.

" Was not that the queer journalist? " said Ruth, when they
were in the vestibule and Barbara had met with an accident to
her dress. " I was ashamed of his loud talking."

" Well, he's a Catholic, my dear Ruth," Mrs. Merrion an-
swered, "and knows how to behave in his own church, I sup-
pose."

" He might make use of his knowledge, then."

While they were busied arranging torn clothing Peter wan-
dered near with Frances and Paul in tow, and collided with the
squire, who was just entering the edifice to look after his party.

" Why," said Barbara, " it's Mr. Rossiter, Ruth."

" No," said Peter, "it's Pendleton. How do, old buck? Are
you turnin' Romanist?"

"I'd turn anything," said the squire, "to get home or get
a drink."

" Wait," Peter whispered slily " wait till we get rid of the
ladies, an' I'll show ye to the proper fountain. He's here. Look
out for the girl. I'll see to Mrs. Merrion."

Unfortunately when the two old boys joined the party Mrs.
Merrion had sent Ruth off with Paul and handed Frances to
the squire after an introduction.

" I sent the carriage on six blocks," said she, " for I do so
like a walk in the moonlight, and Mr. Carter is such company."

" Right, me girl," said Peter, who had a knack of marking
his approval in an emphatic way. " There's where you show
yer good taste. Come on, squire. Where's Paul?"

" He is leading the way with Ruth," said Barbara, and in an
undertone she added, " It will be all settled to-night for once and
for ever."

Peter answered with a smile. In the vestibule Mrs. Merrion
had whispered to Frances, after Ruth had gone away with Paul,
" You have heard of her, probably Mr. Wallace's great friend,"
and poor Frances had replied faintly and grown sick at heart,
until in the next interval the sprightly matchmaker told her of
the breaking of an engagement and the utter hopelessness of
its renewal. Then Frances' heart beat strong again and she

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 675

found the squire the best of company. It was a chilly but a
pleasant night, for the moon was shining. Ruth felt, as she
walked along at Paul's side and listened to his sparkling talk,
that this was one of the nights of her life, one of those points of
time which occur rarely to us all, and whose every circumstance
of place and person is woven into one indestructible memory.

" I did not know," he began, " that you were an observer of
Lent."

" Nor am I, Mr. Rossiter. But Mrs. Merrion was so de-
termined to visit the church, and insisted on my going too. Oh !
if our minister knew I behaved so what would he think?"

" It is not such a sin," he said, laughing. " Are not all churches
one before God in your belief?"

" Not the Roman Church," said she ; " you should know that."

" At least I have felt it often enough when publishers declined
my articles because I was a Catholic."

" How cruel and senseless !" she said, starting in surprise.
" But it is a fault of our people. Do you know, I have a great
admiration for Catholicity, Mr. Rossiter* and once -came very
near joining the church."

" Those who know must admire," said he reverently. *' All
truth, all purity, all beauty is there. If men's eyes would only
open to the light ! "

" That is the language of our minister with regard to the
benighted world". Why, I tried hard to open my eyes to that
light, but Methodism shone the brighter by comparison."

" And you were so near as to have tried to believe? " he said
with great gentleness. " O Miss Pendleton ! what sad fortune
deprived you of the greatest happiness this world can give?"

His voice was full of pity and reproach, as if it had been her
fault, and the fault a crime ; as if he were speaking to a lost soul
which had once stood in the brightness of grace, and of its own
will had fled into the outer darkness.

"You frighten me, Mr. Rossiter.* I assure you no one ever
tried harder to believe than I did. I prayed day and night for
a year. I read and studied and consulted. I had a great teacher "
her voice trembled " I was most anxious, and my best inte-
rests urged me to accept your faith. Still I was not convinced."

" And you fell back into the old belief ? "

" What more to do? When you have lost the new road you.
must take the old one or go astray."

" And do you believe that Methodism is the true religion ? "

" I can see none truer," she said- with hesitation.

676 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

" And you are ashamed of yourself because you must make
the admission," he said earnestly. "Common sense teaches that
if you have any doubt concerning the truth it must be quickly
removed. I fear, Miss Pendleton, you have not made good use
of the grace of doubt."

" What more could I do ? " was the reply which had been for
years her heart's refrain when conscience rose up against her.

" You could have prayed," he said gently, " until the doubt
passed away or was satisfied. You went too far to retreat with
safety. You read works of controversy until the brain grew
tired and confused. Faith does not come that way. It is a
gift, and God will give it for the sincere asking. But to some
he gives it more slowly than to- others. You should have
pleaded still. You are dangerously situated now, and I am very
sorry for you."

" You will frighten me so that I shall not sleep to-night," she
said. " Your voice is as solemn as a death-bell. Do not think
me a trifler, but I am getting tired of the struggle."

" Who does not at times ? But that is a poor reason for drown-
ing."

" What would you have me do, then ? "

" I would go away from the world," he said slowly, " and find
a solitude close to heaven, where I would beat the walls of
paradise with incessant prayer until God had satisfied my needs.
We can meet our Creator half-way at least."

They walked along in silence until they met the carriage.

" Here we part," she said gaily, " and you do not know for
how long a time, Mr. Rossiter. I might go away from the
world to-night."

The moon was shining on his face as he looked at her. Both
his look and his words reminded her of Linda. He said mildly,
as he pressed her hand, " That we may meet again."

CHAPTER IX.

BARBARA'S TREACHERY.

LIGHTLY as Paul received the information of Ruth's religious
belief from Florian, it had hurt him deeply. It was not the poet's
manner to make much of a hopeless matter, particularly when it
bordered on affairs of conscience, and in the present instance he
had hastened to remove many old impressions with regard to

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 677

Ruth, and was very careful to chase from his dreams the sweet
fancies concerning her which had beguiled and lightened some
heavy hours. He had seen at once what sort of a woman Ruth
was no trifler to play hide-and-seek with the serious things of
life, but a woman full of the earnestness of deep thought and he
could therefore the more easily understand why Florian had not
succeeded in making her his wife. Marrying, with her, was a
matter of principle, not of feeling or of convenience or advan-
tage. She had deep convictions of the ti*uth and falsity of reli-
gions, and of the necessity of one true faith, and her natural men-
tal clearness forbade her imperilling these for the sake of her
own likings. It was a firm soul indeed which could resist the
heavy temptations to which she had been subjected, and he ad-
mired her the more for it, and prayed sincerely that her good-
ness might win for her an entrance into the only harbor this side
of heaven. All his own hopes and wishes in regard to her were
now dead. He took it as a matter of course, and did not attempt
to find in the temper and behavior of his fellow-Catholics ex-
cuses for marrying outside of his own faith. It was enough for
him that a mixed marriage was prudentially wrong at least, and
beyond that he did not attempt to go. In his last conversation
with Ruth she had seemed to be in a state of doubt, and he had
said some sharp, earnest words to her, partly because his deepest
interest in her was dead and he was not afraid of offending, but
more because he- had taken her statements without due attention
to the exaggeration of fancy. He did not believe she was as un-
certain about Methodism as she thought. She had read and
thought enough, no doubt, to get misty and unsettled in her reli-
gious views, and there really was so little form in Methodism
that one good theological wind shook it to fragments. But one
does not leave old beliefs hastily, particularly so reverent and
firm a believer as Ruth, and the very contemplation of a change
would be apt to make her cling more tightly to old certainties.
Women, too, as a rule, are distrustful to-day of the strength and
truth of emotions which moved them yesterday. Of this Ruth
herself was an example, and she was probably now laughing over
her own sentiment and his severity during their walk from the
cathedral. Well, what need to trouble himself with any further
speculation? He was resolved henceforward to remain outside
Mrs. Merrion's fairy ring. He had taken the determination not
to burn himself ; he would make sure of it by not even going to
look at the fire.

If Florian could have brought himself to the same happy dis.

678 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

position it would have been well for him ; but he was madly
rushing on to his own ruin. Every day found him at Mrs. Mer-
rion's, and every day saw more completely pictured the utter
hopelessness of his expectations. Ruth was gracious as a sister,
and Barbara agreeable that was all. No looks or sighs, no tokens
of past love ; allusions to the earlier times avoided, sentiment
abhorred ! A plainer, homelier conversation he never endured
than when with Ruth, and instead of learning its lesson properly
the cool, far-seeing politician was lashed to an insane fury of pas-
sion. He would succeed in this instance, as he had done in
others. What reason of failure was there ? He began to see
omens of success in the trifling occurrences of the day, and was
overjoyed when Peter winked at him in his vulgar way and bade
him be of good heart, or when the squire described his own in-
terpretations of Ruth's words and actions in the privacy of
home. The two old matchmakers made much of the favor which
Florian showered on them for a short period. The closet stood
always open, and the bottles, in spite of a steady emptying, stood
always full, while Florian's humor never failed so long as they
spoke of Ruth and his prospects.

" Love's generosity," said Peter huskily, as he held his glass
to the light and surveyed it with watery eye, " is a beautiful
thing. I wish all me friends were in love. But there's nothing
like having a mutual feeling of regard, for then the flood-gates of
affection are opened an' two mighty streams well, here's to
ye, squire, an' I swear undyin' regard for ye. When Flory,
here, an' the little girl ye know what I mean, but mum's the
word, o' course we'll put a barrel o' this inside of us."

" I dunno I dunno," said the squire moodily ; " he's too slow,
too cold, Carter. She's hot and quick, and if she takes a notion
who could hold her ? "

" I trust to the power o' love, squire. Love could hold her, if
it got the right grip. Now, Flory 's got the right grip bedad he
has an' wid you an' me to steady him, an' Mrs. Merrion to steady
you an* me, don't ye think, me b'y, that she'll find it hard to
break ? Don't ye, now, ye ould cowboy ? for ye're nothin' more."

" Talk, talk," the squire answered, still sourly. " I don't like
to trust that Barbara. She's a deep one, and she's as quick as
lightning with a man. How do we know what she's working
for? She may have her own little views and wishes, and if she
has, by the no, I'm not going to swear by the Continental Con-
gress she's going to sweep the stakes, and we'll be nowhere."

" Ah ! squire," said Peter, with a wicked smile, " lave Bar-

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 679

bara to me. She's shrewd, but I've dealt with her kind afore, an'
if she does any mischief, let alone what I'll lay out for her, charge
the damage to me."

" Charge it to you ? " the squire inquired briefly. " Who'd col-
lect ? No, Peter, there must be no charging in this business.
It's strictly cash from the word ' go.' You're trusting too much
to that young woman, and I don't think Florian would like it."

" Never you mind Florian ; lave him to me along wid the
rest, ye poor ould hay-seed. Sure you know nawthin about the
ways o' city sharpers "

" Carter, I can tell you more of that critter Merrion in ten
minutes than you can know about her in ten years."

" That's right ; o' course ye can. Who's denyin' it ? Did I
deny it? But lave it all to me an* the god o' love. He's blind,
ye know, an' I'll do the seein' for him. Faith, when we reach
the bottom o' this bottle I'll see twice as much as ever. Now,
squire, put on a bright face when the b'y comes in, an' tell him
all ye know at one rush. It's fine to see the smile that comes on
his face when ye begin to talk Ruth to him. Ah ! me, but it's
the queer thing to see what a change the women can make in a
fine, sensible, hearty man."

" Halloo ! here's Flory," said the squire, as the lawyer en-
tered. " Well, my lad, what's the best news to-day?"

" You generally have it," Florian answered, while Peter slowly
departed with a warning gesture to the squire. " I have been
at Mrs. Merrion's, and we drove out with Ruth, but nothing
of moment occurred. Have you nothing better to say than
that?"

" Oh ! a good deal," said the squire reflectively " a good
deal. She's coming round by degrees, and I shouldn't wonder
if the time for clinching matters arrived within a few days."

Florian said nothing in reply, and after a few mumbled re-
marks the squire hurried after his crony and left the man of
business to himself. Peter was in his room preparing to make a
call on Mrs. Merrion, and the attention he paid to the niceties
of his toilet set the squire laughing.

"You're not touched here?" he asked, tapping his head, "or
has Barbery got her hooks in your jaws? "

"Stop, ould Pendleton!" said Peter, waving his hand play-
fully ; " wait an' see. Mind, yer an ould b'y, yer a widower, an'
ye can't an' don't understan' the motives which actuate us young
bachelors. I'm now conductin' a delicate negotiation concerning
your daughter so delicate, bedad, that a variation in the shade of

68o SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

a necktie might kill the whole thing. Ye don't know these city
people, squire, an' I do."

" I swear," said the squire, " for a sharp one you're the nearest
approach to a fool that I've ever met. But you can go ahead.
There's genius about you, and I want to see it."

The confidence which the squire had in Peter was not strong
enough to overcome his distrust of Barbara. What he feared
from that lady he could not exactly tell, but as he compared her
nature to that of a balky horse it could be inferred that he ex-
pected some treachery on her part at a critical moment. She
was well aware of the squire's opinion of her and delighted to
tease him into strong expressions, which not all his daughter's
warning looks could prevent when the humor came.

She had seen with a feeling of pleasure that a struggle of
some kind was going on in Ruth's soul since the night on
which they had visited the cathedral together. What was its
nature she could not define. Its importance in her -eyes was as
yet purely negative. She had guessed only that it was injurious
to the hopes which Florian so rashly entertained, but that it in
any way was concerned with Paul she could not discover. It
satisfied her simply to know that, for the present at least, society
would not be apt to lose the bachelor charms of Mr. Wallace,
and to secure this end Barbara was quite willing to do many
more awkward things than consorting and conspiring with old
idiots like Peter Carter. In her sly yet perfectly natural way
she assisted circumstances in aggravating Ruth's condition.
Ruth was sad, and she found means to make her sadder, inclined
to keep much by herself and Barbara gave her every opportunity
of solitude fond of talking of death and the importance of salva-
tion when she talked at all ; and Barbara was as deeply religious
and solemn in word and look as a Quaker. All this time she was
working in the dark, and only knew by instinct that it would
come out as she wished. Had she for a moment suspected that
Ruth's struggle was one of faith, and that she was considering a
change to Catholicity, her whole soul would have been roused to
prevent so dangerous a turn of affairs.

She would like to have seen Paul Rossiter again, and won-
dered why he had deserted them. She was becoming anxious.
Paul was Florian's friend. Had he discovered, or had Peter made
known to him, the dead-set which Florian was making against
Ruth's heart, and had he kindly stepped aside at the expense
of his own feelings, that his friend might have a clear field ? It
looked like it. But she had no intention of permitting such a

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 68 1

scheme to succeed, and set about securing Paul's presence in
Merrion house so determinedly that in a few days after she had
picked him up while driving out and had brought him home to.
dinner. Ruth's face lightened up frankly at sight of him.

" You are a gift of the gods," said she " rarely seen, and held
but for a short time. What crime has deprived us of your com-
pany so long?"

" Some literary work," Barbara said. " It could not well be
anything else."

" Managers are more exacting than ladies," he answered, "and
I am not at all inclined to work. I have idled during the winter,
and must make up for it now."

" I did not think I would see you again," said Ruth, when
Barbara had gone away for a time. " I was very much disturbed
that evening coming from church, and was half-resolved to go
away from New York at once."

" But you have thought better of it, I see. The music and
the solemn service on a moonlight night give one enthusiastic
notions. I am inclined always after them to go away and be
a hermit ; but a sound sleep, or, better, an oyster supper on the
way home, brings me back to my senses."

"Oh ! but it was not the music, Mr. Rossiter. I had thought
of many things a long time, until I knew not what to do, and 1
came to New York partly in the hope of forgetting my mental
troubles. I was succeeding yes, I think I was succeeding when
your words spoiled all. Were you enthusiastic that evening, Mr.
Rossiter were you too earnest? "

" 1 have thought so since," he said hesitatingly, " but what I
said was in itself true. When persons are in a state of doubt they
are bound to get out of it."

" But doubt is sometimes a temptation."

" It can be banished by prayer, then, or by removing the ex-
citing causes. But as I understood you, your doubt had only in-
creased with time and thinking. There was something more in
it than mere temptation. I know that even in that case an honor-
able doubt can be smothered, for there are many Protestants to
whom such a grace was given and of their own will they de-
stroyed it. I would not be in their shoes for worlds."

" But now," added he playfully, and sorry to be so quickly
drawn into this subject, " I shall frighten you again by my ear-
nestness."

" No, no ; I am utterly helpless, Mr. Rossiter, and confused
too. Let me tell you just the kind of doubts which trouble me.

682 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Feb.,

Your church has received so many Protestants that you must
know something of their general state of mind, and perhaps you
can help me. Pray do not refuse me," when he had begun to
decline the honor. " I know what you would say, and it only
urges me the more to speak to you. Remember you are partly
responsible for my late annoyances, and, like an honest gentle-
man, you must help me out of my difficulties."

She did not give him time to raise any great objections, but
poured out her story like water from a wide-mouthed urn. It was
plainly and sensibly done, and he had no fault to find with her.

" I think," said he, " that you are in a state verging on con-
version. I don't believe any advocate of Methodism can 'ever
convince you of its truth again. You are done with it for ever ;
and being done with one form of Protestantism is to be done
with all. Still, I do not say you can become a Catholic. You
are bound, however, to examine it under wise and competent
teachers. You cannot find those outside the Catholics them-
selves."

" Then you would advise me "

" I would rather not take such a responsibility," he interrupt-
ed smilingly. " It is easy for you to draw inferences from what
I have said. I can fancy your father and friends will not be very
grateful to me for any advice."

" They are of very little account to me," she began, and then
stopped. " What does it matter?" she continued. " And, indeed,
I am hasty and unkind in dragging you into difficulty. I must
beg your pardon and thank you for your kindness."

" I fear you will think me timid," he said, " but in this coun-
try we are suspicious of converts. Religious thought is not very
deep, and religious feeling not very steady. Women, too, are
emotional creatures, especially in religion. Some very bad blun-
ders have already been committed. I do not wish to add to them.
Let God's grace work its way, and whatever I can do to aid it I
shall do, but prudently."

" You speak wisely," she replied, and then the conversation
ended with Barbara's entrance.

She was very desirous to discover from Ruth what the poet
had to say, but Ruth had no wish just then to speak of such mat-
ters. Later on she told her, however, and Barbara was struck
with dismay on hearing that religion was the source of the trou-
ble. If Ruth were to become a Catholic, was not this one step
nearer to Florian ? She lost no time in unearthing Ruth's mo-
tives and opinions.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 683

" Why," said she, "nothing could give greater pleasure to the
squire or Mr. Carter than to hear of your becoming a Catholic."

" My father would not at all be pleased," said Ruth in some
surprise ; " and as for Mr. Carter, how can it possibly interest
him?"

" Where are your eyes, child, that you have not seen the plots
and snares into which you have been dragged this winter?"

" Plots and snares ! " repeated Ruth in absolute amaze. Bar-
bara laughed cheerfully.

" You are innocent, Ruth. Do you not know how fondly
your papa dreams of your marriage to Florian, and that he has
engaged the services of Mr. Carter to bring it about ? Have you
not observed all the mysterious winks and phrases between those
silly old men ? Oh ! you need not look incredulous. I am one
of the party of conspirators sworn to see you and Florian mar-
ried before summer, and I have the entire confidence of them all.
Their folly amused me, and I thought you saw through their de-
signs long ago."

Ruth was very indignant at first at the bare idea of such a
conspiracy, and was not inclined to believe it ; next she felt hurt
that sensible Florian, who must have understood her manner to-
wards him, should have lent himself to so silly a scheme. To
Barbara she showed no feeling except surprise at her announce-
ment.

" I know that papa always cherished the idea," she said, " but
why should Mr. Carter interest himself in the matter?"

" Mr. Carter is the friend of Paul Rossiter, and has arranged
it in his own mind that Miss Lynch should marry him. As the
young lady doesn't care two pins for Mr. Rossiter and thinks the
world of Florian, he thought to get rid of him by sending him
to you. Like all these politicians, Mr. Wallace is perfectly indif-
ferent, I suppose, and must be ignorant of the efforts being made
in his behalf."

" I hope so," said Ruth a little sadly. " Oh ! I am sure of it.
Florian and I understand each other very well. But Mr. Ros-
siter "

" Why, he is even more innocent than Florian, and would not
at all thank Mr. Carter for his interference. I know he cares
very little for Miss Lynch matrimonially. He would rather have
Mr. Carter plot the other way."

" Such impertinence ! " said Ruth hotly. " I wonder you tole-
rated Mr. Carter here after such a discovery."

" He was amusing, dear, and I spoiled all his little plans very

684 A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. [Feb.,

effectively. I shall crush him completely when you have decided
on what you are to do."

" I must think," said Ruth ; " but at any rate I .must go away.
Where I shall go, is the question."

Barbara was delighted at this determination, and gave the girl
all the assistance possible in settling upon a place as remote from
New York as was desirable.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A NEW PROVENgAL POEM.*

A NEW poem by Frederic Mistral is a great literary event.
Though he is not of the Academy, yet the author of Mireille is
probably the truest, if not also the greatest, poet now living in
France. Born, dwelling, writing in Provence and in Provence's
own enchanting language, he is a very lily of all that was best
in the spirit of the Romance ages, flowering with a great strength
in this rude century of iron and steam. He is a type of that
lofty and abiding "Faith that won once for France the title of
Eldest Daughter of the Church, and of that knightly grace and
principle that set her on the throne as the Queen of Chivalry.

Mistral has just produced another poem, of which we shall
try to give a brief summary.

Although he modestly calls his new volume, Nerto, a Proven-
gal novel, it is divided into seven cantos, preceded by a prologue
and followed by an epilogue. It has also the qualities and pro-
portions, the tone and the elevation, of an epic work.

Nerto is a young girl whose father sold her to the devil, and
who, after moving vicissitudes and terrible trials, escapes from
the power of the infernal spirit. The scene is laid in the middle
ages, in the country of the author, near the gates of Avignon, the
papal city. The poem is written in verses of eight feet, and the
volume has on the left page the Provencal text facing on the op-
posite page, for the benefit of readers not familiar with the beau-
ties of the langue d'Oc, a French translation made by M. Mistral
himself.

It is a considerable risk to speak of an epic poem in our age,
especially one in French. The poets of the present century, even

+ Nerto. By Fr6d6ric Mistral.

1885.] A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. 685

the greatest Lamartine, for example, or Alfred de Musset have
given to their poetic works a character purely personal and, if we
may so express ourselves, egotistic. They sing throughout their
doubts, their uncertainties, their despairs, their revolts. The
world with all its splendors figures as secondary scenery and as
a sort of setting or background to their personalities. What
they have to tell about is themselves. This is what the Ger-
mans call subjective poetry.

Without depreciating the value of that conception or the
merit of their works, it is allowable to say that their idea of
poesy, from the standpoint of the highest art, degrades it to the
level of a philosophical monologue.

Recent French poets, nay, the French poets of this century,
have nearly all failed to grasp the true relations of the exterior
world to their art. The painter, the sculptor, the architect, the
musician, the poet it is their mission to widen our views of life
and to spread before us the existence of forms, of colors, of per-
sonages, of heroes which will be sought vainly in the natural
order. Graced by their touch, the real world will be elevated
to the altitude of their vision of the ideal. It is not with the
poet a mere question of perspective or of grand surprises : he
gives a body and a soul to the representations of his thought ;
he dresses them so with graces and ennobles with such qualities
that the names alone of his heroes and heroines suffice to move
our minds and- make our hearts beat.

It is strange that the poets of our day have relinquished the
mighty gift of lively invention and allowed it to fall into the
hands of a lower grade of literature. Poets are the men who
should naturally create personages destined to pursue a certain
course and accomplish high achievements. Romancers have
now the monopoly of this gift.

It must not, however, be believed for a moment that the ro-
mance can under any circumstances become the equivalent of
the epic poem, unless we desire to repeat the absurd saying of
M. Philarete Chasles that the Odyssey of Homer is a romance in
which the principal personage is the captain of a ship. The ro-
mance of our days has nothing of poetic spontaneity. It is not
that powerful synthesis which, with one living and concentrated
stroke, pictures the man speaking and acting, but it is a long, de-
tailed, minute analysis, or less than an analysis an inventory. It
has neither the love of seeking knowledge nor the enthusiasm of
inflaming one; documents are its weapons; it is an inquest in
which it desires to interest you.

686 A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. [Feb.,

The epic poem has nothing to do with this method of infor-
mation and exposition. Its method consists, not in saying a great
deal, but, on the contrary, in saying little. It suffices a poet to
mark merely the essential traits of the soul and body in order
that the character live and move and the imagination of the
reader take it in ; our spirit is moved by his thoughts and our
attention roused by a glance.

Epic poetry has a superiority which places it high over all
other kinds. The discourses of Homer's heroes have always
been cited as incomparable models of eloquence. The retorts
that the warriors exchange from chariot to chariot as they rush
to battle breathe of the liveliest passion and realize the ideal of
dramatic dialogue. The invocations of the poet are full of lyri-
cal inspiration, and all the resources of descriptive art are brought
to bear in order that the reader may view the scene and behold
the aspects of the characters.

This is why epic works are so rare in the history of the world;
this is why the poets of our times dare not risk themselves in too
high a strain. In order to accomplish anything it requires quali-
ties of mind very powerful and unfortunately not often found
combined : fecundity, variety of invention, the sobriety which
knows how to say everything in a few words and to pass with
ease from one subject to another without abridging by omission
or dra\ying out too long. Failure of fecundity, and consequently
of variety, is perhaps one of the most marked characteristics of
our times. Ours is a worn-out and discouraged epoch. The
painter who one day happens on a fine inspiration passes his life
reproducing the same picture with imperceptible variations :
always the same models, the same effects of perspectives and of
colors. It is the same in literature : each author follows out an
idea, a hobby ; and if you wish to arrive at the quintessence of
him, eliminate his trifling variations and you will find the same
naked theme from the first page to the last. All is sameness.

Let us pass now to the poem of Nerto. It would be diffi-
cult to find in all French literature a more pliable, varied, and
fecund talent than is displayed here. The author unconsciously
calls our attention to the diversity of ideal types which he pro-
poses to place before our eyes. He gives a different title to each
of the seven cantos comprised in his poem : " Le Baron," " Le
Pape," " Le Roi," " Le Lion," " La Nonne," " L'Ange," " Le
Diable."

The introduction of the poem is singularly dramatic. After

1885.] A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. 687

a strophe which paints en silhouette the castle of Chateau- Renard
we are taken into the presence of the Seigneur Pons. The noble
chatelain is about to quit life. He is stretched upon his bed of
agony, having just been brought in from his war-horse wounded
unto death. Arrived at this terrible pass, he avows to his daugh-
ter, Nerto, who is praying at the foot of his bed, the most terrible
of all his secrets. Once, when he had played and lost, he sold
her to the demon. Nerto was to have sixteen years. It was the
delay fixed by the compact. Nerto, on hearing this terrible news,
wrings her hands in despair ; she invokes the help of all the
saints. Her father again speaks :

Chateau-Renard is situated near Avignon, where was the see
of Pope Benedict XIII. The Sovereign Pontiff has been be-
sieged for four years and is on the point of falling into the hands
of his enemies. There was for him, however, a means of escape.
During the first years of the papal sojourn at Avignon a sub-
terranean passage had been created by prudent hands. This pas-
sage, unknown to all, opened in the centre of the papal fortress.
It was through it that Nerto alone could seek the Sovereign
Pontiff ; it was through it that she alone could save him ; and
as the price of this service she would be protected by his power
from falling into the flames of hell.

The Seigneur Pons expires, and Nerto obeys him.

Here in the first canto must we mark the art and the exquisite
delicacy with which the poet averts us from thinking this wicked
father too odious, and at the same time shocks us by this exe-
crable abuse of paternal power.

In the second canto the scene is shifted to Avignon at the
moment when the great Schism of the West was ending. Bene-
dict XIII., who occupies the pontifical see there, is an anti-pope ;
but the author does not touch upon this question he ignores it.
He treats Benedict XIII. as the true successor of St. Peter and
the representative of Jesus Christ. He shows Benedict to us a
stranger in the midst of this city of the middle ages. The pic-
ture of Avignon, traced with the hand of a master by M. Mistral,
will recall to many the features of that celebrated chapter in the
romance of Notre Dame de Paris, " Paris a vol d'oiseau." Aside
from the qualities which are found in the archaeological erudition
of the academicians of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, M. Mis-
tral's description has the quality of being alive as well as exact.
Some one has remarked that a reader can get a better idea of
Grecian mythology from reading the poems of John Keats than
from perusing all the works of all the profound scholars who

683 A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. [Feb.,

have ever written on the subject. M. Mistral is the John Keats
of the middle ages. He pictures Benedict XIII., in his sacer-
dotal majesty and with the tiara on his head, defying the attacks
of man. It is impossible, while reading these lines, not to com-
pare the situation with that of Pope Pius IX. besieged in Rome.

Nerto, issuing from the subterranean passage, finds herself
face to face with the Chevalier Rodrigue, nephew of the pope
and commander of the troops which defend him. Rodrigue is
the type of the elegant and debauched young seigneur. He
murmurs in the ear of Nerto the first words of love she ever
heard. Meanwhile the enemy is upon the point of making an
assault. Nerto, introduced into the presence of the pope, makes
known to him the means of safety of which her father had given
her the secret, on condition that His Holiness should protect her.
After giving a last benediction to the two armies and to the
whole world the pope disappears and seeks refuge in the castle
of Ch&teau-Renard.

The third canto, entitled the " King," shows us the pope,
Benedict XIII., a refugee in the subterranean parts of the fortress
of Chateau-Renard. He finds there the Comte de Provence,
who, following the custom of the house of Anjou, had taken the
title of " Roi de Forcalquier, de Naples et de Jerusalem." This
king is on the point of espousing his fiancee, Yolande of Aragon,
recently arrived from Spain. The ceremony is to take place in
the church of St. Trophime at Aries, several leagues distant
from Chateau-Renard.

Nerto, in the terror of the siege and the precipitation of the
flight, had not had time to reveal to the pope the terrible secret
which concerned her. She now tells him of it and demands of
him a release from the chains of the demon. The Sovereign
Pontiff replies that his power is without virtue against hell. He
exhorts the young girl to become the bride of Jesus Christ and
to take the veil in the convent of St. Ce"saire of Aries.

Then comes the triumphal procession of the pope and the
queen and the king. Rodrigue, on the route, approaches Nerto
and makes proposals in order to prevent her from becoming a
religious.

Upon the road which leads from Tarason to Aries an antique
column marks the limits which divide the abbey lands of St.
C6saire and of Montmajour. Here the bourgeois of the city of
Aries meet the king of Provence. Aries has preserved from the
Roman epoch the pretension of being free and of recognizing no
other king than the lion which guards the entrances to the

1885.] A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. 689

city. Before passing the shadow of this column, called in popu-
lar language " le Baton de Saint-Trophime," the king speaks re-
spectfully of franchises and municipal liberties, after which the
noble cortege receives a grand ovation in this old Roman city.

The next canto, entitled the " Lion," opens as the nuptials of
the king of Provence and the beautiful Yolande close. The
poet, in order to give a new and lively feature to his verses, has
recourse here to an ingenious artifice. Instead of giving the de-
scription as from himself, he introduces a man of the people, who,
notwithstanding his humble position, has an office which allowed
him to view the scene. It is Master Boisset, the archivist. Sur-
rounded by the different citizens of Aries, he is questioned not a
little ; and he, nothing loath, in lively and picturesque language
gives full career to his naive erudition and enthusiastic inspiration.
He describes the beautiful spectacle of those women who were
equal to those who, in the first scene of " CEdipus at Colonus,"
of Sophocles, Antigone presents to the monarch's view as the
chosen flowers of Attica. This Master Bertrand Boisset was not
an imaginary personage; he was that very bourgeois of Aries
who has left us his memoirs covering the years from 1376 to
1404. These memoirs, still unpublished, are written in the Pro-
vengal language, and in them are mentioned the combat of the
lion of Aries with a bull on the i8th of May, 1402. On the 4th
of April, 1553, the council of the city suppressed the practice of
keeping up the traditional lion.

The whole court proceeds in solemn procession to assist at
the combat between the lion of Aries and four bulls. This
episode of cruel sport recalls the epic poems of old. The recital
has a tragic ending. Three bulls, one after the other, are slain
by the noble animal, which, wounded by the fourth, clears by -an
enormous leap the obstacles that surround him and rushes furi-
ously on the king, queen, and Nerto. Just in time to save them,
Rodrigue kills the lion with his sword, and the bourgeois, who
see in this event a decree of Heaven, salute the Comte de Pro-
vence as the new king of the city of Aries.

The fifth canto is called the "Nun," and is a faithful picture
of life in the great cloisters of the middle ages. All is in move-
ment at the convent; Pope Benedict, followed by his whole court,
comes to assist at the profession of Nerto. Setting on his throne,
the Sovereign Pontiff solemnly accords her the necessary dispen-
sations to pronounce her vows. Nerto utters a cry of regret as
Prioress Banale gives the signal for the ceremony. The remem-
brance of Rodrigue is more lively than ever in her distracted

VOL. XL. 44

690 A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. [Feb.,

heart. The genius displayed here can only be compared to that
found at the end of Rent, where Chateaubriand describes the
taking of the veil by Amelie. But, to the honor of M. Mistral be
it said, we do not find here the evil and despairing tone of the
author of the memoirs of Outre Tombe. The sorrow of Nerto is
a sorrow chastened, resigned, Christian ; it recognizes itself and
does not despair.

Rodrigue, however, is not resigned. He assembles a band of
Catalans and roving free lances. He storms the conv'ent and
carries off Nerto in a fainting state. The combat rages. Rod
rigue places the fainting Nerto in the tomb of Roland for the
struggle occurs in a cemetery. Nerto revives, finding herself
alone, and she flies at hazard out into the open country.

The next canto is entitled the " Angel." The author adopts
an ascending succession in his poem. First we find described
the morals and the warlike habits of the people ; then we assist
at the grand spectacles of religious and military pomps. We
enter now into the domain of the soul and the higher region of
the supernatural. The grandeurs of nature, which have been
painted with an incomparable inspiration, fade now in the pre-
sence of God, and the contrast reanimates in us the knowledge of
eternal truths.

Nerto, with broken heart and bruised body, flies until the sun
is about to set. At last she sees a refuge of peace and hope.
The chapel of St. Gabriel appears high up on the side of a moun-
tain ; a hermit descends from it, gives her nourishment, and
speaks to her in thrilling tones of the benevolence and provi-
dence of God. Certainly these beautiful verses approach the fine
pages of F6nelon where he treats of the " Existence of God," just
as they surpass the most admired tirades of the poem on "Re-
ligion " by Louis Racine.

The hermit learns of the compact which chains the young
girl. He promises her the intercession of the Angel Gabriel.
Each day the celestial messenger appears to him on the last
stroke of the Angelus and brings him food.

It is now midday. The ^hermit presents his request to the
Angel Gabriel ; he has promised to save Nerto from the demon :

" Pareil a 1'onde cristalline

Sur laquelle passe un nuage,

L'ange Gabriel se rembrunit,

' Pince de poussiere ! dit-il,

Dans ton dsert, centre les forces
De celui qui chemine par les voies tortueuses,

Le sais-tu bien si tu as combattu ?

1885.] A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. 691

Tu as grand' peine a te sauver toi-meme,

Et tu pretends sauver les autres?
Oh ! pauvre jonc ! Ah ! pauvres que vous tes ? '
Et le bel ange, cela dit,
Avait pris 1'essor vers les astres."

At these words the hermit is seized with a holy terror. He
believes that the presence of Nerto is evil ; and, repenting anew,
he returns to the retreat which he should not have left.

The seventh and last canto is entitled the " Devil." In order^
to prepare the perhaps incredulous mind of the reader for this
episode the poet has affixed a prologue to his work. With the
fervor of good Christian sense and a power of philosophical logic,
the poet openly argues that if the name alone of the malign being
suffices often to provoke one to sorrow and repentance, it is one
of the ruses of hell to persuade men to incredulity, after which
they will not be guarded against the inspirations and attacks of
the enemy of humankind.

Rodrigue after the combat remains in the cemetery of Alys-
camps, vainly seeking Nerto in the tomb where he had placed
her in a fainting condition. Despairing, he invokes Lucifer.
Although a Christian and the nephew of the pope, the chevalier,
during the long siege of Avignon, has had the curiosity and lei-
sure to search among the secret archives where the church, with
maternal vigilance, had entombed the cabalistic books of sor-
cerers and necromancers.

At the first invocation of Rodrigue the demon responds in a
deep voice and without showing himself; for the poet, with a
great deal of art, retards the apparition in order to render it more
solemn. The infernal spirit promises the chevalier to construct
for him, at the foot of the mountain of St. Gabriel, a magnifi-
cent chateau, in which Nerto will be delivered to him without
defence A word suffices to raise this palace of fantastical archi-
tecture. Nerto comes from. out the shadows of the night into
this flaming illumination. Rodrigue receives her at the door.
He walks with her through splendid halls with golden pillars
and capitals. He wishes to renew his proposals of love. Nerto,
full of Christian fervor, exhorts him to repent and to seek her in
heaven.

Here Satan intervenes. He strikes three resounding blows
upon the door and appears under the form of a gentleman
clothed in black and red. He passes his arm within that of
Rodrigue and felicitates him on the good fortune which has
fallen to him.

692 A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. [Feb.,

The denouement of the poem presents a moral crisis. The
love of Rodrigue takes a more elevated and tender form. He
demands of the demon the relinquishment of this soul. Satan's
response is inspired by triumphant rage, hatred, and revolt:

" 'Tu voudrais, toi, me souffler 1'ame
Que j'ai achetee toute neuve
Et payee, moi, au poids de 1'or ?
Tu me prends done pour quelqu'un autre !
Des ames noires, fi ! j'eu ai a verse . . .
Mais depuis que je regne sur les regions d'en has,
Je n'avais pas encore reussi une proie
Immaculee comme cette ame !
M'angelique et blanche Nerto
Sera la perle precieuse d'enfer !
Elle sera mon triomphe et ma gloire !
Car sa capture dement la redemption,
Elle dement la grace baptismale,
Elle dement le mystere entier . . .
Attends un peu que minuit frappe,
Et Nerto va tomber dans 1'abime.' "

At these words Rodrigue, full of a holy indignation, draws his
sword to strike the devil. Peals of thunder vibrate ; everything
crumbles ; the magical illusion disappears, and before his eyes
looms on a single isolated column, like Memnon in the desert of
Egypt, the form of a gigantic nun with her white veil falling
on both sides and her hands clasped in supplication. They say
that there is still to be seen in this country at the moment of the
midday Angelus this immense statue exposed to the ardent rays
of the sun. Listen, and the soft Latin words of the " Ave Maria "
flow gently from its lips.

As in the prologue the poet took care to guard us against a
proper incredulity, so in the epilogue he succeeds in impressing
upon us somehow that the whole is simply an historical docu-
ment. In default of other testimony relative to this antique le-
gend he conducts us over the spots where took place the events
he has recounted.

In conclusion he carries us to the solitude of the old hermit,
and we find him abandoned by the Angel Gabriel for three days.
On the fourth day the celestial messenger appears once more.
His absence has been occasioned by the ftes which have just
taken place in paradise, where the nuptials of Nerto and Rod-
rigue have been celebrated with divine rites.

Then the poet speaks in his own person and laments the

1885.] A NEW PROVENCAL POEM. 693

melancholy condition of these latter days, given over to scepti-
cism as they are :

" Si quelque jour, benevole lecteur,
Tu voyageais par la contree
De Laurade ou de Saint-Gabriel,
Tu peux, au cas ou tu le croirais necessaire
T'assurer de ce recit.

Dans la campagne, au milieu des moissons,
Tu venas la Nonne de pierre,
Portant au front la marque
De 1'Infernal et des foudres :

La petite eglise romane

De Saint-Gabriel, non loin de la,

Semble, pauvfette, s'ennuyer,

Abandonnee par les Chretiens,

Depuis nombre et nombre d'annees.

Entre les touffes d'oliviers,

A sa fagade, Saint-Gabriel,

Sous une arcade creuse,

Y salue la sainte Vierge

En disant : Ave, Maria !

Et le serpent entortille

Autour de 1'Arbre de la science,

Y tente le coeur innocent,

D'Adam et d'Eve. . . . Puis plus rien.

L'homme laboure, indifferent.

Celui qui salua la Vierge

N'a plus un cierge a son autel

Mais les plantes du bon Dieu ;

Dans le preau de son parvis,

Aux trous des murs massifs,

Entre les pierres de son tout de dalles,

Ont pris racine et fleurissent :

Encens agreste que la chaleur du jour

fipanche seul au sanctuaire."

M. Mistral's friends are speculating as to whether he will pre-
sent himself to the French Academy ; and if he does, whether he
will be admitted. Only one objection is urged against his ad-
mirable poems viz., that they are written in the Provencal
tongue. But Provengal is an older language than French in
fact, the mother-tongue of French to some extent and capable
of poetry in a larger degree than its too polished offspring. But
whether or no M. Mistral obtains a seat among the Forty Immor-
tals, certain it is that he is the king of " Felibres " and the favo-
rite of all French poets with foreigners.

694 KA THARINE. [Feb.,

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MRS, DANFORTH had the true motherly eye, absolutely certain
to note the least perceptible change in what it loves, though far
from infallible in its efforts to trace such changes to their actual
cause. Those which she began to observe in her daughter after
her return perplexed her not a little. % At first the girl seemed less
thoughtful and more tender, or so the mother felt with that sus-
ceptibility which not unseldom marks those whose own apparent
defects in this direction are to be accounted for by the difficulty
they find in expressing emotion, and not by their want of feeling.
She was gay and bright, and even caressing, as she had often
been with her father in earlier days. Night and morning she
proffered the kiss which between these two had usually been re-
served for the occasion of a more prolonged and formal parting,
doing so at first with a half-shamefaced, bashful hesitation very
like that with which the mother received it. Both felt the sweet-
ness of a ceremony never afterwards omitted ; perhaps each had
secretly longed for it more than once during the year in which
grief and loneliness had broken the crust which veiled their
hearts, and yet left them with so many old habitudes unchanged.
She surrounded her mother with little attentions, and amused
her much with graphic accounts of what seemed to the latter a
week of novelties almost as absurd as those which befell Lemuel
Gulliver in Lilliput.

" Of course," Mrs. Danforth said, " I have read about such
performances in Cooper's novels. I had a great-uncle, for that
matter, who was carried off by the Indians and lived with them
two years before he escaped. They scalped him even ; but he
got over it and came back to Goshen and died there in his bed
like a Christian. But why any one should want to go through
such tomfooleries nowadays is past my finding out."

" There are no Indians now in the Adirondacks," Katharine
answered, " nor anything worse than bears and an occasional
panther, which is more afraid of the camp-fire than any one be-
hind it need be of him. And it is so lovely in the wilderness I
You can't imagine the beauty of the woods and waters, the

1 8 3 5 .] KA THARINE. 695

sounds that seem to be a part of the stillness rather than to break
it, and the fresh, sweet scent of all that grows about one. Wak-
ing in the mornings was like waking into Paradise."

" Anne says the mosquitoes were unbearable, and the whole
trip the most tiresome thing she ever undertook. I am sure I
should have found it so myself. She says you met Richard Nor-
ton and a friend of his just as you were coming out of the woods.
What in the world was he doing there?"

" Hunting and fishing, I suppose," answered Katharine, turn-
ing as she did so to fetch her sewing from a table at the other
side of the room. Following her with her eyes, her mother
caught in the mirror the quick flush that dyed the girl's cheek
and the half-smile that lingered for a moment in her eyes and
about the deep-set corners of her mouth ; her thoughts were
diverted by them into another channel, where they flowed in
silence.

A few days later Richard himself called at the house, shortly
after his arrival in the city, and Mrs. Danforth watched the two
young people closely during the hour or two which defined his
only visit. But she saw nothing to justify the not altogether un-
pleasant surmise which had occurred to her mind. Yet there
had been something in the girl's eyes at the moment when he
entered a look of expectancy which went beyond him and was
baffled, and then, swiftly sheathed itself again within the familiar
one of friendly welcome, which was not lost upon the young
man himself, although it happened to escape the mother. He
was thin-skinned, mentally and physically, to a degree which
went beyond mere observation, and which was one day to make
him an immense success in the profession he had chosen. What
it did for him just now was to gall slightly a certain masculine
vanity which belonged to his youth rather than to his character,
and which betrayed itself, though to his own consciousness sole-
ly, by the absolute silence it imposed on the subject of the friend
from whom he had just parted. He had used all his powers of
persuasion to induce Louis Giddings to return home with him,
and been irritated by his unexpected and unexplained refusal.
After the lapse of a year, which had changed Katharine much,
and during which he had not seen her, what he thought her ex-
ceeding prettiness had struck him with a pleased surprise, and
after her departure he had spoken of it to his friend, using the
rather inappropriate terms of that description.

" I should never think of calling her a pretty girl," the latter
had replied in a tone which left on Richard's mind an impression

696 KATHARINE. [Feb.,

that he had been found uncritical in his choice of an epithet, not
to say maladroit in his selection of a subject for remark.

" He finds her something more than pretty," he reflected. " I
don't know but what he is right. With those serious eyes, that
look as if they had no bottom, for all they are so clear, and that
mouth, which seems ready to say the unspeakable or to express
it in a better fashion still, I suspect that Kitty really does pass
beyond the limits of the commonplace and ordinary. I had a
notion they would please each other."

Like another of Louis Giddings' friends, Richard had expe-
rienced a certain undefined desire to supply what he felt to be
wanting to his happiness. Nothing would have pleased him bet-
ter than to assist at the growth of a serious attachment between
these two. But something in his friend's manner when once
again he used her name, this time as a possible inducement to
alter the provoking resolution the latter had announced on the
breaking-up of their camp, had baffled his first suspicion. Now,
when he met Katharine on his return, the complement of it sud-
denly affirmed itself to his apprehension and displeased him.

" I saw there was ore in that rock," he said to himself, " but I
would never have believed the vein could have been struck so
readily. She is as cool and friendly with me as if we had been

rocked in the same cradle."

He did not mention his friend's name throughout his visit an
omission which Katharine noticed and wondered at and longed
to remedy, without being able to decide to do so. She was not
sorry afterward for her reluctance, when the lapse of a few days
made it plain that Richard must have gone back to Boston.

Mrs. Danforth, watching her more closely than before, as she
saw her new-gained brightness fading, her old tendency to soli-
tude and silence reaffirming itself, and the look of wistful longing,
which had seldom been absent from her eyes, now deepening in
them day by day, puzzled her brain about her more than ever.
She began one afternoon, apparently apropos of nothing, to talk
about the Nortons, commiserating the father and sharply criti-
cising the mother, whose traits she professed to find vividly re-
produced in Richard.

" I hear that he is likely to do well in his profession," she
went on. " Perhaps he will. Boys always take after their mo-
thers, they say, and she is go-ahead enough for anything. But if
it is true, I know [ should pity from my heart any woman fool-
ish enough to marry a son of hers."

But Katharine, though she defended him, did it in a manner

1885.] ' KATHARINE. 697

so unembarrassed and so kindly that her mother was reassured
at once.

" I always liked Richard more than any other of the children
whom I knew," the girl said, not even raising her eyes from the
sewing with which her hands were generally busy when she sat
beside her mother. " I think I must go some day and see the old
folks I half-promised him I would. I don't think he is much like
his mother. He has her mouth and chin, perhaps, but his eyes,
when he is pleased, are very like his father's. How good Mr. Nor-
ton is ! " she ended, with a sigh which set the mother on still
another track. Something new ailed her daughter, evidently.
Was it, could it be, that she was " under conviction," and that
the prayers which had followed her from her birth were at last
to receive their answer ?

Katharine herself would have been fully as perplexed as her
mother to define the cause of her new trouble. That she was in
love, and with a stranger with whom she had hardly exchanged
a word, was a fancy even more absurd than it was humiliating.
She was too truthful, in fact, to have much pride, though that
reflection certainly did not occur to her. Why, she had barely
glanced at him even. Yet, as she said this to herself, his face
came back so vividly, and with such a look of comprehension
and sympathy in its eyes, that she blushed again, as she had done
whenever she had thought about him since, though when they
rested on her first it was her soul and not her heart which had
looked back its answer. No, it was life itself, so aimless and so
empty, which was pressing on her.

" I begin to look like Aunt Rebecca," she thought one day,
when, turning her eyes from the sky, where they had lost them-
selves in dreams, they fell on her own image in the glass. " Is
there really nothing worth having, or is it only that I have not
found the best there is ? "

She began to grow restless as time went on, especially when
her mother proved equally unwilling to have her take up the
post-graduate course held necessary if she were to equip herself
for teaching in a superior school, or to permit her to accept a
position offered her, through the intermediation of one of her late
professors, in a village some miles distant. The latter scheme
Katharine had regarded with much favor, though feeling all the
while that her mother was quite right in rejecting it absolutely on
the ground of her unwillingness to undergo a prolonged separa-
tion. Yet what a relief it would have been to change the scene
entirely to get away from the little house to which they had

698 KATHARINE. [Feb.,

removed in the spring, where everything was stamped with
reminiscences of her earliest childhood, and yet where everything
looked strange. Her mother had parted with many familiar
objects when they left their former quarters, saying that the
present ones would seem more homelike if she did not remove
her aunt's belongings, which still remained as she had left them.
But to Katharine the rooms seemed narrow, plain, and incon-
venient ; the little back-yard, in which the ugly yellow wall of a
long woodshed bounded her horizon at a distance of twenty feet,
spoke eloquently, by way of contrast, of the long stretch of grass
and flowers where she had taken one of her chiefest pleasures ;
even the tall eight-day clock standing in a corner of the parlor,
to whose slow, melancholy tick and resonant chime she listened
at night when she lay sleepless all wearied her with a sense of
dull, homely monotony in which there seemed no hope of change.
The custom of family prayers had been kept up by Mrs. Dan-
forth, Katharine always reading now the chapter with which
they were begun, as she had done occasionally even in her father's
lifetime. One night, after they were ended, the mother said :

" When you were little, Kitty, and father gave the Book to
you, I generally had to beg you not to read about Vashti the
queen. She got to be tiresome when one heard about her two or
three times a week. I shall have to ask you now to let me hear
once in a while something more hopeful than ' Vanity of vanities,
all is vanity ! ' "

" Shall I try the Song of Solomon next time ?" asked the girl,
with a little laugh.

" Why shouldn't we drop the Old Testament altogether? "

" Very well." And the next night she began with the Apoca-
lypse.

" I have no comfort with such reading," Mrs. Danforth com-
plained again. " You go from Solomon, whom I don't like, to
John, whom I don't understand."

" Well," said Katharine, " you must select your own author
to-morrow. I am ready for anything, even the genealogies in
Luke and Matthew."

The mother sighed.

" I wish," she said, " that I could see you show some interest
in it or in anything. What ails you, child ? "

" Oh ! nothing, mammy," the girl answered, smiling though as
she spoke and offering her good-night kiss. " It is only that I am
fast coming to believe that Solomon was, after all, the wisest of
mankind."

1 88 5 . J KA THA RINE. 699

CHAPTER XXIV.

IN mid-October the Whites came home.

" The trip we first projected was too absurdly short," Anna
said on the occasion of her earliest visit to her cousins after her
return. " Three months would not have been too much to spend
in England alone, we had so many letters to the pleasantest sort
of famous people. Think of seeing Ruskin face to face and
telling him how delightful you found his Modern Painters^
and then going afterward to look at the Turners for yourself !
Queer-looking things some of them were, too ! And then fancy
my finding Arthur's own book in Dr. Martineau's library ! It
made me feel as if we were almost famous ourselves."

A slip of memory doubtless prevented Mrs. White from add-
ing that it was a presentation copy. An air of matronliness
pervaded and changed the young woman, giving a certain
propriety to the self-sufficiency which in the girl had bordered
on conceit. She seemed to Katharine a person of immense
experience, who merited a degree of respect beyond any hitherto
accorded her. Even Mrs. Danforth, in the pleasure of seeing
her daughter kindle once more into animation, seemed willing to
accept, on the score of kinship, an intimacy which on others she
would have been glad to avoid.

" We saw Thomas Carlyle, too," Mrs. White ran on, with the
volubility of a person well convinced that what she has to say
will be far more interesting to all parties than anything she is
likely to hear. " We had two letters to him, and we took tea
once at his house in Chelsea. He talked all the time, and abused
Americans roundly the abolitionists especially which was not
very grateful on his part, seeing that it is we who buy and read
his books. Arthur liked his wife better than he did him but, of
course, that is nonsense. She said some bright things, too, but I
thought she looked ill-natured. The most charming woman I
saw was a Miss Fox. We went to Cornwall, partly for the
scenery, of course, but Aaron Carew got me a letter to her from
Friend Mott. She was more orthodox than we really liked, but
so serene and placid. It made me think of old times to be thee'd
and thou'd as we were there. She talked to me a good deal
about her brother, who died last year, and showed me some
of his poetry. I thought it was beautiful, but Arthur said it
smacked too much of the broad- brimmed hat and the drab coat-

700 KA THARINE. [Feb.,

tails. She seemed to have known almost every one worth know-
ing. And what a delightful house ! Do you know, I mean to
have evenings every week this winter. They used to have
sociables round at different houses once a fortnight last year, but
I think the minister's parlor ought to be the centre. I won't
pretend to entertain them, of course ; we can't afford it. I may
give them a cup of tea, perhaps, but nothing more. I shall
expect Kitty always, without further notice. Would there be
any use in asking you, Cousin Eliza ? "

" Not the slightest. You must be fonder of company than
ever I was if you think of throwing open your doors as often as
that to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who cares to come."

" One owes something to one's position," Anna answered, with
the tone of one condescending to a truism which ought not to
need repetition.

" You were not all the time in England, surely j> " asked
Katharine.

" No ; but most of it. We ran over to Paris for a week, and
of course we went to Rome. But it was pleasanter where we
found people whom it was easy to talk to and who cared about
the same sort of things. We were both tongue-tied in France,
for all that Arthur reads French with ease and I practised talk-
ing so much last year with Miss Smith. But when the French
speak it, it doesn't sound the least in the world as one expected it
would. They were like a set of monkeys chattering. We could
generally make them understand what we wanted, but when it
came their turn to answer we were all in the dark. In Rome we
found some Bostonians and got along very well. Arthur wished
very much to go to Hungary or perhaps it was Transylvania:
I don't just remember. There are Unitarians there who have a
bishop, and he wanted to put a chapter about them in his book.
But we could not afford either the time or the money. It costs
frightfully to travel ! "

" Is he going to write another book? "

" Oh ! certainly. The least we could expect of the trip would
be that it should pay for itself in that way. We have both been
taking notes all the time. That is the way to make books. I
only wish he would let me put in all mine ; but he thinks they
are generally too personal. After all, for real intellectual life
America is the place. We got back to New York the very last
day of September, and, after going home to father's for a day or
two, we went right on to Boston to attend the Unitarian confer-
ence. We both thought we heard more eloquence and more

1885.] KATHARINE. 701

original thinking there than anywhere else. The most radical
English people one sees are hidebound with prejudices when you
compare them to the best among ourselves. I must be going.
Put on your hat, Kitty, and come home to tea with me. I have
a thousand things to show and tell you."

" Were you long in Boston ? " asked Katharine when they
had gained the street.

" Nearly ten days. The conference lasted a week, and then,
on the very last day of it, Arthur met his old friend Mr. Gid-
dings, and we stayed rather longer than we would otherwise,
because they wanted to visit together a little. We had been
stopping at a hotel, but we found we could have a room just as
well as not in the house where he is living, so we went there for
the last few days. I really think Arthur enjoyed that more than
anything else that has occurred since we left home. They were
like brothers together in college. He promised to visit us before
long, which surprised me, for I had supposed him to be very shy
and unwilling to go anywhere. You don't know him, of course,
but I have heard so much of him from Arthur that perhaps I
have mentioned his name some time or other."

" It sounds familiar," said Katharine, pushed into disingenuous-
ness by the instinct of self-defence which led her to hide the
significance of the rush of pleasure which made her face all
smiles. " How you say Arthur this and Arthur that, as if the
world had suddenly gone to turning round that little man ! You
were not jealous of his friend, I suppose?"

Anna shrugged her shoulders.

" It isn't in me to be jealous, I think. One must have a very
low opinion of one's own merits to be that. In fact, I liked Mr.
Giddings too much myself for anything of the sort. He is
greatly changed in some respects, my husband says. The lady
in whose house he is living has lately become a widow ; he told
Arthur, and she told me, that he had been helping her to nurse
her husband for the last month. She has two children, that he
makes as much of as if they were his own ; and she speaks of him
as if he were an angel of kindness and consideration. I told
Arthur I should not be a bit surprised if he were to marry her
some day."

" And did Mr. White agree with you ?"

" Oh ! " said Anna, laughing, " he said my mind ran altogether
too much on marrying and giving in marriage. He was greatly
taken with Mrs. Kitchener himself. She is a pretty little woman,
who must -be half a dozen years older than Mr. Giddings but

702 KA THARINE. [Feb.,

those fair women never show their age. I think he will marry
her yet, if only out of pity and because of the children. Talking
of children, Mrs. Price seems to have fairly set Fanny against me.
She screamed like a little witch when I tried to take her the day
we got home."

" Now, that is not fair, Anna. She never liked you, so far as I
remember, and she is cross-grained to everybody, almost. I
haven't seen much of Mrs. Price this summer."

"And you'll see less this winter. She says she is going to
stay with her mother-in-law in New Haven. They have patched
up a peace, I suppose. She was there after her husband's death
until Arthur invited her to come here, but I imagine they kept
up an armed neutrality whenever they were not actually at
swords' points. Arthur says he would try harder than he has
done to keep her with us, if he did not know the old lady to be
in failing health and that his sister's interests would be better
served by going. For my part, I always think a poor excuse is
better than none ; sometimes it is even better than a good one.
I shall be heartily pleased to see her back turned and to feel my-
self mistress in my own house."

" Wouldn't you be that in any case? "

" Certainly I should ; but. I like freedom from criticism as
well as freedom in action. Even silent criticism can become
offensive, as Mrs. Price has made me feel more than once already.
She appeared to take Arthur's wish to remarry as a personal af-
front, and I don't see why. She is not really dependent on him."
" You can't be so sure as that of people's motives, I think,"
said Katharine, who had been taken into the widow's confidence
on this and other subjects. " If it had been any one else, now,"
Mrs. Price had said to her just after the marriage, "I shouldn't
have minded so much. If it had been you, for instance, I should
have been positively glad of it. But that mass of self-assertion
and self-conceit, plastered over with a layer of rules and maxims
that she actually mistakes for her own skin ! How men can be so
blind ! Arthur, too, to rush from a little white rabbit like his first
wife to that red-cheeked Amazon posing for the Puritan Maiden !
I can't bear her, and never could. For my brother's sake I will
stay here and look after the child till they come back, but after
that 1 wash my hands of them. The widest house that ever was
built wouldn't be roomy enough for her and me."

" Oh ! yes, you can," Anna responded to her cousin's last re-
mark. " Some people are stupid, I don't doubt, but I have never
found my penetration at fault thus far."

1 88 5 .] KA THARINE. 703

" How did you find them all at home ? " asked Katharine,
changing the subject.

Anna's face clouded at once.

"Things go so contrary in this world ! " she said. " I don't
see how Mary can ever forgive herself for being so self-willed
and opinionated. I know I did my best to make her hear reason.
I believe people always ' get come up with,' as my mother used
to say, when they think they are so essential to the framework of
things that they must always be interfering to help Providence
out of a muddle. She might have married when I did and been
happy ; for, as it turns out, all would have gone just as straight at
home without her as with her."

" I don't understand."

" Of course you don't. We had not been gone a month be-
fore my half-sister's husband died, and she has gone back to my
father's. There was the whole difficulty settled at once."

" But too late for Mary."

" Well, whose fault is it ? There she goes about, looking like
a ghost, and with eyes as big as moons. I couldn't help telling
her that I hoped she would hear reason another time and not be
so bent on taking her own way in spite of counsel."

41 What did she say ? "

" She didn't say anything. Sarah, though that is my half-
sister, Mrs. Gay took it on her to say to Arthur that she thought
a little delay on my part would have answered every purpose. I
don't deny it, but who could foresee what was going to turn up?"

" Poor Mary ! " sighed Katharine. " I'm afraid Mr. White
couldn't have enjoyed his visit much. Had he ever seen her be-
fore ?"

" No," said Anna, frowning again at the recollection of some
post-nuptial self-criticism on his part which she had divined rather
than listened to. " It seems to me, Kitty, that you have a genius
for annoying subjects. I have nothing to reproach myself with,
in any case, and I count my experiences of the last three months
as so much clear gain. There he is now at the window with
Fanny in his arms. She is too old to be coddled in that fashion.
I told Dinah to have tea ready at five, and we will both walk
home with you afterward. I have some lovely photographs to
show you."

704 KATHARINE. [Feb.,

CHAPTER XXV.

" COULDN'T you come and spend this afternoon and evening
with us ? " ran a note which Katharine received from her cousin
a few weeks later. " I won't pretend that pure hospitality
prompts the invitation, though you know how glad we both are
to see you always. But I had set my heart on going out with
Arthur to-day, en grande tenue, to make a series of return-calls.
And Fanny has been croupy all night, Dinah says, and this morn-
ing she looks more peaked and like a washed-out rag than ever.
Arthur says he can't think of leaving her alone with the girl
under the circumstances. I don't suppose it would make the
least difference myself, but he never will listen to reason where
that child is concerned. Do take pity on me and come down
about half-past two. She is always on her best behavior with
you, and you are never at a loss to amuse yourself in the library.
We shall be home to tea between six and seven, and it is always
probable that some one will drop in during the evening. I en-
gaged a carnage yesterday, and I do hate to put. things off when
once I have settled on them. Send back word by Dinah whether
1 may expect you."

" I suppose there is nothing to prevent?" asked Katharine as
she finished reading this appeal aloud. " This is your afternoon
for class ; why shouldn't you go in and take tea with the min-
ister's wife afterward ? I heard her asking you the other day.
Hannah could go after you about eight o'clock, and I should be
home by nine at furthest."

" A fine stepmother she is going to make ! " said Mrs. Dan-
forth, passing over this suggestion. " I never could understand
people's taking up burdens they don't mean to carry. It would
serve her quite right to tell her no."

" ' If every one got his deserts, which of us would escape a
whipping?'" laughed Katharine. " I don't want to tell her no,
as it happens. I would much rather oblige her than not. But I
don't like leaving you alone quite so often. I was there only last
Friday. If you would come too which, of course, you won't
or if you would agree to go in and pay Mrs. Farr a visit, I should
absent myself with an easier mind."

" Perhaps I will ; I half-promised her when she was here.
But I hate beginning to go about alone. I hardly ever did it
even when I was a girl, and never since."

" It will do you good, mammy," said the girl caressingly.
" If things had been different I should have coaxed you out of

1885.] KATHARINE. 705

this way of living long ago, and carried you about the world with
me to look at things and people. We are both of us too much
by ourselves for our own good."

" ' And when alone, then am I least alone,' " quoted the mo-
ther, who was growing daily more like her former self. " But
you must get out my other cap and let me take a look at it, if I
am to put it on this evening."

Mr. White's house in Hudson Street was large and old-fash-
ioned. Its low stone stoop, facing sideways, led up to a door
ornamented by a ponderous knocker and surmounted by a fan-
light shaped like a half-moon and covered on the inside with
green gauze. The wide hall was hung with paper intended to
produce the illusion of oak panelling an illusion with which Miss
Fanny had recently made havoc in sundry moments of ill-humor.
A hat-rack, carved at the upper extremity into a not very suc-
cessful imitation of a stag's head and antlers, stood opposite the
front-parlor door, and was flanked by a tall, straight-backed arm-
chair upholstered in purple leather, and a small table bearing a
card-receiver. A white-marbled oil-cloth, the bi-weekly torment
of black Dinah's existence under the new rlgime, relieved to the
eye by two or three red, fluffy mats bordered with green, which
lay at the side-portals and the foot of the stairs, struck, neverthe-
less, a chilly sensation to the heart as well as the feet of whoever
opened the front door upon it of a cold day.

Within the parlors things wore a somewhat cheerier aspect.
A certain Quakerish simplicity marked all their appointments,
but the wide windows, if undraped by curtains and hung with
white and gold shades, were festooned with climbing ivy and
decked with flourishing ferns which had been the object of Mrs.
Price's fostering care. The wood-colored carpet, spotted with
an irregular tracery of leaves in darker brown, was covered, as
to its centre, by a red drugget, which, though originally intended
more for use than ornament, served both objects equally well.
Since her installation Anna had hung up some of her photo-
graphic acquisitions in passe-partout frames. Our Lady of Dolors
and the Man of Sorrows, in the two best-known versions, hung
between the windows in the place usually occupied by the tall
mirror which formerly claimed the post of honor in most Ameri-
can parlors. In this one it stretched across the mantelpiece and
reflected a pair of old silver candlesticks which Arthur's sister
had vainly begged to carry away with her. Leonardo's " Last
Supper " was suspended over a what-not on the side of the chim-
ney farthest from the light, and a copy of his " Mona Lisa," with
its inscrutable eyes and sly, elusive smile, stood out well from the
VOL. XL, 45

706 KATHAKINZ. [Feb.,

neutral-tinted wall-paper on the other. One or two family por-
traits, stiff, wooden, staring, were above a long mahogany sofa
luxuriously cushioned as to comfort, but disagreeable enough to
the eye in its drab rep corded with dark red. The chairs stood
about in a sort of formal irregularity which suggested a certain
studied avoidance of symmetry which had just failed of attaining
ease, and a round table in the middle, covered with a dark brown
cloth embroidered in gold, bore a number of well-bound volumes
which had apparently overflowed from the tall bookcases that
lined the entire wall of the back parlor, which Mr. White had
appropriated to his own use. This was the appearance of the
front one when it had been newly put to rights by the careful
fingers of its mistress and left in solitude to await the advent of
occasional callers.

But on this cold November afternoon, when the gray air
seemed to hold the promise of the first snowfall of the season,
the room looked brighter than its wont by reason of the glowing
anthracite fire kindled in the grate and coaxed sometimes to a
flame by a great lump of the cannel coal which stood beside it
in a polished brass scuttle. The doors between it and the library
were thrown open, and there also there was a fire in a cylinder
stove ; for Mr. White, in accepting Katharine's services as volun-
teer nurse and companion for the little one, had stipulated that
her pleasure and the comfort of both should be thus provided
for. The young girl herself lighted up the room into a certain
vividness of life and warmed it with a suggestion of domesticity,
even though her slender figure, still clad in the flowing habili-
ments of mourning, relieved only by a touch of white at throat
and wrists, had an air of almost nunlike gravity. The little crea-
ture on the rug before the fire, in scarlet flannel and white, long-
sleeved apron, with another bit of flannel about her neck, and
stockings to match on the tiny legs pushed out toward the blaze,
had been very persistent in her claims upon attention. Her
headless doll presented no attractions, she was too weak to run
about, and the window was interdicted on account of possible
draughts. Katharine had chanted Mother Goose until her
memory and her throat were both weary, while her imaginative
flights into fairy-land were checked partly by the child's incre-
dulity and partly by her insistence on repetitions rather than
variations of such tales as happened to strike her fancy. Finally
she complained of being cold, upon which Katharine gathered
her up on her lap, where she dropped asleep at last with her
flaxen head upon the young girl's shoulder.

Katharine had not sufficiently foreseen this probable con-

1885.] KA THARINE. 707

tingency to provide herself with a book in anticipation of it.
Moreover, at four o'clock the early twilight was already falling.
The light from the fire glowed ruddy and cheerful, and the low,
wide arm-chair with its downy cushions was very comfortable.
Gradually the day-dreams into which she had lapsed grew
vaguer, and she, too, dropped into a light slumber, in which
the sound of the brass knocker on its shield half an hour later
translated itself into the thud of the guide's axe in the wilder-
ness. Dinah's parley with the new-comer escaped her wholly,
though prolonged beyond ordinary bounds, and it was only
when the door opened and the woman ushered in a stranger,
proceeding afterwards to the back room to light the gas in the
drop-light over the study-table, that she fully wakened. Even
then she could not move without disturbing Fanny, and her
ample chair, placed just in front of the grate, hid her completely
from those who were behind her.

" Dey'll be in "fore long, sir," said Dinah. " Missus' cousin
was in here with the little 'un, but I guess likely she's taken
her upstairs to her crib. If you'd sit down by the fire, sir, I'd
go up and let her know. I yeered her singin' here not ten
minutes ago."

" Don't disturb yourself, Dinah," said Katharine, turning her
head toward the back parlor, where the girl was still busy with
the match-box. " I'm here, but I can't well rise, for Fanny has
just dropped a'sleep." She pushed her chair back on its rollers
as she spoke, in order to make room. " You might carry her up-
stairs, perhaps. No ! she is waking again. I will keep her."
Then, observing that the new-comer neither seated himself nor
approached the fire, she addressed him in a voice in which he felt
the suggestion of a smile : " Pray excuse my involuntary bad
manners, and take the arm-chair opposite. It is so dark that my
cousins can hardly stay out much longer. 5 '

The gas blazed into full head as she spoke, sinking again in
another instant to decorous dimness as Dinah lowered it to what
she deemed an economic height before leaving the room.
Katharine's eyes, lifting themselves to the tall figure which ap-
proached her, recognized him with a start which seemed to
make her heart stand still. She arose now, and Fanny slid down
to her feet with a half-cross, half-sickly cry. As her elders re-
leased their clasp of each other's hand Louis Giddings stooped
and picked her up.

" Come, little one," he said ; " for every nursery rhyme this
young lady knows I'll wager I can give you half a dozen."

TO BE CONTINUED.

7o8 THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL, [Feb.,

THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL.

SUCH an event as the recent Plenary Council shows again that
the Catholic Church is of too high importance to be ignored, too
great to be stopped by defamation, and has too much vital energy
to be smothered by calumny. In her dealings with the powers of
this world she has hitherto conquered by her peaceful weapons
every enemy however powerful, and even a superficial view of
European affairs shows that, guided, under God, by the courage
and wisdom of Leo XIIL, she is vanquishing her present foes,
haughty and obstinate though they be. Anything worthy the
name of an enemy the Catholic Church has not had in North
America since before the Declaration of Independence. Many
evil-wishers she has had, and various secret conspiracies and open
assaults she has suffered from, but they were weak and transitory
efforts of an enemy whose spirit was broken by the influence of true
civil liberty. As matters stand, the council and its pastoral were
viewed with almost universal favor, even in quarters where one
would least expect it. What strikes one in reading the. pastoral
of the Third Plenary Council is that its literary style is direct
and, we were going to say, familiar. Yet the majesty of office
really does clothe the sentences, and their reasoning and plead-
ing and exhorting could only be the words of men who felt that
their power is from above. Moreover, all through the pastoral
the prelates concern themselves in a familiar way with the daily
life of priests and people. We know not, for example, if in any
pastoral before this the prelates stepped across the threshold of
home and in so familiar and loving a mood considered the virtues
of the family circle.

The pastoral opens with a retrospective glance over the past
eighteen years and the work of the last Plenary Council. Par-
ticular reference is made to the General Council of the Vatican,
and it is worthy of remark that the prelates assume its reassem-
bling at some future date by declaring its work unfinished.

A matter particularly dear to the heart of the present pontiff
the education of the clergy is dwelt on in the pastoral sufficiently
to show the council in hearty accord with the Holy Father.
That the training of our priesthood in the seminaries shall not be
confined to the technical branches peculiar to our sacred profes-
sion is shown by the following words :

1885.] THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL. 709

" It is obvious that the priest should have a wide acquaintance with every de-
partment of learning that has a bearing on religious truth. Hence in our age,
when so many misleading theories are put forth on every side, when every depart-
ment of natural truth and fact is actively explored for objections against revealed
religion, it is evident how extensive and thorough should be the knowledge of the
minister of the divine word, that he may be able to show forth worthily the beauty,
the superiority, the necessity of the Christian religion, and to prove that there is no-
thing in all that God has made to contradict anything that God has taught.

" Hence the priest who has the noble ambition of attaining to the high level
of his holy office may well consider himself a student all his life ; and of the
leisure hours which he can find amid the duties of his ministry, he will have
very few that he can spare for miscellaneous reading, and none at all to waste.
And hence, too, the evident duty devolving on us to see that the course of edu-
cation in our ecclesiastical colleges and seminaries be as perfect as it can be
made."

The legislation mentioned in the pastoral concerning the
canonical status of the priesthood a matter of much moment for
both clergy and people will be looked for, when the decrees
return from Rome, with much interest. It will doubtless be
what the more settled character of much of our population now
calls for.

As to legislation on the school question, perhaps the most
weighty topic in the council, we may surmise, if the pastoral is a
forecast of the decrees, that the prelates have reasserted, perhaps
enforced with new vigor, the fundamental principle of the Catholic
Church, that the school has too much to do with the child's
eternal destiny to be allowed to go neutral of positive religious
influence. On this topic two things are noticeable in the pastoral :
the bishops seem hopeful of the more religious portion of our
non-Catholic fellow-citizens taking measures similar to our own
for the religious training of their children, and they have dwelt
with special emphasis on the need of such schooling for the pre-
servation of our civil liberties. We beg our non-Catholic friends
to read and read again this part of the pastoral. Truer and
wiser words were never spoken than those in which the Catholic
bishops plead for the school's place in the same elevated and
heaven-lighted sphere as the Christian church and the Christian
home.

And earnestly and mightily do they plead for the Christian
home. The influence of our holy faith in saving the family, the
sacramental holiness of marriage and its perpetuity, the mutual
and holy love of man and wife, are spoken of in such terms as the
heart alone knows how to choose. The practice of family prayer,
the reading of Holy Scripture as well as other good books to the
ssembled family, the duty of buying Catholic books, the duty

THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL. [Feb.,

(alas ! how much needed is this admonition) of subscribing for
Catholic periodicals, the necessity of kind words and Christian
forbearance with each other's faults in the family life such are
the home topics treated by the bishops, and certainly with mar-
vellous unction.

Then comes what we deem a plain sign that the Spirit of God
has breathed out his wisdom upon our bishops with a special
fulness. We refer to that part of the pastoral which concerns
the observance of the Sunday. These paragraphs should be care-
fully studied, especially by fathers and mothers of families, above
all by pastors. We had become sick and tired of the talk about
the observance (better say at once non-observance) of the Sun-
day in 'so-called good Catholic localities of the Old World, and
now come the shepherds of the flock of Christ and settle matters
with the voice of authority :

" There are many sad facts in the experience of nations which we may well
store up as lessons of practical wisdom. Not the least important of these is the
fact that one of the surest marks and measures of the decay of religion in a people is
their non-observance of the Lord's day. In travelling through some European coun-
tries a Christian's heart is pained by the almost unabated rush of toil and traffic on
Sunday. First, grasping avarice thought it could not afford to spare the day to God;
then unwise governments, yielding to the pressure of mammon, relaxed the laws
which for many centuries had guarded the day's sacredness forgetting that there
are certain fundamental principles which ought not to be sacrificed to popular
caprice or greed. And when, as usually happens, neglect of religion had passed,
by lapse of time, into hostility to religion, this growing neglect of the Lord's day
was easily made use of as a means to bring religion itself into contempt. The
church mourned, protested, struggled, but was almost powerless to resist the com-
bined forces of popular avarice and Caesar's influence, arrayed on the side of ir-
religion. The result is the lamentable desecration which all Christians must de-
plore."

Moreover, a certain class of people are engaged in a traffic
always disreputable and often soul-destroying, but particularly
hostile to Sunday observance. Now they have actually sought
impunity by skulking in the shadow of the very church itself.
They have at last brought upon themselves a withering and
well-merited condemnation. It is amazing to think how often re-
spectable men have given these persons, now solemnly arraigned
before the council of the church of God in America and con-
demned, the benefit of theories nowise applicable to this country
and to our circumstances. To say that keeping a saloon in our
cities was a bad business, to say that it was commonly a proxi-
mate occasion of mortal sin, was to be deafened in response by
theological ifs and ans t and ohs and a/is, brought from over-sea ;

1 88$.] THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL. 711

was to be bid stand mute and listen to a teaching addressed to a
past generation in distant lands and to races then untainted with
the foul leprosy of drunkenness.

" There is one way of profaning the Lord's day which is so prolific of evil re-
sults that we consider it our duty to utter against it a special condemnation. This
is the practice of selling beer or other liquors on Sunday, or of frequenting places
where they are sold. This practice tends more than any other to turn the day of
the Lord into a day of dissipation, to use it as an occasion for breeding intempe-
rance. While we hope that Sunday laws on this point will not be relaxed, but
even more rigidly enforced, we implore all Catholics, for the love of God and of
country, never to take part in such Sunday traffic nor to patronize or countenance
it. And we not only direct the attention of all pastors to the repression of this
abuse, but we also call upon them to induce all of their flocks that may be engaged
in the sale of liquors to abandon as soon as they can the dangerous traffic, and to
embrace a more becoming way of making a living.

" And here it behooves us to remind our workingmen, the bone and sinew of
the people and the specially beloved children of the church, that if they wish to
observe Sunday as they ought they must keep away from drinking-places on Satur-
day night. Carry your wages home to your families, where they rightfully belong.
Turn a deaf ear, therefore, to every temptation, and then Sunday will be a bright
day for all the family. How much better this than to make it a day of sin for your-
selves, and of gloom and wretchedness for your homes, by a Saturday night's folly
or debauch ! No wonder that the prelates of the Second Plenary Council declared
that ' the most shocking scandals which we have to deplore spring from intempe-
rance.' No wonder that they gave a special approval to the zeal of those who, the
better to avoid excess or in order to give bright example, pledge themselves to
total abstinence. _Like them we invoke a blessing on the cause of temperance, and
on all who are laboring for its advancement in a true Christian spirit. Let the ex-
ertions of our Catholic temperance societies meet with rtie hearty co-operation of
pastors and people ; and not only will they go far towards strangling the mon-
strous evil of intemperance, but they will also put a powerful check on the dese-
cration of the Lord's day and on the evil influences now striving for its total pro-
fanation.

" Let all our people ' remember to keep holy the Lord's day/ Let them make
it not only a day of rest, but also a day of prayer."

The simple truth is that Catholics do not want a European, or
a German, or an Italian, or an American Sunday, but a Catholic
Sunday. The observance of the Lord's day is an apostolic in-
stitution and needs no national customs for its description, least
of all in the presence of the hierarchy convoked in council by
the Apostolic See. If the reader wishes a companion piece for
this part of the council's pastoral, we recommend the Catechism
of the Council of Trent on the same subject. There he will find
an authoritative statement of just what the Catholic Church
means by keeping holy the Lord's day.

The treatment of the perplexing question of forbidden socie-

712 THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL. [Feb.,

ties is remarkably practical. It furnishes a few principles, plain
and easily applicable for deciding cases.

Not the least important part (to many souls by all standards
the most important) is that directing a yearly collection for mis-
sion purposes. Let us consider this a practical beginning of our
missionary enterprise, not only for the Indian tribes, but also
for the conversion of the colored people. Let all good souls
pray and every Catholic be ready to give generously of his
means, that we may soon see a large and steady stream of con-
verts setting towards the church.

What the council has to say of our religion in relation to
American institutions we have kept to this last place, because
we deem it of such high importance. Read what the Catholic
Church in America thinks of our national liberties :

" We think we can claim to be acquainted both with the laws, institutions, and
spirit of the Catholic Church and with the laws, institutions, and spirit of our
country ; and we emphatically declare that there is no antagonism between them.
A Catholic finds himself at home in the United States ; for the influence of his
church has constantly been exercised in behalf of individual rights and popular
liberties. And the right-minded American nowhere finds himself more at home
than in the Catholic Church, for nowhere else can he breathe more freely that
atmosphere of divine truth which alone can make him free.

" We repudiate with equal earnestness the assertion that we need to lay aside
any of our devotedness to our church to be true Americans ; the insinuation that
we need to abate any of our love for our country's principles and institutions to
be faithful Catholics. To argue that the Catholic Church is hostile to our great
republic because she teaches that ' there is no power but from God ' ; because,
therefore, back of the events which led to the formation of the republic she sees
the providence of God leading to that issue, and back of our country's laws the
authority of God as their sanction this is evidently so illogical and contradictory
an accusation that we are astonished to hear it advanced by persons of ordinary
intelligence. We believe that our country's heroes were the instruments of the
God of Nations in establishing this home of freedom ; to both the Almighty and
to his instruments in the work we look with grateful reverence ; and to maintain
the inheritance of freedom which they have left us, should it ever which God for-
bid ! be imperilled, our Catholic citizens will be found to stand forward as one
man, ready to pledge anew ' their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.'

" No less illogical would be the notion that there is aught in the free spirit of
our American institutions incompatible with perfect docility to the church of
Christ. The spirit of American freedom is not one of anarchy or license. It
essentially involves love of order, respect for rightful authority, and obedience to
just laws. There 1s nothing in the character of the most liberty-loving American
which could hinder his reverential submission to the divine authority of our Lord,
or to the like authority delegated by him to his apostles and his church. Nor are
there in the world more devoted adherents of the Catholic Church, the See of
Peter, and the Vicar of Christ than the Catholics of the United States. Narrow,
insular, national views and jealousies concerning ecclesiastical authority and

1885.] THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL. 713

church organization may have sprung naturally enough from the selfish policy of
certain rulers and nations in by-gone times ; but they find no sympathy in the
spirit of the true American Catholic. His natural instincts, no less than his reli-
gious training, would forbid him to submit in matters of faith to the dictation of
the state or to any merely human authority whatsoever. He accepts the religion
and the church that are from God, and he knows well that these are universal, not
national or local for all the children of men, not for any special tribe or tongue.
We glory that we are, and, with God's blessing, shall continue to be, not the
American Church, nor the Church of the United States, nor a church in any other
sense exclusive or limited, but an integral part of the one, holy, Catholic, and Apos-
tolic Church of Jesus Christ, which is the body of Christ, in which there is no
distinction of classes and nationalities in which all are one in Christ Jesus."

Yes ; the pure atmosphere for religion to breathe is civil free-
dom. The American has a docility to the law of God a,nd to the
legitimate authority of the hierarchy all the more admirable be-
cause he is free. The United States is the church's home. The
church can never be aught but a sanctifying influence for our
civil institutions, for her influence " has constantly been exercised
in behalf of individual rights and popular liberties " ; and our civil
institutions, on the other hand, can but give the spiritual life a
more generous temper, because the freer and more enlightened
men are the nobler will be their motives in dealing with God.

The prelates have shown themselves competent to answer one
of the most urgent questions in the public life of the Catholic
Church of our day a question arising into men's minds in every
part of the world : How shall the living word be framed anew ?
How shall religious teaching be suited to the special needs of this
age without detracting from the integrity and venerable antiquity
of the truth ? The answer is, by opening our souls to the voices
of struggling humanity. What are the yearnings of the human
spirit in matters civil, political, and social ? How is the provi-
dence of God leading men on in the natural order ? The church
is the home of man in the supernatural order; it has ever been the
first to hearken to his cries for more light and greater strength in
the natural order. It never can be said of the members of God's
church, least of all of its hierarchy, that among the gifts of the
Holy Ghost we shall not possess the power to read the signs of
God's providence in the lives of men. Are we not taught by di-
vine faith to discern our Lord under the forms of bread and wine ?
It would be a pity indeed if we could not detect the will of God
in the cry of humanity for liberty and independence. Our pre-
lates have shown that the church has a heart and a hand and a
voice to welcome the fruits of God's Spirit in the natural order,
and that the follies of license and of eccentricity are but the more

714 THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL COUNCIL. [Feb.,

sharply defined by a true estimate of the dignity of human aspi-
rations.

And it is in just this domain of living questions that the future
work of leading minds must chiefly be engaged. Let the ene-
mies of the faith wonder, as they have done, that the council has
ignored time-honored controversies. The honors of time rest
heavy on controversies. The rule of faith, the marks of the
church of Christ, the divine method of sanctification, are ques-
tions slipping away to the background. The persons interested
in such questions are but of second-rate importance compared
either in numbers or prominence with those who are struggling
with questions more fundamental. Ex-Protestants now far out-
number Protestants. We are fighting for the Bible itself with
ex- Protestants ; we are fighting for a trust in a future life with
the children of the Pilgrim Fathers ; we are especially fighting
against the delusion of vast multitudes that the nobility of human
nature is somehow debased by the simplicity of Christ's Gospel ;
and these make up the big fight of the Catholic Church. Our
venerable hierarchy has clearly uttered those great truths now
so commonly needed to be understood, so that every man may
know that he may be a Christian consistent with his natural as-
pirations, and that the highest boast of his civilization is that it is
in harmony with the supernatural longings of his soul.

The pastoral letter shows that the hierarchy of the Catholic
Church in the United States share the conviction that American
political institutions are in advance of those of Europe in help-
ing a man to save his soul, and that they promise a triumph for
Catholicity more perfect than its victory in mediaeval times ; and
they do not hesitate to express these convictions. That is indeed
the best government which secures to men the amplest means of
sustaining life, interferes least in the exercise of his liberty, and
aids him most in the pursuit of his true happiness his divine
destiny. The assertion of the natural rights of man in the De-
claration of American Independence draws its inspiration from
the duties which man naturally owes to his Maker. The rights
of man spring from man's duties to his Creator. Democracy in
its true sense and meaning is an effort to bring the political in-
stitutions of society more in accordance with the prime truths of
reason, which but lead up to the fulness of the truth in revelation.
Hence when the institutions of this nation are let do their work
they unconsciously favor the triumph of Christianity, which in
its concrete, organic existence is the Roman Catholic Church.

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 715

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JESUS THE MESSIAH. By Alfred Edersheim, M.A.
Oxon., D.D., Ph.D., late Warburtonian Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn. In
two volumes. Second edition. New York : Randolph & Co. ; London :
Longmans, Green & Co.

Dr. Edersheim has a good reputation in England as a scholar. Several
small works published by him prior to his latest and greatest work are ex-
cellent. He is a German, and we know what that denotes in erudition and
painstaking. He is an Israelite, and that is another advantage in respect
to Jewish learning. We do not look for complete and precise orthodoxy
of doctrine in the works of one who is not a Catholic, though we are glad
to find all that there may be anywhere. It is necessary, however, that one
should believe in the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ united in one
Person, in miracles, prophecy, and inspiration, in order to write a life of
Christ which shall be true history and not mere romance. Dr. Edersheim's
faults in doctrine are mostly shortcomings, and his uncatholic opinions are
kept much in the background, expressed, moreover, in a quiet, modest man-
ner, and free from the obnoxious features of Calvinism and rationalism.
He holds the Nicene doctrine concerning our Lord and most other doc-
trines of moderate Protestant orthodoxy. His spirit is reverent and con-
servative. His style has many excellent qualities. His grand thesis is, to
prove against unbelieving Judaism -and rationalism that Jesus is the true
divine Saviour of the Jews and of all mankind. A man of sc\ much learn-
ing and ability, zeal and industry, bringing to bear his resources of histori-
cal lore, of criticism, and of argument upon such a subject, could not fail of
constructing a work in many of its parts solid and instructive.

It is chiefly to those topics upon which Dr. Edersheim's Jewish lore can
cast special light that we look for some new and particularly instructive
elucidation, for something additional to what we have already in prior lives
of Christ. In this aspect the account of the Jews of the " Dispersion,"
other extraneous historical environments of the Messianic epoch, various
synopses of Jewish theological systems, an epitome of the traditional inter-
pretation of Messianic prophecies, etc., are worthy of mention. We desire,
also, to express a great satisfaction with the author's penultimate chapter
on " The Resurrection of Christ from the Dead."

We have examined with some curiosity the author's treatment of sev-
eral questions much discussed, but without as yet any agreement having
been arrived at, by critics, commentators, and writers of harmonies or lives
of Christ. One of these is the date of the birth of our Lord. Dr. Eders-
heim decides for A.u.C. 749 as the year, and December 25 as the day, of the
Nativity. He gives A.D. 25 as the year of the baptism and 29 as the year
of the death of our Lord.

As for the " star in the East," Dr. Edersheim favors Ideler's astronomi-

7 1 5 NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. [Feb. ,

cal hypothesis. We have a decided liking for the same, though much dis-
couraged by the opposition of the best astronomer with whom we have the
honor of acquaintance.

The Passover in the Holy Week is another still more vexed question,
upon which how much paper has been blotted ! and with quite confusing and
vacillating results to some, at least, inquiring minds. Our learned author is
positive that our Lord did celebrate the true Jewish Passover ; that he did
not anticipate the time ; that the rulers of the Jews did not postpone it ; that
all alike ate the Paschal supper on the evening of Holy Thursday. The
most serious objection to this view is St. John's statement that the Phari-
sees would not enter Pilate's pretorium, lest they should become unclean
and incapable of celebrating the Passover, whence, it is argued, Friday
evening must have been the time appointed. Dr. Edersheim disposes of
this objection in the following manner : First, he affirms that the " Chagi -
gah," which was appointed for the next day after the eating of the Paschal
lamb, was called " Passover," as well as the principal ceremony itself; sec-
ond, that any uncleanness contracted by a Jew during the day would have
lasted only until sunset, when it could easily be removed by a purification ;
so that entering the pretorium in the morning could not disqualify from
eating the Passover lamb in the evening, whereas it would disqualify from
taking part in the " Chagigah " during the day. This is very probable, and
the attempt to refute it which was made after Dr. Edersheim's first edition,
it seems to us, the doctor has shown in this second edition to be a failure.

Not having had time to read these volumes through, we cannot pretend
to make an adequately complete criticism on the whole work. We have
examined it, however, with sufficient care to warrant the expression of our
opinion that the author has ably and amply proved his grand thesis. It is
gratifying to see from an Israelite such an act of homage to our Blessed
Lord as the Messiah of the Jews. May he deign to accept it, and reward
the one who has made it with an increase of light and grace !

TRAIT DE DROIT NATUREL THORIQUE ET APPLIQU. Par Tancrede
Rothe, Docteur en Droit, Professeur aux Facultes Catholiques de Lille.
Tome Premier. Paris: L. Larose et Forcel, 22 Rue Soufflot. 1885.

In this first volume of his Treatise on Natural Right Dr. Rothe proceeds
by first defining law and right, and then making succinct expositions of the
topics : the Eternal Law, the Natural Law, Natural Right, Conscience,
Natural Duties of man toward God and toward himself. After finishing
these topics, which are embraced in the first three parts, he arrives at the
fourth, which occupies about seven-eighths of the entire volume. This
fourth part concerns the Duties of Man toward his Fellows, and embraces
a number of the most important and at present most practical and disputed
questions about all kinds of societies, the State, the Church, the Universal
International Association, the Origin and Nature of Power, the relative
merits of different kinds of government, etc., etc.

The author's treatment of his topics is thoroughgoing, incisive, origi-
nal, judicially calm and composed. On the one topic of paramount inte-
rest viz., the origin of the state, and the ruling power in it he is clear
and strong in arguing against the theory of the social compact and the vol-
untary concession of power to the civil government by the whole multi-

1885.] NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. 7 1 7

tude of individuals making up the civil society. He takes special pains,
also, to refute that particular theory known as the theory of Suarez and
Bellarmine. There is a certain resemblance between this part of his trea-
tise and Dr. Brownson's most able and nearly complete work on The Great
Republic. Although the author is dead against a great many notions
which are quite prevalent among ourselves and find vent in popular politi-
cal speeches, yet his fundamental principles are not incompatible with the
real, essential foundations of our own political order. He affirmsthe divine
origin of the state and of government, the immediate collation of power to
the possessor of sovereign authority in the state, by God, and similar doc-
trines. He is, moreover, a decided advocate of the monarchical form of
government. Nevertheless, he is as far from the extreme opinions of a
certain class of legitimists as he is from the opposite, democratic extreme.
The conclusion is fairly deducible from his premises that the foundation
of our republic and its political constitution are as truly legitimate as are
those of the temporal principality of the pope ; and that the sovereignty
possessed by the organized, political people of the United States, with the
right of ruling which this sovereign people delegates to its elected officers,
are from God, claiming allegiance and obedience under a divine sanction.
This treatise is well worthy of an attentive study.

HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. For use in Seminaries and Col-
leges. By Dr. Heinrich Brueck, Professor of Theology in the Ecclesi-
astical Seminary of Mentz. With additions from the writings of His
Eminence Cardinal Hergenrother. Translated by Rev. E. Pruente.
With an introduction by Right Rev. Mgr. James A. Corcoran, S.T.D.,
Professor of Sacred Scripture, etc. Vol. I. Einsiedeln, New York,
Cincinnati, and St. Louis : Benzigers. 1885.

This hand-booR is well adapted for its purpose. It is a succinct epi-
tome, based on solid learning and supported by abundant references to
authorities. The translator has taken care to make his version really
English, and has had it revised, for greater security, "by an English author
of acknowledged reputation" ; he has also made additions and alterations
of his own to make it more "commendable for English-speaking students."
Nevertheless some German idioms have escaped the notice of the reviser,
there are some proper names e.g., Vincenz instead of Vincent which are
not in the most correct form, and there are some typographical errors.

In the list of popes we find Felix II. noted as undoubtedly an anti-pope,
which seems to us doubtful. On the other hand, we do not see why
Christopher and Leo VIII. are not marked as anti-popes.

We take the liberty of suggesting that in a second edition the chrono-
logical date should be put at the top of each page. Of course it cannot be
expected that every one should agree in opinion with an author about all
points which are matters of historical controversy. Neither has any critic
a right to complain because an author has adopted an opinion different
from his own. Still, we think it would be an improvement in a book like
this to take notice, in important matters, of the fact that there is a differ-
ence, e.g., in respect to the orthodoxy of Origen and the merits of the con-
troversy between St. Jerome and Rufinus. We are not seeking to detract
from the merit of this manual. Its excellence is too well established by

7 1 8 NE w PUB LIC A TIONS. [Feb. ,

the approbation of competent judges to need any new and detailed com-
mendation of its merits. The only kind of criticism which can be of real
service is that which calls attention to what one may think to be minor
defects such as are practically unavoidable in text-books. A hand-book of
ecclesiastical history is one of a kind in which amendments ought to be
continually made in successive editions, so that it may be brought nearer
and nearer to perfection. We trust that Father Pruentewill have occasion
to publish several editions of his history, and thus find the opportunity of
repeatedly revising and improving it. We recommend it cordially to all
students as the best and most convenient epitome of ecclesiastical history
they can find in the English language, and a suitable introduction to the
reading of more extensive and complete works that is to say, so far as* we
can estimate the entire work by an examination of its first volume. This
comes down to A.D. 1303. the end of the pontificate of Boniface VIII. The
period of five hundred and eighty-two years between this pope and Leo
XIII.'s present year is crowded with events which it needs the hand of a
master to epitomize successfully. We take it on trust, for the present, that
we shall find the second volume as praiseworthy as the first.

LIFE OF RT. REV. JOHN N. NEUMANN, D.D., C.SS.R., FOURTH BISHOP OF
PHILADELPHIA. From the German of Rev. J. A. Berger, C.SS R., by
Rev. Eugene Grimm, C.SS.R. Second edition. New York, Cincinnati,
and St. Louis : Benzigers. 1884.

Having been intimately acquainted with Bishop Neumann, we can testify
to the truth and fidelity of this biography by his nephew, Father Berger.
The bishop was of small stature and homely exterior generally, much as
we fancy St. Gregory Nazianzen to have been. The portrait of him in his
Life is like, yet far from being perfect. His countenance had a calm and
thoughtful but gentle and winning expression, not the drawn and anxious
cast which appeared in the photograph which was taken after his appoint-
ment to Philadelphia, by order of his provincial, and is the original of all
subsequent likenesses. He was a man of severe and ascetic sanctity, but
there was nothing sanctimonious, forbidding, or harsh in his manner. He
possessed all the virtues which go to make up a perfect Christian, a perfect
religious, and a perfect priest, even those mfnor ones of nature and grace
which make a man lovable and pleasant to converse with, as well as admi-
rable. His natural gifts were excellent, though not in the brilliant order
of oratory and rhetoric, or in the line of metaphysical speculation. His
tastes were decidedly towards mathematics and some branches of physical
science, as also towards linguistic studies. He was a good scholar in He-
brew, Greek, Latin, and several modern languages, and well acquainted
with dogmatic and moral theology, but especially with the writings of St.
Thomas, to whom he was devoted. He was an ornament to his respectable
congregation, and afterwards to the American episcopate. His life from
childhood up was one furnishing materials for most interesting narrative.
Happily his nephew, unlike some biographers, has known how to tell the
story well, and to fill in the small events, details, and anecdotes which are
worth much more to a reader than any lucubrations, reflections, or pious
remarks of an author. This is a very readable as well as otherwise good
and instructive book.

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 719

AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS: RALPH WALDO EMERSON. By Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

Perhaps there is no one whose opinion about Mr. Emerson we were
more curious to know than the author of the above biography. Dr. Holmes
was a contemporary of Mr. Emerson, a friend, an author, a poet, a man of
wide experience and of acknowledged literary ability. He is an indepen-
dent thinker, walks in his own path, and is a live man. No one will ven-
ture to deny that he has given from his standpoint a fair and honest ac-
count and estimate of Mr. Emerson. His resume of Mr. Emerson's message
is not bad. Here it is ; we give the whole :

''Thou shalt not profess that which thou dost not believe. Thou shalt
not heed the voice of man when it agrees not with the voice of God in
thine own soul. Thou shalt study and obey the laws of the universe and
they will be thy fellow-servants. Thou shalt speak the truth as thou seest
it, without fear, in the spirit of kindness to all thy fellow-creatures, deal-
ing with the manifold interests of life and the typical characters of history.
Nature shall be to thee as a symbol. The life of the soul, in conscious
union with the Infinite, shall be for thee the only real existence. This
pleasing show of an external world through which thou art passing is
given thee to interpret by the light which is in thee. Its least appearance
is not unworthy of thy study. Let thy soul be open and thine eyes will
reveal to thee b'eauty everywhere. Go forth with thy message among thy
fellow-creatures; teach them they must trust themselves as guided by that
inner light which dwells with the pure in heart, to whom it was promised
of old that they shall see God.

"Teach them that each generation begins the world afresh, in per-
fect freedom ; that the present is not the prisoner of the past, but that to-
day holds captive all yesterdays, to compare, to judge, to accept, to re-
ject their teachings, as these are shown by its own morning's sun.

"To thy fellow-countrymen thou shalt preach the gospel of the New
World, that here, here in our America, is the home of man ; that here is
the promise of a new and more excellent social state than history has
recorded. Thy life shall be as thy teachings brave, pure, truthful, bene-
ficent, hopeful, cheerful, hospitable to all honest belief, all sincere thinkers,
and active according to thy gifts and opportunities."

COMMONWEALTH SERIES. KENTUCKY : A PIONEER COMMONWEALTH. By
N. S. Shaler. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.

The fine and compact little volume before us is one of Mr. Horace E.
Scudder's "American Commonwealth Series." It is the fourth of the series,
Virginia, Oregon, and Maryland having preceded it. California, Kansas,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, South Carolina, New York, Michi-
gan, and Missouri are in preparation. Other State histories will also be
announced as they are prepared. These compact histories of the States
are amply sufficient as histories for the general reader, but for the histori-
cal student they are too brief and discursive. But they have another and
distinctive value to historical students, political economists, constitutional
students, and to miscellaneous readers. They are all founded upon the

7 2o NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. [Feb. , 1885.

plan of giving the life-principle, the interior and outward growth and de-
velopment of each State as a commonwealth, its ethnology, the races com-
posing its population, the political principles underlying the constitution,
its colonial position, influence, and the motives of its colonization, and,
finally, its influence and position in the American Union or sisterhood of
commonwealths. Hence these volumes are not written in the mere dry
historical narrative, but in a style blended of history, essay, and commen-
tary. They are admirably adapted to disseminate among our people, and,
indeed, throughout the reading world, a more general and pleasing know-
ledge of our American history. They are useful, too, in showing the com-
ponent parts of the Union or nation.

The present volume on Kentucky well sustains the general good repu-
tation of the series. It is written in a pleasant and easy style, and the
author has a good command of the English language. Yet we notice in
some instances a rather awkward style of expression, such as that used in
describing Queen Elizabeth : she is called "England's manly queen." This
expression cannot be said to be incorrect, yet it is grating to the ear ; and
yet it may in some sense be apt, since the character it describes certainly
grates upon our sense of the appropriate and good.

We think the author attributes too much to Virginia in the make-up
of the original population of Kentucky, and attaches too little value upon
an important element of Kentucky's pioneers which went from Maryland.
This element of which we speak was a most valuable one, inasmuch as it
was Catholic, truly moral, high-toned, religious, and patriotic. Many of
Kentucky's best citizens, many of her best educational institutions, have
sprung from this element. The recent work of Mr. Webb, The Centenary
of Catholicity in Kentucky, shows how valuable and good an element this
has proved in the development of the State., The author classifies Ken-
tucky among those States not colonized from Europe directly, nor by mis-
cellaneous immigration like our new Western States, but that were imme-
diate outgrowths from particular colonies deriving their blood and institu-
tions from one of the original American colonies.

BISHOP ENGLAND'S WORKS. Vol. I. Baltimore : Baltimore Pub. Co.

A notice of this new edition of Works of Bishop England can be better
given after the second volume has been received.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XL. MARCH, 1885. No. 240.

CARLYLE AS PROPHET.

PART FIRST.

MR. FROUDE says of Thomas Carlyle:

" He was a teacher and a prophet in the Jewish sense of the word. The
prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah have become a part of the permanent
spiritual inheritance of mankind because events proved that they had in-
terpreted correctly the signs of their own times, and their prophecies were-
fulfilled. Carlyle, like them, believed that he had a special message to
deliver to the present age. . . .

" If he has been right, if, like his great predecessors, he has read truly
the tendencies of this modern age of ours, and if his teaching is authen-
ticated by facts, then Carlyle too will take his place among the inspired
seers, and he will shine on, another fixed star, in the intellectual sky."*

In another paragraph he places on parallel lines Carlyle and
St. Paul :

" Of all human writings, those which perhaps have produced the deepest
effect on the history of the world have been St. Paul's Epistles. What
Carlyle had he had -in common with St. Paul extraordinary intellectual
insight, extraordinary sincerity, extraordinary resolution to speak out the
truth as he perceived it, as if driven on by some impelling internal ne-
cessity. He and St. Paul I know not of whom else the same thing could
be said write as if they were pregnant with some world-important idea
of which they were laboring to be delivered, and the effect is the more strik-
ing from the abruptness and want of artifice in the utterance." t

What is the world-important idea which Carlyle was driven
on by some impelling internal necessity to speak out as a special

* Hist, of First Forty Years, vol. i. ch. i. t Life in London ^ vol. ii. cli. xxvi.

722 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [Mar.,

message to the present age ? What is its relation to the perma-
nent spiritual inheritance received from the Hebrew prophets
and to the world-important idea of St. Paul which has pro-
duced such an effect on human history? Is it a new theophany
and a new gospel, superseding old ones which are passing away,
manifested by a new prophet and apostle of God, a successor of
Isaiah and St. Paul? Such is the claim of Carlyle's biographer,
which, if made good, will secure for him a title to be ranked as
the new Luke of the new Paul. If his language does not assert
this claim and the life and writings of Carlyle sustain it, it is a
mere rhetorical flourish and the greatest of" unveracities."

It would be more agreeable to the writer to discuss this
matter in an impersonal manner ; yet, for reasons, a more familiar
way will be taken. And so, dropping formality, before I under-
take that severe censure of Carlyle's prophetic message to the
age, and the echo of it from Mr. Froude, which truth and con-
science demand, let me say a word of my own thoughts and feel-
ings about this remarkable man and the series of memoirs edited
or written by his friend and confidant.

I was one of the number, designated by Mr. Fronde as " few
but select," of Mr. Carlyle's earliest and most ardent admirers
almost fifty years ago, or, to speak more precisely, during the
latter half of my college-life, from 1837 to '39. Sartor Resartus was
'then a new book, and it seemed to me wonderful and fascinating
beyond every other. Afterwards I read all the works of Carlyle
which were within my reach. I still retain a great admiration
of the genius and a respect for some of the moral characteristics
of their author, and my interest in the life and works of this
great man has been deepened as time has passed on and his
career has been continued to its end. The biographical series
which Mr. Froude has issued comes as near to being a perfect
life as I can conceive to be possible, and his two principal sub-
jects, Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle, not to speak of
other persons belonging to the group of his admirable piece of
character-painting, have, in their individual traits, the events of
their history, the progress and close of their interior life, and
the mournful scenes which wind up all, everything to compose a
solemn tragedy, intermixed with some pleasing comedy, worthy
of all the labor which the artist has bestowed and all the atten-
tion bestowed upon his work by the wide circle of his readers.

That Carlyle will remain as a fixed star in the firmament of
literature can be conceded without reluctance. That he has
given utterance to some great religious and moral ideas with a

1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 723

striking originality and power of expression, and that in his life
and character he has in some respects left a grand example, can
also be cheerfully granted. But that he was a seer and a prophet
cannot be admitted, unless it be made evident that the faith of
Christianity has become an obsolete unveracity and that Carlyle
has at least begun the work of re-embodying that spirit and idea
which his disciple, following the teaching of his master, declares
to be the soul of religion, in a new and more perfect creed and
law, sufficient to effect a new regeneration of mankind in the com-
ing age.

The negative part of Carlyle's message to this generation
consists in the denial of the historical and dogmatic truth of
Christianity as an institution founded, a doctrine and law re-
vealed, by God, for all mankind to the end of the world. He
was most strictly brought up in one of the Scottish Presbyterian
sects, and went through a part of the course prescribed for can-
didates for the ministry. After a long and bitter interior con-
flict he gave up his belief in the Christian religion ; yet, although
he seems to have been terribly shaken by an assault of absolute
scepticism, he emerged from it with a positive belief in certain
truths to be spoken of more particularly later on, and which he
assumed to be the whole of that which is the absolute and eternal
truth contained in Christian theology.

He is by far the most notable representative of a class of men
in our age whose training and entire bent of mind are most
religious, but who have found no abiding resting-place in any
Protestant sect or system of belief presenting a claim to be the
genuine Christian church 'and creed. Christianity under these
forms, as presented and proposed to their belief and allegiance
according to these systems, comes at length to appear to them
incredible, destitute of a basis in either history or reason ; there-
fore, drawing the logical conclusion of their own premises, they
reject it.

Before examining into Carlyle's individual reasons and mo-
tives for his negation of the truth of Christianity, I have some
remarks to make on the general . subject of the provocation
to scepticism and unbelief which Protestant teaching furnishes
to philosophical and inquisitive minds which cannot be content-
ed to trot in a prescribed routine because their fathers have
done so.

The question is not, let it be carefully noted, why scepticism
and unbelief of a greater or lesser extent is possible, and found to
exist, among those who have been taught from infancy to believe

724 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [Mar.,

in the doctrine of Jesus Christ. We are in a state of probation
in respect to faith as well as every other virtue ; free-will has its
part to act in determining- the assent of the intellect to objects
which do not compel assent, as .well as intelligence. There are
passions, some of which are more spiritual, others more animal,
whose impulses incite to revolt against, the doctrine and the pre-
cepts of a religion whose sign is the Cross. That heresies should
start up and prevail more or less, that subtle or gross forms of
infidelity should break out and make ravages, and at certain
epochs become unusually rampant, is no great enigma.

But it is somewhat of a problem, to those who have not dis-
covered the intrinsic essence of Protestantism, that earnest and
religious minds, in striving to appropriate and act out the re-
ligious and moral axioms and maxims taught them in childhood,
should find in this very doctrine a provocation to doubt the very
principles and first truths of Christianity.

It is like looking down the mouth of a man who has a cancer
at the root of his tongue, to inspect closely this deadly ulcer of
unbelief which attacks so many victims in our day among the
gifted, amiable, and even well-disposed towards religion and vir-
tue, who might and should adorn a Christian profession, if only
they had a firm Christian belief. But it is a necessary work to
search in Protestantism for the microbes, the parasites, with
which all its various systems are filled, adhering to its garments,
poisoning its atmosphere, and generating deadly disease in its
dwelling-places. This is my wish and intent, to search out and
expose in Protestantism the causes of incredulity, the principles
breeding scepticism and preparing religious minds for the un-
happy and fatal decision that Christianity is incredible. Each
and every system of Protestant theology mixes something not
credible with Christianity. Those who perceive that this some-
thing is lacking sufficient grounds of credibility, or perhaps
positively incredible, if they identify it with Christianity con-
clude that Christianity is of doubtful credibility or certainly in-
credible.

I am not justifying the incredulity of those who mistake
spurious for genuine Christianity, but only accounting for it and
explaining it. I will not attempt to decide whether or no it is
sometimes altogether or partly excusable. But assuredly I am
not taking sides with such as find a reason in the defects and in-
consistencies of Protestant teaching or of the teachers and pro-
fessors of religion in various sects, for rejecting Christianity. If,
and so far as, they may be free from moral blame in their error,

1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 725

it can only be on the plea of ignorance, which is not voluntary
on their part, but their involuntary misfortune.

Those who know, or at least might or ought to know, the
motives of credibility of the Christian religion, which have been
often explained and vindicated in the most conclusive manner
by able and learned Protestant writers, do not act rationally
when they reject Christianity because they do not find any Pro-
testant theory of the Christian religion to be self-consistent and
tenable. The truly reasonable course is, to doubt or reject
whatever is not credible in this theory ; to suspect or conclude
that whatever in it is not credible is no part of genuine Chris-
tianity ; and to make an inquiry into the true and genuine nature
of Christianity.

I must also disclaim the intention of applying severe judgments
upon certain doctrines pertaining to Protestant schemes of religi-
ous belief and practice, indiscriminately, to all those who hold and
teach them. The censure falls upon opinions, not upon persons,
unless there are special reasons for condemning certain particular
individuals whose moral delinquency is manifest and notorious.

Moreover, at present especially, perhaps at all times among
those who have been brought up from infancy in some Protes-
tant sect, the most extreme and obnoxious doctrines are by the
majority practically ignored. A large part of the clergy even,
although not of the class which has become wholly rationalistic,
neglect or modify these obnoxious doctrines, and they neutralize
them by more or less of the genuine and Catholic doctrine which
they have retained, by their natural theology and ethical system,
by the truth which they draw from the Bible and from other
pure sources. The majority, indeed, are careless and indiffeient.
But the earnest minority, who seek to please God and save their
souls, letting alone obscure and difficult questions, fasten their
minds on the ideas of God, of eternity, of duty, of the redemp-
tion accomplished by Jesus Christ; they strive to repent of their
sins and obtain pardon from the divine mercy ; they follow their
conscience and take for granted what they have been accustomed
to see taught, believed, and practised by those whom they regard
as the good and the best people in their own community. I
have no hesitation in affirming positively that this is precisely
what they ought to do, whether they are Greeks, Anglicans,
Presbyterians, or even Unitarians or Jews, so long as they are
in sincere good faith, have no reasonable doubt of their paternal
tradition, and no admonition of conscience to seek further for the
truth and the law revealed by God.

726 . CARLYLE AS PXOPHET. [Mar.,

Nevertheless, there are some who cannot remain quiet; who
must look for the deepest causes and reasons of things ; who
cannot help being vexed by the problem of human life in relation
to God and the spiritual world ; who cannot rest without a
" theory of the universe " which reconciles theology and ethics,
history and doctrine, revelation and science. It would be bettor
if all such would imitate more simple folk, hold on to the truth
they have, strive to be as virtuous and pious as they can, pursue
their inquiries and studies diligently, and wait for an increase
of light.

Some, however, do lapse into infidelity, for a time or for life.
In point of fact, they cannot find intellectual rest and security in
any form of Protestantism, and they do not see that it is to be
found in the Catholic Church. Wherefore they conclude that
Christianity cannot furnish it, is not self-consistent or in harmony
with facts and reason.

The self-contradictions, the discords with reason and fact, the
insufficiency and general unsatisfactoriness of Protestant Chris-
tianity, are partly common to its genus and partly differences
of its various species.

Its uncertainty and internal dissension is one fundamental
fault which robs its teachings of authority. It is not an organic
whole, and no one of its sects has a better right than another to
claim legitimate succession from the genuine, primitive church.
Every claim to teach in Christ's name, if not disavowed, is
groundless. There is no presentation of Christianity which can
make a reasonable claim to be certain and complete. Revelation
is not proposed as something definite with an interpretation of
its contents which is sure and stable, but each individual is
referred to his own inquiries and his own judgment upon Scrip-
ture and other subordinate sources of knowledge, and these
are only helps to him in constructing for himself a theology and
finding by his own efforts truth and religion.

Besides this, the original and grand pretension of the Refor-
mation, to bring back a pure, original, genuine, perfect Chris-
tianity, which had existed for some centuries at the beginning,
and then for ages had been supplanted by an invented, a human,
a false and counterfeit Christianity, has been found out to be a
delusion and has had to be given up. The most eminent Pro-
testant writers have been the chief agents in dispelling the illu-
sion of this romance. The Catholic Church has been acknow-
ledged to be the occupant of the entire historical ground, leav-
ing the myth of a prior primitive church in the prehistoric

1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 727

shadows, and the vast work accomplished by Christianity has
been of necessity recognized as belonging to that so-called
human institution which was raised on the apostolic foundation
and is confessed to have been indispensable in such times and
circumstances.* Now, such a theory as this, reducing actual and
historical Christianity to the human level, and relegating its ce
lestial and divine pretension to the region of myth and legend,
naturally leads to a further and more radical view of the mythi-
cal and legendary character of the gospels themselves, of the
miracles, of inspiration, of the supernatural foundations and ori-
gin of Christianity, which have been believed in by Protestants
as well as Catholics.

Again, the reformation of Christendom, the restoration of
the pure gospel, the return of an apostolic age, was expected to
produce grand, extensive, and stable results in a new regenera-
tion, new triumphs, the bringing-in of the kingdom of Christ in
this world. The signal impotence and failure of Protestantism
has proved to the world the fallacy of this expectation. The
Reformers have lost their prestige as apostles, and sunk to the
level of rebels and revolutionists, destroyers and innovators, who
have led and prepared the way only, for successors of bolder and
more thorough-going designs. History has divested them of the
mask of sanctity, and laid bare the base and secular character of
the work in which they were agents, the crimes which accom-
panied it, the -political, moral, and social disorders and miseries
which were its consequence. A volume could be filled with
lamentations and invectives on this head from Protestant writers,
beginning with the Reformers, exceeding in strength of language
almost any indictment ever drawn up by Catholics.

In the non-liturgical and more pietistic sects, especially those
which are derived from Scottish Presbyterianism and English
Puritanism, the bare and dreary character of their religious ser-
vices, the dull and lugubrious character of most of their religious
books, the funereal pall of gloom which their doctrines cast upon
everything, have made religion repulsive to the young, and, by
alienating the minds and hearts of those whose intellectual ten-
dencies lead them into different and more attractive regions of
thought and sentiment, make them willing, or even eager, to listen
to the voices which exhort and persuade them to escape from
a wearisome servitude and assert their liberty of thought and
action.

The system of practical, personal religion among the sects of

* See Allnatt's Which is the True Church ? Appendix.

728 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [Mar.,

this sort, what they delight to call the " evangelical " religion, is
one which harasses, baffles, and bewilders honest and upright
seekers after the way of salvation. Its false mysticism and emo-
tional excitements, revivals and unwholesome processes of conver-
sion, are repugnant to good sense, to self-respect, and to all rational
ideas of solid piety and virtue. When they are carried to excess
in the more fanatical sects or portions of sects, they become shock-
ing to the sense of propriety in every mind which has any just
perception of the sobriety and dignity of true religion. Those
who refuse to submit themselves to influences of this kind are apt
to receive a prejudice and aversion against all religion, while in
many who are carried away by them a reaction takes place leav-
ing in the soul a disposition toward scepticism with other bad
effects.

The Bibliolatry which has prevailed so extensively and been
carried to such an excess among Protestants, and which has been
succeeded by such an extreme freedom of criticism, has had the
effect of weakening the basis of belief in divine revelation, sur-
rounding the revealed truths with an atmosphere of doubt, and re-
ducing them to a human level. I cannot now enlarge upon this
topic or fully explain my meaning. It is a fact that many, seeking
to find in the Bible a rule of faith, are bewildered, and, if they
do not in despair sink into the quicksand of agnosticism, look for
their footing to the ground of rational philosophy, regarding the
collection of sacred books contained in the canon of Holy Scrip-
ture henceforth as merely human documents, without divine inspi-
ration or divine authority.

When an intelligent and upright person is told, by those to
whom he looks up as his teachers, that the truth of God, made
known by revelation and called the Christian religion, must be
believed by him and made the rule of his mind and will, in order
that he may attain his end ; he has a right to ask for definite and
certain information as to what this truth is, what the rule of
belief and conduct is, to which he must conform his mind and
will. Passing over the uncertainty arising from the differences
among sects and the variations of theologies, there is one com-
mon inability among them all to give a reasonable answer to cer-
tain very important questions which relate to facts and doctrines
generally admitted to lie at the foundation of the Christian reli-
gion. The Incarnation, Redemption through the death of Christ,
the need which all men have from their conception and birth of
salvation through the Redeemer, which need originates in a fall
caused by the sin of Adam, our first father these facts and doc-

1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 729

trines are so plainly of the essence of Christianity that those who
reject them, though they may be called Christians, are, strictly
speaking, only theists.

One question which the troubled mind desires to have an-
swered is this : What is the lost condition of all mankind which
makes them need redemption and salvation ? The original,
genuine Protestant theology, coming from Luther and Calvin, in
its systematic and developed form known as the Calvinistic sys-
tem, has a categorical answer to this question : The lost condi-
tion is a state of total depravity and condemnation to everlasting
torments.

The second question is: How could we fall into this state
through the sin of Adam, so as to deserve the wrath of God for
being in this state from the beginning of our existence and for
every actual sin which we commit unavoidably by the spontane-
ous, infallible determination of our will to sin, and only to sin, in
every moral act, by our depraved nature ?

It is answered that the sin of Adam is imputed to his pos-
terity, and they are held guilty of an act which caused their de-
pravation, of the inability to do anything except sin, and of all
actual sins springing from their depraved nature, on the principle
that one guilty of placing the cause is accountable for its effects.
You poor, sinful inquirer ! You were created upright in Adam ;
you sinned in Adam ; you are guilty for being in this lost condi-
tion, from which, you cannot deliver yourself.

Another great question which the troubled mind desires to
have answered is the one which St. Anseim proposed and an-
swered in the great treatise, Cur Dens Homo ? Why should God
become man ?

The Calvinistic answer is : Because God decreed to restore
some men to holiness and everlasting happiness, and could not
do so without substituting in their room a divine person in human
nature, who should endure and exhaust the punishment due to
them, keep the law of God in their place in a manner infinitely
meritorious, and transfer to them the expiation, the perfect right-
eousness, the title to everlasting reward fulfilled and acquired by
himself. All men lost by the sin of Adam imputed to them,
which sunk them in total sinfulness and misery ; some men saved
by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, in consequence
of which they are eventually altogether purified from sin, made
holy, and transferred into the kingdom of God, where they live
for ever glorified and blessed this is the sum and substance of
the doctrine.

I will not enumerate any more of the Calvinistic tenets or

730 CARLYLE AS PROPHET, [Mar.,

dwell on those just mentioned. For a fuller treatment the reader
may consult the author's work entitled The Kings Highway.

The answer which the troubled inquirer gets is absurd and
incredible. And the worst of it is, it is not a mere baffling of
intellectual curiosity which disappoints him. He wishes to be
saved from the state of sin and misery, and to have part with
Christ in the blessings of the sons of God. But he is told that he
can do nothing ; that the only help for him is a free act of grace
on the part of God, changing his wicked heart and making him
a Christian. He encounters not absurdity only, but also cruelty,
at which his heart as well as his intellect revolts.*

The Luthero-Calvinistic theory of sin and justification per-
vades all orthodox Protestantism. It is true that from the be-
ginning of the schism to the present day there have been divers
modifications of Protestant theology, and that the doctrines of
the Christian creed have been and are taught and received, and
the practical direction of religious piety and virtue carried on,
in such a manner as not to deserve all the censure due to the
doctrinal and practical system just now mentioned.

Yet, even when Christian doctrine is presented in orthodox
Protestant theology divested of the most obnoxious errors which
disfigure it in the Calvinistic system, there is a defect in the
presentation, and a failure to answer the questions which arise in
the minds of the thoughtful and inquisitive about the natural
state of man and the supernatural way of redemption and sal-
vation. Cur Deus Homo? Wherefore the Incarnation, and the
entire system of supernatural revelation, miracles, inspired proph-
ets and apostles, etc. ?

The general spirit of modern literature, philosophy, and sci-
ence is averse from the supernatural and strongly bent toward
naturalism. The great wave sweeps over the minds of a large
class of the young generation, at least shaking their hereditary
belief. Respect for their own particular sect is not strong
enough, and has not sufficient legitimate hold upon reason or
conscience, to keep them in firm adhesion to its teaching. Even
in the Anglican Church, which is far superior to all other sects,
there are many reasons and causes, though not- precisely the
same with those which are found in other portions of Protestant-
ism, which operate to produce a disesteem of ecclesiastical doc-
trine and authority. A predisposition against all dogmatic and
organized Christianity is generated. From this germ any kind
of infidelity, down to utter agnosticism, can be, and often, alas!
is, developed. The unhappy soul finds itself in a waste and chaos

* See the works of Catharine Beecher, passim.

1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 731

of uncertainties. The belief of childhood, the Bible, or the Bi-
ble and the Fathers what sure and sufficient criterion can these
furnish to one whom doubts and the mighty attraction of a great
body of scepticism are dragging away from Christianity? He is
left to examine and determine and judge for himself upon his
hereditary belief, upon the authority and meaning of the Bible,
upon the real contents of the tradition handed down by the
Fathers, upon the tenets of differing theological schools, upon
the apparent conflicts between that which is said to be revealed
truth and what professes to be historical fact, rational philo-
sophy, or scientific knowledge.

Now, however conclusive may be the argument for the credi-
bility of Christianity, and for much else besides, which any one of
the chief systems of Protestant orthodoxy can furnish to one who
undertakes to make the aforesaid examination, it falls short at
some point. Letting alone other shortcomings, whether common
to all such systems or peculiar to each of them, all fail in answer-
ing reasonably, in such a way as to meet the most stringent exi-
gency of minds affected by scientific scepticism, the question, Cur
Deus Homo? with the other questions implicitly contained in it.

There is an antecedent, a priori incredulity respecting mira-
cles which prevents all arguments and all evidences establishing
the extrinsic credibility of revelation in general, and of all doc-
trines or facts in particular which are proposed as contained in
it, from taking due effect on the mind. An exposition of the
intrinsic credibility, of the sufficient reason, is demanded as a con-
dition precedent to the admission of extrinsic evidence. The
objection is put that the doctrine of original sin is incredible ;
the need and the provision of redemption through the incarna-
tion of a divine person incredible ; the whole system of " celes-
tial-miraculous " revelation, inspiration, and supernatural works
wrought by divine power above or against the laws of nature,
is incredible. Nature is of divine origin, it is good, it is suffi-
cient, its laws eternal and immutable ; there is no need of mira-
cles* supernatural religion is an intrusion, a being of the imagi-
nation, a castle in the air.

I will not now inquire how far it is justly requisite that the
intrinsic credibility and reason of revealed religion should be
made manifest as a condition precedent to submission to its
authority. It is a saying of St. Ambrose: Morale est omnibus, ut
qui fidem exigunt, fidem astruant which may be paraphrased in
this form : It is a just and universal rule that whoever demands
faith should give a sufficient reason for it. It is desirable to go
as far beyond the just and strict exigency of the case as we can,

732 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [Mar.

and to show the intrinsic reasonableness and belief-worthiness
of the doctrines of revelation up to the most extreme limit at-
tainable. Protestantism encourages the rationalistic spirit, sug-
gests and stimulates doubt, and puts inquisitive minds into an
attitude and position where difficulties and objections most
numerous and far-reaching have to be met by those who would
get a hearing and hope to make an impression in favor of a
system of doctrines which makes large demands upon faith.

Protestant theology, even in those forms of it in which ten-
ets directly and certainly contrary to reason have been modi-
fied or suppressed, fails to substitute for these tenets some other
explicit interpretations of the doctrines of original sin and re-
demption which afford an adequate answer to questions which
insist on being answered. It fails, namely, to bring out explicitly
and distinctly the true idea of the supernatural as distinguished
from the natural order. Implicitly, in an obscure and latent
manner, .this idea may be underlying the exposition of its best
representatives when they attempt to set forth those doctrines
of the ancient and universal Christian creed which they hold and
advocate. But they are never free from one erroneous concep-
tion, derived from the Lutheran and Calvinistic sources of their
theology viz., that the original condition of human nature in
Adam was a state of mere natural perfection in an integrity due
to its essential constitution. From this follows logically a con-
ception of original sin as a depravation of the essence, or what
flows normally from the essence, of human nature. Wherefore,
consequently, redemption is a reparation of a damage in the
natural order, a restoration of nature to its normal condition, a
supplement to creation and the laws of nature, which had failed
to fulfil the intention of the Creator and had to be reconstituted
in a supernatural way and by supernatural means.

The first principle, the soul, so to speak, of the entire body of
modern anti-Christian naturalism and rationalism, is the idea that
nature ought to be, and is, endowed with all requisites for its
own normal development and perfection. A need of miracles
implies a flaw in nature, a need of revelation a flaw in human
intelligence, a need of redemption a defect in the plan of natural
providence.

The discoveries of science, together with theories based on
them which are plausible or probable, at least in the view of many
minds, have enlarged and elevated the conceptions of the won-
derfulness of the universe common to those who have ordinary
knowledge. The cultivation of history has given a more enlarged
and comprehensive view of mankind and human development.

1885.] CARLYLE AS PROPHET. 733

Regarded from a natural point of view, the domain included with-
in the scope of the Hebrew Scriptures has dwindled by compari-
son with the whole world, and historical Christianity even has
lost some of its exclusive importance. Thus a grand scheme for
restoring and improving mankind in the natural order, which is
restricted and partial, appears not to be. really divine and catho-
lic, but human, local, and temporary. It does not seem that God
would employ such mighty causes for such small effects. Espe-
cially when such a stupendous event as the assuming of human
nature by a divine person, who lives a life of painful labor and
sacrifice, dies a victim to human cruelty and divine justice on the
cross, rises from the dead, and promises to return again to the
world as judge, is attentively considered, there appears to be a
want of sufficient reason and adequate final cause for such means,
in view of their object. To say that God cannot forgive sins
against the rational and natural law of order by his pure mercy,
or that he cannot restore the violated order except by a condign
satisfaction and through the means of grace merited by a divine
redeemer, is a groundless assertion. The moral improvement,
civilization, religious instruction, and even the final endless felicity
of a certain portion of mankind in the merely natural order, do
not need such a stupendous series of causes and agencies as are
the Incarnation with its foregoing and following miracles, proph-
ecies, and other supernatural events. Besides, the result gained
is not at all proportioned to the force expended.

Especially when we look at this earth and its inhabitants, as a
part of the grand, universal realm of nature, does it seem unrea-
sonable and incredible that such an outlay of power, such an ex-
traordinary intervention of the direct action of God, such a de-
parture from the regular uniform course of law \yhich reigns in
the universe, should have been planned and executed by the Al-
mighty merely for the sake of correcting the aberrations of an
insignificant planet.

Thus the orthodox theory comes to be looked on as a kind
of obsolete theology, like the obsolete Ptolemaic astronomy, akin
to this latter and similar theories of times of partial and incorrect
science, or of nescience, not reconcilable with the laws of Kepler,
the Copernican theory, and other grand results of general induc-
tion from the observed facts of the universe.

The ct priori position reached by this road or by some similar
way among the many nowadays converging to this one point
that miracles are unprovable and impossible ; the supernatural,
except in so far as all nature and everything existing is, in some
sense, identical with the supernatural, impossible and unthink-

734 CARLYLE AS PROPHET. [Mar.,

able this position and affirmation bars the plea for the extrinsic
credibility of revelation. It is not listened to. It is passed by with-
out any serious and careful examination. Or it is assailed and un-
dermined by a thousand special pleadings, specious objections,
subtle criticisms, captious and sceptical suggestions and hypo-
theses all the arts of sophistry, in fine, which are known to logic,
floated upon a flood of rhetoric which sweeps away the ignorant.

Protestant writers, in their anti-Catholic polemics, have set
the example of this. They have introduced and fostered the
sceptical and unsteady habit of mind. Not to speak of the ra-
tionalists and quasi-infidels among them, even those who ap-
proach the nearest in some things to the Catholic Church, when
they set themselves to the refutation of Catholic arguments and
to the explaining away of Catholic historical evidences, furnish
weapons easily turned against their own fortress. They either
prove nothing or they prove that Christianity is a human institu-
tion, revelation a natural product of the genius of man.

In the case of a great many minds at the present time their
inquiries and reflections bring them to this alternative : Either
Christianity embodied and organized in the Church Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman is completely and absolutely true and di-
vine, or there is no supernatural, divine, revealed religion. Some
of these look on the logical conclusion which they perceive to
follow from the premise that there is a supernatural, divine, re-
vealed Christian religion viz., that the Catholic Church is abso-
lutely true and divine as a reductio ad absurdum. They adopt,
therefore, the other alternative of the dilemma. Protestantism
is cast aside as unworthy of consideration. The reasons for re-
jecting all and singular of its varieties are different in different
persons, and the ways they take after turning their backs on
Christianity are different.

I have in view directly only those reasons which were the mo-
tives of Carlyle's unbelief, and the goal towards which he set his
face, with the road he took to reach it. Some of the defects in
the plea of Protestantism which I have pointed out did not affect
Carlyle. Others which did affect him I may not have explicitly
mentioned, and some flaws, as he regarded them, may have been
no defects at all, but attributes of genuine Christianity looked at
through an imperfect, distorting lens. Still, I think I have in
general terms given what may be considered the negative part
of Carlyle's " spiritual optics," and prepared the way for a more
definite and precise examination of this negative, together with,
also, the positive part of his theory.

1885.]

ON CHRISTIAN CHILDHOOD.

735

SURL'ENFANCECHRETIENNE. ON CHRISTIAN CHILDHOOD.

(By CHATEAUBRIAND.)

ADIEU, vaine prudence,
Je ne te dois plus rien ;
Une heureuse ignorance

Est ma science,
Jesus et son enfance

Est tout mon bien.

Jeune, j'etais trop sage,
Et voulais tout savoir ;
Je n'ai plus en partage

Que badinage ;
Et touche au dernier age

Sans rien prevoir.

Quel malheur d'etre sage,
Et conserver ce n\oi,
Maitre dur et sauvage,

Trornpeur, volage !
O le rude esclavage

Que d'etre a soi !

Loin de tout esperance,
Je vis en pleine paix ;
Je n'ai ni confiance,

Ni defiance ;
Mais 1'intime assurance

Ne meurt jamais.

Amour, toi seul peux dire
Par quel puissant moyen
Tu fais, sous ton empire,

Le doux martyre
Ou toujours Ton soupire,

Sans vouloir rien.

O Dieu ! ta foi m'appelle,
Et je marche a talons
Elle aveugle mon zele,

Je n'attends qu'elle ;
Dans ta nuit eternelle,

Perds ma raison.

fitat qu'on ne peut peindre
Ne plus rien desirer,
Vivre sans se contraindre,

Et sans se plaindre
Enfin ne pouvoir craindre

De s'egarer.

(TRANSLATION.)

VAIN, worldly prudence, flee ;
I owe thee nothing more ;
Sweet ignorance shall be

My only lore,
My Saviour's infancy

My only store.

A child, I was too wise ;
All knowledge I would win ;
I drew, alas ! my prize,

Jeers and sighs ;
And now age dims my eyes,

That naught have seen.

Ah, fool ! who wise would be,
And seek myself to save
That master cruelly

Deceiving me !
Oh ! the rude slavery,

To self a slave !

Thinking nor woe nor weal,
In peace I pass my day;
Distrust nor trust may steal

My rest away ;
The faith assured I feel

Shall bide for aye !

Love, thou alone canst say

By what great power 'twas

wrought
That 'neath thy gentle sway

The martyr lay,
Where- all may sigh their day

Nor wish for aught.

Thy faith doth call, O God !
I follow in her train ;
I bow beneath her rod,

Wait but her nod ;
In thy eternal cloud

Reason is vain.

O state no art can paint :
No want of anything ;
To live without constraint

Or doleful plaint ;
And, last, no fear, how faint,

Of wandering.

736 IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. [Mar.,

IRELAND'S ARGUMENT,
i.

EVERY statement about Ireland is controverted. Whatever
England, or the " English garrison," assert, Ireland, or the
Irish patriots, deny. England also is divided against herself
on all the Irish issues, for what her workingmen * report her
rulers discredit ; what her political students admit her landed
aristocracy repel. I have diligently studied the problem of Ire-
land, without rest or change of topic, for the last five years ; I have
seen tens of thousands of her ragged peasantry in their western
cabins and interviewed her titled governors in Dublin Castle;
I have conversed with representatives of her " loyal " and her
"patriotic" population of every rank of official life and of every
grade of social life ; and, besides thousands of speeches, debates,
editorials, essays, and pamphlets, I have read every recent and
scores of earlier books that treat on the Irish question. Yet I
do not call to mind a single statement that has not called forth a
contradiction.

Is Ireland, for example, "the most distressful country"?
There are such huge masses of easily accessible evidence on the
state of Ireland the concurring testimony of so great a host of
independent journalists and authors, French, American, and
English, and the corroborating statements of numbers without
number of Irish tenants, attested under oath before Parliamen-
tary committees that it would seem impossible to deny that a
large proportion of the Irish people are living in a condition of
most abject poverty, especially in the western counties ; and that
no general improvement has been made in their social surround-
ings or their physical welfare during the present generation. Yet
it is denied, and with vehemence, that the Irish peasantry are
worse fed or worse clad or worse housed than the laboring
rural populations of other European countries. If this assertion
were a truth the Irish of to-day would have no greater grievan-
ces than the poor of every Old- World land ; Ireland would need
no special legislation, and the " Irish question " would only be a
factor in the world-wide problem : How can pauperism, or the
poverty that degrades, be modified or abolished ? But the state-

* See Report of Durham Miners' Committee, 1882, and Earl Spencer's reports.

1885.] IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. 737

ment is not true ; Irish poverty has exceptional features and
an exceptional origin, and therefore it demands an exceptional
remedy.

II.

Is Ireland " a distressful country " ? " No devastated pro-
vince of the Roman Empire," wrote Father Lavelle, now the
parish priest of Cong, " ever presented half the wretchedness of
Ireland. At this day the mutilated Fellah of Egypt, the savage
Hottentot and New-Hollander, the live chattel of Cuba, enjoy a
paradise in comparison with the Irish peasant that is to say,
with the bulk of the Irish population."

This language is rhetorically fervid, but the " frozen truth "
confirms it. I travelled from Cong to Galway, and saw a coun-
try desolated as if a heathen conqueror had ravaged it. Once
populous, it is almost a desert. The people have been expelled
from it. I travelled once for hundreds of miles in the wake of
Sherman's army on its famous march to the sea, but nowhere
saw such evidences of a ruthless destruction. And Father La-
velle is not regarded in Ireland as a "patriot," but as a conser-
vative of the conservatives.

Father John O'Malley lives at the Neale, half a mile or so
from the presbytery of Father Lavelle. I asked him how the
peasantry in that neighborhood and in the counties Mayo and
Galway lived. -

" The daily food of the peasants," he replied, " is, for break-
fast, potatoes, and, if they are pretty comfortable, a little milk
and butter with it ; but in the great majority of the cases they
have nothing but the potatoes, with sometimes a salt herring.
When I tell you that the dinner and the supper are a repetition
of the breakfast you have the whole bill of fare of an Irish
peasant every day. As for meat and other luxuries, they are
simply out of the question, excepting at Christmas or Easter,
when even the poorest try hard to get a few pounds generally
of American meat."

My own investigations in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, and Kerry
carefully and extensively in these counties and here and there in
a dozen other counties proved that this diet, generally without
the milk or butter and herring, is the sole food of the majority of
the peasantry of the west. When the potatoes are eaten they
substitute "yellow-meal stirabout." Having travelled on foot
throughout the Atlantic seaboard and Gulf States and most of
the Western slave States when negro slavery was strongest here
VOL. XL. 47

738 IRELAND" s ARGUMENT. [Mar.,

about thirty years ago I can testify, and do most solemnly
say, that our bondmen were everywhere better fed, and had
better cabins, and were better clad then than the industrious
peasantry of the west of Ireland to-day.

III.

What do the French say r^ The Rev. Father Adolphe Perraud,
priest of the Oratory of the Immaculate Conception, made a
thorough personal investigation of Irish life, and, in 1862, pub-
lished the results in a remarkable series of Etudes sur f Irlande
Conteinporaine a standard authority, endorsed by M. Gustave de
Beaumont, one of the most distinguished French publicists, who
made a similar personal investigation a quarter of a century
before and gave similar testimony. Father Perraud's work is
eloquently commended by the illustrious bishop of Orleans,
Monseigneur Dupanloup.

I have space for the briefest quotations only :

" The destitution of the agricultural classes," he writes, " in order to be
rightly appreciated, must be seen in the boggy and mountainous regions of
Munster, of Connaught, and of the western portion of Ulster.

" The ordinary dwelling of the small tenant, of the day-laborer, in that
part of Ireland answers with the utmost precision the description of it
twenty years ago given by M. de Beaumont : ' Let the reader picture to
himself four walls of dry mud, which the rain easily reduces to its primitive
condition ; a little thatch or a few cuts of turf form the roof ; a rude hole
in the thatch forms the chimney, and more frequently there is no other
issue for the smoke than the door of the dwelling itself. One solitary room
holds the father, mother, grandmother, and children. No furniture is to
be seen ; a single litter, usually composed of grass or straw, serves for the
whole family. Five or six half-naked children may be seen crouching over
a poor fire. In the midst of them lies a filthy pig, the only inhabitant at
its ease, because its element is filth itself.'

" Into how many dwellings of this kind have we not ourselves pene-
trated, especially in the counties of Kerry, Mayo, and Donegal more than
once obliged to stoop down to the ground in order to penetrate into these
cabins, the entrance to which is so low that they look more like the bur-
rows of beasts than dwellings made for man !

" Upon the road from Kilkenny to Grenaugh, in the vicinity of those
beautiful lakes, at the entrance of those parks, to which, for extent and rich-
ness, neither England nor Scotland can probably offer anything equal, we
have seen other dwellings. A few branches of trees, interlaced and leaning
upon the slope in the road; a few cuts of turf, and a few stones picked up
in the fields compose those wretched huts less spacious and perhaps less
substantial than that of the American savage."

Every scene that M. de Beaumont and Father Perraud thus
describe my own eyes have witnessed within the last four years

1885.] IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. 739

not here and there, few and far between, but by hundreds, all
along the western coast and in the Galtee mountains. Scores
of times I have been obliged to stoop low to enter these inhuman
human habitations.

IV.

As to the clothing of the people, the Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud,
S J., in his admirable book entitled* The Irish Race in the Past and
the Present, quotes from a Londonderry paper of 1858 this sad
account :

"There are in Donegal about four thousand adults of both sexes who
are obliged to go barefoot during the winter in the ice and snow pregnant
women and aged people in habitual danger of death from the cold. . . .
It is rare to find a man with a calico shirt ; but the distress of the women
is still greater, if that be possible. Thjere are many hundreds of families in
which five or six grown-up women have among them no more than a
single dress to go out in. ... There are about five hundred families who
have but one bed each."

I have seen many hundreds of women white-haired grand-
mothers, matrons soon to become mothers, comely girls and little
children trudging along the half-frozen roads of Mayo barefoot
in the depth of winter. One Sunday at Gweedore I saw several
hundred women attend Mass. Only four of them had shoes on
their feet the priest's sister, the coast-guardsman's wife, and two
servant-girls from the hotel. Every statement of the passage
quoted is as true to-day as it was thirty-four years ago.

One more description as to diet of the peasantry from the
Abbe Perraud, and I close :

" In the district of Gweedore our eyes were destined to witness the use
of sea-weed. Stepping once into a cabin, in which there was no one but a
little girl charged with the care of minding her little brothers and getting
ready the evening meal, we found upon the fire a pot full of doulamaun
ready cooked ; we asked to taste it, and some was handed to us on a little
platter. This weed, when well dressed, produces a kind of viscous juice ; it
has a brackish taste and savors strongly of salt water. We were told in the
country that the only use of it is to increase, when mixed with potatoes,
the mass of aliment given. to the stomach. The longer and more difficult
the work of the stomach, the less frequent are its calls. It is a kind of
compromise with hunger; the people are able neither to suppress it nor to
satisfy it: they endeavor to cheat it. We have also been assured that the
weed cannot be eaten alone, since of itself it has no nutritive properties
whatever."

I have seen little girls gathering this sea-weed in Mayo and
Donegal, to be eaten if the distress should become greater ; and
the same statement that it was a "stay-hunger," not a diet

74O IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. [Mar.,

was made in explanation of its use. Secretary Trevelyan saw
the peasantry of Donegal actually eating sea-weed three years

ago-
English authorities corroborate the French. In the correspon-
dence of the London Standard ; in the reports of the Durham
and Northumbrian pitmen's committees ; in New Views of Ireland,
by Charles Russell, the leader of the English bar; in the speeches
of Joseph Cowen and of John Bright (before he became an up-
holder of coercion) ; in a score of Parliamentary reports, it is de-
monstrated that Ireland to-day is the Garden of Gethsemani of
Europe the sad home of a great nation's sinless sorrow.

The anti-Irish excuses made for Irish misery vanish at the
first touch of the Ithuriel spear of truth.

It is "popery" said Macaulay in a famous passage. But
Catholic France in the last ^century and Protestant Prussia in
this 'century were the counterparts of Ireland of to-day as re-
spects the poverty and the misery of their rural populations.
Peasani proprietorship the ownership of the soil by the tillers
of the soil was established, and almost instantly the rural inhabi-
tants became prosperous in both the Protestant and the Catholic
country.

It is Irish laziness, said the London Times. But the Irish have
emigrated to every land, and everywhere they are regarded as
most industrious workers. In Ireland in the winter I found men
anxious to work for sixpence a day, and saw hundreds so work-
ing and so paid wherever there was a ditch to dig or a road to
repair. When men are idle in Ireland it is because there is no
work to do ; because the woods have been cut or the woods are
protected ; because the fields are untilled or because they are
walled in ; because the mines are closed and the fisheries unpro-
ductive by the operation of a policy that seeks only the welfare
of the absentee owner of the soil and is deaf to the cries of the
poor for work on the soil that bore them.

It is drunkenness, said Lord Lansdowne in a letter to his ten-
ants that I read written after hundreds of them had been saved
by American charity from death by hunger in 1880. But statis-
tics show that there is little more than half the amount of liquors
consumed in Ireland as in England and Scotland. The rural
populations who are the poorest are also the most abstemious.
In the parish of Gweedore, often described as the most wretched

1885.] IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. 741

parish in Ireland, Father McFadden told me that nine-tenths of
the adults, both men and women, were members of his total-
abstinence society. The Irish are the most temperate people of
Europe.

It is their extravagance, said Trevelyan. But it would be a
wanton deference to the traducers of the Irish race to reply to
this audacious accusation, excepting to say that the solitary
example that he gave of it after he had seen working-people
eating sea-weed that " the women no longer made their own
cloth, but bought it at the village shops," is one of the results of
that system of legalized tyranny by which the mountains, on
whose barren slopes the peasants used to graze their sheep, and
that had been held as commonage for centuries, were suddenly
taken from them and rented to Scottish graziers and sheep-
raisers, thereby depriving the old inhabitants of the wool that for
more than a generation had been their surest source of income.

It is their lawlessness, a thousand V9ices exclaim. But official
statistics show that at the time when this cry was the loudest
in the year when it was asserted in Parliament that the queen's
writs did not run in Ireland and that Mr. Parnell's will had taken
the place of English statutory law there was less crime in Ire-
land than in any civilized land : less than half, per thousand, than
in England and Scotland, and less than in the most law abiding
communities in America. During that year there were forty-
nine homicides, in Philadelphia and only four in all Ireland; and
yet " the City of Brotherly Love " has only sixteen per cent, of
the population of Ireland !

Every other reason given by the partisans of the existing
order is found, on the slightest serious investigation, to be
equally inadequate and unjust as an explanation of Irish distress.

VI.

The Irish people are impoverished because the statutory law
is in conflict with the natural law that justifies the individual
appropriation of the land ; because its legal owners ignore their
duties as its holders, and deny all rights that appertain to the
tillers of the soil. Until the statutory law is brought into har-
mony with the natural law no device of legislation will remedy
the evils that inevitably must flow from such a conflict.

Emigration, for example, as a cure, is a quack's " specific,"
not the scientific prescription of a true physician.

" Emigration," as Mr. Gladstone said in a famous debate, " is
the process which the Almighty has ordained for covering and

742 IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. [Mar.,

cultivating the waste places of the earth ; but that is when the
emigrant is one whose wish it is to go" or, he might have added,
when the land was clearly inadequate to support its people ; but
otherwise, he affirmed (and justly), " emigration is only another
name for banishment."

Ireland is one of the most sparsely populated countries of
Europe. Compare it, for example, with little Belgium a land
naturally less fertile than Ireland, and with mineral resources
vastly inferior to hers. Belgium has exactly three hundred more
inhabitants to the square mile than Ireland, and she invites, not
repels, emigration. Our own State of Massachusetts has a larger
population to the square mile ; and " Massachusetts' natural pro-
ducts are only granite and ice." If Ireland had the same density
of population as Belgium she would now contain nearly fifteen
millions of inhabitants. She has only five millions. There is
very little poverty in Belgium, while Ireland is the most pauper-
ized country in Christendom.

Five millions of the Irish people are forced to live on fifteen
millions of acres of land for six millions of her area is still unre-
claimed and it is kept untilled because there is no protection
given to the improver. The greater part of her reclaimed area,
once under tillage, is now kept in pasture. Her landlords are
irresponsible aliens and absentees, who, in nearly every parish of
three provinces, have appropriated for centuries the improve-
ments of the tenants as fast 'as they were made a system of per-
ennial and accumulative communism, if by communism is under-
stood the confiscation of private property without compensation.
Wherever this system of land tenure has existed or does exist,
whether in Asia or Europe, the result has been identical exces-
sive poverty, hatreds of classes, the creation of castes, the ag-
grandizement of individuals, of families, or of dynasties at the
expense of the great masses of the people. Wherever it has
been abolished national prosperity the creation of a great class
of independent yeomen, of a self-reliant, self-respecting, and pa-
triotic middle class has followed its destruction.

Until the existing system of land tenure is abolished in Ire-
land there can be no prosperity there.

VII.

But what right have we to abolish vested interests and to
compel the legal owners of the soil of Ireland to dispose of it?
I answer: By the natural law that permits of individual owner-
ship of the soil. When the statutory law conflicts with the na-

1885.] IRELAND' s ARGUMENT. 743

tural law it is not binding on the conscience ; it is immoral ; and,
as Blackstone says, "all immoral laws are void."

St. Thomas Aquinas has expounded the natural law of indi-
vidual ownership of the soil in a passage which forestalled the
wisest teachings of modern political science anticipating the
dictum of Mill that .the land of a country belongs to the whole
people of the country, and is unlike all other property which can
be multiplied by industry, because no skill nor labor of man can.
create or extend it, and therefore it is not subject to the same
laws that should regulate the individual ownership of personal
property.

St. Thomas * says in reply to the query

" Whether it is lawful for any one to possess anything as his own ? I
answer that, with respect to exterior things, there is a twofold capacity in
man one of which capacities consists of getting and having control of ex-
terior goods.

" As regards this power, it is lawful for man to possess things as his own,
and this is even necessary for the life of man, for three reasons : first, be-
cause every one has more care to acquire a thing which is to become his
own than that which he would share with all men or with many men, be-
cause every one avoids labor and leaves to another that which is to be held
in common as happens in a crowd of servants; secondly, because human
affairs are managed in a more orderly way if on each and every individual
there is incumbent the special care of procuring a thing, as there would be
confusion if every one who pleased, without division, should procure what-
ever he pleased; thirdly, because in this way [that is, by every one pos-
sessing things as -his own] a more peaceful state of men is preserved, while
each one is content with his own possessions. Whence we see that among
those who in common and without division possess anything quarrels more
frequently arise.

" The second capacity of which man is possessed with reference to ex-
terior things is the use of them. And, as regards this, a man ought not to
hold exterior things as his own, but as common [to all] ; so that he ought
early to communicate them in the necessity of others. Whence the apostle
says: ' Charge the rich of this world to distribute readily, to communicate
to others,' etc."

In considering the objection that whatever is contrary to
natural law (jus naturale] is wrong, and that by this natural law
all things are common, and that to this community of possession
the institution of private property is antagonistic, St. Thomas
replies :

" It must be answered that to natural law is attributed community of
property, not because the natural law imperatively requires that all things
must be possessed in common, that nothing can be an individual posses-

* Summa of St Thomas, 2. aae, q. Ixvi. art. 2. This passage is left untranslated in the
English version, as being so contrary to the received opinion !

744 IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. [Mar.,

sion, but because the distribution of possessions [that is, private property]
is not according to the natural law, but rather according to [that is, based
on] the determination [decision] of mankind ; and this is a part of positive
law. Whence private property is not against the natural law, but is super-
added to the natural law by the inventions of man's reason."

VIII.

In this remarkable passage the true theory of private property
its raison d'etre, its justification, its rightful powers, and its
moral limitations is stated with scientific precision, enabling
us to combat, on the one hand, the fantastic teachings of sophists
who would " hold all things in common " and deny the right of
private property in land, and, on the other hand, the arrogant
pretensions of aristocratic tradition which assume that the right
of the landowner is absolute and that the toiler has no claim to
representation in determining the value of his recompense for his
labor on it.

Individual property is justified when the holding of it is re-
garded and treated as a trust for society ; when the possessor, in
the exercise of the power it imparts, so wields it as to promote
the public peace and the general welfare of the community. As
every man has the " right to do as he pleases " until he interferes
with the equal rights of his neighbor as the boundaries of his
rights are the limits of his neighbor's rights as, when he invades
the rights of others, he is justly regarded as a violator of the basal
law of society, so also the private possessor of the land is en-
titled to " do as he pleases with his own " just so far as his action
does not interfere with the rights of others ; for it is to those
others by their consent and by their protection that he is en-
abled to hold any " external good" as his individual property.

The doctrine of St. Thomas saves us from that wasteful ap-
propriation of land that the ancient Irish sept and the modern
Indian tribe the system of holding it in common rendered un-
avoidable. It insists that we shall take no step backward; that
we shall not listen to the voice of modern communists, charm
they ever so sweetly, nor yet advise the toiling millions to sub-
mit to wrongs with a reverence that is superstition, because not
founded on the divine law but on " the inventions of man's rea-
son," so often perversely misapplied ; but that we shall exert our
lawful influence to create such a system of individual ownership
of land as shall cause the passions, the interests, and the avarice
of men to become servitors of the common welfare.

1885.] IRELAND'S ARGUMENT. 745

IX.

The doctrine that St. Thomas taught in the thirteenth cen-
tury St. Elphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, practised in the
eleventh century. He was captured by the Danes on their inva-
sion of England in ion, and held as a prisoner in the expectation
of a large ransom. His biographer says:

" He was unwilling that his ruined church and people should be put
to such expense, and was kept in a loathsome prison at Greenwich for seven
months. While so confined some friends came and urged him to lay a tax
upon his tenants to raise the sum demanded for his ransom. ' What reward
can I hope for,' said he, ' if I spend upon myself what belongs to the poor?
Better give up to the poor what is ours than take from them the little that
is their own.' "

He refused to become a rack-renter, and therefore he was mur-
dered.

How impassable a gulf is fixed between the theory of land
tenure legalized in Ireland to-day and the theory of private prop-
erty expounded by St. Thomas ! How wide as the poles asunder
the action of St. Elphege, who chose death rather than to oppress
his tenants, and the action of the Irish landlords who keep a race
in rags and hunger in order that they may have the means to
gratify their vanity and pride and passions in foreign lands !

Applying, therefore, the teachings of the natural law and the
unbrokenly uniform experience of all ages and nations to the
present condition of rural Ireland, it follows that her people de-
serve and should receive the encouragement and good-will of
every friend of equal rights, of national prosperity, of peace, and
of a righteous order in their legitimate and legal efforts to estab-
lish the natural system of the ownership of the soil by the tillers
of the soil, which, wherever it has been enacted, has produced
the most beneficent fruits a respect for law and a more equitable
distribution of the common heritage ; that has increased industry,
frugality, and temperance ; that has created a people whose social
condition is an answer to the ancient prayer, "Give me neither
poverty nor riches . . . lest I be full and deny Thee ... or lest
I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain."

COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. [Mar.,

COMMON SENSE VERSUS SCEPTICISM.

WHAT is commonly called " philosophy " is beyond the reach
of most persons who have not had a " liberal education." The
very vocabulary of the philosophers is puzzling. Words crop up
in every page which, no doubt, have their exact meaning-, but
which to the ordinary reader mean nothing. Ideas also and
modes of argument which to the metaphysician or to the scien-
tist may convey the most definite signification seem to the aver-
age reader very profound or very learned, but leave him clouded
and confused in apprehension. More than this, the amplifica-
tion of every argument the vast quantity of words which must
be used is itself very embarrassing to the simple mind. Nine
readers out of ten are disposed to ask themselves the question :
" If the professed object of the philosophers be to teach me how
to think, why should they make the process so laborious? " This
question specially arises when reading the wordy articles of the
new philosophers who reject revelation. The reader seems to
lose himself in a labyrinth. He has to call upon his common
sense to get him out of it. Common sense usually suffices to do
this. And though common sense has a different degree in each
person, it has certain honest habits which are "generic."

Let us take a familiar example of such honesty. The favorite
object of all the sceptics who ignore revelation is to prove that
matter may be the father of mind. Any way, even the best of
them the least dogmatic in infidelity will not allow the Chris-
tian idea of the living God nor the Christian idea of the immor-
tality of the soul. Their object is to prove an origin of creation
(including also an origin of man) which is not that of the simple
fiat of the Creator. They want a number of middle causes, no
First Cause. For this reason they use language which implies some
attributes of God, though they are careful not to say that they
adore God. In the same way they talk of mind as an instrument
which is judicial, but not as being the gift of the Creator. They
do not allow to it an independence of matter, a separate and su-
preme sovereignty of its own, but simply treat it as the sublim-
est accident of matter, or at best as its sublimest development.
They vex us with their mundane estimate of the "soul" while
glorifying their own brains as supra-mundane. They cannot

1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. 747

make too much of their own thoughts nor say too little of the
Divine Object of all thought. Indeed, their object is their ovvti
thinking, and their subject is their own thinking, spite of critical
distinctions between the subjective and the objective, which, in
pure reasoning, have of course their proper place. Such " philo-
sophers " are not called " great " by their too facile admirers be-
cause they lead them to beautiful ideas about God or to beautiful
ideas about their mission and their future, but because they find
for them pretexts for the may-be of scepticism as the most con-
venient and easy groove of God-forgetting.

Now, all men have common sense, which is the only sense
which is necessary to apprehend the broad truths of their exist-
ence. For example, a man has a mind, and he knows that his
mind must have been created quite as much as his body. He
knows that his mind, whether it be big or be small, whether it be
a greater mind or a lesser mind than was Adam's mind, must in
its very first beginning have been created by God, and this for
two obvious reasons. The first reason is that, even supposing
that man's mind were a development from some lesser intelligence
which is the fantastic theory of some new men of science all
the possibilities of man's mind, as it now is, must have lain hid in
the original man ; since it is inconceivable by common sense that
that which is, in all its perfections, should have come out of a germ
which did not contain it, as it is inconceivable that a cow should
be developed out of a mustard-seed or a dog out of a sparrow's
egg or a root-bulb. Man's mind must have been, therefore, in
the original parent, even on the hypothesis of his development
from some strangely human type, through countless ages when
there was no animal life! It is no answer to say : " Look at the
oak-tree, which once was no more than an acorn." Oak-trees do
not talk, nor do they write works on philosophy ; whereas an
infant, from its first lisp, its first hint of its possibilities, gives
promise of the full development which awaits it. Common sense,
therefore, shows " mind " to have been created ; for the materialist
theories do not bring us a whit nearer to accounting for the exist-
ence of that which is from that which was not. A Shakspere or
a Dante, like a Brown or a Robinson, must have lain hid in the
first creation of human nature. If such minds were not cre-
ated by the Infinite Mind, then they were " a polarity " of matter
like their own boots and all the sublimeness of intellect was
begotten of causes in which did not lay such possibilities. So
that, setting aside the Christian theory of creation which alone
accounts " rationally " for all that is common sense is sufficient

748 COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. [Mar.,

to show the dreams of the sceptics to be as baseless in science as
in philosophy.

A second and perhaps still better reason which common
sense is quite good enough to advance is that the universal or
infinite character of man's mind proves both that it is not mate-
rial and that it is created. It is this " infiniteness " of mind which
has been called "divine." A man's mind, unlike his body or
unlike any body or any intelligence of which we have experi-
ence or even hint is infinite in sphere, in its travels in imagina-
tion, if not in range of reason or of knowledge. It can go up to
heaven, and it can conceive of immortality, and it can aspire to,
and long for, the Infinite. Nothing stops it but body. Matter
is its only enemy. It hates matter. Between mind and matter
there exists an antagonism which seems sometimes to suggest a
different paternity. This cannot be so. There is some sort of har-
mony between the two ; but it is a harmony which is regulated
by Infinite Wisdom, not the harmony which comes from the son
loving his father. If mind were matter's son the parent would
have as much reason to be proud of his offspring as the offspring
would have to be contemptuous. Moreover, the relative duties
would be inverted. Mind is always occupied not only in util-
izing matter, but in controlling it, in judging it, in punishing it.
Man's body is either the slave of his mind or else his mind be-
comes enfeebled by his body a very strange relation of the filial
mind to parental matter, if the materialist theory be true! But,
as a fact, man's mind is the autocrat. It does what it lists; it
travels where it chooses ; it believes or it disbelieves arbitrarily ;
and such is its immensity that it comprehends within itself a great
variety of beings, almost at will. The common saying, " a man is
not himself " when he is put out by contrariety of incident, is not
more true than the assertion that a man is several selves in the
range of his intellectual being. Now, this universality which is
common to all men is a simple argument of common sense for
the rejection of speculations in favor of fantastic matter-origin.
The universal cannot be created by the particular; the master,
thought, cannot be created by the slave, matter ; the infinite in
motion, in compass, in aspiration, must have necessarily had an
infinite origin, or else the infinite would be begotten of the finite.
Man has been said to be "an infinite within a finite "; and this is
true even of man in his natural being, leaving his revealed im-
mortality out of the question. But here let us take a popular
quibble of the sceptics, so as to bring out more fully this " infi-
niteness."

1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. 749

It is urged by the sceptics that in insect life there is an "in-
stinct " which needs but little increase to become " mind." They
who have read Mr. Darwin's treatise on insect life, or even Mr.
Romanes* clever paper on the same subject, may have been a bit
puzzled as to how they should define instinct, but they could not
possibly have confused it with mind. Mind, as we human beings
understand it, can have come only from mind, not from instinct ;
for as to instinct, the finiteness of its range makes it impossible
that it could be developed into intellect. Allowing that many
insects, and many animals, have memory, have will, have affec-
tions ; granting, which is much more to the purpose, that many
insects, many animals, are able to connect cause and effect, or to
foreknow the effects of certain causes, yet the one sovereign dis-
tinction which marks off all insect life, as well as all animal life,
from human life is that man is the only being who can pass his
mortal career with reference chiefly to a career which shall be
immortal. A dog may hide his bone for to-morrow ; insects may
bury their seeds for future offspring ; but it may be asserted, from
closest scrutiny of all such life, that no insect, no animal, can
weigh his present career with reference to an eternal correspon.
dence with reference to the intellectual or moral equivalent
which is to come after judgment on " this life." This of itself is
infinite gift, infinite creation. There is nothing at all like to it in
insect life, and there is nothing at all like to it in animal life. In-
stinct is exquisitely adapted to career. The instinct of every in-
sect is so adapted. So is the instinct of every animal. It is tru'e
that man has instinct as well as reason,; but man's instinct is only
his quickest intuition, the rapid judgment of his reason without
(felt) processes. What we call instinct, in all beings which are
not human, is a measurable gift, designed solely for temporal life
and utterly incompetent to grasp a higher.

Once more, in regard to this point of man's infiniteness : in
all his marvellous researches in the various branches of science,
in all his studies in mathematics or in physics, he has always
present to his mind these two truths : that he knows that the In-
finite can alone clear up his difficulties, and that he aspires to
possess Infinite Knowledge. Now, this knowledge, this aspira-
tion, show that he is begotten of Infinite Mind, that he possesses
powers to correspond to his mission, and that he is, therefore,
destined for an infinite future ; for otherwise he would be the
greatest anomaly in creation. It may be true that this know-
ledge, this aspiration, do not prove such great truths, as we say,
" logically," but they show them to the satisfaction of common

75o COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. [Mar..

sense. And since, in this life, we judge of everything by com-
mon sense, and act from morning to night upon its dicta, we must
be fools if in the most important of interests we do not give our
common sense the first place. Briefly, then, to sum up what has
been said: In all the soarings of his imagination, in the reach of
what is called the pure reason, in the compass of the affections
and aspirations, and in the capacity to live always for an infinite
future, man must be called an " infinite" being and must be con-
trasted with all other earth-creatures. Common sense will suffice
to establish this. We might spend our whole life in quibbling
about theories in which words and ideas play the chief parts,
but a few moments' exercise of the common gift of common
sense will suffice to convince us of our own infiniteness.

This question of infiniteness may be also argued in connection
with what is called the " fitness of things." Just as it is true that
the fitness of things (the fitness or perfect harmony of all creation,
both in the vaster and in the lesser spheres, both in the illimit-
able heavens and also in the minutest living organisms) could
come only of an Intellect above them all, so it is true that man's
mind can only know this because it has (created) faculties to do so.
The gift of apprehension, in itself infinite infinite in the appre-
hending of Infinite Fitness couJd not grow out of an instinct such
as we mean by "insectile," any more than instinct could grow
out of itself. The fitness is one thing, our apprehension of it
is another. It is this gift of apprehension which makes us ask
ourselves such questions as Who made our eyes to see the stars,
our ears to hear the harmonies of sounds, our hands to know the
touch of different objects, our delicate sense of smell to become
enraptured by the rose, our fineness of taste to like or to
dislike what may possibly be beneficial or injurious, save
only He who created the human intellect, which apprehends
the fitness of everything ? " Oh ! but," it is replied, " the senses
are at least common to all insect life as well as to all animal
life." No, not the senses, in combination with other gifts, such
as enable man, and man only, to converse with exquisite fitness
on every mental and sensuous aspect of all he knows ; not the
senses which are as inlets to that human " soul " which can pour
itself into the soul of another by a hundred operations in which
volition and matter are united with ineffable* perfectness ; not the
senses which are as threads which unite the finite with the in-
finite e-lectric wires which play on intellect and on will, con-
veying messages to the " infiniteness" of mind which roams in
worlds unexpressed and inexpressible. Our apprehension of

1885.] COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. 751

this " fitness of things " may certainly be called infinite gift, just
as our apprehension of the analogy in things createdanalogy in
the material and moral world, or analogy in things natural, things
revealed is proof positive to common sense that the Creator
" foresaw it all," forewilled it, foreapproved it, as a whole.

Scepticism, with its small auxiliaries, modern science and that
philosophy which treats the mind as a sort of clock-work, is al-
ways rummaging in the workshop of its fancy, among the difficul-
ties which it vainly strives to resolve, instead of taking the great
whole of all that is and preferring the infinite before the finite.
Scepticism, when scientific (and it always pretends now to be
so), will not let a man think anything until he has defined all
the processes by which his thoughts ought successively to be
generated, and is very angry with an objector who thinks that
anything ought to be thought in a different groove to the scep-
tic's own pet one. Scepticism is always painfully conceited.
It fancies it knows everything about religion, especially about
Catholic philosophy, and can even teach theologians what they
do not know. To take one example of this conceit, Mr. Her-
bert Spencer published, in an English magazine, a paper on
certain aspects of religion, in which paper he condensed into
half a page five objections to the religion of Christians; and
of these five objections four were grounded on .statements
which were absolutely untrue as points of dogma, or, to put it
differently, were such "slovenly writing" that almost every line
might have been corrected by a seminarist who was but begin-
ning his studies in theology. Here we had a philosopher who
really has great talent, and who can reason well on what he does
understand, making four objections to what he supposed to be
Catholic dogmas, but which were not dogmas at all as he stated
them. The " fitness of things " certainly demands that a philoso-
pher should acquaint himself with the elements of a "philosophy"
which he professes to treat with profound contempt. This is
the fearful bane of modern scepticism which common sense just-
ly lashes with severity that conceit and ignorance are the " first
principles" of most quibblers who are too much in love with
themselves to care for truth. One word more as an illustration.
Mr. Harrison stated, in a note to a recent paper, that " the think-
ing world " had long abandoned the delusion that a sound philo-
sophy was consistent with Catholicism! This was stated for a fact
in two lines. Now, if the "facts" on which scepticism is
grounded, or on which so-called philosophy is grounded, are
mostly of this exceptional kind (it being asserted that Catholicism

752 COMMON SENSE vs. SCEPTICISM. [Mar.,

is inconsistent with pure philosophy, and that " the thinking
world" has so decided), common sense can afford to say to such
philosophers : " Your vanity makes you blind to simple tru-
isms."

Lastly, common sense must point to the obvious fact that all
impugners of the divine authority of the Catholic Church, here-
tics and schismatics as well as atheists, differ widely on the
ground of their objections and quarrel without ceasing among
themselves. (In England it would be diverting, were it not
rather lamentable, to watch the slashing and cutting by each sepa-
rate " philosopher " against every philosophy save his own.)
Neither the professedly intellectual philosophers nor the mere
catchpenny vaunters of their own conceits can suggest any sys-
tem which is either practical or sublime, nor can they agree in
their negative ravings against truth. They are destroyers, not
apostles ; wanton children, not grave men ; east winds that cut to
the marrow of the heart, not the still, small voice of the pure con-
science. They are as Apollyons in the desolation they produce,
not as angels in the peace they impart. Common sense shows
whence their mission comes. The gravest thinkers of our time,
whether historians or essayists or men who devote their lives to
pure science, all confess that in the Catholic religion alone may be
found the harmony of the soul's troubles. Such men look up-
ward, not downward ; they look away from themselves to the In-
finite Good, and are not snared by the smallness of a philosophy
which proposes its own measure as its only end. Such men have
common sense. If we should define common sense in its relation
to religion, we should say that it is that "instinct " which teaches
men to prefer greatness to whatever is small in human life, and so
leads them to adore God as the alone infinitely worthy of their
aspirations, their affections, their sufferings.

1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 753

STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY,
A.D. 1570-85.*

IN 1585 the next Percy who held the title of Earl of North-
umberland was committed to the Tower on a charge of being-
concerned in the Throckmorton conspiracy against Elizabeth.f
The queen's council alleged at the time that he committed sui-
cide ; but as he was a very religious Catholic this statement was
not accepted as the true one, and for a long time the event was
described as a political assassination. Sir Christopher Hatton
spoke in a violent manner of the deceased nobleman, stating that
he was " without gratitude or conscience." Many years later
Sir Walter Raleigh affirmed that Northumberland " fell by the
hand of a hired bravo." Who instigated the assassin still re-
mains a mystery. A " whisper of the times," however, pointed
to Lord Leicester.

The executions which followed the imprudent Northern In-
surrection were terrible. Eight hundred men were hanged, and
ten women also paid the death-penalty for harboring rebels.
Several young ^vomen were flogged, and others died of prison fever ;
and many poor children perished from cold and hunger. The
queen severely censured her generals in command for not " exe-
cuting justice more promptly." \ Elizabeth issued a special or-
der that the bodies were " not to be removed from the trees on
which they hung, but to remain there till the said bodies fell to pieces
or were devoured by birds of prey" At the period of the above
horrible scenes Elizabeth was in her thirty-seventh year and
accounted by her courtiers and prelates as " humane and
gentle."

The Earl of Westmoreland escaped the personal vengeance
of Queen Elizabeth. As a matter of course he lost his property,
and, after years of poverty and wandering through France and
Flanders, he died in Paris. He was devoted to the Catholic
Church and to the maintenance of that church in all 'its glory,
power, and splendor. He was likewise chivalrously attached to

* Sefe THE CATHOLIC WORLD for December, 1884.

t The Throckmorton conspiracy occurred many years previous. I shall refer to it anon.
\ Sharpe's History of the Northern Rebellion ; Despatches of Lords Sussex and Hunsdon ;
State Papers upon the Northern Rebellion.

State Papers upon the Northern Rebellion during the reign of Elizabeth (1570-1).
VOL. XL. 48

754 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Mar.,

his friends and his country. This nobleman was the last de-
scendant of the historical peer known as the " King-Maker " in
the days of the " Wars of the Roses."

No one had been more deeply implicated in the project for
the liberation of Mary Stuart than Leonard Dacre, the male
representative of the noble family of the Dacres of Gill's Land.
Leonard Dacre's followers were as courageous as himself. They
pursued Queen Elizabeth's troops four miles to the banks of the
Chelt, " where," writes Lord Hunsdon, " his footmen (infantry)
gave the proudest charge upon my shot that I ever received."
Still, the wild valor of the Bordermen was no match for the
steady discipline of the foreign mercenaries, whose trade was
fighting. Dacre's men fell into disorder; then a panic, followed
by a retreat. Another fight took place a few miles farther on,
where the insurgents fought with immense courage, but were
doomed to final defeat. Leonard Dacre escaped to Scotland,
where he was still pursued by the English spies of Walsingham.
In a few months, however, he reached Flanders, where he re-
ceived a hospitable reception from the outlawed subjects of
Queen Elizabeth.

Dacre sent a herald to Lord Hunsdon, proposing to de-
cide "the claims of the rival queens by a single combat between
himself and Lord Hunsdon." Hunsdon rejected this chival-
rous challenge, as might have been expected. Elizabeth " com-
manded " that Dacre's head should be brought to her, dead or
alive, in fourteen days. Hunsdon, however, failed to gratify his
royal mistress in this instance.

Those were the times for strange events. It appears mar-
vellous indeed that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, one of the most
implacable of Mary Stuart's enemies, should end his days as a
follower and champion of the royal captive. In a confidential
note he writes thus to Mary Stuart, whom he had so long per-
secuted :

" Your majesty has in England many friends of all degrees that favor
your title. Some people are persuaded that in law your right is best. Some
folks have formed a very good opinion of your virtuous character and the
liberality of your religious sentiments. The talent you displayed in the
government of Scotland won for you the confidence and esteem of those
who were opposed to you."

In another secret correspondence from Edinburgh to Tutbury
Castle Throckmorton states that " his convictions are now all in
MaryS favor. ' '

It is certain that Throckmorton was connected with a con-

1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 755

spiracy to dethrone Elizabeth on the grounds of illegitimacy, tak-
ing Cranmer's judgment in the case of Anna Boleyn as their legal
guide. This plot is supposed to have been planned when Eliza-
beth had been about eleven or twelve years on the throne. The
conspiracy was managed with profound secrecy. And, more
strange still, it was composed of Protestants and Catholics, and even
Anglican Bishops, whose emoluments were " to be considerably in-
creased" Throckmorton proceeds : " The people of your own
religion are for you, and many Protestants too." This wily diplo-
matist seems to have been sincere, for he had everything to lose
by the cause he had secretly espoused. He advised the Queen
of Scots to " offer conciliation to the English Protestants ; for
that they were far more easily won than the Kirk Christians"
This was a certain fact, for the Presbyterians were generally a
sordid class in political speculations, and the much-abused name
of Christianity became a matter of money or the transfer of land.

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton escaped the scaffold to die, as it
was reported at the time, by poison. It is, however, generally
affirmed by his contemporaries that he died very suddenly, and
popular feeling pointed out the Earl of Leicester as " having
given him a poisoned fig, and that he became suddenly 'ill and
died in great torture." Lord Leicester was so intensely hated
by the people of England, and especially those of London, that
they would accept as true the worst accusations that might be
preferred against him.

Camden reports the death of Throckmorton to have taken
place in 1570, and he is silent as to the report of poison. And,
again, Camden writes: " He died in good time for himself, being
in great danger of life by his restless spirit."* Public opinion,
whether right or wrong, pointed out Leicester as the assassin of
Throckmorton, who was far from being popular himself.

A large number of State Papers were in the possession of Sir
Nicholas Throckmorton when he filled the office of Chamberlain
of the Exchequer under Elizabeth. Those State Papers were
placed by Throckmorton's son, Arthur, at the disposal of Sir
Henry Wotton, who bequeathed them to King Charles I. to be
preserved in the State Paper Office a bequest which remained
unexecuted until the year 1857.! Amongst those valuable docu-
ments were to be found (if not destroyed) much of the corre-
spondence which passed between Queen Elizabeth, William Cecil,
Randolph, and Throckmorton concerning the Queen of Scots.
The letters, still extant, bear upon them the movements made by

* See Camden's Annals, p. 131. t Preface to Russell Prcndergast's State Papers.

756 STRAY LEAVES -FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Mar.,

the English queen and her council in fomenting rebellion in
Scotland against its lawful sovereign.

It is really a puzzle to learn that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton
was one of the Star Chamber witnesses against his friend, Lord
Crumwell. He must have been a spy in early life perhaps in
the service of Crumwell himself. Nothing more likely. With
the exception of Sir William Cecil and Thomas Randolph, no
member of Elizabeth's council or general government did more
to injure the Queen of Scots than Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.

Another of the conspirators pledged with Throckmorton to
overthrow Queen Elizabeth was the Earl of Pembroke, who re-
ceived so many grants of land and other favors from the queen.
Lord Pembroke professed himself as " an earnest Protestant "
under the government of Edward VI. ; he was one of the first
to acknowledge, and then to desert, Queen Jane. Queen Mary
having restored the abbey of Wilton to the nuns, Lord Pem-
broke received the abbess and her sisterhood [twenty-four in
number] at the gate, " cap in hand." When Elizabeth subse-
quently suppressed the convent at Wilton the Earl of Pembroke
drove the nuns out of their holy and happy home with his horse-
whip, bestowing upon them an appellation which implied their
constant breach of the vow of chastity. In an age rendered in-
famous to all time for the wickedness of its leading men, William
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, stands in the " front rank of the
battalion of evil."

The penalty for celebrating Mass in those days was a fine
of two hundred marks and imprisonment sometimes for years.
In several cases priests were hanged upon the evidence of one
witness, and that witness, perhaps, known to be a person of aban-
doned character. The trial of a Catholic priest was a monstrous
mockery of justice^.

At a later period another of the Percy family joined the
court party. The nobleman to whom I refer was known as
Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and became one of the
champions of Queen Elizabeth. Although his family suffered
immensely from her, he was one of the most obsequious of the
queen's courtiers. The author of the Court of ElizabetJi repre-
sents this nobleman as " signally deficient in the guiding and
restraining virtues." The ladies of the court did not like his
society ; but for a time he was noticed by his sovereign, who
made him a Knight of the Garter. This incident, as usual,
caused some gossip amongst the jealous-minded courtiers, who
were always looking for " more favors and never satisfied."

1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 757

During- the last days of Elizabeth, Northumberland gave many
indications of his desire for a change. He courted the friend-
ship of King James of Scotland, and flattered his vanity by writ-
ing congratulations " to the rising sun." But he little knew of
what material the dastard James Stuart was " made up." He
was amongst the first to welcome King James when he made
his public entry into London. The king commanded that the
Earl of Northumberland should be sworn in a privy council-
lor, and he was noticed particularly at court. As soon as King
James was securely settled on the English throne his policy
underwent some changes. There were new favorites, and Percy
of Northumberland began to feel that he was "suspected of
something of which he knew nothing." The misfortunes of the
ancient house of Percy seemed to pursue him ; for, on some un-
supported charge connected with the Gunpowder Plot,* he was
stripped of all his offices and honors, heavily fined, and sentenced
to a life-imprisonment. At the end of fifteen years the "royal
mercy " was extended to Northumberland, and he was ordered
to live in strict retirement for the remainder of his days. A
novel mark of royal mercy from King James !

During his long confinement Northumberland turned his
mind to the study of mathematics and indicated the possession
of considerable talent. He had some good qualities. He was a
steady friend to the needy literary strugglers of his time, and
had several of them constantly at his residence. The chess-
players and story-tellers were also amongst hie welcome guests.
The close of his career was most edifying, and he retained the
affections of the followers of the Percy family to the end of his
. eventful life. A few months before his death Lord Northum-
berland returned to the faith of his fathers. In the days of the
" priest-hunting " he gave protection and food to many an out-
lawed priest. A number of poor Catholics likewise received
bread, meat, and beer daily at his mansions during the reign of
Elizabeth.

From the " Wars of the Roses " down to " Derwentwater's
Farewell " the name of Radclyffe occasionally appears in the
records of the Tower. Amongst the unhappy prisoners in that
fortress about 1576 was Eaglemond Radclyffe, said to be the
younger brother of the Earl of Sussex. A strange mystery sur-

* The " Gunpowder Plot " is now well known to have been set in motion by Sir Robert
Cecil. Of course it was never intended to take place, but was to be used as a bogey to usher in
the penal laws enacted in the reign of King James against the down-trodden English and Irish
Catholics.

758 STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. [Mar.,

rounds the history of this young- gentleman. In 1569 he joined
the Northern Insurrection with several other men of rank, and
having eluded the vengeance of the queen's council, he escaped
to Spain, and, after leading a wandering life for some years, re-
turned to England in 1575 ; he was soon arrested and committed
to the Tower, where he remained for several months in a state
of prostration from ill-health and bad food. The queen, having
been informed of his condition, " took pity upon the brother of
her faithful kinsman, Lord Sussex." Elizabeth therefore ex-
tended mercy to her prisoner, and Radclyffe was banished from
the realm. His love of adventure was seldom checked by the
experience of life which misfortune afforded him. He next ap-
peared in the service of Don John of Austria. In Vienna he had
a love-adventure, and wounded his rival, a Hungarian officer, in
a desperate sword-combat. In this case he narrowly escaped
the law. He was subsequently arrested, and, accused of having
been concerned in a conspiracy against Don John, he was tried
according to the Austrian code, and condemned to death, in
1578. Radclyffe protested his innocence before the Council
Chamber, but to no purpose. He was attended to the scaffold
by an English Benedictine father named Tottenham ; so writes
his Spanish friend, Don Miguel Cabrera. During his exile
Radclyffe frequently experienced poverty and hardship, espe-
cially in Flanders and France, walking along a forest track for
days half-naked and starved. In these sad wanderings he was
accompanied by several brave and honorable men who were
outlawed from England and Ireland for their religion. Those
poor gentlemen had to depend for support upon the small sums
remitted by their friends at home. As usual, the French felt
little sympathy for the exiles, and I may add that at a later
period the French nation acted in a very ungenerous spirit to the
Irish Brigade. Louis XIV. and his successor, with all their
grave errors, held in grateful remembrance the services ren-
dered by Irishmen to their country. The public men of France
detested the Irish exiles. It is recorded that a French Secre-
tary of War made frequent complaints to Louis XV. against
the Irish Brigade. " Those Irish," says the minister, " are im-
mensely troublesome ; they will not wait for orders, but rush at
the enemy like tigers. They are very troublesome." " C'est
exactement," replied his majesty, " ce que nos ennemis Anglais
ont si fr6quemment verifi6."

Donald Macpherson, a " Borderman " of those times, states
that it was bruited in a very positive manner that the hero of

1885.] STRAY LEAVES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 759

this narrative was not a Radclyffe, but the natural son of one of
the house of Percy by a Spanish lady of youth, beauty, and for-
tune. Lady Sydney throws further light upon this roman-
tic story. She affirms that she saw the picture of the Spanish
lady in question, who died in London, where she resided many
years under the Irish name of MacMahon. Lady Sydney adds :
" There was a mystery connected with the story of this good old
lady which was known to very few. Strange to say, some time
before her death our blessed queen became acquainted with her
through some Irish lady, perhaps Elizabeth Fitzgerald, once so
noted in Surrey's sonnets. Be this as it may, our good-natured
queen knew Madame MacMahon's sad story, and actually visited
her in private, and kindly added to her social comforts in va-
rious ways unknown to the world without."

The Lady Sydney here alluded to was the widow of Sir
Philip Sydney, who perished so gloriously at the battle of Zut-
phen. She subsequently married the ill-fated Robert, Earl of Es-
sex, and the young Earl of Clanricarde became her third husband.
She was the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. Her own
private history is in itself a romance ; I will not, however, in this
instance disturb the veil which conceals the memory of the dead.

The Countess of Clanricarde, to whom I have here alluded,
was much beloved by the Catholics of Galway.

Don John, to whom I have referred in these " Stray Leaves,"
was supposed- to be the natural son of Charles V. by Barbara
Blomberg, who has been represented as a woman of humble life.
Other writers affirm that Barbara was a strolling player, and
possessed of a fine voice which captivated the emperor, who
expended large sums of money upon her; and that she lived in
great extravagance and was a source of annoyance to the royal
family. Don John played a remarkable part in his brief career.
He was very handsome, chivalrous, and brave. For a time he
stood in the front rank of Mary Stuart's admirers. " Every con-
temporary chronicle," writes Motley, " French, Spanish, Italian,
Flemish, and Roman, has dwelt upon Don John's personal
beauty and the singular fascination of his manners in the society
of ladies."* King Philip looked upon Don John with mistrust
and hatred. The narratives handed down concerning the mo-
ther of Don John involve a series of contradictions which have
had their origin in the strong sectarian feeling that prevailed in
the Netherlands on every matter where the characters of Charles
V. or King Philip were at issue.

* Motley's History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. iii.

760 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

A FASHIONABLE EVENT.

MRS. ALDERMAN REIDY was a handsome woman in spite of
her forty-five years. What was more important still in her eyes,
she piqued herself on being- " good style." She dressed with
taste. She compared herself favorably with Mrs. Alderman
Darcy, who habitually wore sealskins and heavy gold necklaces,
and with the lady-mayoress herself, who-had been known to say
" yez." She was sure there was more of the lady about her than
about big, rattling, loud-voiced Mrs. O'Regan, the brewer's wife,
who lived on Merrion Square, and who was a "real, blooded
lady," being one of the Mooneys of Meath. Besides, Dan that
was her husband, Alderman Reidy was in the wholesale wine-
trade : none of your vulgar retail people. He was even con-
nected with some distilleries. This was eminently respectable.
She thought of the Powerses, the Roes, the Guinnesses, which
brought her ideas right up to the realms of the peerage. Cer-
tainly the Reidys might " look high" for their daughter, who
was a beauty and had a large fortune.

" What's that daughter of yours doing with herself all the
morning?" asked her husband, looking up from his Freeman.
"Why isn't she down to breakfast?"

" ' That daughter of mine ! ' Dan, I wish you wouldn't be so
vulgar. Annette has a headache this morning." Miss Reidy had
been christened Maria Anne, according to the wish of an old-
fashioned godmother, but early in her life her mother had made
the best of it by calling her Annette.

" Faith, it's the hardy ould headache by this time. She has it
every morning now. That English finishing-school you sent her
to, Maggie, has upset that girl's head in all sorts of ways. I'll
bet a fiver it's a yallow-backed novel she has in her fist this min-
ute, if we got a peep at her."

Alderman Dan took a sip of his tea, and, stretching out his
legs comfortably on the hearth-rug, plunged into a speech on the
education question by Mr. Gladstone.

His wife, in a half-mechanical way, as if it were a habitual ex-
clamation, said, " Dan, you're shocking ! " and resumed the study
of her newspaper, which was the Daily Express, and which con-

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 761

tained an account of the dress worn by every lady at yesterday's
levee at the Castle.

Mrs Reidy looked well that morning in her quiet, well-fitting
demi-toilette, and occasionally, as she read out in a half-audible mur-
mur, " Lady Mary McGee, by Lady Granard pearl satin, ruby
train, plumes to match," she elevated her head and squared her
graceful shoulders with quite the air of a duchess. Indeed, there
were few matrons of title presented at that levee she was reading
of who could boast of a better "silent presence" than Mrs.
Reidy. Nor when she opened her mouth was she in any great
danger. Her accent was Dublin, enriched and softened by Gal-
way, her husband's county. It was only in moments of very un-
guarded converse with intimate friends that she was betrayed by
the treacherous " yez," the dropped h of Dublin's Cockagne.
At length Mrs. Reidy called her husband's attention.

" Dan," said she, "just listen to this : ' Fashionable marriage
Colton and O' Regan. On Monday, at the Madeleine, Paris, the
marriage of Miss Bertha O'Regan, daughter of Hugh O'Regan,
Esq., J.P., D.L., of Merrion Square, Dublin, and Lord Arthur
Colton, A.D.C., was solemnized with great tclat. The Right
Rev. Monsignor O'Regan officiated, assisted by, etc.' Then
there's a great description of the bridesmaids' dresses, and then
it says : ' The ceremony was again performed at the Anglican
church in the Rue du Bac according to the Protestant rite.'
O Dan! aren't these O'Regans the lucky people?"

" To marry their daughter to a Protestant?"

" Yes, but to a lord, Dan ; and they got a dispensation. O
Dan ! fancy our Annette married to a lord Lady Colton ! "

" I'd see her a nun first," said Dan, rising and trimming
his iron-gray whiskers, and examining his ruddv and good-look-
ing face in the pier-glass.

"Ah! Dan," sighed Mrs. Reidy, "you have no ambition. If
you only exerted yourself we might make a good match for
Annette."

" The girl herself," said Dan, " I thought, had a fancy for that
young Hartigan; and, 'pon my song, the divil a better match I
wish her."

" Dan, let me never hear you say that again. I am astonished
at you. Young Hartigan, indeed ! A briefless barrister ! "

" Faith, his brief-bag won't be long empty, I'll be bail. I
heard him pleading yesterday, and the whole Four Courts were
talking of him. She'll be a long sight better off if she begins life
as the companion of an honest young fellow with brains and

762 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

pluck than any of your Judy O'Regans with their lordy-dords. I
know a girl that began that way, and she don't seem sorry for it
eh, Maggie? although you might have married an alderman
ready-made."

His wife glanced affectionately at him.

" And, for that matter," went on Dan, " Redmond Hartiganis
as good as the best of them. He's a scholar of Trinity and
comes of decent people."

" Oh ! I'll allow he's genteel, and he's real fond of Annette ; but
Dan, we might look a great deal higher, and we will too. Ah !
Dan, if you were only more civil to them at the Castle there's no
knowing what they'd do for you."

" They might make a knight of me," interrupted Dan, with a
hearty laugh, " like Sir Thady Mulcahey, and you'd be me lady.
Begad, Maggie," he added, drawing her towards him and kissing
her brow, " sorra lady in the land would become the title better.
'Twill be well for your daughter if she's half as fine a woman, no
matter who she marries."

" O Dan ! if you'd only make me Lady Reidy ! "

Mrs. Reidy's heart was in that aspiration as she laid her
hands on her husband's shoulders and looked into his eyes.
This was the pinnacle of her dreams. How often had she pic-
tured Dan, his stout calves encased in the silken hose of a court
suit, kneeling before the viceregal throne while the lord-lieu-
tenant, striking him on the shoulder with a sword, said, " Arise,
Sir Daniel Reidy ! " To have the servants address her, " Yes,
me lady," "No, me lady!" But Dan, who had -a strong sense
of humor, together with some mild nationalist opinions, always
laughed heartily, as he did on the present occasion.

" Here she comes," he exclaimed suddenly, " and barely in
time to give her father a kiss before he leaves for the day."

A pretty girl in a blue morning-gown had entered the room.
She ran to her father and embraced him affectionately.

" Dear old dad ! " she cried. " I'm late oh ! take care, you'll
crush my stephanotis."

She rearranged the pale-pink blossom in her hair. Then she
kissed her mother and surveyed herself in the glass.

" Well, Annie, be a good girl and don't let your mother turn
your head. I'm off to town ; there's Christy with the carriage."

In a few moments he had said good-by and was rolling in his
tidy brougham over the gravel of the avenue.

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 763

ii.

Annette Reidy had been educated at Rathfarnham convent
until she was seventeen. Then her mother decided that she
should have a year at what is called a " finishing-school " in Eng-
land. This was to give her "tone." These finishing-schools
are wonderful institutions. They undertake to counteract in
one year what a convent-school has been doing in ten. Alas!
could the mother-superior of Rathfarnham have seen what a
change had been wrought in the modest young virgin she had
sent from her roof with blessings two years ago, she would have
been shocked. Annette had learned how to keep her complexion
pale. She knew the right shade to pencil her eyebrows. She
had become an enthusiastic waltzer. She had learned that a
little sal-volatile in black coffee, taken immediately before going
to a party, makes the eyes lustrous. At supper she made a point
of criticising the sherry. She had the " Rotten Row stare " :
while she addressed one person her eyes boldly followed the
movements of somebody else. Her conversation was as
" horsey " as she could make it ; she even studied the " sporting
intelligence" in the daily papers and tried to learn something of
the horses' names and the betting, but in this she got rather
mixed. All this was "tone " the manner of the best society as
conscientiously extracted by her teachers from the most recent
novels, especially those of " Ouida." At bottom the girl had a
good heart. But then she was only eighteen and had spent a
year at an English finishing-school.

Annette herself was a close student of " Ouida." The titled
military man, blast of the pleasures of "life," yet able to toss a
"cad " over a house with one scented hand, was her ideal hero.

This morning/ before coming down to her late breakfast (she
had had a cup of chocolate in bed, like the Princess Napraxine\
she had read carefully the Daily Express. The Express, being
the " Castle " organ, is supposed to have the most accurate in-
formation on the affairs of the viceregal court. She had de-
voured every line of the account -of the fashionable marriage of
Bertha O'Regan to Lord Arthur Colton, A.D.C. (These let-
ters, dear reader, mean aide-de-camp in the present instance
aide-de-camp to the lord-lieutenant.) Bertha had been a
school-fellow of hers for a while, but had gone to a different
finishing-school. " Blissful Bertha ! " thought Annette ; and only
she had a good little heart in spite of her folly, I would say she
was consumed with envy. " Blissful Bertha! Shall I ever make

764 A FASHIONABLE E VENT. [Mar.,

a marriage like that ? " It was with this thought buzzing in her
head she entered the breakfast- room.

" Mother," she said, when Alderman Dan had driven away
for town (I forgot to say they were living in a handsome villa
on the Blackrock road whose grounds overlooked the sea), " I
have made up my mind to one thing : father must take us to
the levee. We must be presented."

Her mother looked at her admiringly and then heaved a lit-
tle sigh.

"Ah !" said she, "your father is a queer man, Annette. He
has no ambition at all. I believe he'd rather be spouting at the
corporation than mixing with the best society."

" Well, he'll have to get some ambition, mamma. He is an
alderman, and as such he and his family have a right to be pre-
sented at the Castle. The lady-mayoress will be our sponsor.
And, what's more, he'll have to bring us at once, for I want to go
to St. Patrick's ball. All the girls are going, and O mamma !
think of the aides-de-camp ! "

" Yes, my daughter, you shall go," said Mrs. Alderman
Reidy emphatically, as if rising to a proper sense of thesitua-'
tion. " My daughter's prospects are not to be blighted because
her father is unambitious. Musha, Annette, did you see the ac-
count of Bertha O'Regan's wedding ?"

"Didn't I, though?" exclaimed the daughter, casting up her
eyes ; ancl then, dear reader, they entered into a discussion of
the bridesmaids' dresses a theme into which I could not dare to
follow them. Soon, however, Annette said :

" Marrying a lord, mamma ! Fancy, marrying a lord ! "

" Would you like to marry one, Annette ? " asked her mother,
with a furtive look.

" A lord and an officer too ! " went on Annette, still in a
reverie. "Is it would I like to marry one, mamma ? O mam-
ma ! could I dare to dream of such a glory ? A lord and an of-
ficer ! Ay, even a lord's son or a lord's cousin ! Why, mamma,
we would then be in the aristocracy, especially if he was an
officer." Take care, dear reader, and don't misunderstand her :
she does not mean a policeman. There is only one officer in the
world to the eyes of a girl who has been to an English finish-
ing-school the commissioned officer in her Majesty Queen Vic-
toria's army.

" Why, then," said her mother, tossing her head and drawing
herself up, " I don't see why we haven't as good a right to en-
ter the aristocracy as the O'Regans, even if Judy O'Regan is a

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 765

Mooney of Meath. You're an only daughter and a beauty, and
there isn't a girl in Dublin has a bigger fortune. And now,
Annette," added Mrs. Reidy, and the furtive look returned, " I
am glad to see that little affair with Redmond Hartigan is all for-
gotten. A briefless barrister ! "

Annette sighed.

"Ah ! yes," she said ; " Redmond is a nice fellow, a noble fel-
low, and I am very fond of him. But he has no position, no
handle to his name no nothing. What's the law ? True, he is
professional ; but professional people nowadays are looked on as
little better than being in trade. That's what I heard an officer
saying to Miss Dooley at the Mansion House ball. Oh! no;
Redmond must be given up."

" Bravely spoken, Annette bravely spoken ! " Mrs. Reidy
drew her daughter towards her and kissed her. " You shall go
to the levee and to St. Patrick's ball. You sliall make a fashion-
able match. Your father thinks we are silly. He shall see."

III.

It was a day of excitement at the United Service Club in
Stephen's Green. The old colonel who was fond of taking the
air and ogling the passers-by from a camp-stool on the steps was
obliged to swear in Hindostanee a dozen times at the fussy sub-
alterns who, running in and out, trod on his patent-leather shoes.
The steward was tired supplying the bar with materials for
brandy-and-sodas.

It was simply the day of one of the great English races the
Oaks. The members of the club, being military men, were bet-
ting freely. Almost all had made books. There were sweep-
stakes for old fogies who did not bet, but who liked to have a
hand in the fun.

The excitement only really began towards the afternoon,
towards the hour when the race was about to be run. Tele
graph-boys were running in every moment with "flimsies" an-
nouncing the state of the betting at Tattersall's and on the
course.

The young men afforded an amusing study to some of the
cooler heads who lounged in easy-chairs in the bay-window or
in the smoking-room. These young fellows bronzed, athletic
young soldiers of the line regiments for the most part, with not
over-much money took the same healthy delight in a bit of ex-
citement that any other youths used to hard work in the open

766 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

air do. They enjoyed it like jolly plough-boys. The subtle
charm they felt was in the thought that this was " life." They
had two models among their seniors to imitate. One was the
languid, cool man of the world who made bets with a quiet nod
and never got excited. The other was the " plunger," who
dressed rather " loudly " and took every one into his confidence
as to his heavy gambling transactions. The former model was
the most admired, but the blood of youth could not be restrained
sufficiently to imitate it.

Between the hours of three and four telegrams poured in like
a fusilade. The members were asking each other, " Do you
know anything?" "What have you got?" One would re-
ceive a wire from his "tout" containing the very latest " straight
tip." He would toss it to the others and rush wildly out to seek
some seedy bookmaker, dodging the police in Grafton Street or
at the corner of Exchange Court, in the hope that even at that
late hour he might be induced to lay odds. They were satisfied ;
this was " life." For the existence led by the " Household fel-
lows" the curled darlings of the Household troops is as much
a sealed book to the subaltern of the " line " as it is to the ordi-
nary civilian.

At length all was over. The race was run. Bets were settled.
Half an hour of white heat when the news came, half an hour of
red heat, and the club gradually cooled off and pursued its or-
dinary tenor.

But to-day one murmur kept alive when all else was quiet.

A dapper little fellow, with red hair and a round, good-na-
tured face, entered the smoking-room.

" Say, fellows," he said,. " Reggie Whiffletree says he's broke.
He's taking on bad drinking. Come along and see him."

About half a dozen sympathizers followed him.

Captain the Honorable Reginald Whiffletree was seated at a
table drinking brandy-pawnee as fast as a waiter could bring it
to him. His two legs were stretched out straight, making an
inverted letter V. One hand was on the table grasping a glass.
His chin was on his breast. He was making little, weak kicks at
an attendant who was trying to gather up a pack of cards that
was scattered at his feet.

" What's the matter with old Whiffle ? " says one of the sym-
pathizers, lighting a cigar. " What's he been doing with the
cards? Eh, old chap? What are you pelting the cards about
for?"

" 'V had to shell out my last fifty-pun' note to that kid over

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 767

there at ' Nap,' " says Whiffle, wobbling his head in the direc-
tion of a pale young man with an eye-glass who was picking his
teeth and sipping a glass of sherry and bitters.

"Cheer up, old boy !." says another sympathizer, giving him a
dig in the ribs. " You an't broke ? "

"Dead-broke!" says Whiffle, with an oath and a groan.

" Tim, more pawnee, you ! " The

dashes, dear reader, represent expletives and epithets.

" What ! Can't you settle up ? "

" Ruined, ruined, ruined at Tattersall's ! Man alive, don't you
hear? Ruined at Tattersall's! Do you hear now?"

He would have been very deaf had he not heard that roar.

" You see," explained the little red-haired .man, who stood
over Whiffletree as a surgeon might over a case in presence
of a class of pupils " you see, he stood to win ten thousand
on the Golightly mare, and had Scranton backed for a place.
Besides, he laid odds against two of the placed horses. His
book is in a deuce of a mess. There was an old bet to be paid
up at Tattersall's that he had fixed for doubles or quits on to-
day's race. Besides that, the Boulogne fellows wrote to him
yesterday threatening to post him if he didn't pay up. I'm
afraid it's a bad case, boys."

" Pawnee! pawnee! It's a of a bad case," roared the

patient. " I'm done."

" If he can't raise thirty thousand within the next two or
three days it's all up with him."

" What'll happen?"

9 " He'll be expelled from Tattersall's and the Jockey Club, and
be posted in Paris, and have to scoot to America."

The others looked on, sympathetic and glum.

It was remarkable that it was the junior members of the club
who took this friendly interest in Whiffletree. The others did
not seem to mind him. Whiffletree was the senior by many
years of the eldest of his sympathizers. This might have been
accounted for by the fact that he was only home from India on
leave of absence.

The Hon. Reginald Whiffletree was sixth son of the late Lord
Coachandfour and sixth brother of the present lord. At first
he had been in a crack Hussar regiment. Having run through
his money, he found it expedient to exchange into a line regi-
ment embarking for India. But the line regiment was ordered
home after a year, and Whiffletree did not want to go home.
So he exchanged into the native service, getting command of a

768 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

troop of Sepoy cavalry. Thus his old comrades in arms lost
sight of him for several years. Now he was home on a fur-
lough.

At last a thin voice broke the gloom. .It belonged to the pale
young man with the eye-glass. He had been A.D.C. to the
lord-lieutenant for the past twelve months, and was consequently
reputed to " know the town."

" I say," he said, " why don't Whiffle marry an alderman's
daughter?"

The others looked at him in pitying amazement.

" It's a desperate case," he went on, " and requires a desperate
remedy."

" Don't see your remedy," said somebody.

"Aldermen rolling in tin," said the A.D.C., " dying to. catch
us fellows for their daughters."

" Don't see your remedy yet. Whiffle must be paid up with-
in a week or fly. Fellow can't marry an alderman by elec-
tricity."

" You're a fool ! " said the A.D.C. " If we see him in train to
marry an aldermaness we can induce the bookmakers to wait.
They will hold off awhile and give him a chance, if we only say
the word."

It was with an envious admiration Whiffletree's sympathizers
now gazed on this budding Wellington.

"Know e'er an aldermaness ?" asked one at length.

" Yes," said the strategist. " Have the very thing in my eye.
Daughter of the richest alderman in town name, I believe,
Reidy. Met her mother and herself at the lord-mayor's orgie the
other night. Both of them dying to secure either a title or a
military man, so as to get into our world. Deuced impertinence,
but suits Whiffletree's bill now. Mother even went so far as to
ask me did I know any eligible young man in my regiment look-
ing for money and a handsome girl. Begad, I'll go see her this
very evening and bring Whiffle ! "

"Hurray! hurray! Heaw! heaw ! " cried the others in
chorus. " Whiffle, do you hear?"

Whiffle had fallen asleep.

They shook him up.

" Say, old boy, it's all right. Dal by 's fixed it up. You are to
marry an alderman's daughter. It's a come-down for you, you
know. But there's nothing else for it. It's better than being
posted at Tattersall's."

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 769

IV.

Mrs. Alderman Reidy and her daughter had one of their
wishes gratified. They were " presented " at the mock court
which the viceroy of Ireland holds at Dublin Castle. Dan ap-
peared in all the glory of a brown velvet and silver court suit,
with ruffles and sword to match. The sword tickled his fancy
immensely. It reminded him of a skewer. Over all he cast his
aldermanic robes of scarlet and sable, and carried a cocked hat
under his arm. His wife and daughter were enraptured.

They wore ostrich-plumes in their hair. At court plumes
are de rigiienr. Their dresses I don't pretend to describe ; they
were cut low. For two mortal hours they stood in a corridor,
jammed, and another hour they spent on their poor feet in the
Throne Room. At first the glitter of uniforms, the dazzle of
jewels and rich dresses, the important air of gentlemen-ushers,
the court ceremonial overawed them ; but a severe weariness in
the calves of the legs recalled them to a sense of human things.

At length their turn. came. A coarse-featured English earl,
with fiery-red hair and beard and the air of a distrait cattle-show
judge, stood on a dais with his wife. Both seemed extremely
bored and at little pains to disguise the fact. " How d'ye do,
Alderman Reid}' ? Charmed to see you men of your stamp,"
says his excellency. " Delighted to see you, Mrs. Reidy," says
the countess. " How charming your daughter is ! Your plumes
become you, Miss Reidy. Throng here to-day, isn't there?"
A set speech, names only changed. Mrs. Alderman Reidy and
Miss Reid} r kiss her hand, curtsy low, and pass on. 'Tis over!
Now to find the carriage and get home as fast as possible. The
Reidys have been presented at the Castle !

Next day a description of their dresses appeared among
columns of similar paragraphs in not only the faithful Daily Ex-
press, but also in the Freeman's Journal and the Irish Times,
dozens and dozens of copies of which they purchased and sent
to every friend they could think of in any quarter of the globe.

The invitation to the St. Patrick's ball duly followed. What
more was needed to fill Annette's and her mamma's cup of
glory ? A suitor for Annette's hand who would be either a lord
or an officer. Lo ! he came came in the person of Captain
the Honorable Reginald Whiffletree a lord's son, a lord's bro-
ther, an honorable, and an officer!

The St. Patrick's ball is one of the " duty " balls given by the
Irish viceroy to conciliate the tradesmen who put the royal arms
VOL. XL. 49

770 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

over their doors and to gracefully compliment the national sen-
timent. It is held on the evening of St. Patrick's day. Loyalist
squires who curse the pope nevertheless honor the occasion,
and bring their wives and daughters up to town to " rally round
the throne." The professional classes, headed by the surgeons-
in-ordinary and the learned sergeants, make a strong showing
there; for, since the Union, law and medicine occupy in Dublin
the place of the old aristocracy and live in its mansions. Need-
less to say the officers of the garrison and the irresistible A.D.C.'s
muster in full unilorm. On this occasion only, certain wholesale
grocers' wives are permitted the fearful joy of rubbing trains
with certain peeresses. The latter call the affair an awful mixum
gatherum, and attend it as they would a charity bazaar, "to help
the poor viceroy through with it." The supper may or may not
be good, according to the temperament of the lord-lieutenant ; but
Liddel's band always plays the latest waltzes in a masterly style.

Annette and her mamma enjoyed themselves hugely. The
Honorable Reginald Whiffletree's sympathetic club-chums, mean-
ing business, bestowed " the military " on them to their hearts'
content. Alas ! mother and daughter waltzed and waltzed. An-
nette had five different rents to show in her train, made by spurs.
Just fancy! Wasn't it delightful? Early in the evening Dan
found out that the port was good, and disappeared somewhere.

Redmond Hartigan was there, noble-browed and distingut in
spite of his plain coat. Ah! but Offenbach will tell you how
heavily handicapped even the cordon bleu of a prince is when a
military uniform is in competition. Annette gave two dances to
Redmond quadrilles. Redmond disapproved of round dances;
besides, the sons of Mars did not want quadrilles.

Redmond sat them out. He redeclared his love for Annette
and besought her to marry him. Last week he had won a great
popular case, and that day he had received from a deputation of
priests and laymen an invitation to contest a seat in Parliament.
He had just been awarded a moderatorship in Trinity. A bright
career was opening before him.

Annette wavered. She really cared for Redmond ; and don't
forget I said she had a good little heart, if a foolish little head.
Redmond caught her hand and entreated with passionate eager-
ness.

But just then came along her mother leaning on the arm of
a resplendent hussar, all gold lace, silk tights, patent leather, and
"peerage bouquet," who told Miss Reidy the next dance was his.
Ah ! your musty lawyers.

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 771

In sitting out his second quadrille Redmond received a blank
dismissal. Then he grew what Annette called " strange." He
warned her against Whiffletree. Surely she would not dream
of marrying a man who was not a Catholic ? Annette set this
down to jealousy, and was immensely flattered until he said the
captain was a blackleg ; then she was pleased to be indignant.

"At least," asked Redmond, " if you are determined to marry
him, for God's sake delay the day as long as possible. I fancy
I can find out something that may convince you that he is a
scoundrel."

" Sir," said Annette, rising, " this is intolerable. Take me to
my mother."

" Why, Annette Reidy ! "

" Why, Bridget Quin, who'd ever dream of meeting you at a
Castle bail ? "

It was a very beautiful girl, very beautifully dressed an old
school-fellow of Annette's, whom she had not seen since she had
left Rathfarnham.

"Gracious ! Bridget, you look perfectly lovely. How you've
improved ! "

" And you ! "

They escaped from their partners and got into a corner, and
began to chat, as girls who have been school-fellows, and who
have not met for two years, chat.

Captain Whiffletree, who was whirling past in a polka, shook
his programme at Annette a signal to be ready for the next
dance, which she had promised to him.

" O Annette ! I wanted to talk to you about that man. I
have heard the gossip about you. Do you know he is a Pro-
testant ? "

"Yes. What about it?"

" He is paying his addresses to you ?"

"Oh! yes. Well?"

" Annette, you surely do not think of marrying him ? "

" And why not, Miss Biddy, if I like him ? "

Bridget Quin's thoughtful face grew sad.

" Annette, you shock me," she said. " Do you not know what
the church thinks of such marriages?"

" Oh ! well," said Annette, with a toss of her head, " there are
exceptions. 'Tisn't every day girls like us get a chance of
marrying into the peerage."

772 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

Bridget smiled in a peculiar way.

" Besides," added Annette, " it's all right when you get a dis-
pensation."

" Nothing can dispense unhappiness, dear; and it is not with-
out good reason the church frowns on all mixed marriages."

" Bah ! I always knew you were a prude. Suppose you
wanted to marry a Protestant yourself?"

" I would not want to do so. If I loved any one very dearly,
and if he were not a Catholic and would not become one, I
would die an old maid sooner than marry him."

" Nonsense, girl dear ! If you got the chance of marrying an
honorable, a peer's son indeed, you'd be the very first to do it,
even if he was a Turk."

"'Annette, you are really shocking. That English school
you've been at has changed you more than I could believe. But
don't you know, dear, who Captain Whiffletree is? Papa says
he is a ba,d man."

" Papa, indeed ! " exclaimed Annette, in high dudgeon.
" Who's your papa, I'd like to know ? What can you or your
papa know about people like the Honorable Captain Whiffletree,
Bridget Quin ? Indeed, it's in a hurry you ought to be to change
that common name. Quin ! Biddy ! "

Bridget was not angry. She smiled, a little sadly.
" Biddy is not my name," she said. " I was christened Brid-
get my mother's name. It is a good name, a revered name
where I live, the name of one of the noblest women that ever
glorified her sex St. Bridget of Kildare ! "

" Lady Bridget, your aunt is beckoning to you. She asked
me to bring you to her at once."

It was Captain Whiffletree who stood over them, offering his
arm to Bridget Quin.

" Excuse me for robbing you of so fair a partner, Miss Reidy,"
he went on, " but I will return when I cross the room, and," he
added, with a fascinating smirk and dropping his voice, " try to
make amends by offering you myself."

" Lady Bridget ! " Before Annette had aroused from her
astonishment at the title she fancied she heard, the captain, hav-
ing escorted her school-fellow to her aunt, was whirling herself
around the waxed floor to the cadences of Waldteufel's " Geliebt
und Verloren."

Half an hour later Annette was by Bridget Quin's side again.

" O Lady Bridget ! why didn't you tell me? "

" I thought you knew. Don't Lady Bridget me, Annette. I

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 773

am still Bridget and shall always be Bridget to you, dear, though
you don't like the name! "

" Oh ! how horrid you must have thought me ! "

" Never mind, dear," said the other, with a sweet smile.
" You only amused me. I knew then you had not heard of the
change in our condition."

" But I had no idea your father was made a lord or had any
chance of being made one. I thought you were very poor."

" So we were, dear, very poor ; and two years ago my father
good man ! had as little idea there was a peerage awaiting him
as you had yourself. You see, the title was in abeyance for two
generations, and as an uncle and two nephews stood between
him and it, even if it were restored, he never bothered his dear
old head about it. But my granduncle, it appears, kept the
thing stirring, and the title was suddenly restored to him short-
ly after I left school. One of the nephews had died of consump-
tion a year before ; the other was shot in a gambling quarrel in a
California mining camp. The poor old man with his peerage
was heart-broken and bed-ridden with gout. He sent for my
father, who had thus become titular heir, and willed him all his
immense estates to enable him to keep up the dignity. So there,
Annie dear, is our little romance. That is how my father has
become Earl of Owney and Arra in the peerage of Ireland, Vis-
count Templemore of the United Kingdom, and how your
old school-fellow, his eldest daughter, is Lady Bridget Agnes
O'Brien Delacy Quin and the possessor of a handsome dowry."

It would be quite futile, dear reader, to attempt to depict the
awesome admiration with which our poor little Annette now
regarded her former schoolmate.

" And now," she said at length, " I suppose there are all sorts
of lords and dukes and earls, not to speak of honorables, asking
you to marry them. A beauty and a lady of title! O Lady
Bridget ! "

Lady Bridget laughed.

" Not quite so bad as that," she said ; " there are plenty of
titled suitors, to be sure, but papa puts a damper on the most of
them after he gets the answer to one question : ' Are you a
Catholic ' ? "

"Is there no eligible Catholic, . then ?" asked Annette with
interest.

" Oh ! yes, several. One in particular my father is very anx-
ious I should accept. A very nice fellow, too the Marquis of
Wexford. He is most devoted."

774 A FASHIONABLE EVENT, [Mar.,

" And do you like him ?"

" Very much indeed. I am very sorry for him."

" Why ? Aren't you going to accept him ? "

" Oh ! no. I had made my choice long before I met him. By
the way, you must promise to be present at my little ceremony."

" Why, yes ! " said Annette, delighted. " That will be per-
fectly lovely. Who is he ? When is it to be ? Tell me every-
thing."

" My reception is to take place on the 2oth."

" Your reception ! "

" Yes. This is my last party, dear. I am to be received at
Rathfarnham convent on the 2oth of this month." And Brid-
get, taking both Annette's hands in hers, looked tenderly into
her eyes. " Congratulate me, dear."

But the look of blank amazement on Annette's face was too
much for even the solemnity of this announcement. Bridget
laughed and said : " Well, you are a droll child, Annette ! "

Nevertheless Annette's serious and wondering look did not
depart, even after a galop with Captain Whiffletree. She car-
ried it home in the carriage with her, notwithstanding her mo-
ther's account of the raptures of the night, and notwithstanding
the fact that Alderman Dan snored in blissful sleep in the seat in
front of her. The meeting with Bridget Quin, Bridget's words,
her resolution, affected her suddenly and profoundly. She con-
trasted herself with Bridget and felt shocked. Like a revelation
her conduct flashed upon her in its true light. How frivolous,
how wicked it seemed to her ! On what a precipice was she
rushing !

VI.

It was a severe fit while it lasted. Annette locked herself in
her room for two days and meditated on all she had heard from
Bridget Quin. She resolved to attend her reception, which was
to take place on the following day, the 2Oth. Bridget's words
about mixed marriages and of course she had said more than I
have found necessary to report haunted her. She cast out of
her mind Captain Whiffletree and his uniform and his courtesy-
title. She grew so austere that she would not even allow Red-
mond Hartigan back instead, but had half resolved to inform
reverend mother to-morrow that she intended to follow Bridget
Quin's example and to " enter."

It is remarkable with girls of Annette's disposition that when

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 775

they are brought to disapprove of any course of action they have
been pursuing they straightway make a rush to the opposite ex-
treme. Horace notices the same thing about a certain class of
men whom he calls " stulti" It is due to a want of balance. Of
course Annette's " entering " would mean a nine days' visit to the
kindly-shrewd reverend mother, who would restore her to her
friends in every way a better and a wiser girl.

Nor can I say how much of their effect Bridget Quin's coun-
sel and example owed to the fact that Annette's old school-fellow
proved to be a peer's daughter, a titled heiress, and a beauty.
In these cases when the effect is produced it is ungenerous to
be too critical of the cause.

Annette was doing nicely. She had deliberately read a chap-
ter and a half of The Religious Life, and had made up her mind to
have a long consultation with her confessor that evening.

This gave her such a sense of satisfaction that she thought she
might while away a few minutes with a novel.

As fate would have it, it was a novel by " Ouida."

Annette read about military heroes who had " seen life."
This naturally led her to think of Whiffletree. Had he not seen
life? Had he not hunted with the Quorn, stalked royals in the
Highlands, flirted with maids of honor, supped in the Breda
Quartier, entertained princes and ambassadors at the Star and
Garter, enjoyed pleasant hours in cabinets particuliers at Vefours
and the Maiso-n Dore"e ? Had he not owned race-horses and
gone through a campaign in Afghanistan ? Did not the blood of
his Crusader ancestors assert itself in spite of the carbuncle that
broke the arched line of his aristocratic nose ? Was not his name
Reginald, and his brother, Bertie Cecil, a member of the House
of Peers ? O del ! ay de mi ! was he not a veritable personage
stepped out of " Ouida's " enchanted page? And was not he
he, the Honorable Reginald Vivian Cecil Granville-Tenterden
De Courcy Whiffletree actually at the feet of her of her, An-
nette Reidy lying there on the plush covered sofa and gazing
through the window on the roof of her mother's new conserva-
tory ?

There was a knock at Annette's door. It was the English
footman whom Mrs. Reidy had persuaded the pliable Dan to
engage.

*' Your mother, Miss Hannette, requests you to go to the
droring-room at once, which Captain Whiffletree and Lord
Haladyn is awaiting there."

Annette stood irresolute. Would she double-lock her door

776 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

and send word that she was at home to nobody to-day ? To-
morrow would be Bridget's reception ; to-night she could see
her confessor. O guardian angel ! push her back into the
peace of her chamber and the grace of her good resolutions.
Let not the frail bark adventure to-night the troublous waters of
temptation ! To-morrow give her till to-morrow, till the arms
of reverend mother enfold her, until within that serene -harbor
she is braced for her voyage by sage counsel and guarded by
true friends' help !

Who can fathom the designs of Providence, who plans for the
sparrow on the house-top ?

What prompted Mrs. Alderman Reidy to follow the stately
John Thomas to her daughter's room ; to seize a hair-brush and
give a few artistic touches to Annette's front hair ; to say, " An-
nette, you're looking positively lovely to-day, whatever you've
been doing to yourself. Come down at once, child"; Captain
Whiffletree and his cousin, Lord Aladyn, are below his cousin,
mind, an awful swell. I think he's going to well, to say some-
thing to you to-day. Come along, quick ! " what prompted
Mrs. Reidy to do this? What a silly question ! She did it any-
way, and, taking her daughter by the arm, tripped away with
her to the drawing-room.

Ala's ! that I should have to tell it. Annette did not go to
Bridget Quin's reception next day at Rathfarnham. She and
her mother went to Baldoyle Races with Captain Whiffletree in
Lord Aladyn's drag.

When two headstrong women set their hearts on a thing,
what can one man, their husband and father, do? If he be a
strong man and disapprove of the thing, he may fight, and may
or may not win. But if, like Dan Reidy, he be weak and easy-
going, and admire his wife, whose boast it is that she can twist
him round her finger, there is only one issue to the unequal
contest.

Dan strongly disapproved of his daughter's marrying a n'on-
Catholic, although at the bottom of his heart he was himself
flattered at the idea of becoming father-in-law to a " sprig of
nobility." He made an honest protest ; and his struggle, if weak,
was sincere.

But when he was informed that Captain Whiffletree had pro-
posed for Annette, and that Annette had accepted him subject
to her father's- consent, and when Mrs. Reidy plied all her wifely
arts of persuasion and coercion, skilfully using the example of
the O' Regans, Dan feebly struck his colors.

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 777

He renewed the contest once after an interview with the
priest of his parish. But it was too late ; he had given his con-
sent, the engagement had been announced, and Mrs. Reidy
only smiled at him. Dan, shamefaced, hid himself thenceforth
from the venerable priest, whom he both feared and revered.

Whiffletree's creditors, when the engagement was put be-
yond all doubt, complaisantly accepted his promissory notes,
which result of their brilliant diplomacy his sympathizers and
himself triumphantly celebrated in a noisy supper at the club.

There was one thing that Dan held out for. The day after
St. Patrick's ball Redmond Hartigan had asked him as a special
favor, in case of Annette's engagement to Whiffletree, to fix the
date of the marriage for as late a day as possible. " I'll give you
my word and honor on that at least, Reddy, my boy," Dan had
answered, squeezing his fingers with emotion. " Dang me if I
know what's come over the girl that she won't have you t "
Redmond had then left Dublin for a prolonged trip in the East
and had not yet returned.

Now that Whiffletree and Annette were engaged, Dan
stoutly battled for this stipulation.

" By my word, Maggie," he said, " it goes to my heart to
think of that fine young fellow and the way he felt and the way
we're treating him. I'll bet he's fonder of the girl this minute
than her Englishman has it in his gizzard to be, for all his blue
blood. No ! by the big gun of Athlone, Maggie, I'll not give in
to ye in this. I pledged my honor to the boy that he'd have a
long day, and he'll have it, as sure as my name is Dan Reidy
four months, not an hour less. 'Tis the laste ye may do for him
after throwing him over like a bad shilling."

Dan's idea was that Redmond had asked him to delay the
date of the marriage on the same principle that criminals sen-
tenced to death by Lord Norbury used to beseech for " a long
day, me lord ! "

Mrs. Reidy herself was touched and wiped away something
like a tear with the corner of her handkerchief as she admitted,
" Dan dear, he really was very fond of her." But the thought
only made her more anxious to have the marriage over at once.
Now that it was inevitable, now that her ambition was on the eve
of being satisfied, she began to experience a mingled feeling of
shame and temerity at the deed. She felt like Macbeth exactly :

" If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly."

778 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

Whiffletree, too, pressed with singular eagerness for an imme-
diate crowning of his happiness. Annette, in the background,
with a feeling something like her mother's, modestly counte-
nanced these demands.

But Dan held his ground sturdily in keeping his promise to
bestow this last sad favor on his friend.

So it was arranged that Annette's marriage with Captain
Whiffletree was not to take place till four months after their
engagement.

VII.

After all, four months was not so long a term and gave An-
nette barely time to prepare her magnificent trousseau.

The marriage had to take place in Liverpool. The ecclesi-
astical authorities of Dublin, with stern wisdom, have absolutely
forbidden mixed marriages to be solemnized in any church
within their diocese.

There was to be but a single ceremony. Captain Whiffle-
tree did not press to have the marriage performed again in a
Protestant church. This removed some of the difficulty Dan
met with in procuring the dispensation.

Whiffletree wished the event to go off as quietly as possible.
Dan was anxious for a " blow-out." But Annette, sure of the
main thing, agreed with her prospective husband in desiring a
quiet wedding. As for Mrs. Alderman Reidy, her courage had
oozed out at her fingers' ends, and never an envious, only a
vain and emulous, little woman she had no anxiety to exploit
the occasion to the discomfiture of her Dublin friends.

One of the O'Regan girls, considering that the Reidys were
now about to enter their sphere, in an extraordinary burst of
generosity consented to act as Annette's bridesmaid. Whiffle-
tree's best man was the red-haired youth who had been one of
his most active sympathizers at the club.

I cannot say it promised to be a very jolly affair. The bride-
groom was pale in spite of what several years of .India's sun
and brandy-pawnee had done to his complexion. Annette did
not feel nice at all ; she tried her best to forget what she was
about to do to plunge into it, as it were, with her eyes shut.
Her mamma did not cease crying the whole morning. As for
Alderman Dan, he and the red-haired groomsman had been
taking " nips " of brandy and soda from an early hour, and
looked almost as. watery about the eyes as Mrs. Dan herself.

1885.] A FASHIONABLE EVENT. 779

" Whiffle, old boy," says Dan and these were his last words to
his son-in-law-apparent before they left the hotel " take a horn
to give you courage." And Whiffle did.

The ceremony began. What a desecration ! My pen hesi-
tates to go on. Annette looked round the church with a fright-
ened feeling. Was that Redmond's face behind a pillar?

The priest had no heart in uniting this fair Catholic maiden
to a man of a different religion. He asked in a loud voice the
question as to whether any one knew of a reason why the mar-
riage should not proceed, and even paused a moment when he
had asked it.

There was a solemn silence. The bridegroom's hand shook.
" Go on ! " he said.

The priest looked at him surprised, then repeated the ques-
tion, and paused again.

Annette felt ready to faint. Was that Redmond's face?

"Can't you go on, confound it!" said Whiffletree, the ten-
sion getting the better of his broken nerves.

" Hold ! Hold ! "

What is that strident voice from the end of the church ?
What is that commotion ?

" Hold ! This marriage cannot proceed ! For God's sake
stop!"

Who is this running down the church with half a dozen men
and one woman at his heels? It is Redmond Hartigan.

Breathless he runs to the altar.

" Stop before you commit a sacrilege ! " he cries. " I have
brought Captain Whiffletree's wife with me from India. Here
she is ! "

A veiled lady advanced.

Where is Whiffletree? No one saw him disappear, yet he
has fled.

Annette, white and frightened, stood alone before the altar.

Redmond had gone to India on a hint from no less a person
than Viscount Templemore, Bridget Quin's father. The latter
had learned something which led him to be suspicious of Whiffle-
tree something of which, in a less definite way, Redmond had
also heard and when his daughter told him that Whiffletree
was proposing to marry a friend of hers he interested himself in
the matter, and, at Bridget's suggestion, sent for Redmond.

Redmond's expedition seemed as futile as it was arduous.
His information was of the vaguest kind, and probably unre-

780 A FASHIONABLE EVENT. [Mar.,

liable. In Nowshera he learned that Whiffletree had admitted
once to have been married, but had given out that his wife had
died. The last station he had been quartered in was one of the
most remote of the hill stations of the Punjaub. Redmond with
tremendous difficulty made his way there. He found one troop
of Sepoy cavalry Whiffletree's troop under the command of
native officers, and in a bungalow in their midst the captain's
wife, living there contentedly with two children and quietly
awaiting her husband's return, which she did not look for till the
expiration of his leave of absence. She was a comely but com-
monplace woman. She had been the widow of a white sergeant-
major, and thought her lot a happy one in being the wife of a
captain, even though she had to spend her lifetime in the jungle.
She had been held a prisoner there, unknown to herself, by
her husband's command, and it required the full force of the let-
ters with which Lord Templemore had supplied Redmond to
persuade Whiffletree's Sepoy lieutenant to permit her to leave
the station.*

The fair reader wants to know the sequel.

Well, Annette fled for refuge to Rathfarnham, where during
a series of retreats she received from warm and devoted hearts
consolation and congratulation.

Poor Mrs. Reidy and Alderman Dan spent six months on the
Continent, hiding their diminished heads.

Three years afterwards there was a wedding. No mixed
marriage this time ; no giddy girl of eighteen, but a woman of
twenty-one, whom a terrible experience had chastened and made
wiser than her years. And the bridegroom ? Her deliverer
from an awful doom.

It was with the full blessing of wise and benignant Mother
Church, and in the church of their own parish, that Redmond
and Annette were married.

Redmond is now a member of Parliament as well as a promi-
nent member of the Irish bar. Why do I mention this? Ah!
ladies, for your sake. I know you have a charming curiosity.
Here is a clue. Find out who Redmond is !

* The ; main incidents of this story actually occurred.

1885.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. 781

THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES.

SHAKSPERE himself informs us that " the rose by any
other name would smell as sweet." But the truth of this
" Shaksperean proverb " may be questioned. Some one has said
that a nickname is " a concentrated calumny " a calumny which
at times acts prejudicially not only on the fortunes but the dis-
positions of men. Many a man's nature has altered with his
name. The ancient Orientals and the Hebrews above all be-
lieved that in human names a certain mystic property lurked
which modified more or less the current of men's lives. The
touching anecdote of Father Garnet, the Jesuit, would seem to
corroborate this. In the Latinized name of this martyr (Pater
Henricus Garnetius) a father of the society discovered the
words " pingere cruentus arista " (" on an ear of corn you shall be
painted in gore "). Father Garnet was executed in London in
1606. An ear of corn dipped in the martyr's blood was long pre-
served as a memento of his execution, and assumed, it is alleged,
a striking likeness to the features of the deceased.

The philosophers of antiquity believed that names originate
in the very essence of objects and that the nature and character
of things are -condensed and represented in their cognomens.
They attributed a powerful, one might say a sacramental, charac-
ter to names. lamblichus assures us that in the worship of the
gods names were employed by the priests which, though unin-
telligible to men, were perfectly intelligible to the gods. The
divinities were moved by the language addressed to them.
Names possessed a prophetic influence which modified the omens
that guided their enterprises and rendered evil good and good
evil. When Anchises, in the ALneid, concludes his prayer to Jupi-
ter, a peal of thunder rolling to his left fills him with joy as an
omen of auspicious fortune ; whereas in the first Eclogue the
comix perched on the same side saddens Melibceus and. indicates
disaster. Such was the efficacy of names that an : .bbject which
when its name was Latin was deemed dis#strotf became aus-
picious when its name was Greek a circumstance which intro-
duced confusion into augury and rendered the clo&jl which veils
futurity still more mysterious and impenetrable to tEe ancients.
One thing seems certain : the names of men throw light on the
future destiny and past history of the nations they belong to.

782 THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. [Mar.,

National history is revealed in family names. There is, for in-
stance, a strange dissimilarity between the meaning of the names
borne by the foremost characters in Greek and Roman history.
The Greeks have brilliant, poetical, and beautiful names worthy
of freemen. The Roman names are vulgar, prosaic, and boorish
fit for slaves. The name of Leonidas comes from Xecar, " a
lion " ; the name of Cicero comes from cicera, " fodder for cat-
tle," Diogenes signifies " divine " ; Scipio signifies " a walking-
stick " ; Anaxagoras signifies " the king of the forum " ; Verres
signifies " a boar pig:" Archelaus is " the ruler of the people " ;
Flaccus signifies " flap-eared " it is a name suitable to a dog
" having pendulous or flabby ears " ; it could hardly be applied
in the first instance to a man, but seems to have been transferred
from the canine to the human slave. Aristarchus signifies " a
good prince " ; Brutus signifies " irrational, stupid, brutish " ;
Ambrose signifies " immortal " ; Servius, " born in slavery," etc.
The inference to be drawn from this is that at the time they
received these names the Romans were in a state of slavery.
They were " hewers of wood and drawers of water " to the
Etrurians. They were not savages like our Red Men ; they
were slaves like our negroes. They were possibly subjected at
that time to the great and opulent people who excavated the
Cloaca Maxima and gave a name to their city which has no radix
in the Latin language. In their ignoble occupations, subjected
to the scourge and clanking in fetters, they received names
which reflected their servile employments. Thus Marcus signi-
fies " a brazier's hammer " (Marcellus is a diminutive of Marcus,
and Marcius is " of or belonging to Marcus "). Caius signifies
"beaten"; it comes from a defective verb caio, " to cudgel."
Cassius signifies " unprofitable " a most appropriate name for
a slave ; * it is a genitive to cassus, " ignorant, broken, empty."
Catiline signifies " a glutton " ; it comes from catillo, " to lick
the dishes." Fabius is obviously derived from faba, "a bean ";
the family dealt in those vegetables or were remarkable for
cultivating them. Claudius comes from claudus, " crippled,"
and signifies " the cripple's son." Fabricius comes evidently
from faber, "an artisan"; Furius from fur, furis, "a thief"
the son of a thief would be called Furts, the grandson Furius.
Spurius seems to come from spuo, " to spit upon " a most
degrading name. Caninia, a woman's name, comes from cants,
" a dog." Vitellius signifies " of or belonging to a calf." Caesar
signifies " hairy " ; Julius, " of or belonging to a fish " named

* "When a man loses his liberty," says Homer, "he loses half his virtue."

1885.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. 783

Julis. Cecinnius comes from c&cus, " blind " ; Crassus means
" fat, dull, coarse." Scsevola comes from sccevus, " awkward, per-
verse, stupid " ; Sylvius means " of or belonging- to a wood " ;
Gracchus, "a crow " ; Sura, "a boot "; Titius, " a firebrand," etc.
These are visibly the names of slaves. They are not merely degrad-
ing ; they are infamous. It is impossible to suppose that freemen,

" Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,"

would assume such vile epithets. They must have been forced
on them by haughty and arrogant masters who treated them like
dogs and gave them names fit for brutes. Every one of them
seems to be " a concentrated calumny." The natural feelings of
the human heart would hinder men if they could avoid it from
giving to their children names which are slanders. For

" Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls."

This is not all. Names crop up in Roman history such as
Tanaquil, Icilius, and Maecenas which are evidently derived
from their masters' language, as we cannot find in Latin a ves-
tige of their roots. Niebuhr expresses a suspicion that the Ro-
mans were slaves ; but this suspicion would arise to certainty if
he took into consideration the meaning of their cognomination.
Not only were they slaves, their subjugation must have endured
for centuries, until time rendered venerable what was originally
shameful. Nothing is more true than what Cluverius says: all
that portion of Roman history which preceded the Gallic sack of
the city and consequent destruction of its annals is entirely fabu-
lous.*

Applying all this to the family names of Ireland, we may find in
the cognomination of that people some curious elucidations of native
history. Irish names are obviously those of freemen. The Irish
were not slaves when they assumed them. For instance, O'Kear-
ney is the genitive case of cearnac/t, which means " victorious,"
and is equivalent to viKrjriKos in Greek. The O'Kearneys are de-
scended from " Conal the victorious," who flourished in the first
century of the Christian era. O'Neill is the genitive case of Niall,
which signifies " a soldier or champion," and corresponds with
the Greek ffrpari&rjj?. Mac Eagain is a modification of Eagna,
which signifies " wisdom, prudence, discretion." It corresponds
with the Greek ayveia, castitas chastity being the invariable at-

* ' Verum enimvero Romanorum regibus," he says, " qui ab Evandro ad Consules usque
fuere, falsas ascriptas esse origines, falsa item nomina, falsas interdum res gestas," etc. i.e.,
the actions, names, and origins of the kings who reigned ^before the Consuls were all false.

784 THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. [Mar.,

tribute of a wise man. The Mac Eagans were hereditary judges,
who administered the Brehon laws under the jurisdiction of the
McCarthys in Cork and Kerry, and their name corresponded
with their functions.

Mac Keon a common Irish name is a modification of Mac
Eoghain (pronounced Mac Owen). Eoghain signifies " well born,"
and corresponds with the Greek " Eugene," which has the same
meaning i.e., svysvr/?, "of noble descent."

"Art" says Joyce, "is an ancient Celtic word which has three
meanings ' a stone,' ' God,' and ' noble.' As a personal name it
was originally meant to convey the idea of hardness, bravery,
and power of endurance in battle. It was very much used in
Ireland, several of the ancient kings having borne the name. As
a personal name it is still used, but is now almost always made
Arthur ; and as a family name it exists in O'-h-Airt, or O'Hart,
and also Mac Art and Mac Arthur." *

Some time before his death the poet Moore adopted as his
crest a Moor's head. It was horribly ugly, with negro features
of an exaggerated type. With this head his note-paper was em-
bossed, and he seemed to think his name had some connection
with it ; but he was always careful to inform his correspondents
that they were not to consider it a portrait. The Irish form of
his name is O 1 Mordha. The Queen's County was the property
of the tribe, and the name signifies " great," " magnificent." It
corresponds with the Greek jtsyaS. It has no connection with
the Moors of Spain or Africa.

Eochaidh (pronounced Ohy), "a knight or horseman," was a fa-
vorite name with the ancient Irish. Their chiefs and kings de-
lighted in the epithet, which was equivalent to *ljsitlotS among the
Greeks. From this comes the family name Mac Eochadha (" son
of the horseman "), of which the Anglified form is Mac Keogh, in
modern times often contracted into Keogh or Kehoe.

The root of this name is ech, " a horse " (Lat. equus) a word
which in Irish gives rise to a variety of names, such as Echagan,
meaning " little horse." From an ancestor of this name descend-
ed the family of Mac Echegain or Mageoghegan, now generally
Geoghegan and Gahagan. From a chieftain named Eochaidh
Cobha, who flourished in the third century, a tribe descended
named Uibh Eachach (Ivahagh), who possessed a large territory.
in Ulster, now represented in name by the barony of Iveagh, in
Down. There was another territory of the same name in the
southwest of the County Cork, the inhabitants of which derived

* Irish Names of Places, vol. ii. p. 150.

1885.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. 785

their name from another chief named Eochaidh, " the horse-
man."

One of the noblest names in Irish history is O'Callaghan.
The Irish form is O Ceallachain, which comes from ceallach, " war,"
" debate," " strife." It is equivalent to the Greek TtoXepo?. Their
tribe-lands were situated in the County Cork and termed Clon-
mean, " the pleasant plain." The County Cork likewise con-
tained the tribe of the O'Coffeys, of which O'Brien says:

" Cobhthach, signifying ' victorious,' was the proper name of an Irish
chief from whom the ancient family of O'Cobhthaich derive their name.
They were proprietors of the territories now called Ballyroe, in the County
Cork. In an Irish poem their chief is termed O Cobhthaich na n-ardcorn-
oir />., ' O'Coffey of the tall gold drinking-cups,' a compound epithet
worthy of Homer."

It seems evident from the above that the name of a family
was originafly the name of an individual. In Ireland this change
is attributed to Brian Boru. His victories and conquests in-
vested Brian with supreme authority and enabled the Imperator
Scottorum to compel the clans to select some one of their ances-
tors and convert his prasnomen into a permanent surname. All
the other nations of Europe, according to Keating, followed this
example and imitated the Irish. It was only in the present cen-
tury that, at the command of Napoleon I., the German Jews as-
sumed unalterable cognomina. In compliance with the imperial
ordinance they took such fanciful names as Rosenthal (rose in a
vale), Blumenbaeh (flowery stream), and Rothschild (red shield)
names wholly unknown to their patriarchs and quite enough to
make them turn in their graves. For when men are free to
choose, names which flatter their vanity are sure to be selected.
Previously to this nominal revolution it was necessary to recite a
whole pedigree to identify an individual. In the old play, " Sir
John Oldcastle," we are presented with an amusing instance of this :

"Judge. What bail, what sureties?

"Davy. Her cousin Ap Rice, Ap Evan, Ap Morice, Ap Morgan, Ap
Madoc, Ap Owen, Ap Shenkin Jones.

"Judge. Two of the most sufficient are enow.

" Sheriff. An it please your worship, all these are but one."*

Irish names are never derived from base pursuits or servile
employments. This is the rule, to which there is one exception.
The Smith who manufactured arms, which are essentially neces-
sary to the military profession, participated in its dignity and
ranked as a gentleman.

* Ap in Welsh is equivalent to Mac in Irish. It is an abbreviation of mab, "a son."
VOL. XL. 50

786 THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. [Mar..

No people in Europe have names which manifest more clearly
the dignity, pride, and freedom of the men who first assumed
them. They were a people who may have commanded as mas-
ters, but certainly never drudged as slaves. If all Irish records
were obliterated, all our manuscripts destroyed, our names alone
would prove that when we took those names our condition was
dignified. The history of the race is condensed in its cognomi-
nation. We may remark in evidence of this that in an Irish verb
the imperative mood always stands foremost. In every Gaelic
grammar it is placed at the top. It is the root of all the subse-
quent conjugations, and is always developed with the utmost
clearness. Nature, in giving the Irish a military spirit, gave
them a language which suits the profession of arms, in which
the word of command can be given with facile lucidity and un-
mistakable energy. In a Latin grammar the imperative mood
goes last, or nearly so. In Irish it goes first. It is the radix
from which spring all the branches of the verbal tree. " Let
him strike" is an awkward phrase, but buailadh se (pronounced
boola sJiay) is " short, sharp, and decisive." It is a command, not
an exhortation. Authority is condensed in its sound, whereas
the English imperative is a feeble, floundering expression, en-
tirely too weak and clumsy to express or enforce authority.
"No hope," said Carlyle of the Irish, "for the men as masters.
Their one true station in the universe is servants slaves, if you
will. And never can they know a right day till they attain that."

Mr. Carlyle is mistaken. If God gave the Irish that "innate
warlike passion, the gift of high Heaven to chosen races of
men," he did not intend them to be slaves ; and we may ask
with the poet :

" O Erin ! when nature embellished the tint
Of thy fields and thy mountains so fair,
Did she ever intend that a tyrant should print
The footsteps of slavery there ? "

It is a task of the utmost difficulty to retain a nation of soldiers
in a condition of slavery a task which has often involved in
utter destruction those who attempted it. The Persians called
in the Turkomans to assist them, but their mercenaries became
their masters. The Spaniards called in the Goths, with equally
disastrous results. The Welsh called in the Saxons, only to be
vanquished and exterminated by that " hireling chivalry," etc.
Instances of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely.

It may be laid down as a principle that no family will vol-
untarily give itself a discreditable name. It is contrary to na-

1885.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. 787

ture. Nothing but the most grinding form of oppression will
reduce it to such infamy.

Hence Hood has some reason for asking :

" If human beings had a voice,
Would any be a Bugg by choice? "

Applying this theory to English family names, we shall find
in the nomenclature of that people striking evidences of their
former degradation. For instance, the ancestors of the cele-
brated painter Hogarth were swineherds. Hogarth is a modi-
fication of Hog-herd. Swinnarts is another form of the same
name. Sowards is also a name which had its origin in the herd-
ing of pigs. Calvert a name not unknown to history is com-
pounded of calf and herd. The name was originally written
Calveherd. Such names as Bullman, Bullock, Stierman, Cow-
man, Coward, Bullard, and Bull show that tending cattle was
the employment of their original bearers. Lytton Bulwer, the
novelist, was descended from some care taker of bulls who was
termed Bullward. In Norman documents such cognomens are
translated Le Steer, Le Boeuf, and Le Vacher. Nathaniel Lard-
ner, who wrote a defence of revealed religion in ten volumes,
which Paley summarized in one, was descended from a slave or
serf whose avocation was to fatten hogs. Shakspere, in describ-
ing Falstaff, tells us that

" He lards the lean earth as he walks along."

In other words, " he fattens the earth." Now, the duty of the
lardner was to restrain the erratic propensities of his grunters
and keep them in that part of the forest where beech and mast
abounded where

" Acorns larded many a sow."

He resembled Gurth in Ivanhoe, who herded hogs with an iron
ring round his neck. A branch of this family settled in Ireland
and gave birth to Dionvsius Lardner, who published the Cabinet
Cyclopedia in one hundred and thirty-two volumes and was re-
markable at once for learning and licentiousness.

The highly respectable name of Bacon may be mentioned in
connection with the lardner. The poet says that Chancellor
Bacon was " the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." Would
it be a pardonable inference that the chancellor inherited the
" meanness " which disfigured his moral character from the an-
cestor who cured the bacon which the lardner fattened ?

One would be inclined to think from the large number of
family names connected with the profession, such as Pigman,

;88 THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF FAMILY NAMES. [Mar.,

etc., that the diligent surveillance of hogs was in England in
ancient times an all-important avocation and absorbed a large
segment of the industry and talent of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Chancellor Sugden so well known at one time in Ireland was
indebted for his respectable name to two words : den, a covert
or lair for animals, and stigg, a sow. A " den of thieves " is still
familiar to the lips of Englishmen, but a " den of swine " was
equally familiar to their ancestors. Swinfield, Swinburne, Swin-
ton and Swindel, Denman and Denyer, seem to lead back a large
number of the English people to an ancestry of pig-boys. Clean-
hog, Pigsflesh, and Hogsflesh were no uncommon names amongst
that people. Laws were enacted by the Parliament of the Pale
the English parliament in Ireland commanding the Irish to lay
aside their venerable patronymics and adopt these attractive
cognomens !

Stothard is a compound of stot, "a bullock," and herd, " a care-
keeper." Stobart, Stoddard, Stubber, Stotherds, Stoberd, and
Stubbard are modifications of the same name. Veiled in Norman
French, such English names take a less repulsive aspect. Thus
Bullface becomes Front-de-bceuf ; Bulleye, Oyl-de-bceuf ; Bull-
bodied, Cor-de-bceuf ; and Bullsheart, Cceur-de-bceuf. Nuttard is
a modification of Neat-herd. Oxford, Oxberry, and Oxherd are
equally derived from the dull quadruped which now

" Breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god."

, Those highly respectable Englishmen, the Gattards, Gathards,
and Gateards, are indebted for their name to the occupation of
their ancestors, who kept goats. Gatesden has a similar origin.
It signifies a den or haunt of goats. William de Gatesden and
John de Gatesden are found in Parliamentary writs. Hunnard,
or Hound-herd, is another English name of considerable antiquity
The first bearer was whipper-in or dog-boy to some Danish or
Norman master. The Weatherheads were originally " wether
herds." They herded wethers, or rams. The Shepherds in-
dicate their origin in the meaning of their name. Hurd is a
modification of herd, and Woodard and Herbart are compounds
of that word.

In Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott, through one of his characters,
speaking of the English peasantry, tells us : " These be no pagan
Saracens, noble Sir Brian, or craven peasants of France, but
English yeomen against whom we shall have no advantage save
what we derive from our arms and horses, which will avail us

1 88 5 .] DA YBREA K. 7 89

little in the glades of the forest." This has been quoted in the
United Service Journal as if it were authentic history. It is
really romance. Cambrensis, writing at the time Front-de-bceuf is
supposed to have lived, asks: " Who dare compare the English-
men, the most degraded of all nations, with the Welsh? In their
own country they are serfs the veriest slaves to the Normans.
In ours who else have we for our herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers,
skinners, cleaners of our dog-kennels, ay, even of our privies,
but Englishmen?" This condition is clearly indicated in the
Anglo-Saxon cognomination.

Thus we have seen in comparing the family names of four
distinct races, the Greek, Roman, English, and Irish, what an
important connection there is between these names and the his-
tory of the races.

DAYBREAK.

THE night seems long, my Father. Shadows rise,

And dark across my pathway fall ;
There is no light of dawn in orient skies,

And sorrow shrouds me like a pall ;
The stars of Faith and Hope so dim have grown :
Oh ! rift the gloom and send their radiance down.

The morn was fair, seen with glad childhood's eyes,
A world of sunshine, love, and flowers;

Not sweeter was the bliss of Paradise,
As onward fled the swift-winged hours ;

At noon I revelled in the sunshine still,

And felt no prescience of the twilight chill.

I am so tired, my Father ! The rough path
Is strewn with wrecks of joys long gone ;

I scarce can lift my dim and weary gaze
To watch the coming of the dawn.

Oh ! let me lean and rest against Thy Heart

Till glorious day shall break and night depart.

790 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

SOLITARY ISLAND.

CHAPTER X.
A FINAL REPULSE.

IN his luxurious rooms Florian was sitting, arrayed in his
dressing-gown, his hands clasped idly on his lap, his gaze wander-
ing and frightened ; while before him stood the red, vexed, irri-
tated squire, who had just brought in the news of Ruth's in-
tended departure.

" What's to be done, Flory what's to be done ? "

Florian knew there was but one thing to be done, and the
utter hopelessness of success made him despondent. This was
not as he would have had the scenery and properties when he
came to declare his love. The squire had told him nothing more
than that Ruth, disturbed by her old religious doubts, was going
away to a convent. There was nothing to account for the train
of thought and feeling which had led up to so surprising a course
of action; if the squire knew anything he declined to talk about it.

" I had thought," said Florian helplessly, " of renewing an old
proposal."

" Had you, my boy had you ?" cried Pendleton. " Then it's
the only thing that can stop this flight the only living, almighty
thing."

" But it's useless to try it under such circumstances," Florian
continued. " She is upset in mind ; she has not shown any par-
ticular care for me since "

" What, Flory ! " yelled the squire, " what are you talking of,
lad ? Not shown any particular care for you ! Why, man, it has
been nothing but Florian here and Florian there to her friends,
to her acquaintances, and to strangers since she came to New
York. ' Do you know Florian Wallace ? ' was her first question,
until Mrs. Merrion had to tell her it looked as if you were en-
gaged still."

Florian sat listening in delight to these wanderings of the
squire. His own shrewder sense told him that the squire's lik-
ings had taken the place of his powers of observation, but it was
very sweet to know that some people thought Ruth willing to
renew the old relationship. And she was going away ? It

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 791

might be the last chance of testing her feelings that he would
have, and if the result was unfavorable no harm was done. They
would be sure to understand each other better.

A great slice of the romance of Florian's character had been
devoured by the capacious jaws of his political ambition. Sensi-
bility and delicacy were less fine, evidently, or he would have
seen how very much injury this surrender of old principle would
do him, and how hurtful it was to his own sense of honor and
religion. He looked at the position, not as a lover torn with
doubts as to the result of his action, but as a man of the world
taking his chances, shrugging his shoulders at failure, mildly
muttering bravo at success. It was not a thing to be mourned
over long, though.

" If you wouldn't insist on on the old condition," the squire
began.

" Nonsense ! " said Florian. " I've got over that. I'll take
her, no matter how she comes."

" O Lord ! " cried the delighted father, uttering a sigh like
the whistling of the wind through a cavern, "then it's settled.
She'll not go to the convent. Now, my lad, just brush up and
get over to Barbery's for lunch, for she's packing and may be off
at any moment."

Florian felt as he dressed that his position was similar to that
of a noble in the Reign of Terror arraying himself for decapita-
tion. But he proceeded calmly and heroically to his doom, and
at one o'clock that afternoon was lunching with Barbara and
Ruth in the pretty dining-room in Brooklyn. Ruth was pale
and worn, but determined. Florian knew that look of old and-
what it meant much better than her father. He received notice
of her departure with an air of well-bred surprise. "There is
one consolation in it," Barbara said " it's the end of the season.
But then there was so much for Ruth to see which does not
belong to fashionable life, and so many people will be disap-
pointed."

" The disappointment of the many troubles Ruth very little,"
said he, with pointed reference to her indifferent expression.

"I never thought of them," Ruth answered wearily, "and
I'm sure they never once thought of me ; nor do I care."

" You never did," said Florian, and both ladies felt an iciness
in the tone that gave a double meaning to the words. When the
lunch was ended Barbara left them together.

" This sudden flight," said Florian, " looks remarkable, but I
know you never do anything hastily. Is it a homeward flight? "

79 2 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

" No," said Ruth frankly, " it goes heavenward at least I
hope so."

" You are always flying in that direction," he said, with quiet
sarcasm.

" Not always, but I am to make a good effort this time." And
her lips were compressed for an instant. " I am disgusted with
my own doubts and I am going to rid myself of them for ever.
I am on a search for certainty."

" I offered it to you once," he said indifferently.

" And I am sure I did well in refusing it then, Florian."

Why did she put such a stress on that last word ? It made
his heart bound like a frightened deer, but he was silent until
she added : " And don't you think so too ?"

" Why should I ? If it was for your benefit, I say yes ; but if
it has condemned me to a course of suffering that ambition alone
could smother "

Her amused laugh interrupted him.

" Then you smothered it with ambition ? "

" With the aid of hopelessness," he answered bitterly. " Did
J not know you well and myself too ? "

" I must say you did, and I am sorry to think I did not know
you better. Through all this winter I was afraid you would pro-
pose again."

" The winter is not over yet, Ruth."

" But I am gone from the world. Florian, I shall never
come to New York again. I like home best, and if I come into
the world once more it will be to live and die outside of this tur-
moil and uproar. You cannot applaud that decision?"

" No, for I had hoped to induce you to remain in it as long as
I would." His face, in spite of his self-control, grew for one mo-
ment ashen pale, and the tone which accompanied the words
brought Ruth to her feet flushing with pain.

" O Florian ! " she cried, "you surely don't mean to "

"Why not?" he answered severely. "You may have cast
aside my love easily .enough, but I find it harder to forget.
Ruth, I have not ceased to love you since I left Clayburg, nor
have I ceased to hope. You are looking for certainty and rest-
You will find them here." And he held out his arms invitingly.

" If you were not so very sincere," she said, "I could laugh
at you. Mr. Wallace, this is the language of silly sentiment."

" It is the language of love," he replied ; and there was a
restrained and awkward silence for a long time, until both came
slowly to their cooler selves.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 793

" You have honored me, Florian," she said gently ; " but it is
an honor I cannot accept. I am still a Protestant "

" Pray let that pass," he said hastily. " I do not insist on
your becoming a Catholic. My love has risen above such dis-
tinctions."

The hand which she had placed on his shoulder fell from it
suddenly, and, looking up, he saw an expression of surprise and
grief on her face and quickly interpreted it.

" I had always thought that a principle with you," she said
slowly.

" Principles suffer from the wear of time," he answered, "as
well as ourselves, though we are immortal."

" O Florian ! " She spoke the words in deepest sorrow. " I
hope there are very few things to which you cling as poorly.
That is one of my principles yet. You accused me a moment
ago of forgetting, but that I have not forgotten."

"It is because I love you," he replied sadly; "and I fear I
could forget much more because of you."

" I am not worthy of it, Florian."

" O Ruth ! " Her two hands were on her lap and he seized
them passionately. " Is there no hope ? Can we never resur-
rect that sweet past that lies buried with Linda by the
river? "

" Never " she said the words with an effort " no more than
we can resurrect Linda."

He dropped her hands with a long look of grief and pain,
and a shuddering sigh ; he realized fully that he was losing her
for ever, and her last words put his sentence in its best form so
that he could not misunderstand it.

" But you must know why I am going, Florian," she said
after a pause; "for you are my best friend, and, although you
have hurt me by this scene, I cannot but feel that you have
honored me beyond deserving. Do you know that, while I could
not join the Catholic Church or leave my own, I always had a
doubt as to the truth of Methodism, but it took long to convince
me that my position of doubt was sinful. I have found out at
last that to remain willingly in that state is sin, and by the grace
of God I am going to rid myself of it for ever."

" If you had had that feeling in the old days," said Florian,
" what a happy story ours would have been ! "

" Why did you not give me the feeling?" she said sharply.
" Why did you leave it for Mr. Rossiter to do."

" It was an oversight," he said in surprise. "But I was not

794 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

aware that Paul talked religion to you. He is stricter even
than I am in such matters."

" Well, it happened oddly enough, too. Mrs. Merrion and I
had been at the cathedral, and met Mr. Rossiter and others on
our way home. He accompanied us some distance and spoke to
me of his surprise at seeing me there. Then I told him of my
former nearness to the church, and he lectured and scolded me
for not making proper use of the graces I had then received, and
filled me with dread of my present position. It has rankled in
my heart since that night. It has led to my present determina-
tion. Ah ! he has the poet's soul."

" It was a moonlight night? " questioned Florian.

" I think so. Yes, I remember now it was. His eyes shone
so when he bade me good-night, and he stood looking upward."

" I thought it," he said quietly ; and she did not notice the
sarcasm, for her memory was dwelling on the splendor of the
poet's eyes. " And so you are going away to hunt up the blessed
certainty of the faith ! Is it not a queer place to settle one's
doubt in a hot-bed of Catholicity ? For instance, if I went to the
Whigs to learn the strength of some doubts I had concerning
Democracy ! "

" I am certain of this," said she : " that Methodism is not Chris-
tianity, and I am going to investigate Catholicity where it shines
brightest, and take that as the standard."

" Well, that is wise. When you return to Clayburg I shall
be sure to meet you, for I am going up there some day. I shall
wait until you shall return, or mayhap longer if politics offer me
inducements."

" You say that because you think I would say it," she replied.
"You will never go to Clayburg to see anybody, Florian; you
will never see it again, unless on business or when brought there
to die. If you can prophesy of me, why not I of you ? Good-
by. Why did you not bring your poet with you?"

"He- knows nothing of your departure. You would have
gone without a word to him, to whom you should be ever
grateful."

" I shall be," she said very tenderly, " always."

And so they parted. Barbara met him in the hall on his
way out, and was surprised and pleased to see no evidence of
strong emotion about him. She had looked for a romantic love-
storm.

" Now that we are losing Ruth," said she, " I trust we shall
not also lose the pleasure of seeing you frequently."

885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 795

" That would be a distinction I never could have deserved,"
said Ruth. " Florian can never forget your kind hospitality."

" True," said Florian ; " if I could I would be sadly wanting in
gratitude."

" Is it so amicably settled ? " whispered Barbara to him at the
door ; and when he nodded, she said, " I am so very glad. We
shall not lose you entirely." And Florian departed puzzled, dis-
appointed, yet pleased by the tender tone of her voice.

CHAPTER XI.
AN APPARITION.

WITH the flight of Ruth the second act in the comedy ended,
and the curtain was rung down on Madame Lynch's boarding-
house'. Very much like a deserted play-house it looked in the
days that followed. Florian was deep in law and the excite-
ment of a Congressional campaign with his name at the head of
the ticket, so that he was rarely seen in the handsome rooms
where hung the yachting picture. Frances, buoyed up by a
hope which love only could hold out to her, was touched at
times with the green melancholy, but smiled oftener and was
happy at a word or a look from her ideal of manhood. Paul
worked away in the attic at plays, essays, and poems, and was
troubled because of a sudden coldness which had sprung up
between him and Florian. Peter and the squire alone seemed to
retain that boisterous spirit of frolic and intrigue which had
enlivened the winter, but for want of encouragement displayed
very little of it. Every spirit was dulled and life seemed to have
met with so unpleasant a lull that a storm was necessary to rouse
the people who floated in it like motes in a hot sunbeam.

The summer passed and lengthened into fall. Florian's run
for Congress set the house in a ferment. It was a great thing
to have one of the boarders graduating from the front parlor
into Congress, and when the election had passed and he was
returned by a handsome majority the reception tendered him
by Madame Lynch was superb. All the world was there, and
in some way it began to be understood that Frances was the
lucky woman who would draw the lion of the evening in the
matrimonial lottery. It was on the evening of this reception
that two gentlemen called upon Florian while he was engaged

79 6 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

among- the guests. It was after eleven, and, unless the matter
was urgent, the great man could not be seen till after midnight.

" We can go to the hotel," said one gentleman to the other,
" and rest until that time. You will please tell Mr. Wallace that
a gentleman on important business will call upon him after the
reception. As he is compelled to leave the city early in the
morning, he must see him during the course of the night.''

They went away without further trouble, and the servant
naturally forgot to mention their visit or message. Coming to
his room a little after one, jaded and depressed, deep as was the
draught of popularity which he had quaffed, he threw himself on
a chair and gave himself up to aimless thought. A pier-glass
stood directly in front of him, and he had a full and fair view of
the new Congressman the petted idol of society and fame, the
present form of the serious yet light-hearted boy who fished,
swam, and loved not many years back on the St. Lawrence. It
was a delightful but not a satisfying feeling which his new
honors gave him. There was no fulness about the heart, no
complete lull of that bitter craving of ambition which had eaten
him so long. He could hardly realize that this elegant gentle-
man with brown, parted beard and moustache and pale, serious
face was really he who had loved Ruth Pendleton and been
beloved.

The mirror which reflected his shapely form seemed to centre
all its light on him. The background was very dark, and yet
while he was looking a shadowy face seemed to grow out of the
darkness and come nearer to him. He watched and studied it as
a curious phantasm of the brain, until a cough reached his ears
and notified him that a person had really entered the room. The
first look at the stranger led Florian to believe that he was
dreaming, for the man who stood gravely there, as if waiting to
be welcomed, was the living image of Scott, the hermit of the
Thousand Islands, just as he had looked in Paul's play or when
last he had seen him at Linda's grave: his cap worn helmet-
fashion, his blue shirt and high boots, and the red beard with the
sharp blue eyes shining above. He made no movement and
uttered no word, but stood looking at Florian until a chill crept
down the Congressman's shoulders.

" Scott, is this you ? " he said holding out his hand. " You
look like an apparition."

" And so I am," said Scott, taking the proffered hand for a
moment " a ghost of the past. Could I be more out of place
than in this grand house ? "

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 797

" You don't look so," said Florian, who felt that the hermit's
simplicity would not be amiss in the homes of kings, and he held
tightly to his hand and shook and pressed it as if he never would
let go.

" This is the hand Linda held," he said in excuse for his rude-
ness. " You have overthrown me quite. I am glad, but I can't
feel as if anything new had happened, you came so suddenly."

The hermit went around examining the room in his simple
way ; stopped at the picture of Linda for a moment, for a longer
time, at the picture of Ruth.

"This should not be here," he said, "if I know what's what
in this city."

" True," said Florian ; " but it's hard to do right always."

" Not for you," said the hermit, and suspicious Florian felt a
harshness in the tone. " Not for one who in the main acts
squarely is it hard. Do you think so ? "

" Some things are so much harder than others," was the re-
ply, very slowly and smilingly given. " But this is a cold greet-
ing, Scott. I feel the honor you have done me. It is something
unusual for you to do, and I am troubled to show you how it
impresses me."

" No anxiety on my account," said Scott, coming to take a
seat in front of him, with his eyes still studying the beauty of the
room. " I must be off before daylight. And so you're a Con-
gressman."

" High up, isn't it? " said Florian, blushing like a schoolboy.
" I am pretty close to great things, too close to make much fuss
if I should get them. And you remember what you said to me
about the political life that it would be my damnation, perhaps.
Ah ! how many a greater man must live to eat his own proph-
ecy."

" I have not eaten mine yet," said Scott, " and perhaps I hold
a leetle mite stronger to that opinion. Being a Congressman
at thirty-one isn't so great a show. It's ordinary in these days.
And it's not an evidence of piety, either ; do you think so?"

"Well.no." And he laughed. " But then I have not lost the
faith. I am the same old Florian, fond of speculating, of fishing,
of old friends, and of Scott the hermit in particular. I am a boy
yet, and I resemble St. Paul inasmuch as I have kept the faith.
My course is yet to be finished."

" No doubt you will be able to say that, too, some time," said
Scott, and Florian thought his seriousness was intended to mask
his sarcasm.

798 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

" No doubt, Scott. And you hint that I shall be able to say
no more. Pshaw ! I went to confession and communion last
last spring, and I never miss Mass. I have no taint of liberalism.
I object only to papal infallibility, and that is not yet defined."

" And do you object to mixed marriages ? "

A burning flush spread over Florian's face.

" Well, I am firm as to the theory if not as to the practice.
But I was not aware that many knew of this, indeed."

" Squire Pen'l'ton knew it."

" Which means that the whole world is in the secret."

" It was a big fall from Clayburg notions," Scott said, with
his sharp eyes piercing his very soul.

" I was only a boy then and had no experience."

" If you were mine I would be prouder of the boy's actions
than of the man's. It was a fair and square move to keep clear
of Protestant wives for the sake of the little ones. I don't think
you improved on it."

" Perhaps not ; but the world, I find, thinks little of these
things. I shall always regret my Clayburg obstinacy on that
point." He looked up sadly to the picture hanging over the
bookcase, and his firm lips trembled. He had lost it all for ever,
and no one to blame but himself. " I shall always regret it,
Scott always."

" I've no doubt," the hermit said shortly ; " an' you'll lose
more time than that before you wind up."

" See, friend," said Florian, turning with playful sharpness
upon him, " I have an idea you came here simply to haul me
over the coals. If so, proceed to the coals. I'm still more hon-
ored than before, for a man must think much of another to travel
so far for his sake alone."

The hermit drew a bit of newspaper from his pocket, and,
after smoothing out its wrinkles and creases, handed it to him.
" Pere Rougevin gave me that," he said ; " it is an extract from
one of your stump speeches. I kind-a doubted it, but I'd like
to hear your opinion on the thing. It's something new."

Florian read as follows : " Education belongs properly to the
state, and any attempt to rival its systems cannot fail to be hurt-
ful to all. After some experience in the matter I am convinced
that our public-school system is as fair an attempt at govern-
mental education as can be attained at present. All other sys-
tems should be frowned upon. Religion must attend to its
churches and its catechism, and let general education alone."
" It is mine," said Florian frigidly and briefly.

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 799

Without a word the hermit dropped it into the waste-basket,
and, rising, he began aimlessly to read the titles of the works in
the library. Decidedly Florian was not feeling as pleasant over
this visit as he expected, and the hermit's allusion to mixed mar-
riages and the producing of the extract had cut him deeply.
What was the next crime? he wondered.

" Them titles and names," said Scott, " don't sound well.
Voltaire, Strauss, Schlegel, Heine, Goethe, Hobbes, Hume. If
I'm not wrong, them's the people have done as much harm to
the world as men could do."

Florian laughed at his pronunciation of the names, for
Goethe was called Goath, and Voltaire Voltary.

" I bought them out of curiosity," Florian explained. " People
talked of them and their authors until I felt ashamed of knowing
nothing more about them than what I had read. They did not
impress me much, I can tell you."

" No, I s'pose not. They usually don't, such books." He
was turning over periodical literature, and, recognizing among
them some of the worst sheets of the day, pointed to them as one
would to a rotten carcase, saying, " I've heard the pere give his
opinion of them things."

" And it was not a favorable one, I feel sure. Well, a politi-
cian must see and read these things in order to keep abreast of
the times. They leave no impression on me, save regret for the
folly and the crime which produced them."

" The whole place," said Scott, " has a literary atmosphere.
I should think you'd want to keep it pure. You were brought
up to pure air, pure thinking, pure doin'. But this," with a
comprehensive gesture around, " don't look anything like your
bringing-up."

Florian was gnawing his lip with vexation by this time, for
the hermit ignored his arguments, his attack and defence and
apology entirely, and spoke as if in a soliloquy.

" Bringing-up was a little roughly done in Clayburg," said
he carelessly, " and a little narrow-minded. If I had remained
there I would have gone on ignorant of the world and its great
though erring minds. It does not injure man to know of his
great brethren, even if they be fallen."

" Has it done you any good? " asked the hermit, fixing once
more upon him the gentle eyes. " You say you read 'em be-
cause you wanted to talk about 'em with people who had them
on their lips always. Well, you've done your talkin' and your
end is reached. Whar's the good?"

8oo SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

" I have learnt something from their errors and from their
story, like the sailor who passes the scene of a comrade's ship-
wreck. You will never find me advocating Rousseau's civil-
government ideas or believing in Hume's idealism or but I beg
your pardon ; I had forgotten that you were unacquainted with
these things. Dry enough, aren't they, even when compared
with dry politics ! But here, my dear friend, this is not what
you came for from Clayburg. You have some news for me,
have you not? How's the fishing in Eel Bay? And* how do
people comport themselves in the steady old town?"

" I don't know much about 'em, but I believe they're well.
Your sister's eldest child died, you know " he did not, but
thought it best to say nothing " and your father, as you heard,
had a narrow escape with rheumatism of the heart."

He had not heard that either, and was ashamed to think that
letters from home had been lying unopened and forgotten for
weeks on his table.

" They was kind of expectin' you'd show up there soon.
They don't know your vocation is so well settled, and they
thought your likin's was stronger."

" Business with a young man," said Florian, " is usually too
pressing to admit of much recreation."

" I s'pose." The tone of these two words was delightful, and,
although they stung him, Florian was compelled to laugh.

"When you return, Scott, you can tell them how well I am
looking and how neatly my new office fits me. Next year I
shall try to deliver an oration at their Fourth of July turnout.
And to this you can add your own opinions of me."

" I would not like to," said Scott, shaking his head ; " it
wouldn't please your friends to know you are as you are.
You've changed, boy, for the worse. The man that reads such
books and thinks as you think he's on the wrong road. I hope
for Linda's sake you won't reach its end. That little grave ought
to be a reproach to you. I have a paper that you writ before
you left, and I brought it down, thinkin' perhaps you might care
to read it."

" Nonsense ! " said Florian roughly ; " let the buried past stay
in its grave."

The hermit sighed secretly, and before either could speak
again a knock came to the door, and Pere Rougevin entered and
shook hands with Florian warmly.

" Glad to see you in your new honors, Flory," with the gentle,
upward wave of the hand that the young man knew so well ; " hope

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 801

they will wear and stand a public washing. Scott here is quite
sombre-looking. You've been recalling- old reminiscences.
What a fine library ! Standard works, too ! Um, urn ! Voltaire
oh ! Schlegel very good ! Goethe ah ! Rousseau there's
the politician ! Your reading is comprehensive, Flory, shining,
like the sun, on the good and bad indifferently! There's the
mind of your true mqdern statesman."

" See the difference between the two men," said Florian, smil-
ing, yet quite aware of the pere's biting sarcasm. " Here this
vicious hermit has been reviling me for reading these things."

" Well, Scott has old-fashioned views," said the pere. " He
hardly understands the vigor of the faith in our rising Catholic
generation how easily these assaults of Satan are beaten back
by their vigorous arms, and how quickly these storms of infideli-
ty melt from them, like water off a duck's back, as the old lady
said. But no one can persuade him. He is morbid and melan-
choly. He would have us all hermits."
Scott rose and prepared to go.

"I am sorrj' for you," he said, with a long look at Florian,
more direct and earnest than he usually gave to any one.
41 Good-by."

" Good-by," said Florian, but they did not shake hands.
The pere was standing with his eyes on Ruth's picture.

" That should not be there," he said, as he offered his hand
for the parting salute ; " but the old love seems to die hard."

"Shall I see you in Washington this winter?" said Florian,
ignoring these remarks. " You are always talking of a visit
there ; surely you will make it now."

" It is likely, thank you, unless " and he looked at him slyly
"you begin to make speeches on education."

He was gone the next instant, and the new Congressman,
weary and irritated, returned to his meditations in disgust.

These two men were slowly fading out of his life, and it was
hard to endure in silence their rustic sarcasms, but he was de-
termined they would disturb him no more with their allusions.
Even if their charges were true, what use in making them ? He
would not go back to the rusticity of Clayburg, and in minor
points a politician could not bother with the strict laws of con-
science. In essentials it was different. The mention of Linda's
grave had stirred him and it brought back her dying words and
the sweet love she had for him. " I wonder," he thought curiously
as he fell asleep he would Once have spurned the thought with
indignation " if I could ever forget that last scene and those
VOL. XL. 51

802 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

last words. O Linda ! I pray with all my heart that we may
meet again."

PART THIRD.

CHAPTER I.

AN EVIL FACE.

THE clouds had been gathering over the city of Washington
during the whole of a warm December afternoon, and a little
after sunset the rain began to fall, lightly at first in a trouble-
some drizzle, and later in a heavy downpour. The city lamps
were not lighted. The municipal almanac had that night an-
nounced a full moon, and although the threatening of the heavens
was plain enough for six hours before darkness, the officials
preferred to stand by the almanac and leave pedestrians and
thieves to stumble and grow profane in the Egyptian dark-
ness. A private dwelling on one street had lighted the lamp
before its own doors, as if in order that thirsty people might the
better see the advertisement of a neighboring drinking-shop, and
under this lamp at the same moment' two dripping gentlemen
stopped for the purpose of lighting cigars. Both stood in the
rim of light that fell from the lamp, and naturally each eyed the
other with polite though ill-Veiled curiosity.

The Hon. Florian Wallace shivered slightly at the first im-
pression of the stranger's face, it was so white, so dull, so cruel ;
and the flickering light of the lamp and the red glow of the
match gave it a very sinister expression besides. The long
upper lip and short nose, with nostrils in full view, looked coarse
enough, and the face was covered by a light beard ; but what
disturbed the honorable gentleman most was the passionless, thin
lips curved like a sword. In his sudden dislike for that face he
could fancy it dipping in the blood of human beings. The
stranger looked at him slyly but strangely for a long time, as if
he were studying a familiar but long-forgotten scene and trying
to place it in his memory.

" It is a queer meeting," thought Florian. " We came from
opposite directions with the same intention, and we are interested
in each other. I never saw a face that disgusted me more. I feel
as if he were an assassin or some bloody and horrible thing that
might fasten on my throat like a vampire and suck my life-blood
with those hideous lips."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 803

In fact, Florian grew very nervous and unsettled while they
stood in that central spot of light, and the inquisitive glances of
the stranger's little, sharp eyes actually pained him. With a
hasty remark about the weather, he plunged into the darkness
on his homeward way, and ran and stumbled along the street
for a few blocks until want of breath had assisted the wind and
rain in restoring his senses. He did not feel at once that he
could afford to laugh at his unreasonable terror. He tried to
analyze the circumstances which had induced a sensation so new
and so apparently unworthy of its object. He had walked the
streets on such nights many a time, had met with people of
every shade of manner, some more disgusting than the stranger,
had faced dangerous characters even, and had never feared or
trembled as he had to-night. It might have been the strain of
the day's labor. He was not so strong, or he might be tak-
ing a cold, and was prepared, like weak-nerved people, to make
ghosts of unusual-looking men and to tremble at presentiments.
He was ready to laugh at himself when he had reached his hotel.
In its warmth and brightness and social cheer he felt ashamed
of his fears, and amused acquaintances with a description of his
feelings and an analysis of the features of the stranger.

It was awkward that in the loneliness of his room the face
should return to his mind like the memory of a portrait, shaping
its thin lips, sharp eyes, pallor, light beard, and cruel coldness
against a darkness of wind and rain, and producing the old sen-
sation of chilly fear. He began to think he was going into a
fever, but his steady pulse and cool head were not indications.
Sleeping, he found the face in every contortion of his troubled
dreams, and, like De Quincey, was haunted by a sea of faces, all
having the same fixed look and cruel expression. It was the
more peculiar because of Florian's cold, steady character. His
imagination was warm enough, but habit kept it in a refrige-
rator. What state of feeling could account for the phenomenon ?
The rush of business next day prevented him from dwelling on
it often, and until he came to speak on some bill in the house he
did not once recall the strange face. He was in the middle of
a telling speech, and the house was listening with more defer-
ence than young members usually get from it, when he stopped,
stammered through a sentence, hesitated, and then, with an
effort, resumed his speech and finished. The cause of the inter-
ruption was a glimpse he had gotten of the stranger in the gal-
lery surveying him with an opera-glass.

He began to get angry with himself. He determined that

804 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

if the face were to haunt him for ever he would never allow it
to disturb him again. When he was preparing to attend a late
session next evening he met the stranger in the office of the
hotel, and, to his great disgust, he shivered involuntarily. The
gentleman was a man of ordinary ugliness, and seemed to be a
foreigner, of an expression not particularly agreeable nor yet
decidedly repulsive. He was dressed well and looked human,
but Florian's obstinate fancy persisted in seeing his face as he
had seen it two nights before, apart from his neat dress, gay
necktie, handsome felt hat, and other pleasant circumstances ;
yet he had to admit that any countenance would look terrible
when seen under a strong light with no other part of the human
figure visible. Still, he shivered the more when the man casually
glanced at him. After he had addressed him politely and re-
ferred to their meeting in the rain, and the stranger had cour-
teously replied in a foreign accent, he still shivered and was un-
comfortable. " Evidently," he thought, " we represent the
poles of human feeling. We should be miles apart for our own
happiness. I can never take to him."

The stranger was probably a traveller studying life at the
capital, for Florian saw him often at remote distances examining
buildings and watching the scenes of every-day life. It came to
be a positive irritation to meet him, which required all his reso-
lution to keep under restraint. The stranger frequented the
hotel, and was occasionally in conversation with a daintily-
dressed, dark-skinned young man of light, engaging manner,
who made Florian the object of his careful study. However,
the face ceased to be troublesome within a few weeks, and
almost passed out of his memory.

He was pleased and surprised to find Mrs. Merrion's card on
his table one evening. She did not usually spend the winters in
Washington, but he was glad to know that she was to be in the
city during the session ; for of the many women he had met in
casual society, Barbara was one of the most charming, and ap-
peared to appreciate him without being capable of matrimonial
designs. A rather clever woman he thought her, thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of the world an immense addition to the
household of any man. What would stupid Merrion be, whom
no one ever heard of except in connection with his wife, if he
had not taken this diamond from its rough setting in Clayburg
and transferred it to his own bosom? This reminded him and
he needed little reminding how necessary it was that he him-
self should soon set up his household. He was heartsore yet

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 805

with regard to Ruth, and he hardly cared to put any one in her
place, except as ambition stirred him.

The ball which Mrs. Merrion gave a week or two later was
filled with an assemblage of the highest people in the city, and
was really a brilliant scene. Mr. Merrion had come expressly
from New York to be present at it, and was assisting his wife in
doing the honors of the evening when Florian entered and paid
his respects. Uniforms of embassies were sprinkled plentifully
through the throng, and Mrs. Merrion gazed upon them in
ecstatic delight.

" If there is anything I do like," said she, with a giggle, to
Florian, " it is the army, navy, and embassy uniforms. They
give such an air to a room ! By the way," she added, " I wish
you to make the acquaintance of one of the nicest young men
here to-night."

They proceeded to the music-room and heard a glorious tenor
voice rolling off some foreign syllables.

"That is he," said Barbara; "he is a Russian, a count, and
holds first rank at the embassy. He is handsome, witty, good-
humored, talented, and his voice speaks for itself."

When they entered the room the Russian count was leaving
the piano, and, as he came forward at the lady's bidding, Florian
recognized the young man whom he had seen in the hotel in
conversation with the stranger.

" Count Vladimir Behrenski the Hon. Florian Wallace."

The gentleman bowed low, and, with a graceful lightness and
presumption that took one's heart by storm, offered his hand and
warmly pressed Florian's.

" Now you are already friends," said Barbara, leaving them,
"and you shall be rivals in my good graces."

" There are so many," said the count, with French quickness.
" Mr. Wallace, I have been desiring to know you this long time,
since it came to me that I saw in you a wonderful resemblance
to a noble Russian family a family of royal connections, in
truth. The likeness is very clear and very exact."

" You surprise me," said Florian, who was not at all sur-
prised. He thought of saying, " You flatter me," but he
believed, with the true republican sternness, that facts lay
the other way. " It would interest the noble family, I am sure,
to know an American citizen honored them by personal resem-
blance."

" Your resemblance is so very close and exact to the Prince
Louis of Cracow," the count said meditatively. " If there were

8o6 SOLITARY ISLAND. [Mar.,

Russians here acquainted with him they would take you for
him, but that his hair is light."

" I may be an offshoot, count. My mother came from Ireland,
and no doubt Russians emigrated thither some time. We are
descended from princes, I know."

" Yes, the Irish are a princely race, more so than other
Europeans the island being small, I think, and the word prince
having a wide application. You were born in this country, sir?'*

" Oh ! yes, and nursed and educated into Yankee notions."

" They are very elastic, these Yankee notions," said the count.
" Would you call the pretty hostess, Mrs. Merrion, a Yankee
notion ? "

" The term is hardly used that way," Florian answered, hesi-
tatingly, at its rather ridiculous application. " But you seem to
think Mrs. Merrion of an elastic disposition."

" She is a fine woman, delightful ; but it's hard for us to un-
derstand her. We know two classes of women in Europe the
very good, the very bad. It is easy to tell at once the class.
Not so with your American ladies. Your code of manners is
elastic. It is a Yankee notion."

" Purely," said Florian, uneasy at the drift of the count's
remarks. " It would hardly suit the Russian climate."

The count shook his head and laughed at the idea.

*' Yet* it is very amusing at first. There is a fine uncertainty
about it, and it sharpens the faculties wonderfully."

" Of course you do not like Washington," said Florian, "after
a term of years at Paris."

" There are opportunities for pleasure everywhere, my dear
sir. The fewer they are the more we make of them. I enjoy
myself, and I am not haunted by a fond mother anxious to save
me from dissipation and irreligion, yet who dares not cross the
ocean. Then there are so many things new. Oh ! it is pleasant
to me, and I have been here two years. They /tell me you are
one of the rising men, Mr. Wallace ? "

" Gradually rising," laughed Florian. " I have the White
House in view."

" Four years of power just a mouthful. Bah ! And you
strive for years like giants to get the place. I had rather be a
count over a little village than such a man. If you were offered
a princeship to-morrow and the Presidency at the same moment,
which to you would be the nearest to choose? "

"That which is perpetual," said Florian gravely, "of course.
But we never have perpetual power in this country."

1885.] SOLITARY ISLAND. 807

" I know. I referred to other countries. Suppose you were
heir to some distant noble family of Ireland?"

" An earldom would satisfy me, count," said Florian, looking
to see why the gay attach^ should be so earnest ; but Vladimir
was smiling carelessly at a dame passing. " You look as if you
were beginning to feel that ennui which pleasure-seekers suffer
from."

" I ?" cried the count, starting. " That is the last thing which
will reach this effervescing soul of mine. It is the presence of
grave greatness like yours which throws a shadow over me. I
am always gay. Ah ! Mr Wallace, living on ambition as you
do, it is not to you a real pleasure to be always gay. You are
up and down as the game goes. I am always up."

"How about the little monitor here?" said Florian, tapping
his breast. " Does conscience never trouble you with the thought
that up-ness here means down-ness somewhere else? "

" Never. My conscience is my slave. It belongs to me.
Shall it dare speak without permission. But tell me, sir, will
you accompany us to-morrow to the services of Strongford's
death ? He was a Methodist, but you are not so strict, so
bigoted, as to refuse so plain a favor. Will you not come?"

" If you wish it, count. I am not so bigoted or so narrow-
He stopped, his face whitened and his jaw fell. At the win-
dow near which they stood appeared the cold outlines of the
haunting face, its cruelty outlining itself so sharply and suddenly
on the pane as to overwhelm him with terror. He recovered
himself speedily, but did not finish the sentence.

" What's the matter?" said the count, with much sympathy.

"Oh! a weakness of mine," said Florian. "You will excuse
me for a time, count, until I have recovered myself."

The count bowed, and Florian went silently out into the gar-
den and strode along the bare walk, hot from anger one moment,
shivering from terror the next. It was plain the face was haunt-
ing him, and for what purpose? Why he more than another, and
why should he be compelled to such a display of emotion by the
mere sight of a face seen a dozen times in a few weeks? He
could not explain it, but he was so determined to put an end to
it that when a silent form stole to the same window, before his
very eyes, and the light shone clearly on the cruel face, he stood
beside the stranger, and, calling his attention to himself, kicked
him down the walk and out of the garden-gate in a terrible
passion.

TO BE CONTINUED.

8o8 BEATIFICATION ASKED FOR [Mar,

BEATIFICATION ASKED FOR AMERICAN SERVANTS

OF GOD.

THE church militant is the birthplace and nursery of the
saints. In return they become our patrons in heaven. What
is a church without saints or a nation without patrons and
shrines? Deprive proud England of her Edward the Confessor,
her Dunstan, her Thomas a Becket, and there remain only the
tragic rdles of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and the modern spirit
of heartless conquest and selfish trade. Attempt, if you dare, to
strike St. Patrick from the cultus of Ireland : you provoke a revo-
lution which no power can suppress. Blot from the history
of France her St. Louis, her St. Genevieve, her St. Roch, and
there is little left but the French Revolution, the two Napoleons,
and an infidel Republic. What would Rome become if deprived
of that long and honored line of saints, martyrs, doctors, pontiffs,
and confessors of the faith whose deeds and virtues are enshrined
in the domes and basilicas of the Eternal City? Her very atmos-
phere is sanctified by the fragrance of their virtues. No wonder
that Lord Byron, the poet of sensualism, felt the charm and
spirituality of Rome's undying sanctity when he exclaimed :

" O Rome ! my country ; city of the soul !
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee."

Where does America stand in this vast spiritual empire of
the communion of saints? We have our share, it is true, in the
common treasures of the church, which are inexhaustible. We
have for our patrons the great saints of the universal church.
But where are our national saints and shrines ? This is one of the
coming questions of the hour.

We make bold enough to answer now that America has her
saints and shrines. That a nation long passed beyond the nas-
cent period of colonial life, the true historic time ; whose third
century is passing; ranking among the great nations; founded
by Christians that such a nation has had no saints, martyrs, inno-
cents, holy virgins, confessors of the faith, in a period of heroic
discovery under the banner of the cross, in a period of mission-
ary and apostolic zeal, in a period when men of God abandoned
home, family, country, and every human solace, and encountered
danger, thirst, hunger, nakedness, and every sacrifice, in order to

1885.] AMERICAN SERVANTS OF GOD. 809

carry the faith and salvation to a heathen race that such a na-
tion has no saints is a moral impossibility. Yes, America has her
saints, and now we ask that they, too, may receive the homage
paid to the servants of God, and as such, to use the words of the
poet, that they may be

" Worshipp'd with temple, priest, and sacrifice."

The church, in her wise and well-disposed economies, is slow
and cautious in such matters. Centuries elapse between the life
and death of the saint and the period of canonization. In the
meantime tradition, history, intercession not made in vain, and
even miracles have prepared the field for the harvest. For more
than two centuries the fame of their sanctity has survived, and
has grown brighter with advancing time ; and now our martyrs
and the Indian virgin, first-fruit of their blood, have become the
honored and venerated objects of the first and preliminary stages
of beatification by the spontaneous voice of petition and prayer
from prelate, priest, and people, and of a devout hierarchy, ad-
dressed to the Sovereign Pontiff. The illustrious candidates for
this sublime honor are Father Isaac Jogues, priest of the Society
of Jesus, Rene Goupil, novice of the same illustrious society
martyrs; and Catherine Tegakwita, the Indian virgin of the Mo-
hawk. May they intercede for us, who now devoutly ask that
they may be elevated to the altars of our country and of our
church for the veneration and invocation of the faithful !

In order that our readers may understand the history, mo-
tives, progress, present condition, and prospects of this great and
pious movement, we will first give a brief historical account of
these saintly persons, and, secondly, some relation of the cause or
proceedings instituted for their beatification and, as we hope, for
their ultimate canonization.

Father Isaac Jogues was born at Orleans, France, on January
10, 1607. His family were noted for their piety and faith. His
first academic studies were made at the College of Orleans ; his
higher studies, as a novice and scholastic of the Society of Jesus,
at the College of La Fleche under the celebrated Father Louis
Lalemant. His literary and scholastic attainments were con-
siderable. His beautiful and classical Latin letter to his superior,
in which he gave an account of his imprisonment among the
Mohawks, his account of Novum Belgium, and the epistle he wrote
to the Dutch minister who saved his life, the worthy Dominie
Megapolensis, are among the evidences of this. Ordained in
February, 1636, it was not long afterwards that he dedicated

8 io BEATIFICATION ASKED FOR [Mar.,

himself to the Indian missions in America and sailed for Canada.
Almost immediately after his arrival he was in the forest, the
wigwam, on the chase wherever a soul could be saved. He
possessed every characteristic and performed every work of an
apostle. The Huron missions were his first regular field of labor,
peril, and suffering. First he labored with Father Br6beuf, then
with Father Gamier, and next with Father Duperon. The suf-
ferings he endured with patience, and even with joy, on the Huron
mission were incredible, as related, but for the undoubted authen-
ticity of the accounts. And yet he thought and felt.only for the
sufferings of his fellow-missionaries, for they were all reduced to
the last extremity for want of the necessaries of life. In their
great distress Father Jogues volunteered to make the perilous
journey from St. Mary's of the Huron mission to Quebec and
back for their relief. Accompanied by Eustace Anahistaii, the
converted Huron chief, and other Hurons, he ran the gauntlet of
every danger and hardship and arrived safely at Quebec. The
return journey was far more dangerous, for the fierce Mohawks,
implacable enemies of Huron and Christian, were on the war-
path. He was now accompanied by the same and other Hurons,
and was joined at Quebec by William Couture and Ren6 Goupil.

Rene Goupil, the first to gain the crown of martyrdom, had
long been known as " the good Rene." A native of Angiers,
educated as a physician, a novice of the Society of Jesus, he pos-
sessed every quality of a saint. Forced by ill-health to leave the
novitiate, he became a donnt of the society that is to say, one
who from religious motives gives his whole services to religion
in the society, receiving only a support. He, too, espoused and
gave himself to the Canada mission. His services in nursing the
sick, instructing the heathen, and confirming and encouraging
the neophytes were no less admired than his personal goodness,
zeal, piety, and devotion. Such was the congenial soul that be-
came the companion of Jogues on the journey back from Quebec
to St. Mary's of the Hurons in August, 1642.

The flotilla, which consisted of twelve canoes, reached Three
Rivers on August i, and had scarcely proceeded three leagues
from that place when suddenly a volley from a Mohawk ambush
riddled their canoes. The Hurons were panic-stricken. Some
fled ; others, after rallying and resisting, were overcome ; and
finally the brave Eustace and his immediate companions were
reduced to a captivity which meant death. Father Jogues and
Rene could have easily escaped in the confusion of the surprise,
the rally, the battle, and the eagerness of the Mohawks to secure

1885.] AMERICAN SERVANTS OF GOD. 811

their Huron victims. But no ; in the prison-pen were souls
newly converted, or souls about to be plunged into eternity
without the faith or without baptism. The father and the good
Rene voluntarily surrendered themselves as prisoners, that they
might give the freedom of the Gospel to the other prisoners.
"Could I," said Father Jogues, '"a minister of Christ, forsake
the dying, the wounded, the captive ? " " When," says Bancroft,
" did a Jesuit missionary seek to save his own life at what he
believed to be the risk of a soul ? "

On and near the Mohawk River stood the three Mohawk vil-
lages, of which Ossernenon was the first. Hither, amid impre-
cations, derision, and blows, the captive Jesuits and Christian
Hurons were brought. Father Jogues felt comfort, amid such
treatment, from the good he had done ; for in the midst of the
terror and din of the surprise and capture he had taken water
from the river and baptized his pilot. He had rushed to a
Huron woman, one of the prisoners, while wrapped in flames,
and baptized her with water from his hand, which, as it fell,
seethed in the fire. He confessed the good Rene, now in expec-
tation of instant death, and as the Huron prisoners were brought
in he rushed to embrace and console them. Compelled to pass
through thickened ranks of Mohawk savages, men, women, and
children, the prisoners fell and fainted under a shower of clubs
and missiles. Rene" was so exhausted that he had to be lifted and
carried to the place of public torture. His person was so black-
ened with heavy blows that Father Jogues said there was not a
white spot on his body except the white of his eyes ; but the
mangled and bruised form of the young and almost expiring
martyr was so beautiful in the eyes of the father that he em-
braced Rene with unbounded affection, while his own condition
was near as sad. His own body was mangled and torn, and his
left thumb was cut from his hand ; the saintly priest offered this
member as a sacrifice to Him, his Saviour, who was bruised and
mangled for our sins. His finger-nails were torn out by the
roots, and his venerable head was the savages' favorite mark for
every form of attack.

We can but hasten through the heroic ordeal of suffering and
martyrdom. Bitter torments day and night were their fate : tied
hand and foot, given over to the sport of Indian children, who
threw burning coals upon them," which hissed and burned in the
writhing flesh until they were extinguished there " ; they were
dragged from village to village for seven days amid appalling
tortures, witnessing the deaths, one by one, of the Huron Chris-

8 1 2 BE A TIFICA TION A SKED FOR [Mar.,

tains, from Eustace to Paul, all, however, welcoming death for
Christ. They also witnessed the fruitless intercession of Arendt
van Curler and his companions from the Dutch colony of New
Amsterdam for their release. Their condition finally became
hopeless, except that bright, distant hope of wearing the crown
of martyrdom in heaven.

The good Rene was engaged in constant prayer; in the midst
of his torments he instructed the young Indians to make the
sign of the cross and to pray. He and Father Jogues were again
and again driven from pillar to post with ignominy and insult
from brutal savages. Rene was an object of special hatred be-
cause of his devotion to the cross, which the Mohawks hated.
Father Jogues comforted and cheered him ; forewarned him of
his impending fate. Finally, and suddenly, when in the very act
of teaching a young Indian girl to make the sign of the cross
near the gate of the village, the tomahawk in the hand of a young
Mohawk brave descended upon his head, and "the good Rene"
fell before the eyes of Father Jogues, a martyr, a saint, uttering
with his last breath the name of Jesus !

After the martyrdom of Ren6, Father Jogues became the
object of all the Mohawks' fury. He was given as a slave to a
Mohawk chief, whom he had to accompany to the chase, to the
fisheries, to the war-path, and everywhere. He had to perform
the most menial offices, to witness the most horrible excesses of
Indian devil-worship, and to endure every ill-treatment and insult.
He had chances of escape, but refused to avail himself of them,
and yearned for opportunities to instruct, to baptize, and to save.
On several occasions, in the midst of appalling danger, he ex-
ercised his ministry of mercy. " I have," he said, " baptized
seventy since my captivity children and youth and old men of
five different tongues and nations that men of every tribe and
tongue and nation might stand in the presence of the Lamb."
Now approaching Rensselaerswyck the present city of Albany
in search of souls, it was with the .utmost difficulty that he could
be persuaded by Van Curler and the Dominie Megapolensis,
the Dutch minister, to entertain even their offers of escape. For
he was willing to suffer captivity; he loved the Indians because
they possessed immortal souls. Having learned of fresh wars, in
the midst of which his ministry would be unavailing, after much
hesitation he consented to make his escape, and reached the city
of New Amsterdam, now New York. He was the first Catholic
priest who celebrated the Holy Mass in this city. Even here,
and in his forlorn state, he sought out Catholics to whom to ad-

1885.] AMERICAN SERVANTS OF GOD. 813

minister the sacraments of grace. Returning to Europe, he
was honored as a saint by sovereign and people, by priest and
prelate. At Paris the faithful pressed forward in crowds to ven-
erate him and kiss his wounds. He asks, not for rest, nor for
friends, family, country, or even the company of his brethren, but
to be sent back to the Mohawk mission. His mangled hands
present an impediment to his offering up the Holy Sacrifice ; but
the pope, Innocent XL, removes the impediment, saying: "It
were unjust that a martyr of Christ should not drink the blood
of Christ." In May, 1644, Father Jogues is again in Canada.
Peace is made between the French and the Iroquois, who now
even manifest fruit of the martyrdom of the good Rene ask
for the society and ministry of the blackgovvn fathers. In May,
1646, Father Jogues appeared among the Mohawks in the new
capacity of ambassador from the French ; his mission was per-
formed and he returned to Canada. By the last of the month of
September of that year Father Jogues is on his way back to the
Mohawk to found a mission !. The Mohawk mission the mission
of the martyrs ! That he should make such an attempt, among
such fierce savages, shows the intrepidity of his soul. His
Huron companions, appalled at the attempt, abandon him soon
on the way. The courageous priest pushed on. And now, when
he had arrived within two days' journey of the Mohawk villages,
he fell into the hands of the Mohawks, who were again on the
war-path ; -they rushed upon their best friend, now their victim,
stripped him of his clothes, loaded him with insults, and hurried
him to the same village where he had witnessed the martyrdom
of Ren6 the village of Ossernenon. He stood undaunted in their
midst, but, the gentlest of men and the humblest, when question
of God and truth and faith was involved became a second Paul ;
and he challenged the insolent savages to bow before their God
and his. As he spoke the name of God he received his death-
blow and became the second martyr of the Mohawk valley. His
death occurred on October 18, 1646 a day destined to become
honored in the annals of the American church.

The blood of these glorious martyrs proved to be the seed of
the church ; for on the very spot where Rene" Goupil and Father
Jogues had shed their blood for the faith sprang up the Mission
of the Martyrs, and the golden fruit of this mission was the
saintly life, virtues, character, and death of Catherine Tegakwita,
the Iroquois virgin. She was born ten years after the martyr-
dom of Father Jogues, at Ossernenon, in 1656 ; she embraced
the faith in her heart long before she could find confidence or

8 14 BEATIFICATION ASKED FOR^ [Mar.,

opportunity to confess it to the missionary. In 1676 she con-
fided her secret to Father Lamberville. Her joy at being- received
into the church was unbounded. She was baptized in the mission
church on Easter Sunday, 1676. Her virtues were exalted ; she
gave her soul and body entirely to God ; her devotions, her
austerities, her good works were constant ; she bore insult, de-
rision, and calumny in silence; she dedicated herself to a life
of celibacy ; in the world, and amidst the labors, turmoil, and de-
basement of savage society, she led a life of prayer and recol-
lection, self-denial and penance. She spent hours in the chapel
at prayer. The festivals of the church were turned into fasts
for her, for she was then deprived of food by her relatives, whom
she refused on those days to accompany to the cultivated fields ;
she was set upon by a brutal drunken Indian on her way to
church, by the instigation ot her tribe, and narrowly escaped
the tomahawk once raised over her head ; persecution of every
kind she endured in silence and with patience. She finally, and
in order to save both body and soul, escaped to the more con-
genial and free atmosphere of Caughnawaga, in Canada, where
she spent the three remaining years of her life in the highest
sanctity. Here at the foot of the village cross she spent hours ;
she, with some pious female companions, spent their lives in pov-
erty, seclusion, and humility, and their lives were assimilated to
those of the nuns of Quebec. She renounced all pleasures, prac-
tised austerities, and bore ill-health with joy. This flower of
the Indian race was now fading on earth, to bloom with greater
fragrance and beauty in the heavenly Paradise. She received
the sacraments in her humble cabin with the most profound de-
votion ; told the missionary the time when her death would
occur, and requested him then to come and anoint her. Her ex-
piring words were the names of Jesus and Mary. She was con-
scious to the last, and seemed to sleep when she died. She died,
as she had lived, in the odor of sanctity.

These are the martyrs and saints Upon whom the American
church is now petitioning the Holy See to bestow the highest
honors of the church militant on earth. In order to enable the
readers of this paper fully to understand the important and
detailed course of proceeding to be instituted in this important
and, to us American Catholics, new proceeding, we will explain
the method of beginning the cause, its introduction, the nature of
the evidence, the different stages of the cause, the results aimed
at and how attained. This imposing process is in the nature
and form of a law-suit, or rather of a suit in equity. Exclusive

1885.] AMERICAN SERVANTS OF GOD. 815

jurisdiction is reserved to the court of Rome and the papal com-
missions or auxiliary courts appointed to investigate and re-
port to the Sovereign Pontiff. Hence the proceeding is called
a cause. Neither the local or diocesan authorities nor the de-
vout people are permitted to anticipate the- decision of the Holy
See, nor to usurp its jurisdiction, by public honors paid to, or
invocations of, the saintly or martyred dead. In this very case,
although a Pilgrim Shrine is to be erected by the Jesuit fathers
on the very site of the martyrdom of Ren6 and Father Jogues,
yet, however much it may owe its existence to the desire of
keeping fresh the memory of those martyrs, it will in no religious
sense be dedicated to their honor, but will be placed under the
invocation of Our Lady of Martyrs. The new mission to be
established at this sacred place will bear the original name of the
Mohawk mission over two hundred years ago The Mission of the
Martyrs.

But it is the pious and grateful prayer of the people, the
voice of tradition ever fresh, and the petition of the local ordi-
naries, synods, or councils that may legitimately, and does in fact,
move the Holy See to direct the cause to be introduced. Thus for
the past twenty- five years or more a desire more or less ardent,
and renewed from time to time, and manifested in an exact form
by three independent petitions prepared without concert long
before the assembly of the Plenary Council, has been mani-
fested for t,he beatification and canonization of these servants of
God. From among numerous evidences of this may be cited
only one : the desire expressed by Father Martin, of Canada an
illustrious historian and pioneer chronicler of the American In-
dian missions in his writings, that, without anticipating the
judgment of the church, this cause should be taken up and pro-
secuted to a glorious result. Of late the Jesuit fathers have
identified, by unmistakable evidences, the sacred spot which was
the scene of the martyrdom and of the old Mission of the Mar-
tyrs the village of Ossernenon and have purchased the land,
on which they propose to erect the Pilgrim Shrine. They first
issued the interesting pamphlet entitled A Holy Place in New
York State, and now they issue monthly The Pilgrim of Our Lady
of Martyrs, devoted to the collection and renewal of the evi-
dences and traditions of the virtues of Rene Goupil, Father
Jogues, and Catherine Tegakwita. There have been selected
four promoters of the cause a priest of Buffalo, a priest of Al-
bany, a priest of New York City, and a Jesuit father of Wood-
stock College. These reverend promoters addressed a memorial

816 BEATIFICATION ASKED FOR [Mar.,

to the late Plenary Council of Baltimore, giving in detail the
past and the present state of the case, with references to docu-
ments and testimonials already gathered, its readiness for presen-
tation at Rome, and the favorable opportunity now offered for
petitioning the Holy. See for its formal introduction.

The grounds of the application may be briefly stated. It
is capable of exact proof, by tradition and contemporary writ-
ings, that all three of these servants of God led lives of extraor-
dinary sanctity ; that they practised in an extraordinary degree
the heroic virtues of faith, hope, charity, prudence, temperance,
fortitude, justice. In respect to Rene. Goupil, the testimony of
Father Jogues, who witnessed his virtues and his death, is con-
clusive when he writes: "It was the 2Qth of September, 1642,
this angel in innocence and this martyr of Jesus Christ was im-
molated, at thirty-five years of his age, to Him who had given
His own life for his redemption. He had consecrated his soul
and his heart to God, his hand and his existence to the service of
God." The attested documents gathered in 1652 by order of
the archbishop of Rouen also prove his sanctity to have arisen
to the standard of the saints. Father Jogues' testimony is still
preserved in his own handwriting.

I 1 he sanctity of Father Jogues is proved not only by tradition,
but also by the testimony of contemporary writers and by all
historians, secular and ecclesiastical. He showed the power of
prophecy in his lifetime, for when he was selected to go and
found the Mohawk mission he said : " I will go, but I will not re-
turn." In a vision he saw Rene's reception into glory, and he saw
Rene beckoning him to come. The fama sanctitatis of Father
Jogues is sustained by Father Buteux, his superior, in his sworn
depositions, and by the other contemporary documents and by
the manuscripts in the archives of the superiors of the Society of
Jesus from 1652 to 1800. preservSd in St. Mary's College, Mon-
treal. The pages of Charlevoix, Martin, Shea, and all ecclesiasti-
cal history teem with the same evidence. In THE CATHOLIC
WORLD for October, .1872, his sanctity is shown in a paper
on Father Jogues by the present writer. So, too, with secular
histories. Bancroft speaks of his " vision of the glory of the
Queen of Heaven " as he was running the gauntlet of Indian
mockeries and blows, of the consolation he enjoyed even in his
torments, and of his cruel martyrdom. Parkman describes his
character with admiration ; speaks of his tortures, his daily ex-
pectation of death, his conscientiousness, his patience, his spirit
of devotion, his longing for death, his pious labors, his humility,

1885.] AMERICAN SERVANTS OF GOD. 817

his defence of the Gospel, and of his life as "one of the purest
examples of Roman Catholic virtue which this western conti-
nent has seen," and of his cruel death.

The good Catherine was venerated as a saint in her lifetime
both by the Jesuits and by her own people. When she fled from
Ossernenon to Caughnawaga, her confessor, writing to the su-
perior at the latter place, said : " Catherine Tegakwita goes to
live at the Sault. I pray you to take the charge of her direction.
You will soon know the treasure we are giving you. Keep it
well, therefore. May it profit in your hands to God's glory and
to the salvation of a soul assuredly very dear to him." Besides,
we refer to the manuscript record of over thirty extraordinary
graces, cures, and other favors obtained through her, signed in
attestation by M. Remy, priest of St. Sulpice, Lachine, Canada,
in 1696; also to personal testimony of Columbiere and Du Luth,
and other grave personages, etc. Buried beside the church
where she had worshipped, her grave became a place of pil-
grimage for Indian and Canadian, for people and rulers, priest
and prelate, and her invocation was rewarded with miraculous
cures. So, too, of Father Jogues and Ren6 Goupil it is stated
that miracles have attested their sanctity, such as Rene's ap-
parition to Father Jogues a miracle of high order wrought by
Father' Jogues in Paris, of which the record and evidences are
preserved, though the ecclesiastical documents were destroyed
in the French Revolution and great graces obtained have been
attributed to the intercession of all three. It may also be men-
tioned that Father Jogues' name was included in a postnlatum
for beatification, along with those martyred on Canadian soil
De Brebeuf, Lalemant, and others by one of the provincial
councils of Canada.

The memorial addressed by, the reverend promoters to the
Plenary Council of Baltimore was received with the greatest
favor, and even enthusiasm ; and a conciliar petition, or Postula-
tuin, on the part of the assembled episcopate of the United States
unanimously agreed to. One of the archbishops of the council
said : " Father Jogues' name is a household word." Another
archbishop said : " I wondered often this cause had not been
brought forward long since." And still another archbishop
said : " The devotion so long existing in Canada toward Cathe-
rine shows how little difficulty there should be in the case."

The petitions to the Holy See for the beatification of our
holy ones will not, and should not, be numerous. The Postula-
tuni from the Plenary Council of Baltimore will represent, of
VOL. XL. 52

8i8 BEATIFICATION ASKED FOR [Mar.,

course, the whole American church, and would of itself suffice.
But besides this it has been suggested that petitions be sent to
Rome from the various Indian tribes and one from the United
States Catholic Historical Society, whose headquarters are in
this city. A beautiful petition for the Indians has already b*een
written, in the language of the Flatheads, by an old missionary
of that tribe, and it has been signed by their chiefs. So also the
chiefs of Catherine's own village have signed their petition to
the Holy Father. The writer has before him now the Flathead
petition in three languages ; he considers that this paper would
be incomplete without an English version of this touching ad-
dress. It is as follows :

" OUR FATHER THE POPE :

" Though we Indians are very poor and miserable, yet our Maker had
great pity on us and gave us the Catholic religion. Moreover, he had pity
on us again and gave us CATHERINE TEGAKWITA. This holy virgin, an
Indian like ourselves, being favored by Jesus Christ with a great grace,
grew up very good, had great love for our Maker, and died good and holy,
and is now glorious in heaven, as we believe, and prays for us all. This
virgin, we believe, was given to us from God as a great favor, for she is our
little sister. But now we hope that thou, our Father, who art the Vicar of
Jesus Christ, wilt grant us a favor likewise : we beg thee with the whole of
our hearts to speak and say : ' You Indians, my children, take CATHERINE
as an object of your veneration in the church, because she is holy and is in
heaven."

" There are also two others who, though Frenchmen, yet are as if they
were Indians, because they taught the Indians the sign of the cross and
the way to heaven ; and for this they were killed by bad Indians. Their
names are BLACKGOWN ISAAC JOGUES and BROTHER RENE" GOUPIL. We
wish to have these two also as objects of our veneration, as our protectors
and our advocates.

" If thou givest us these three as our PATRONS our hearts will be glad,
our behavior will be good, and our.children will become perfect; also a
great many unbaptized Indians will enter into the Catholic Church and
will see the glory of heaven."

The first process in the conduct of a cause for the beatification
of a servant of God consists of formal inquiries instituted by the
ordinary or bishop of the diocese as to the reputation, or fania
sanctitatis, of the holy one beatificandus. The second process is
conducted either by the same local bishop or by an official of the
Roman Curia, and consists of investigations de non cultu that is,
that the decrees of Pope Urban VIII. have been complied with
and that the decision of the Holy See has not been anticipated
by any unlawful public veneration of the proposed saint. The
third process consists in officially transmitting the results of these

1885.] AMERICAN SERVANTS OF GOD. 819

preliminary inquiries to the secretary of the Congregation of
Rites at Rome. The fourth process consists in the opening of
the investigation before this congregation at the request of the
postulators, or promoters, of the cause. The fifth process is the
appointment of a promotor fidei, familiarly called the " devil's advo-
cate," whose duty consists in exposing the weak points or flaws
in the evidence adduced. The sixth process occurs in case the
beatificandus was an author, and consists in an examination of his
writings. If the reports be now favorable, by the seventh pro-
cess the Holy Father decrees the introduction of the cause for
regular trial. The effect of this act is to invest the servant of
God with the title of Venerable, and the Holy See now makes the
cause its own. The eighth process consists in the commission
issued by the pope to the Congregation of Rites to investigate
the reality and nature of the virtues and miracles attributed to
the saint. Without special dispensation this process is not taken
until ten years have elapsed since the third process, of transmis-
sion of the preliminary inquiry, was taken. The ninth process
consists in the appointment of a court, consisting of three bishops
or other high officials, to proceed regularly with the trial, exam-
ination of witnesses, etc., and the record of the preceding pro-
cesses of the trial. If this be favorable the tenth process consists
in a still more searching inquiry into the merits of the case upon all
the preceding processes and documents. On the return of all these
processes to the Congregation of Rites the whole case is exam-
ined and considered by that body ; and here the pope himself
is present, and this is the eleventh process. The pope, after
prayer and supplication to know the will of God, if his judgment
so far is favorable, holds a new general congregation, which, as a
twelfth process, determines whether the beatification shall pro-
ceed forthwith or be further delayed. And if this be favorable
the pope appoints, as a thirteenth and final process, the day for
the beatification, which takes place in the Vatican church with
great ceremony, and ending with a Te Deum, incensing the
image of the beatified, reading the decree, etc. Now the holy
one is called Blessed. The various inquiries on the merits are
four: de non cultu, de virtufibus, de martyr to, de miraculis. For
cause the processes may be shortened by dispensation ; and this
is hoped for with our cause, by reason of the long delay already
taken place, the historical fame of the saints, and the difficulties
in the way of the regular processes caused by the changes 01
sovereignty in the country France, England, and the United
States having in succession been sovereigns in the land.

820 ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. [Mar.,

Beatification is a mere permission for a limited cultus of the
beatified, whereas canonization introduces them as Saints upon
our altars, to be religiously venerated. The proceeding is simi-
lar to the later stages of beatification, and greater importance is
here given to the inquiry de miraculis. The final canonization
takes place at St. Peter's, and the saint is enrolled on the Canon
Sanctorum and a festival day given to the new saint. Beatifica-
tion is permissive ; canonization is mandatory. The former is
special or local, the latter general. The former is in the nature
of an interlocutory order ; the latter is a final decree.

In this suit the writer espouses, with all his heart, the cause
of the plaintiffs. Would that he were worthy to plead for them
at the court of Rome and before the court of heaven! To join
in the prayer of the poor Indians and in the prayer of the Ameri-
can church is the privilege of Us all. May they first be entitled
Venerable ; may they then become Blessed ; may they finally be-
come our canonized Saints, and, as such, the patrons of our coun-
try and of our church !

ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST.

HIGH o'er the throne of Clairvaux' mitred saint,

And the Seraphic Francis far above,
Stands the Christ's consecrated chosen priest,

Whose eyes speak purity, whose lips speak love.
No cowl or cincture tells of his degree,

Or discipline his penances attest ;
But from his locks exhales the perfume caught

When the Redeemer clasped him to His breast.

1885.] KATHARINE. 821

KATHARINE.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE supreme moments in life seldom or never answer to our
anticipations of them. Sometimes, indeed, they go beyond them,
at others they fall short, but they are never such as we supposed
they would be. No day had passed since the first meeting
of these two that each had not greatly occupied the other's
thoughts. The young girl sitting opposite to him now, her
slender figure drawn into a curve of the great arm-chair, the
firelight shining on her face and reflecting itself in her dark,
serious eyes, was the goal at which Louis Giddings had pro-
posed to terminate his present journey. To him a renewal of
their acquaintance had been a foregone conclusion from the
first, although he had deferred it for a reason he thought impor-
tant. The object of such a renewal was equally plain -to him.
He meant to win, if he could, the girl who had suddenly re-
kindled in him not alone the ardor and the passion of his youth,
but its hopes and its ambitions, and to take up again the common
life of his kind, from which for years he had felt himself shut
out. No obstacle should stand in his way now except his in-
ability to make himself beloved. His vanity was not great, and
it had suffered in the past along with his love and his pride.
But, although there had been many a moment when, in recalling
Katharine's image, the thought of ill-success had weighed upon
him, yet his. hopes were still stronger than his fears. " Some
tie there is between us," he assured himself whenever the latter
persisted in recurring. " I felt it vibrate, and I believe she
felt it, too. At all events, I can but try to draw it tighter."

With Katharine the case was different. In spite of her good
sense, her heart had told her that in the few words that passed
between them on the night of their first meeting the promise ot
another had been contained, and she had confidently expected
to see him with Richard Norton on their return from the woods.
Baffled in this first anticipation, her hope had faded, and when
momentarily revived by her cousin's account of her meeting
with him and his promised visit, it had been extinguished anew
by her idle gossip. Neither hope nor vanity was strong in her,
and, while she had thought much of the change so unexpectedly

822 KATHARINE. [Mar.,

wrought in her own experience, she had thought little of any
effect she might have produced herself. Some day, perhaps,
he would arrive, and she might in that case possibly meet him ;
but even that seemed more than doubtful. Mr. White, when his
wife had once alluded to his friend's coming in her presence, had
assured her that she might as profitably expect a white black-
bird as a visit from Louis Giddings.

" But he promised," reiterated Anna, " and he was quite in
earnest about it, too, or I am very much mistaken."

" I wouldn't for the world impugn your discernment, my
dear," was the smiling answer. " Louis and I are very old
friends, and there is no one whom I would so gladly welcome
under my roof. But I was never able to persuade him, even
when my sister and I were alone here. At present I fear my
chances of that pleasure are immeasurably smaller than ever."

Anna shrugged her shoulders.

" Don't be so confident," she said. " We were very good
friends, I assure you, and for my part I expect to see him here
before any of us are much older. For a shy man, as you seem
to think him, he appeared to me to have bien asses cT aplomb et de
savoir-vivre"

Mr. White's eyes met Katharine's at that moment with a
shade of amusement in them.

" You would never believe," he said, addressing her, " how
much more trippingly French rolls off one's tongue here than in
France. I have thought of that often lately, as one more in-
stance of the innate perversity of things. I hope your prevision
is correct, my dear," he added, turning to his wife, " but, all the
same, I think it will be time enough to get his room ready when
you find his hat hanging in the hall."

But an unheralded meeting like this had been among the
possibilities which had not occurred to the minds of either.
And here, again, the man had the advantage, his parley with the
servant having apprised him of Katharine's presence before he
entered it. To find her there, and alone, solved one of his diffi-
culties at once. He had felt that a formal, uninvited call upon
her at her mother's house would be such a presumption on so
slight an acquaintance as by itself to demand an explanation.
But that was what he had determined on, with a characteristic
unwillingness to leave anything to chance, or to profit, at this
stage of his quest, by the intervention of any third whatever.
He would know, in that case, or so he fancied, what to say and
when to say it. Either he should see at once, in the deep, soft

1885.] KATHARINE. . 823

eyes that had drawn him thus far, the light of welcome which
would make all things easy, or gain at least the right to make
himself better known and so give his hopes a surer foundation
than he was able to persuade himself that they possessed when
the time drew near to put them to the trial. Yet the unlooked-
for chance that had come to his aid embarrassed him curiously.
The image that had been forming in his mind and grown fami-
liar there paled and put on a sudden cold unlikeness to this
creature of flesh and blood, whose hand had trembled for an
instant in his own, and on whose face the play of quick emotions
had been plainly legible before she was able to turn it back into
the shadow. The sense of what it would cost him to lose her
touched him so keenly, even at the instant when he was pos-
sessed by the certainty that no such loss awaited him, that he
felt the presence of the child as a sensible relief and outlet to the
mad impulse which dared seek no other.

" Put me down ! " cried Fanny, struggling in his arms and
turning her little face from side to side. " I want to go back to
Aunt Kitty. You hurt me ! I don't like you ! "

To Katharine, too, this moment had been a sudden and com-
plete illumination, though of her own heart only. But for the
moment that was sufficient. The joy of loving rushed over her
like a sea that has burst its ancient barriers and inundates for
the first time a desert whose sands have turned their parched
faces to the sun through centuries. No thought of the future
clouded 'an instant whose sweetness was but 'intensified by the
bitter, aromatic perfume yielded by the past as it too faded into
nothingness. Intense emotion, felt for the first time, quieted and
made her calm when its first surge was over, and she sat silently
in her corner, turning her face a little further from the ruddy
hearth, and burying it willingly on the flaxen head when it re-
sumed its place upon her shoulder. Her self-possession had re-
turned before the fretful but welcome importunities of the little
one yielded again to slumber, and with it came the instinct to
guard the secret she was unconscious of having betrayed al-
ready.

" Give her to me ; I shall not frighten her again," demanded
Louis once before this consummation had been reached. There
was a smile in his voice and in his eyes which was answered in
those of the young girl as he bent toward her. The sense of ab-
solute well-being which belongs to happy love had restored him
also to himself, and something in the situation moved him to the
silent laughter that lay close beside most of his deeper feelings.

824 KATHARINE. [Mar.,

" I was within an ace of seizing her as if she had been a
young Sabine whose brother or lover I had just run through,"
he thought as he sank back again into the cushions of his chair
when this offer had been refused. " God be thanked ! there
is nothing between us which cannot be put aside in a gentler
fashion."

When he spoke again the other voices had passed for some
moments into silence and his own had relapsed into gravity.

" For years," he said, "this hour between daylight and dark-
ness has been the most hideous to me of the twenty-four. Yet
the child's instinct is the true one it is the time for stories.
Will you let me tell you one? It was the hope of doing so that
brought me here to-day ; it would have brought me sooner if I
had not believed the delay would give me the right to tell it
completely and then put it out of my memory for ever. The
moment that it did so I turned my face your way, though even
then I did not dare to think of telling it so soon. It will not dis-
please you, I hope, if I say I have thought of little else, since the
day we met last summer, but of another day when I should find
myself face to face with you once more."

Katharine's heart beat heavily again, and she turned toward
him with a motion as instinctive and as unresisted as that with
which a flower turns to the sun. He saw it, and it drew him out
of his regained composure. He left his seat and knelt down to
bring his head on a level with her own, taking as he did so the
little hand that had been put out to him involuntarily.

" I will tell you that another time, my love," he said, his voice
sinking into a whisper and then dying on her lips. "Just now I
can think of nothing but that we love each other. Kitty, I came
to ask you to be my wife. Thank God! you answer me before I
ask."

" I could not help it," she said under her breath, but in a tone
that vibrated with the intensity of her feeling, drawing back
from him as she spoke, but not averting the face that had first
grown pale and then flushed painfully.

" I have been hoping for these three months that you could
not," he answered, looking at her with a smile that brought still
deeper waves of color and suffused her eyes with tears. " Don't
break my heart with blushing that way, child ! You never
would have given me such a pang of pleasure if you could.
After all, you know, I think I did ask, though not so plainly as
I do it now," he went on after a pause, smiling still, but not
touching the hand that had been withdrawn or the head that had

i885-J KATHARINE. 825

drooped and turned away. " Look at me, love, and tell me what
you think it means that each of us knew our own the instant
that we saw it? My God !" he added, more to himself than her,
"how easily it might have meant something different from this! "

At his altered tone the girl lifted her head. Her clear eyes
looked straight into his, and her hand went toward him again.

" How good you are ! " she said softly. " I was afraid I
loved you, but I was not sure. Now I am glad."

"If to love you is to be good," he answered, " be sure I am
the best man in the world. Ah!" he went on, looking at her
still with eyes in which passion glowed but did not flame, " I see
well what I am to you ; God be praised ! that speaks in every
line of your sweet face. Don't don't turn it away from me
again ! There are not many perfect moments in life, and this
one will never come back to either of us. I love you, I long for
you, but I don't want even to look at you except as you give
yourself to me of your own free and perfect will. I never could
be all to you that you are to me."

" I love you, too," the girl answered slowly, 'and her voice
was heavy, as if each word bore on it the whole weight of her
heart. " What is it to love but to give everything? "

" Good God ! " he said, looking at her still, " what have I done
to deserve this hour? I see your soul, living, palpitating, and I
know you hold back nothing. You touch me to the very roots
of my being. And yet I swear to you that if I were not free to
take you if, seeing as I do your sweet, innocent surrender, I
had that to say to you which until yesterday I still thought
I might have, if I spoke at all I could not say it. I should
leave you as you are. But you are mine my love, my wife !"
And his arm, which had been resting on her chair, slid around
her in a light embrace. "There is not even a question in your
eyes; and yet I still hav*e something to tell you."

" Not now," she breathed. " I can bear nothing further."
She looked down at the child, still lying on her left arm. " And
I must go home," she added, lifting her slow lids again. " I
cannot wait to see them when they come. If you would ring, so
that she might be carried up-stairs?"

" Laws, honey ! " said Dinah, as Katharine, who had slowly
followed her to the upper room, sank down on a chair beside the
little bed. " She's too heavy for you, a great chile like this.
You're clean fagged out. It's one woman's work, for sure, to
wait on her, poor dear! You don't ever mean to go home with-

826 KA THARINE. [Mar.,

out your tea? Sho', now an" I hear the carriage stoppin* at the
door this very minute."

" Go down quick and ask Mrs. White to send me back in it.
Tell her my head aches and I must go at once. I'll be down
myself the moment I can find my hat."

" If you really cannot be persuaded," Anna said, meeting her
cousin at the head of the front steps, and looking radiant and
rosy from the keen air, " of course it is fortunate that we have
not yet dismissed the man. Look at my cloak ! I'm all white
with snow only in coming from the carriage. I should think the
streets were six inches deep with it. I've had a lovely time, and
I'm ever so much obliged. Here, Arthur, pu-t Kitty in and tell
the man where to take her. A gentleman in the parlor, did you
say, Dinah ? " And she passed on into the room where Louis
Giddings was standing with his back to the fire.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE morning was well advanced when Katharine awoke
from the profound sleep into which she had fallen after a night
too full of waking dreams for slumber. Her eyes, opening then
upon her new-found joy, half-closed on it again, and a faint smile
hovering about her soft lips gave them an almost infantine curve.
Mrs. Danforth, coming in and sitting down on the side of the
low bed, regarded her in silence for a moment before speaking
in a voice that took, involuntarily, its gentlest tone. " She looks
precisely as she used to in her cradle," had been the mother's
thought.

" Is your headache better ? " she asked. " I came in about
eight o'clock, but you were so sound asleep I would not wake
you. I used to have headaches myself when I was young, and I
know there is nothing for them like a good sleep, when you can
get it. But now it is close upon the stroke of ten."

" O mother! " the girl said, rising from her pillow with eyes
that looked like stars reflected in a limpid pool " O mother ! "
And she took her in her arms. " I shall never have an ache again
while time lasts. I don't believe there is such a thing in all the
world."

" What is it?" asked the mother, divided between surprise
and hope. " What ails you, child ? Have you are you "
She stopped, not knowing in what shape to put the question
which came foremost to her lips and heart. Katharine divined
it, and she smiled anew.

1 885 .] KA THARINE. 827

"Oh! no, mother," she said, "it isn't that. It is oh! don't
you know? Can't you guess? Were you never young your-
self?"

" I don't know," the mother answered, drawing back a little
from her daughter. " And I can't guess. I have been young,
but I never went into ecstasies solely on that account. You will
have to explain yourself better if you want me to understand."

While she was speaking the knocker resounded through the
quiet house. The great clock began its slow, musical strokes,
and mingled with them Katharine heard a voice she recognized.
In another moment the door of her chamber opened and Hannah
stood upon the threshold.

" A strange gentleman, ma'am," she said, presenting a card.
" He would like to see you as soon as you are at liberty, and I
showed him into the parlor."

It was one of Mrs. Danforth's old-fashioned courtesies never
to keep a caller waiting. The name on the card she held in her
hand was unfamiliar, and she rose at once. But after she had
done so she still lingered for an instant. Katharine had buried
her face again upon her pillow.

" Don't lie there any longer, then," she said. " Ten o'clock
is too late for people who have no aches or pains and don't
believe in their existence. Are you sure you have nothing to
tell me?"

"Olj!" said the girl, "I will tell you everything when you
come back everything that you will not know already."

The interview seemed to Katharine interminable, even while
she would not for the world have had it shortened. It was not,
in reality, very brief, although Louis had a genius for comprehen-
sive statement and Mrs. Danforth was by no means dull. She
had gone down-stairs without the shadow of a misgiving as to
what awaited her, and saw, in the tall figure that on her entrance
turned from his contemplation of the large photographs of her-
self and her husband which hung in oval gilt frames against the
wall beside the further window, merely another of the strangers
who still occasionally presented themselves on business connected
with the unsettled estate. She had a shrewd, instinctive insight
into character, which, while it seldom formulated its conclusions
into anything more definite than a simple statement of liking or
dislike, was none the less sure and immovable on that account.
What she thought of the face now bent upon her would have
been sufficiently indicated to any one who knew her well by a
certain relaxation of the lines about her mouth and eyes, which

828 KATHARINE. [Mar.,

showed that she felt it unnecessary to keep up the guard she
habitually erected on such occasions.

As for Louis, he had finished to his satisfaction his study of
the two heads, which it seemed to him he would have found
interesting under any circumstances.

" Both of them would be good to have in the ascending line
of one's family," he said to himself; "and Katharine's is made of
what is best in both. How on earth am I going to explain this
sudden demand on the old lady's sympathies ? They don't gush
but in legitimate channels, or without good reason even then, or
the sun lias lied about her."

His task, in fact, was not of the easiest.

" You want to marry Katharine ! " the mother exclaimed
when that fact had become undeniably evident. "My daughter!
Why, she does not know you ! I never heard her breathe your
name ! I know nothing at all about you ! "

Louis laughed a little. Her astonishment was so genuine,
and his own means for allaying it seemed so absurdly inadequate
to the occasion.

" I think we know each other, Katharine and I," he said,
" although it is certainly not to be wondered at that she has not
spoken of me. I met her in the woods last summer with her
aunt and uncle ; but I have never had the opportunity to do so
since until yesterday afternoon. Serious matters have detained
me, up to now, in Boston, where I live ; otherwise, if I could
have gained her permission, I should have done myself the honor
to ask yours before to-day."

" And do you mean to tell me that you have gained hers now?
Did you speak to her last summer ? I understand neither of you."

" No," he said, smiling in spite of his sense that gravity might
become the occasion better. " I simply committed the indiscre-
tion of falling in love with her on the spot."

" But you have told her now ? And she has sent you to me ?
I would never have believed it of her. Where, pray, did you see
her yesterday ? "

" At the house of my old friend, Arthur White. That was a
pure accident. I came to -the city yesterday with the express
purpose of seeking her here and putting my question. I admit
that my having done so at once must seem to you extremely
premature, under the circumstances."

" But you did put it? And she " The recollection of the
scene just enacted up-stairs flashed across the mother's mind and
found its explanation. She sat silent.

1885.] KATHARINE. 829

" Young- girls," she said, after a pause which her visitor
showed no signs of breaking, though he was studying her atten-
tively while it lasted "young girls are not much like what
they were in my time. Even my own daughter is not. And
yet she has always seemed so hard to please! "

She looked up, as she ended, from the floor on which her
eyes had been fastened. Louis crossed the room and sat down
beside her on the sofa.

"Don't be too hard upon us," he said. "I'm afraid that is
to say, I hope that neither of us could help it. Don't you see,"
he added, as in spite of herself she smiled, " what an enormous
endorsement of my merits that very difficulty you speak of lends
me?"

"I see," she answered, "that you are bent on taking your
own way ; and as for her, she has never taken any other since she
was born. But, nevertheless, I must know something more about
you. You cannot expect me to give you all I have as readily as
she seems to have been willing to. Have you explained your
position to her? "

" No," he said, laughing again. " I fear she took me on trust.
But it will not be difficult, I think, to give you whatever assur-
ances you require. You know my young friend Norton, from
whom I first heard her name, and in whose company I met her.
Either he or his uncle can give you such particulars as you are
likely to desire in addition to those that I will offer you at once.
I am a lawyer by profession and a journalist by practice ; but I
have a private fortune sufficiently considerable to permit me to
think of marrying without great indiscretion. There is White,
too. We were at college together, and have known each other
pretty thoroughly since."

The mother drew a heavy sigh. " I suppose," she said, after
another protracted pause, " that it is useless for me to offer ob-
jections if you have both set your minds upon it. But she is all
I have. What am I going to do without her? "

Louis took her hand, which she left passive in his clasp.
" Why should you do without her at all ?" he said in a voice that-
touched her. " I have no mother. Why not come and make
your home with us ? When you give her to me I want to carry
her off for a year or so. I have never been abroad, but now I
mean to go. If you have no near friends here, I have one in
Boston who will be a daughter to you in her absence, and whom
you cannot fail to like and feel at ease with."

" No," she said, the tears rising to her eyes, " I have no near

830 KATHARINE. [Mar.,

friends. I have nothing at all in this world except my child. Be
good to her, if I give her to you. I would gladly keep her, if I
could, but I see I cannot."

" God be good to me in that measure ! " he said. " You will
not lose a child, but gain one. And now do you think that
I might see her? I had not half-finished my story last night
when she found it .imperatively necessary to leave me and come
home."

Katharine came slowly, being summoned. To face either of
them in broad daylight, now that the tale was told, seemed a
thing be} 7 ond her. She stood at her mother's side with her hand
upon her shoulder, her eyes down-dropped and veiled with their
long lashes, unable to meet the other pair that she felt bent
upon her. The mother regarded her steadfastly, and then her
eyes turned toward the other face, coming back slowly to her
daughter's.

" What can I say to either of you ? " she began at last. " She
is mine, but I have never had a hold upon her. She is a creature
by herself, who follows her own ways and lives in a world of her
own making. You love her and I love her, but are you any
surer than I am that you can keep her when the time comes for
her flitting?"

Louis looked up at the girl. His eyes also had dropped while
the mother was speaking. Now they met hers full, and lingered
in them as they had done the night before. He leaned forward
and took her hand where it hung down by her side, and drew
her towards him.

"She is mine now," he said. "She comes of her own will,
and I think she comes because she feels, as I do, that she is the
other half of my soul. If we both mistake, we shall drift apart
again. I promise her never to try to hold her one minute after
she wishes to be free."

" Ah ! " sighed Katharine, forgetting in that moment all her
shyness, and everything in the world but the man within whose
arms she stood, and on whom her lambent eyes shone full as she
yielded to and answered his embrace, " if I have followed my
own ways, it was because they all led straight to you. And I
am never close bound but when I feel my perfect liberty."

1885.] KATHARINE. 831

CHAPTER XXVIII.

" I DOUBT, Katharine," Louis said, the first time they found
themselves alone together afterwards, " whether I have dealt
quite fairly with your mother. In the forum of strict morals
and 'abstract justice I suspect I might find something to say
against myself on that score. Why don't you look alarmed ?
How do you know that I am not going to ease my mind by con-
fessing to having robbed a till or forged my master's check?"

Katharine laughed. " Give me credit," she said, " for some
sense of the fitness of things. If I were forced to select a pro-
bable crime for you, I think I might hit on something more
in character. But I would rather not listen to any confession at
all. I have no fear of you."

" But don't you see that that is one reason the more for mak-
ing it? As a matter of fact, you need have none. So far as that
goes, I might spare my pride even with you and if I had any
where you are concerned I should very likely do so. I tell you
because I find it easy : you don't so much unlock my tongue as
turn my heart into speech. Otherwise the story, which, so far
as it is known at all through me, is known only to the friend who
listened to my ravings in delirium, might rest untold still. As
things have turned out, I have nothing worse to reproach myself
with than idiotic folly, nor anything more difficult to obtain from
you than sympathy. Within these last three months I have
asked myself often what I should do if I could not assure myself
on that point. I never was quite able to come to a decision. I
should have come to you, I think, in any case. 'Beyond that I
was able to determine nothing. One alternative which might
have resolved my difficulties, had they taken their worst possible
form, was plain enough before my eyes, but I was not certain
that my pride would let me take it, even 'for you. Suppose,"
he said, leaving the place where he had been standing since
Mrs. Danforth left the room, and coming to sit down at Katha-
rine's side, " that I had a dilemma to put before you. I should
never have told you anything less than the exact truth. What
would you have answered me had the truth been this_r Years
ago, when I was a hot-blooded young fool, I was entrappecl ty.o
marriage. I say entrapped, though I was sortho roughly enticSgl,
as well that I played my part of the farce with an eagerness aii3
good faith that must have been amusing to the other ac:
introduced me in it on account of the absence of the plny^r to

832 KATHARINE. [Mar.,

whom the r61e belonged in actual fairness an absence which
was merely temporary as it turned out, but which she had reason
to fear was likely to prove lasting. When he was ready to take
his cue she lied to him, poor wretch ! as she had lied to me.
Such a contingency must have been present to her mind through-
out, for she could not have found much difficulty in covering up
her traces where I was concerned. I never fairly understood
until afterwards her insistance upon absolute privacy in our mar-
riage and our subsequent meetings. I should have been willing
enough to publish them to all the world, but I yielded to the
reasons she thought fit to offer. If I had been needed as a cloak
at any time I was always to^be ready in her wardrobe. As it
happened, I was of no use at all to her, and I don't doubt she
has regretted the one she put me to at least as often as I have.
The difference between us was that when I ceased to be a pos-
sible convenience she did not choose that I should be a clog.
She rolled me in the mire and left me there. She had even the
cool audacity to confess the whole thing to me when she thought
the time was ripe, and throw herself on what she called my
honor. How shall I explain it to you? The man who should
have been her husband, because he was the father of the child
she carried, and not I, came back alive and well from the voyage
on which he was reported to have been lost, and was ready not
only to marry her, but to give her a position to which anything
I could offer her was the merest trifle. It was well for her peace
of mind and, I suppose, for his, though I doubt whether that
might not have been secured in the end much more satisfactorily
in another fashion that the letter in which she explained all that
to me knocked me down as effectually as if I had been a bullock
under the hand of a butcher. ' My honor,' to which she ap-
pealed, would have dictated a course of procedure which would
have taken neither his nor hers into consideration. Perhaps she
thought as much when she reflected on it further; at all events,
when I came up from the edge of the grave both of them had
disappeared entirely. There was one remedy open to me, it is
true. I might have freed myself legally from the millstone I had
tied about my neck, but my pride revolted then, as it has done
ever since, at the thought of dragging myself publicly out of the
slough. It was horrible enough to feel the filth sticking to me
in private."

He stopped and looked long at the girl, who had been grow-
ing paler as he continued speaking.

" You are cold," he said. " Your hands are like marble. I

1885.] KA THARINE. 833

don't want to torment you unnecessarily. The woman is dead.
The first time I ever heard your name that piece of good-fortune
was also announced to me, and by the same lips. I will be frank
with you, nevertheless. I did not believe the news. When I
look for a reason for my scepticism I find it in two things. One
was her last letter, in which she told me that I need never be
afraid to act as though she were in reality dead. ' I shall be
dead for you,' she said ; ' you need never fear my resurrection. I
have injured you too much not to wish to give you that repara-
tion, even if it were not necessary for my own safety.' My in-
stinct detected a sinister ring in that. If I could have found her
in the first access of my fury I should have put her death be-
yond reasonable doubt in a much more satisfactory way. The
other thing was my recollection of herself. She was the per-
fection of the human animal all the more perfect as an animal
because the soul seemed to have been entirely omitted from her
make-up. She was built to live, and to carry her vigor and the
freshness of her beauty into age. Death and she were things
too utterly antagonistic for one who had known her well to ad-
mit easily the thought that they had come conveniently together.
During the early part of my misery I was constantly expecting
that piece of information. She had lied so ingeniously to me
for her own protection that I felt sure her benevolence would
coalesce with her fears to lie me, if she could, into a false posi-
tion which would effectually shield her. But it never came. My
rage cooled down after a while, and I ceased to care very much
about it. The sight of a woman was hateful to me, or I fancied
so. Since I meant never to avail myself of freedom to remarry,
what great odds did it make, after all? When the news came at
last it produced no immediate difference in my hopes or my
plans in life. The day I saw you changed all that. I went to
Canada directly afterwards to find out, if possible, the exact
truth, but what I heard there, confirmatory though it was, roused
my suspicions anew instead of dispelling them. 1 wrote then to
the one man who seemed likely to be in possession of the facts,
and the day before I came to you I received his answer. God
had been good to me. My wife died two years and more ago.
Peace to her memory ! I owe her, in one way, a debt of grati-
tude. Perhaps but for her, and the purgatory she plunged me
into, I should either never have found you, or, finding you, never
felt myself free to claim you. And heaven, I find, is cheaply
purchased, even with a sojourn in hell itself."

The girl remained silent and Louis went on again :
VOL. XL. 53

834 KATHARINE. [Mar.,

" I have owned up the faults committed against me I will
make the measure overflow by confessing the one I was guilty
of towards you The morning that I received the letter I spoke
of I had been thinking of you after I awoke. I don't mention
that as a rare occurrence. But I knew the Eastern mails were
due I had counted the days well, you may be sure. My long-
ing for you seemed growing unbearable. The worst that could
happen would be to find my suspicions confirmed. In that case
what should I do? My repugnance to the idea of divorce and
what in my case it would mean was unabated. I need not say,
perhaps, that my aversion rests on no idea of right or wrong in
the matter. For those who can bring themselves to seek it I
think it right enough in certain cases, but I more than doubted
my personal ability to do so. And then the thought came to me
of telling you the whole truth if I found that you shared the
feeling you had kindled in me, and asking you to go through
the legal forms of marriage and run the chances that a secrecy
which has been guarded well thus far might be so guarded to
the end. There was something horrible in that idea, too. It
would be asking you to live a lie which would be none the less
a lie to our own consciousness though it rested there alone.
But the moment I began to speak to you, and saw the innocent
unreserve with which you gave yourself to me, without a doubt,
without a question, I saw also that I could have cut my tongue
out rather than suggest that plan to you. But I was not cer-
tain until then that I would, in the last resort, have offered you
the other. Tell me, you who ask no questions, do you know
what you would have answered ? "

" No," she said slowly, and sighing between her words, " I
would rather never know. You frighten me. I wish you had
not shown me the abyss over which I hung." And then : " Poor
woman ! "

" Don't pity her ! she was never worth it."
" But you loved her! And she might have kept you."
" Don't believe it ! Even if the danger nearest her at the
time had not been the greatest, and she had seen fit for any rea-
son to cling fast to me, her reign would have soon been over.
She might have kept her crown, but she was doomed to lose her
sceptre. The lie in her always came through and cut me to the
quick, even when I was at the height of my fool's paradise. Now
that I love you, I know that whatever feeling I had for her was
something else. I hated in her from the first the easy response
I found to all that is worst and vilest in me. Away from her, I

1885.] KATHARINE. 835

could dress up in the garments of her beauty the creature she
suggested to my imagination, but it was never other than a mys-
tery to me, even then, why she tortured me most when I was
with her and she was most gracious. I have hurt you," he went
on again, seeing that she was still inclined to silence. " I have
rubbed the bloom already off what was perfection. Did I not
tell you last night that such a moment would never come to
either of us again? And yet I have not meant to grieve you,
but only to make you absolutely free of my mind and heart, as I
know, without asking, that I am of yours."

" You have not grieved me. It is only " And she stopped
and sighed again.

" Tell me," he said, taking her in his arms, " what does your
mother mean when she warns me that to clasp you thus is not
to keep you ? Are you putting out the wings ot your flight al-
ready ? "

" Don't think the bond between us is so slight as that. But
my heart was so content this morning, and now it is heavy, and
I know no reason why. Perhaps," and she smiled at last, " it is
because you are sinking deeper and deeper in it. I did not think
that was possible at first."

" But are you so elusive? So hard to grasp and so impossible
to hold?" he asked, smiling also. "Your mother was like a
prophesying sibyl, and I own she frightened me. I warn
you that 'I am constant, slow to move when once I have cast
anchor."

" I don't know what she means. My own ways have been
straight ones so far as I can see, and they have lain for the most
part parallel with hers. There is one where I cannot follow her,
but only once in my life have I been seriously bent on taking
another which directly traversed it, and I am not cure that she
knows it even now. My struggle was with my father. I yielded
and heard no more about it. But up to that time all my ways,
whatever else they might have been, were certainly ' ways of
pleasantness' to me. Since then at least until they ended here
they have led to nothing but discontent and weariness."

" And that is the only attraction that has ever divided your
heart with me?" he said, when a question or two had satisfied
him as to her meaning. " I could find it in mine to share you
with it."

"I wish you could," she answered, "but it is gone. There
has been only emptiness there since, until you came and filled it."

TO BE CONTINUED.

836 THE DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF [Mar.,

THE DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL
THE APOSTLE, IN NEW YORK.

ON the 25th of January, the Feast of the Conversion of St.
Paul the Apostle, the church erected in honor of that Saint by
the Paulist Fathers and the people committed to their spiritual
charge was blessed and dedicated to the worship of God. It
was a happy and auspicious event for both priests and people.
For the former it was the realization of an integral part of their
mission ; for the latter a matter of religious edification, while
the material edifice itself is a monument to their generosity, and
will be to them and to succeeding generations a school of the
beautiful in art. Hence there was literal as well as mystical
truth in the words which mother-church used in the dedicatory
service : " I rejoiced at the things that were said to me : We will
go into the house of the Lord. Our feet were standing in thy
courts, O Jerusalem ! Jerusalem, which is built as" a city: which
is compact together."

To build a church materially " compact together," suitable to
divine worship, and spacious enough to bring many worshippers
into immediate contact with the sanctuary the fountain, so to
say, of sacramental mediation and within good hearing of the
word of God, is the main object of an ecclesiastical structure ;
while the architectural facilities are to be utilized as instructive
lessons in Christian art. The style is old Gothic, of the massive
order of the thirteenth century. The twelve columns of Syra-
cuse limestone, alternately round and octagonal, which support
the entire vault, suggest solid security. The nave, from portal
to apse, is two hundred and fifty-seven feet in length ; in breadth,
from the centre of one column to its opposite, sixty feet fully
sixteen feet wider than the centre aisle of the great cathedral in
Cologne. Few churches have that breadth, and still fewer sur-
pass it ; and it is this breadth of nave which gives the beholder,
on entering the edifice, an impression of solemn vastness. As
the side-aisles and passages of breadth proportionate to the
main aisle are to be unencumbered of pews, the church can
hold, because of its breadth of nave, more worshippers within
sight and hearing of the high altar than many a cathedral. And
this realizes to the full the idea of the Paulist Fathers, that their

1885.] ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE IN NEW YORK. 837

church shall be a parish and preaching church, wherein all can
take direct part in divine worship, and many can at one time
hear the word of God. In furtherance of these objects, and with
a view of excluding the noise of the outer world, the only wii -
dows are those in the clear-story of the edifice. This is beauti-
fully consentaneous with both the religious and scientific prin-
ciple that all light comes from above. The basement is eighteen
feet high in the clear, of the same size as the church, and is ca-
pable of accommodating an equal number of people.

Between the two incompleted towers which are thirty-eight
feet square at the base and immediately over the great portal, is
a large panel, to be occupied by a bas-relief representing the tri-
umph of Christ. This panel shows us a Jour-wheeled chariot
drawn by an ox, a lion, an eagle, and an angel, typical of the four
Evangelists. At each of the wheels, gripping a spoke in the act
of helping the chariot forward, are four great doctors of the
church Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory. The cha-
riot signifies the church. Seated therein is Christ, an aureola
of stars around his head, the right hand extended in the act of
benediction, the left holding a sphere surmounted by a cross.
Seated before him in a propitiatory attitude is the Virgin Mary.
This majestic mosaic picture will act as a baptism on the imagi-
nation of the beholder before entering the church, and on the
passers-by. The panels on either side of the exterior walls will
contain bas-reliefs representing a procession of the prophets and
saints, ajid among these will figure prominently the saints Pa-
trick and Bridget, and, let us entertain the hope, Father Jogucs
and Catherine Tegakwita, the Iroquois virgin, and others of our
race and day.

Under the windows in the interior] of the church there will
be frescoes representing the history of the seven sacraments, ac-
cording to the conception of the great painter, Overbeck. This
is in happy congruity with the external decorations, and correla-
tive with them, as cause with effect. For it is within the church
that heroes and heroines are made, for the sacraments afe the
means of the grace of sanctification. The decorations of the
sanctuary will be in strict accordance with the principle of sacri-
ficial mediation through Christ with the Eternal Father. The
central object will be the tabernacle ; around it will be only
figures of adoring angels, and of the Blessed Queen of Angels in
their midst, all in homage to him and through him to the father.
Hence the five windows of the clear-story of the chancel will be
of stained glass, representative of the glory and majesty of God

838 THE DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF [Mar.,

in the Choirs of Angels, the'Thrones, and the Dominations. The
central window of the apse, directly over the high altar, is already
designed, and being executed in the studio of Cox, Sons, Buckly
& Co., of London. It is the gift of a parishioner. " It shows a
prominent and beautiful figure of the Blessed Virgin as the
Queen of Angels, standing in a halo of glory, crowned with a
diadem of stars, with the moon under her feet, and surrounded
on every side, above and below, by angelic figures of the cheru-
bim and seraphim. The great number of these figures, their ani-
mated and graceful positions, the splendor and brilliancy of the
general tone of the glass, make this work equal to any done
in our day, perhaps not surpassed by any window ever made."

The celebrant on the occasion of the solemn blessing was his
Grace the Most Rev. Archbishop Corrigan the same who,
nearly nine years ago (June 4, 1876), blessed the first stone of
the church. He was attended by twelve other bishops, some of
whom came from far-distant sees ; the two right reverend vicars-
general of the archdiocese, and other prelates ; by more than one
hundred representatives of the regular and secular clergy of
New York and other States; by the priests and novices of the
Congregation of St. Paul, and by a choir of one hundred, men and
boys. A memorable sermon was preached by the Archbishop of
Philadelphia, the Most Rev. Patrick John Ryan. The occasion,
he said, was doubly auspicious. It was the silver jubilee of the
Paulist Fathers and the feast commemorative of the conversion
of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Premising some general
remarks upon the active and the contemplative saints, whom he
compared respectively to the running river and the tranquil lake,
he gave the character of St. Paul. He was characterized by an
adamantine faith and a warm personal love for Christ. His faith
was reasonable and certain ; and so is and must be the faith of Ca-
tholics, who may have difficulties sometimes, doubts never. In-
ability to explain difficulties is not a doubt, for a doubt is de-
structive, in conception, of faith. What the nineteenth century
needed was the faith of Paul. Paul's love for Christ was like his
own character, fiery, impetuous. Yet his love was as tender and
devoted as his hatred of Christ was consuming when, armed
with the authority of the priests, he went on that memorable
errand of persecution to Damascus. The love of Paul for Christ
was the beautiful love of the penitent, who was moved to repen-
tance, says St. Augustine, by the prayer of the youth Stephen,
whose fade shone like an angel's while he said, " Lord, lay ngt
this to their charge." He concluded with an appeal to the fa-

1885.] Sr. PAUL THE APOSTLE IN NEW YORK. 839

thers to preach the love of Christ crucified, and by invoking the
blessing of God upon their mission to this generation.

The music of the occasion was a triumphant assertion of the
supremacy of the healthy and robust Gregorian chant, the har-
mony here and there added to the grand old chant being evi-
dently but the handmaiden of the venerable melody. As the
procession of prelates, priests, and choristers marched up the
middle aisle of the temple, chanting the Litany of the Saints
with four-voiced responses the imagination of the hearer rode
with religious gladness from portal to apse on the surging tide of
that volume of harmony ; and as the echoes caught it up and sent
it hither and thither with quivering undulation, the scene changed
from St. Paul's of the Paulists to St. John Lateran's in far-off
Rome, where surpliced choristers were singing the cadences of
Gregory the Great according to the old, old traditions. And
this happy and pardonable distraction was intensified when the
solemn numbers of the Introit, Scio cut credidi, were wafted to
the ear with the harmony of four concerted voices, unaccom-
panied by the organ. It is in moments like this that one is im-
pressed to the core with the beauty of God's choicest instrument
of melody, the human voice; that he admires the aesthetic wis-
dom which excludes the organ from the greatest chapel in the
world the Papal and is even disposed to accept the matter-of-
fact definition of that instrument given it by the testy John
Knox:,"a kist o' whustles." The organ accompanied, not led,
the singing of the psalm, in just deference to the fact that it
ought to be regarded merely as a help to keep the voices in
tone and harmony. The music of the Mass was Gregorian
throughout, and this was consentaneous with the chaste and
purely religious architecture of the temple, apart from the ex-
press decrees of the church in favor of plain chant.

The study, cultivation, and rendering of church music, accord-
ing to the letter as well as the spirit of papal ordinances in the
matter, have been an integral part of the mission of the Paulist
Fathers from their very foundation as a congregation. In the
outset they resolved, despite the difficulties which would ensue
therefrom, to eliminate from the quartet that element sweet and
melodious in its place, if you will of contention for prominence-,
and sometimes of disedification, the female voice ; which, by the
bye, is tolerated by the church with more reluctant sufferance
than that accorded to the organ. The alti and soprani neces-
sary to the quartet were supplied by boys. Now, while a
choir of men and boys, or of boys alone, when well trained, is

840 THE DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF [Mar..

both rapturous and edifying in singing the praises of God, but
few know how difficult it is, especially in this country, where
musical instruction is still a luxury, to train boys with one, or
even two, lessons a week. Then, about the time when a boy
arrives at proficiency in reading music, his voice changes.
Hence, in order to keep a choir of boys together as a perma-
nent and efficient organization, it is -necessary to recruit the
ranks continually. In the great cathedrals of Rome and other
Catholic cities of Europe there is no difficulty either with the
instruction of the boys or in preserving their efficiency in the
choir. They are generally pensioners of the cathedral schools,
in which music is as important a branch of study as grammar or
mathematics. As the schools receive yearly recruits of seven
years of age, the preservation of the choirs as efficient bodies is
permanently insured. The establishment of such a school has
long been a consummation heartily wished for by the Paulist
Fathers. But, with their limited means, they have been very
successful with their choir. Apart from the weekly rehearsal of
the music for each Sunday, they have a weekly lesson in plain
chant and the rudiments of music. The men also frequent these
classes, and with happy result. Witness the processional and
recessional hymns, which are rendered not only with precision,
but even with the true ecclesiastical spirit. Another distinguish-
ing feature of the music is, that it is sung in chore that is, in the
chancel, after the old monastic traditions. The organ is behind
the high altar. This, with the arrangement of the choir in double
rows on either side of the altar, produces the effect of a double
choir. The Mass proper to each Sunday, with the Gradual, Of-
fertory, and Post-Communion, is sung strictly according to the
rubrics; the Vespers, with the antiphons, responses, and com-
memorations, likewise. Thus, while observing to the letter the
magnificent ceremonial of the church, there is given untold edifi-
cation to the faithful, and they are indoctrinated in the mystic
beauties of the liturgy by way of corollary. They have not over-
looked the usefulness of congregational singing that famous old
Catholic institution, which Luther utilized with prodigious re-
sults. For several years past the congregation at St. Paul's
has been accustomed to sing pious hymns in English at their
special Lenten services, and a notable step towards making this
form of congregational worship more popular has been lately
taken with marked success.

As in the order of creation every individual born into
the world has a life-purpose, and as the same is true of coin-

1885.] ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE IN NEW YORK. 841

munities, which are a collection of individuals, so the Con-
gregation of St. Paul the Apostle has its purpose, its mission.
It was no fortuitous circumstance that in the early ages peo-
pled the deserts of Africa with anchorites, whose lives of purity
and rigorous self-denial were a protest against the effeminate
luxury of the times; that raised up a Benedict against univer-
sal vandalism ; that gave" the world a St. Dominic to preach
and teach, a St. Francis to be the champion of humility, and
St. Ignatius and St. Philip to arrest the career of the so-called
Reformers. That especial providence which God exercises over
the church raised up these men and the orders founded by them,
as it did subsequent religious congregations, to meet the exi-
gencies of different times and places. And thus it was no re-
ligious whimsicality, but the indwelling Paraclete, which, twenty-
five years ago, moved four fathers of the Congregation of the
Holy Redeemer to petition Pope Pius IX. that he would grant
them a dispensation to leave that body, go into the world, and do
especial missionary work under the patronage of the great St.
.Paul. These men, and they who subsequently joined their ranks,
while not losing sight of their general mission as priests to preach
the Gospel, make it their especial province to be abreast with
the times, to study modern thought in its multitudinous phases,
and to battle with it using modern weapons where it clashes
against Eternal Truth. In this particular they imitate their model
and patron, St. Paul ; for though he was " all things to all men,
that he might save all," he made his especial mission among the
gentiles, who were the foremost men of action of their day.
Hence they preach the ancient Gospel as Americans to Ameri-
cans, be these native or foreign-born. Not that the congrega-
tion is exclusively American as to members, character, or pur-
pose ; for the study and cultivation of Catholic thought and prin-
ciples, in their relations to times and places, make men cosmo-
politan or apostolic ; and these men would be English in London,
Irish in Dublin, Parisians in Paris, Viennese in Vienna, Berlinese
in Berlin. If the war against religious, political, and social insti-
tutions has become international, and has already raised up an
army bearing the character and title of Internationalists, why
should they not be met on their own ground, with their own
weapons. There is nothing anomalous in religions becoming in
our day cosmopolitan or apostolic. For what else is the apos-
tolic missionary spirit than Internationalism in its supernatural
form.

Continuous missionary work is, then, the general object of

842 THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE. [Mar.,

the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle. But they are cecume-
nic as to means. As Art has been the faithful handmaiden of
every religious institution from time out of mind, and has been
the beneficiary thereby, they give intelligent attention to the
study and use of the beautiful, as tending ultimately to the en-
joyment of Him who is the Primeval Cause of all beauty. As
has been intimated, the church just dedicated is a temple of the
living God. But it is also a school of the beautiful. Though
missionary convenience was the first consideration in the build-
ing of the church, artistic elegance, and the lessons it teaches
with consequent culture, are not lost sight of. Of their cultiva-
tion of music, as a means of glorifying the Almighty and of
edifying and teaching the people, enough has been said already.
But to the Rev. Alfred Young, priest of the congregation, be-
longs the credit of having made the music of St. Paul's an at-
tractive feature. He has recently published a Catholic Manual
of hymns, Vespers, and litanies, for congregational and home
use, which will entitle him to as worthy a place among the com-
posers of choral music as he holds among musical critics. The
"tunes" of the hymns, as he modestly, though not inappropri-
ately, styles the music, are religiously simple and elegant. He
has devised an original system of division of the psalm chants,
and the pointing of the words, which will prove invaluable to
choirs that are not schooled in the traditions of the Roman
Vesperal.

This notice of the Congregation of St. Paul, in connection
with the dedication of their church, would be incomplete with-
out a reference to their use of the most powerful propagator of
thought existent the press. They have in their ranks essayists,
reviewers, and critics whose contributions are read with interest
by the Catholic and the non-Catholic alike. The most popular
and influential Catholic magazine in the United States is a crea-
tion of the Congregation of St. Paul, and is read in every land
where the English tongue is spoken. The Catholic Publication
Society was also an institution of the congregation, designed
for the propagation of Catholic literature. There are cities and
towns and villages of this vast continent in which the voice of
the Paulists was never heard, and never may be heard ; but their
works from the press are there doing the Master's work in their
name, and proving that they strive not in vain to be like unto
their great Patron and Model.

1885.] HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION. 843

. HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION.

THE modern novelist has long- ago appropriated every known
corner of the navigable globe. From the wilds of Siberia to the
heart of Cathay, from the ice-peaks of Finland to the Nubian
desert, everywhere he has floated his standard and called the
land his own. Not content with this universal sovereignty, he
sighs for fresh worlds to conquer, and, greater than Alexander,
has created them to order ; peopling strange islands and un-
known planets, or digging, as Bulwer does, into the bowels of
the earth, to find there in its perfection the coming race. But
it has been reserved for more recent writers to mount one step
higher, and,ennuyS with all below, to plant their fictitious charac-
ters in a vague and hazy atmosphere which it has pleased them
to label Heaven. The advantages of this new departure are ob-
vious. There is, first of all, the charm of utter novelty ; there
is a certain coloring of religion to please the grave-minded, and
an agreeable sense of tampering with forbidden things to attract
more daring spirits; and there is an unlimited opportunity for
the author to give his or her views upon the subject of our
future life.

These views, be it remarked, are not mere suggestions offered
from a novelist's standpoint, but are uttered with all the con-
scious certainty of an Isaias, and by a host of unthinking readers
are accepted as something- very nearly related to a revealed
truth. Who does not remember the discussions that raged when
Miss Phelps first launched upon an unsuspecting public that ex-
plosive little volume called Gates Ajar? a work which, we fear,
must be held responsible for its train of followers. All those
who thought it would be charming to play on the piano, to eat
gingerbread, or to " h'ist " gates in the next world, immediately
announced -that here at last was a rational and alluring Heaven ;
while those who fancied that such entertainments would be apt
to pall when protracted into an eternity combated the book as
vigorously as if it were a new religion preached from the pul-
pits instead of the idle fancies of a clever woman. Intended
merely as a protest against the dreary Heaven portrayed by Sun-
day-school hymns, it was received as the utterances of a second
Swedenborg ; and its success has not only spurred its author
on to v wilder flights, but has inspired a whole school of disciples,

844 HEA VEN IN RECENT FICTION. [Mar.,

who seek, each after his own fashion, to make us intimately ac-
quainted with the unknown.

From one of these, at least, we would have expected different
things. That Miss Phelps should dabble in the world of spirits
is, perhaps, natural; but that Mrs. Oiiphant should turn her
back upon Carlingford, and Salem Chapel, and all those delight-
ful, half-cynical pictures of country and clerical life of which
she is so able an exponent, is something inexplicable to her
readers. Yet in Old Lady Mary and A Little Pilgrim this au-
thoress has deliberately chosen to carry her creatures beyond
the gates of death into the world to come. Lady Mary lands in
a border-country, a sort of nineteenth-century Purgatory, while
the little Pilgrim is at once transplanted into the more genial
soil of Heaven.

Lady Mary, when told that she is dead, merely experiences
a slight shock of surprise, and says, not unnaturally : " It is very
wonderful how much disturbance people give themselves about
it, if this is all." In default of any judgment the souls all retire
into little rooms and examine their own consciences, with rather
indifferent results ; for in ninety years of worldly life this woman
can find but one real cause for self-reproach the sad folly ot
hiding her will and so leaving her adopted child penniless in the
midst of plenty. " All the risings-up of old errors and visions
long dead were forgotten in the sharp and keen prick of this
which was not over and done like the rest."

Apparently sins once " over and done " cease to be very
troublesome to this comfortable little community, for by and by
she meets a man " who had neglected all lawful affections, and
broken the hearts of those who trusted him, for her sake" ; and
we fail to see that he is pricked with any keener remorse than is
Lady Mary, who has walked purely and decorously in the days
of her beautiful youth. Only this one matter of the will troubles
her sorely, and she " appeals to one of the officers " which
sounds a little like a police court for permission to return to
earth long enough to repair her error. Her prayer is granted,
with a warning of the pain it will entail ; and the description of
the disembodied soul revisiting its old haunts is given with an
artistic pathos which Miss Phelps, who has essayed a similar
scene, can never hope to reach. Her wistful desire to be seen
and heard, her distress at the horror she may cause, her sense of
exclusion from the warm, bright life around, her loneliness and
desolation, her sickness of heart as she walks forgotten amid the
strangers who fill her home all are told with a direct earnestness

1885.] fJEA VEN IN RECENT FICTION. 845

and power. " Oh ! have pity on me ! " she cries in vain, standing
with helpless, shadowy hands before the cabinet which holds the
hidden will. There is a true poetic justness in her inability to
accomplish that for which she has suffered so much: the will is
discovered in the most commonplace manner by the vicar's sons;
and the poor ghost turns gladly back to the spirit-world, where
alone she has a place to fill.

In A Little Pilgrim Mrs. Oliphant has ventured further and
succeeded less. To begin with, the very title is misleading.
The Pilgrim is not, as might be imagined, a child, but a middle-
aged woman ; and, the book opening at once with her death, we
find her, as we found Lady Mary, dazed with the change, slow to
find out what is the matter, but perfectly complacent and satis-
fied as to the result. She laughs at the absurdity of thinking she
is dead ; then weeps a little, observing very sensibly that " it is a
silly old habit"; then takes in her surroundings, and proceeds
with great cheerfulness to make herself at home. It is hard to
think she has not some small sins to regret or atone for, but
apparently nothing can be further from her mind. She wanders
among green fields and lovely landscapes, and she sees a great
many souls coming in through little doors, all in a state of
rather ludicrous bewilderment as to where they are and how
they got there. One poor, astonished man takes it very hard
that he is not to be judged, and one sinful woman exhibits some
natural- trepidation, which is immediately soothed and allayed.
There is a pretty piece of word-painting which describes the
little children who have grown up in Heaven, and the Pilgrim's
first meeting with our Saviour is told with a fervent intensity
and a delicate sense of reverence that help us to forget many
of the absurdities around us.

The journey to the " Heavenly City " is, however, painfully
disappointing. We find there a great many handsome houses
decorated with frescoes and paintings, the work of those who
had been artists upon earth ; while hosts of industrious spir-
its occupy themselves with writing and compiling histories re-
vising, let us hope, Macaulay and Carlyle illuminating manu-
scripts, and engaging in various praiseworthy labors. On the
whole, it is what the school-books would describe as a highly
flourishing place. Perhaps mediaeval Florence, purified and en-
lightened by nineteenth-century culture, would be as near as we
can come to Mrs. Oliphant's ideal Heaven. Hell there is none,
the book, like all its fellows, being a vastly comfortable one for
sinners to peruse. Its substitute is a singular place called the

846 HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION. [Mar.,

" Land of Darkness," where revellers make merry for a time, and
then, growing- weary, work their way up to Paradise.

But the book shines with a chastened splendor of its own
when compared to the volume recently published by Miss
Phelps, in which grotesqueness and irreverence bordering on
blasphemy run riot hand-in-hand, seeking to out-herod Herod
in tierce and extravagant absurdities. If Mrs. Oliphant's Heaven
fails to allure, Miss Phelps, in Beyond the pates, holds out a pros-
pect so utterly appalling that, in view of virtue being thus re-
warded, the book becomes a positive incentive to vice. From
beginning, to end it is unbrightened by any touch of religious
feeling or of artistic beauty a dreary abyss of platitude, made
deeper and drearier from the very solemnity of the subject it
aspires to handle.

" Miss Mary," who kindly relates her own experiences, dies
after the rather monotonous fashion of such works in the first
chapter, and her father's spirit is sent to conduct her straight to
Paradise. Like all the rest, she is in happy ignorance of what
has taken place ; and the two ghosts go comfortably down the
stairs together, and sit chatting and resting in the parlor before
venturing out into the cool night air. The manner of their as-
cent is strictly original, and reflects great credit on the author's
imagination. There is no need here of the assisting angels to
whom Goethe and Newman confide their precious freights. On
the contrary, Mary's father proceeds to instruct her how to strike
out in the air, as if learning to swim ; and so with convulsive
efforts she fairly kicks her way upward ! It is plain that Miss
Phelps sets great store on this system of aerial locomotion, for
we are afterwards introduced to whole legions of spirits who,
being unable to master the art, are reduced to floating aimlessly
around the world ; eating, drinking, buying, and selling she
neglects to say just what ghostly commodities and otherwise
behaving absurdly as if they were alive. And it is explained
that, having lived only for the earth, "they simply lack the
spiritual momentum to get away from it." Thanks to her fa-
ther's instructions, our heroine accomplishes the distance in safe-
ty, and, after giving her the alarming assurance that she will find
her new companions " neither unscientific nor unphilosophical,"
he leaves her to take a much-needed nap.

In the next chapter we are surprised to find her making her
way back to earth, guided by her knowledge of astronomy and
geography which proves the advantages of education and as-
sisting decorously at her own funeral, being much pleased with

1885.] HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION. 847

the style in which it was conducted. She takes her old chair by
the table, and narrowly escapes being sat upon by her married
sister a ludicrous contretemps painfully suggestive of one of Mr.
Frank Stockton's ghostly episodes, but which is told with that
happy absence of all sense of humor which is the most striking
characteristic of the book. Having seen herself decently in-
terred, Miss Mary returns to the other world, where she is met
by our Lord upon the threshold ; and the interview between
them grates through our whole system. She does not even
recognize the Saviour, but, after holding with him a pro-
longed conversation on the validity of the Bible and other
kindred topics, is informed by a friendly spirit who it is with
whom she has been speaking. Nor does it seem to dawn upon
Miss Phelps for a moment that to see God and kno*v him
is the one and only thing which most Christians seek in seeking
Heaven.

After this we are launched upon such a formidable array of
incongruities that it becomes impossible to do justice to half of
them. Mary's father, returning opportunely, conducts her to
the Heavenly City, shows her the " Hospital " where the " sick
of soul "are healed, and finally brings her in triumph to their
own neat little house built of inlaid woods, with a nice lawn in
front, a dog stretched comfortably on the step, and a great many
pretty and highly respectable ornaments decorating the interior.
There te no mention made of the cat dozing by the kitchen
hearth, but we hope, for the sake of pussy's admirers, that the
omission is not intentional. So pleased is Miss Phelps, indeed,
with this realization of her cherished dreams as set forth in
Gates Ajar that she is loath to spare us the smallest detail.
Mary " freshens her dress" can it be that she has only one?
puts flowers in her belt, and comes tripping down-stairs all fine
and natty, to be welcomed by a detachment of soldiers whom she
has helped to nurse, and who propose, as an appropriate enter-
tainment, to " sit and tell army stories half the night." True to
her New England instincts, she wastes no time in starting upon
various intellectual labors, especially in mastering the " universal
language," which she finds necessary to her convenience ; and
she expresses much naive surprise that no grand ovation should
have been tendered to a great writer who has just arrived. In
this case, however, she is consoled by hearing that " 1 is public
influence in Heaven, be it remembered though so far but a
slight one, had gradually gained and was likely to increase with
time." So that authors have before them the cheering prospect

848 HEA VEN IN RECENT FICTION. [Mar.,

of fighting their literary battles over again before they can hope
to properly control the celestial mind.

But intellectual pleasures are by no means the only ones that
this practical writer holds out to lure us on. There is a good
word said for all gourmets and epicures, who will be rejoiced to
hear that the delights of eating and drinking not only remain
but are actually enhanced in the life to come. On this point
Mary's testimony must be taken as conclusive, albeit couched
in language a little misty and obscure.

" I do not expect to be understood," she says, not unnaturally. " It
must be remembered that in all instances the celestial life develops the
soul of a thing. When I speak of eating and drinking, for instance, I do
not mean that we cooked and prepared our food as we do below. The ele-
ments of nutrition continued to exist for us as they had in the earth, the
air, the water ; though they were available without drudgery or anxiety.
Yet I mean distinctly that the sense of taste remained, that it was gratified
at need, that it was a finer one and gave a keener pleasure than its coarser
prototype below. I mean that the soul of a sense is a more exquisite thing
than what we may call the body of a sense, as developed to earthly con-
sciousness."

This is comfortable news, and we are still further gratified by
learning that the souls of the other senses are quite as amply
provided for. There is a vast Music Hall where concerts are
given, at which Beethoven kindly consents to play ; while an-
other and much more novel entertainment, called a Color Sym-
phony, is the attraction in " an adjacent town." To this come
Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, and here ".the apple- blossom
told us its secret, and the down on the pigeon's neck, and the
plume of the rose-curlew, and the robin's egg, and the hair of a
blonde woman, and the scarlet passion-flower, and the mist over
everglades, and the power of a dark eye."

After learning all these secrets those spirits of a religious
turn are regaled with a sermon from St. John the Apostle, whose
preaching has fallen off sadly since the days of his earthly exhor-
tations ; while a hint as to other heaven-born amusements may,
perhaps, be gathered from the following paragraph :

" I had been passing several hours with some friends who with myself
had been greatly interested in an event of public importance. A messen-
ger was needed to carry certain tidings to a great astronomer, known to us
of old on earth, who was at that time busied in research in a distant planet.
// was a desirable embassy, and many sought the opportunity for travel and
culture which it gave"

Shades of Boston tea-drinkers, here is your -Paradise at last !

1885.] HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION. 849

After a while our heroine, spurred on by all these oppor-
tunities for culture, grows still more ambitious and speculative.
She looks forward, she tells us, to " meeting select natures, the
distinguished of earth or Heaven; to reading history backward
by contact with its actors, and settling its knotty points by their
evidential testimony. Was I not in a world where Loyola and
Jeanne d'Arc, or Luther or Arthur, could be questioned ? " She
wonders " what occupied the ex-hod-carriers and cooks," and
what were Darwin's heavenly labors, and what became of Cali-
gula, and what " affectionate relation " subsisted between Buddha
and Christ? Not satisfied with history, she even aspires to visit
worlds peopled by great characters of fiction, and longs to meet
in the flesh, or rather in the spirit, with " Helen, and Lancelot, and
Siegfried, and Juliet, and Faust, and Dinah Morris, and the Lady
of Shalott, and Don Quixote, and Colonel Newcome, and Sam
Weller, and Uncle Tom, and Hester Prynne, and Jean Valjean."

Finally she gets just a little tired of Heaven which, perhaps,
is hardly to be wondered at and discovers that it is not satisfy-
ing all the claims of her nature. What the missing something is
we are too soon informed. Having lived forty years on earth
without a husband, this strong-minded old maid begins to feel
the need of one in Paradise, and mopes sadly over her single-
blessedness. Happily the want is supplied by the timely ap-
pearance of an old lover, who, having married and died, claims
Mary as his heavenly wife on the strength of his earthly widow
having taken to herself a second spouse. Mary, in nowise
daunted by these complicated marital relations, immediately
makes the extremely strong avowal that without him Heaven
would be Hell ; and the last scene of this undivine comedy is our
Saviour blessing their spiritual nuptials. By this time our sense
of humor is merged into a feeling of horror and disgust. And
when Mary wakes up in her own bed and coolly informs us that
the whole has been but a thirty-hours' trance, we close the book
with a devout hope that if she has any further revelations she
will not consider it necessary to make them known.

But how comes another and a different question to be an-
swered. It is easy to see Mrs. Oliphant's inability and Miss
Phelps' total unfitness to describe the wonders of Heaven ; but
have greater writers been much more successful in their trials?
Granted that the novelist, like Antaeus, loses his vigor when lift-
ed from his mother-earth, but has the poet, the veritable child
of light, reflected for us a single gleam of the divine radiance ?
" Who," asks an English critic, " is satisfied with the heaven or
VOL. XL. 54

850 HEA VEN IN RECENT FICTION. [Mar.,

with the seraphs of Milton ? Or who fails to see that if Dante's
angels are more impressive than those of Paradise Lost, this effect
is mainly due to their dignified reserve to that silence which is
so seldom broken by them, except in the very words of Scrip-
ture? " Vondel's angels are less angelic than either Milton's or
Dante's ; they are brave, sensible, warm-hearted, and occasionally
dogmatic men. Goethe's seraphic hosts sing some strong, sweet
strains ; but in their skilful outwitting of Mephistopheles they
recall to us the arbitrary kindliness of the Homeric divinities
rather than the messengers of a just and avenging God. New-
man, in the " Dream of Gerontius," has essayed what the other
poets have shrunk from attempting : he has penetrated into the
mind of a dying man, and with curious and painful insight has
revealed to us the awful touch of death upon the conscious soul.
Where can we find lines more charged with restrained power
than those in which Gerontius recognizes the final throes of dis-
solution ?

" It comes again,

That sense of ruin which is worse than pain,
That masterful negation and collapse
Of all that makes me man ; as though I bent
Over the dizzy brink
Of some sheer, infinite descent ;
Or worse, as though

Down, down for ever I was falling through
The solid framework of created things,
And needs must sink and sink
Into the vast abyss."

And, after death, what a contrast between the supreme flight
of Gerontius, borne swiftly upwards by angelic wings, and the
kicking, struggling spirits to whom the American lady intro-
duces us, trying to make their own way to Heaven ! What a
sharper contrast still between the placid complacency of Miss
Mary and the little Pilgrim, and the agony of love and shame in
which the pure soul of Gerontius lies quivering at its Master's
feet! Yet even of this strong and beautiful poem the choral
songs of the angels form by far the weakest portion. They are
in nowise equal to the utterances of Gerontius himself; they
fail to stir our hearts with any great impulse of love or joy, or
to carry us for a moment to the foot of God's hidden throne.
As we read their monotonous and somewhat dreary burden we
know that it is not thus the real angels sing in Paradise, and we
feel once more that the beauties of the holy place and of its un-
seen inhabitants may not be described in words.

1885.] HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION. 851

"The verse falls from Heaven,
Like a poised eagle whom the lightnings blast.' 1

Blinded we turn aside, after brief, piteous glances at the
brightness that is not for mortal eyes to penetrate.

" White-winged the cherubim,
Yet whiter seraphim,
Glow white with intense fire of love

Mine eyes are dim :
I look in vain above,
And miss their hymn."

So sings Christine Rossetti, while her brother is busy arrang-
ing the stars and lilies that decorate the earthliest of angels,
his " Blessed Damozel," who leans over the golden bar of Heaven
as Juliet leaned over the balcony at Verona to watch for Ro-
meo's coming. It is hard to quarrel with her, she is so beau-
tiful, with the still light in her eyes, and her young bosom warm
against the heavenly ramparts. She is no saint ; she does not
even aspire to sanctity ; she has strayed into Heaven like a lovely
lost child, and waits, weeping, for her lover's advent. Yet in her
purity and simplicity she is more nearly akin to the dwellers in
that holy abode than any one to whom the New England or the
Old England novelist has presented us. She seeks no self-cul-
ture, she learns no universal language, she does not think about
herself at all. She cares no more for Beethoven than for Leo-
nardo da Vinci, and if there is a secret in the hair of blonde
women she is not eager to discover it. Her Heaven is not peo-
pled with clever novelists and scientific lecturers, nor with neat
little battalions of Federal soldiers, nor with shades of Sam
Weller and Dinah Morris. When her lover joins her they

" Will seek the groves
Where the Lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret, and Rosalys."

She is sure that the " dear Mother " will approve their love and
lead them hand-in-hand into the presence of her divine Son.

" There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me :
Only to live, as once on earth,

At peace only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now,

Together, I and he."

852 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

But she does not say that Heaven will be Hell if this should
not come to pass, nor has she any practical aspirations towards
celestial housekeeping.

It is easy to jest over follies that should grieve us, easy to
laugh when the graver questions lie behind unanswered ; but
what must be the state of those minds which can accept with
satisfaction an eternity shorn of all that could make eternity en-
durable? No joy that it is in our power to conceive can outlive
time ; and when we project our minds into eternity, and try to
realize the dreadful completeness of the word, we shrink appalled
from its full meaning, and the human part of our nature sighs for
rest and annihilation. To walk through green fields, to gather
flowers, to listen to concerts, to improve our minds for ever, and
ever, and ever ! Why, Watts' dreariest verses offer no more
melancholy prospect! Well might we exclaim with the Macaria
of Euripides :

" For if there too

We shall have cares, poor mortals doomed to die,
I know not whither we can turn."

Yet this is the modern Christian improvement upon the ever-
lasting nothingness craved by Buddhist solitaries ! This the
fulness of rest and joy promised us after life's fretful work is
over ! A Heaven without a God, an eternity without the divine
radiance to fill its vastness, an immortal soul without the love of
Christ to feed its immortality !

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF
THE CONTINENT. By George Bancroft. The Author's Last Revision.
Volume V. New York : Appleton & Co. 1885.

We have now before us the fifth volume of Mr. Bancroft's history.
During the past year we have had much to say in relation to the present
edition of this valuable work much that was favorable and some things
that were very much the other way. Our complaints against Mr. Bancroft's
history lie principall)' against his method of treating the colonial period
and the Catholic element in the history of the United States. His intense
Protestantism, his recent illiberality towards Catholics, and his attempting
to make our country a living monument erected by Divine Providence in
honor of Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformationists, are so patent in
these recent volumes as to destroy the influence of his writings with en-
lightened and fair-minded students of history, and to result in the end in

1885.] NE W PUBLICA TIONS. 853

the author's last revision being permanently shelved while the unrevised
editions will be held in more esteem. While Protestantism is dying out as
a creed or system of religion ; while its pulpit and nave that is to say, its
ministers and its people are losing all distinctive faith, are quite satisfied
with preaching and accepting as sufficient for all religious purposes the
broad principles of Christianity ; while the modern teachings of infidel
scientists of the schools of Darwin, Spencer, and such like have under-
mined the faith both of the ministers and people of Protestantism ; while,
indeed, it is a generally admitted fact that Protestantism is a failure, Mr.
Bancroft comes forward as the champion of an effete idea. What Bismarck
is among statesmen Mr. Bancroft aspires to be among historians. Some
have supposed that the policies, aspirations, and tendencies of these two
distinguished men have one common source, for it is since Mr. Bancroft's
residence at Berlin as American minister that his mind and his pen have
become so deeply imbued with the most malignant form of anti-Catholic
Protestantism. It was while he and Bismarck exchanged the diplomatic
assurances of the most distinguished consideration, held long conferences
at the Berlin Office of State on the relations of what they flattered them-
selves were Protestant Germany and Protestant America, were dining
and wining together, basking in the sunshine of imperial condescension,
and dozing or dreaming occasionally under prosaic sermons in a fashion-
able church, that Mr. Bancroft's mind, unconsciously perhaps to himself,
became dis-Americanized and at the same time became Germanic. These
two gentlemen may have endeavored to study past history, but they have
misunderstood or have ignored the true current history of their own
times. Catholicity is a living and regenerating power in both empires. In
Germany the great minister and man of blood and iron finds himself now
and again defeated by votes of the German Parliament under the leader-
ship erf the Catholic champion, Windthorst ; and, in spite of his inexorable
policy, the Catholic Church is assuming her old status in Prussia and in
the empire. Mr. Bancroft, on the other hand, has, from his literary circle
in Washington, witnessed an assembly in the sister-city of Baltimore that
shows the deep and broad foundations of the Catholic Church throughout
this great republic to be impregnable against his assaults, and that, in the
midst of Protestant infidelity, the Catholic Church is the only truly pro-
gressive body and the only bulwark of faith and morals now left in the
universe. His boasted Puritanism in New England, and his respected
Episcopalianism in Virginia and the Carolinas, have both lost vitality and
faith. The religion of the Calverts and the little handful of Maryland
Catholics wedged in between the two, and offering an asylum to the per-
secuted flying from both, has grown, like the mustard-seed, until we behold
in a national council of this church, so distasteful to Mr. Bancroft, the re-
presentation of about eight millions of believing Christians in the persons
of twelve archbishops, fifty-one bishops, and ten vicars-apostolic or ad-
ministrators, from seventy-three chief ecclesiastical organizations, besides
mitred abbots, numerous religious orders and congregations represented by
their superiors, and delegates from a body of about six thousand priests.
It is not the numbers attending this great assemblage, but it is
the' vast religious body which these represent and govern in religion,
the power of faith represented by their splendid temples and numerous
churches, of hope represented by their progress made and making, and of

854 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

charity represented by their colleges, schools, convents, asylums, hospitals,
and homes for every kind of human misery it is from such signs as these
that the historian of the present day will judge whether the great and en-
during institutions of this republic and its future stability are based upon
the so-called principles of Protestantism transplanted, during the colonial
period, from Europe to the virgin soil of America, as Mr. Bancroft contends,
or are traceable to another and opposite principle.

From our study of Mr. Bancroft's history we think the whole theory of
his work is utterly erroneous. To him the so-called Reformation is the
fountain-source of everything good, great, and enduring in the colonies,
and in the Union which the colonies formed. To our mind all these things
are traceable back to, and founded principally upon, the Catholic history
of England ; the principles of equity and justice and law constituting the
common law of that country when Catholic; the political institutions that
had their origin and strength in Catholic days and in Catholic reigns, in
the virtue of loyalty, which is a Catholic virtue, and in those great Catholic
theological principles which define the source and origin of political power,
the correlative rights and duties of governments and the governed, and the
line of separation between the temporal and the spiritual. We will con-
fine ourselves to the strict historical field of inquiry in determining the
period in English history in which the institutions we boast of might be
claimed to have had their origin. We ask Mr. Bancroft whether the prin-
ciple of a representative government, parliaments representing the people,
is derived from the " glorious" Reformation of the sixteenth century or
from the established institutions and customs of the ancient Catholic peo-
ple of England ; whether it is derived from the Diet of Worms or the
Witenagemote of the Anglo-Saxons ? We ask him whether the principle
of no taxation without representation, upon which our War of Independence
was fought and won, was derivable from any other source than the common
law of Catholic England ? The modern Bills of Rights, and, greatest of all,
the Declaration of Independence, are based upon the Magna Charta, or the
great Bill of Rights wrested from a tyrant by a Catholic archbishop at
the head of Catholic noblemen. So, too, with the trial by jury, the open
and permanent courts of justice, the superiority of the civil over the mili-
tary power, and all those great old principles of government, justice, and
right which constitute the glory and the durability of our government and
of our nation. What rational or unbiassed mind can see in the Constitution
and institutions of the United States any principle, maxim, or custom that
is traceable to the Reformation ? What single fundamental principle is there
embedded therein that is not traceable to the old Catholic common law and
constitution of England ? As a matter of history the Protestant sovereigns
of England during the period of American colonization were the most con-
spicuous violators of constitutional right, were the champions of arbitrary
power and the violators of civil and religious liberty. It was they who,
prior to the Revolution, had overturned nearly every charter granted to an
American colony. James II., a Catholic, with all his faults which were
rather the faults of the Protestant line of sovereigns of whose dynasty he
was a part was noted for his national sentiments and for his true patriotism.
It was a Protestant king and parliament that protected the slave-trade,
and it was the Protestant Georges whose arbitrary conduct was the im-
mediate cause of American revolt. It was the American Revolution that

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 855

arrested this arbitrary rule of the Protestant sovereigns of England and re-
stored the government of the colonies, then the United States, to the prin-
ciples of the ancient English constitution and common law.

We are led to these reflections by the whole series of Mr. Bancroft's
volumes from the first even to the fifth ; and we presume the sixth, when
it comes, will not differ from the others. We supposed, when we took up
the present volume, that we would have no further need to animadvert
on the strong Protestant bias of Mr. Bancroft a bias which has unjustly
colored his history in the preceding volumes. This volume is devoted en-
tirely to the War of the Revolution, and we supposed no Protestantism
would be preached in detailing the movements of armies and the results of
campaigns. And yet even here we are disappointed ; and there is no can-
did person that will accuse us of misrepresenting Mr. Bancroft in accusing
him of perverting the history of the United States into a vehicle of secta-
rianism, when he reads even his history of the Revolutionary war. In
the table of contents for chapter ix. is the heading, " Protestantism and
Freedom of Mind." We turn to the text of chapter ix., at page 121, and
read under this heading the following truly historical sentence: " The estab-
lishment of liberty of conscience, which brought with it liberty of speech and of
the press, was, in the several States, the fruit, not of philosophy, but of the lovt
of Protestantism for the ' open book.' " A more absurd piece of nonsense could
not have been uttered by a sophomore at a Protestant college on com-
mencement day. We felt like dropping the fifth volume after reading this.
But no ; this is Bancroft's history of the United States. We seem to have
no other history of the United States, and we must read of Washington and'
victory in these volumes or not at all. We feel that we must now say a
single word to our own Catholic people.

The most beautiful part of the history of our country is that which treats
of Catholic heroism, self-sacrifice, and devotion. Why, then, is there not
a Catholic history of the United States? Or. if not a Catholic history, why
have we not a history of the United States which at least brings out the
Catholic chapters with truth and justice and classic effect, and that traces
our laws and political institutions to Catholic rather than Protestant
sources? Are we unable to hold our own in this country with such mate-
rials at our service ? Why are the laborers in the great field of Catholic
American history so few, and why the few so little appreciated ? What
means can we adopt to arrest this evil and to draw forth the talent and
labor of Catholic historians ?

While writing these lines our eye falls upon a stirring appeal from the
pens of Dr. John Gilmary Shea and Dr. Richard H. Clarke in behalf of
the very cause we are now urging. These gentlemen propose as a means
for promoting Catholic historical research and writings the establishment
of a United States Catholic Historical Society. We earnestly second this
work. The field of labor proposed by this society is thus set forth in its
own words :

" This society is formed for social, literary, and historical purposes ; and the particular
business and object thereof shall be the discovery, collection, and preservation of historical ma-
terials relating to the introduction, establishment, and progress of the Catholic Church and
Faitli in the United States, to the history and progress of Christian art and civilization, to Catho-
lic American bibliography, and to the evidences of Catholic Christianity furnished by American
ethnology, linguistics, and political developaient ; to the discussion of subjects and the publica-

856 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Mar.,

tion of essays, documents, and rare books relating to the above, and the maintenance of an his-
torical library and museum of historical relics."

With such objects in view and successfully carried out this society
should become a great educational institution of history ; it should foster a
taste for Catholic history, habits of research, and a talent for historical writ-
ing, criticism, and correction. It should result in our having a great Ca-
tholic history of the United States, one that will correct for posterity the
errors and partisan statements of Mr. Bancroft.

Mr. Bancroft's style of historical writing is of the modern school. It is
florid, rhetorical, and dramatic. In this it follows Macaulay, Prescott, and
other modern historians ; and in this also it presents a contrast to the
dignified and impartial pages of Lingard. The evil of this modern style is
that it gives loose reign to the imagination, and leads many authors to sub-
stitute rhetoric for facts, the drama for history. Mr. Bancroft goes very
far in following this school. He has dropped all the foot-notes and autho-
rities given in his previous editions, and discourses history as if he were
inspired, as if he were the Muse of History herself. Alluring as are the
charms of such a style, it is destructive to historical accuracy ; and if we
cannot mount Dr. Dryasdust on the back of Pegasus, then chacun d son
metier ! let us have the doctor for our history and keep the winged steed
for our flights into cloudland where he belongs.

CATHOLIC BELIEF : A Short and Simple Exposition of Catholic Doctrine.
By the Very Rev. Joseph Faa di Bruno, D.D. Revised and adapted to
the United States by Rev. Louis A. Lambert. New York : Benziger
Bros. 1885.

In the introduction which he has written to this new Exposition of
Catholic Doctrine the bishop of Buffalo commends it as at once simple
and accurate, and especially as entirely free from all polemical acerbity,
and therefore as well adapted to be put in the hands of Protestants. The
great and deserved success of Archbishop Gibbons' Faith of mir Fathers is
an evidence of the great value of this zeal which is animated by charity.
It is all-important to remember in what a different position those outside
the church in our own times stand towards her from that in which those
stood who led the revolt against her ; and it is these latter which theology
as studied in text-books has almost necessarily in view. To help those
outside, the power to understand them which springs from sympathy with
them and from an appreciation of their difficulties is absolutely necessary.
That the writer of this little work has this power is proved by the success
which it has had. The preface is dated Whitsunday, 1884 ; and we are told
that eighty thousand copies have been sold in England. It seems almost
impossible to believe that so many should have been sold in so short a
time; the preface has doubtless been appended to a later editioYi. How-
ever this may be, such success is the best testimony to its excellence.
And it is not hard to see for one's self why it has succeeded Dr. Faa is
full of sympathy and of respect for those for whom he writes, and of an
evidently earnest and single desire to impart to them the truth he himself
knows and loves. And this sympathy is not a mere sentiment, but has led
him to master the difficulties of those outside, and to give to them their
appropriate solution in clear, forcible, and dignified argument, and at the
same time in a simple and pleasing style. We do not remember ever to

1885.] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 8 5 7

have seen the necessity for an interpreter of Holy Scripture so clearly,
forcibly, and briefly put as on pp. 49, 50. The last paragraph, too, of the
chapter on Holy Baptism contains just what an average earnest Protestant
would wish to know as to the place of this sacrament in the religious .life
of Catholics. Great use of Holy Scripture is made throughout. The
special wants this book is adapted -to supply are those of what are called
the orthodox Protestant churches. It is not meant primarily for Ritual-
ists and High-Churchmen (though it would have its value for them), and
it would not help a rationalist, except in so far as a clear exposition of the
truth will help any one. The second part contains a number of prayers,
a. Method of Preparing for Confession, the Creed of Pius IV., and other
things useful for preparation for reception into the church ; while the
third part embraces a number of miscellaneous matters, extracts from
Catholic and Protestant writers (including our old friend the New Zea-
lander on London Bridge), and explanations of more difficult points. Fa-
ther Lambert, who has himself done such good work, has revised this
edition for the United States; but as we have not the English edition, we
cannot give him credit for his share. We suppose, however, that he is the
author of the interesting account of American converts 1 , and that the se-
lections on American subjects in the third part are due to him. The only
criticism we have to make is that the account of Galileo's condemnation is,
in our judgment, inadequate; it scarcely brings out the true state of the
case, and consequently does not give the real solution.

LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. By John Au-
gustus O'Shea. With a Portrait of the Author. 2 vols. I2mo. Lon-
don : Ward & Downey. 1885.

Special correspondents have been coming into prominence lately.
Th-ree of them Mr. Cameron, of the London Standard, and. Mr. Herbert
and Colonel Burnaby, of the London /to/ were killed in the recent battles
in the Soudan. Mr. Edmund O'Donovan, of the Daily News, was annihi-
lated in a previous campaign with General Hicks' army on the same
ground ; and Mr. Vizetelly, of the London Graphic, has been carried away
by the Mahdi and his fate is unknown. It is a somewhat sombre fame; for
they are a small body of men and this is a big fatality bill. But it is a vin-
dication of the special correspondent. He has not been given the right
kind of credit. Lord Wolseley called him a drone who "eats the rations
of fighting men and does no work." The public were given to look on his
business with an army as a charming holiday affair. But the injured worts
is at last beginning to assert himself. He is writing books. Poor O' Don-
ovan wrole the most valuable as well as delightful book of travels ot
recent years about his discovery of the Merv Oasis. He is delivering lec-
tures see the doyen of the profession, Mr. Sala, at present in our own
country. He is marrying million-heiresses teste Mr. Archibald Forbes.
And he is getting shot in appreciable quantities.

Few special correspondents' books, we fancy, will surpass in charm the
one which is now before us by Mr. John Augustus O'Shea. It \v.,s Mr.
O'Shea's lot to have lived several years in Paris and have become a writer
of feuilleton in French in the Parisian press before he became attach-
ed to the great London daily, the Standard. Perhaps it is to this cir-
cumstance that Mr. O'Shea's style owes a captivating airiness, a light-

858 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

ness of touch that we deemed impossible in any other language but French.
But yet this quality must be in the innate character of the writer (" le style
c'est I'hojnme"), for his original personality influences more than the mere
form. The book is the freshest and pleasantest collection of desultory
reminiscences. The opening chapters give graphic sketches of Parisian
life in the closing years of the French Empire. Of most of the notabilities
who made the history and the literature of those days we have thumb-nail
sketches from life, an original anecdote or two about each giving a more
vivid impression than pages of analysis. One of the best things in the
book is the description of the trial of Prince Pierre Bonaparte for the
shooting of Victor Noir. There. is a capital account of Rochefort's rise
into fame, which contains many personal particulars that have never been
elsewhere published. From Paris the scene changes to 'Munich ; from
Munich to the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Mr. O'Shea's description of
which in the Standard was the first important notice attracted by the per-
formance outside of Bavaria, and was the signal for the spread of the fame
it has since attained. We are introduced to every grade of society, from
London prize-fighters to Swabian kings emperors, general officers, the
gamins of the boulevards, artists, authors, lion-tamers, circus-riders, Fenian
head-centres. There are anecdotes of Dickens, Dumas, Thackeray, Hugo,
Paul de Cassagnac, the Empress Eugenie, Tom Hood. A little anecdote in
which the latter figures will give an idea of the author's esprit :

" Hood was fond of chaffing me on my bizarre English, and his chaff was returned to the best
of my power. I laid a plan to take my satisfaction, and, having armed myself the previous
night, brought on a discussion apropos of nothing on the old subject, remarking that there were
very few Englishmen who were really familiar with their own language, and small blame to
them.

" Nonsense ! " said Hood. " Pooh ! pooh ! " exclaimed Crawford Wilson. " How can you
know anything about it?" remarked somebody else; "you're only a wild Irishman with a
coating of French polish."

"Well," I answered, " that is my opinion, at all events, and I am a bit of a zetetic."

" A what ? " exclaimed Wilson.

I took no notice, but I said to Henry Lee that I supposed they were about to afford me
one of their customary examples of the probabilities of zoomorphism.

" By the bye, Lee," I added, " hasn't that fellow who has just come in a neck like a yunx ?"

" He has," answered Lee ; " but don't let him hear you."

" What language is the coon talking ? " cried Bierce. >_

" English, my friend," I answered ; " but as you are only an American, I don't wonder at
your complexion growing xanthic."

Tom Hood burst into such a happy convulsion of laughter. He had found me out.

"Boys," he said, when he recovered himself, "this is too bad! Zetetic, zoomorphism,
yunx, xanthic x, y, z. Don't you see ? O'Shea is reading the English dictionary at last, and,
with his incurable cussedness, as Bierce would say, he has begun at the wrong side of the book."

Every page has its anecdote, like a sip of champagne. Open at random
it is a duelling story of Rochefort's. The editor of the Lanterne was met
by one of his antagonists with written excuses instead of a sword. A few
days afterwards Rochefort met a fair friend of the weak-kneed champion
on the boulevards and asked her how he had got on since his duel. '' Not
too well," answered the lady; " he is still suffering somewhat." " Poor fel-
low !" remarked the pitiless wit ; " I suppose his apologies have reopened."
It is impossible to convey an idea of the subtle, airy charm which pervades
this pleasant book. Much of its matter is of historical value, for Mr.
O'Shea saw great events with his own eyes. He was with the French

1885.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 859

army in the Franco-Prussian war, and was in Paris during its siege by the
Prussians and during the Commune. To give an idea of his more serious
style we quote the following spirited description of the " birth of the Third
Republic " :

" As I walked towards the Place de la Concorde after breakfast a troop of mounted gen-
darmes, some eighty men, was drawn up in single line, under the command of an officer with a
pince-nez, across the entrance to the bridge which leads to the Corps Legislatif. There were
knots of excited people, many of them in the uniform of the National Guard, scattered over the
broad space with its statues and fountains, and I learned that an extraordinary meeting of the
Chamber had been called to discuss the crisis. I turned back and entered the Place du Car-
rousel from the Rue de Rivoli. It was empty, but in the Court of Honor could be seen the vol-
tigeurs of the Imperial Guard men of the skeleton dep6t on sentry, and others pacing in con-
versation up and down the flagstones beside their stacked rifles. A half battery of field artil-
lery was in position. The tricolor was floating over the palace, a token that the empress was
in the Tuileries. I retraced my steps towards the Place de la Concorde, and at the intersection
of the Rue de 1'Echelle a procession of noisy hobbledehoys, with a red flag flaunting in the van,
came bursting down the boulevards. It was the advance guard of Belleville ; shops were hur-
riedly shut. There were shouts of ' Vive la France,' but shouts louder and more frequent of
' Vive la Republique.' The Place de la Concorde was more crowded than before, and some of
the people had approached the line of mounted gendarmes and began talking to the horsemen
in a friendly fashion, saying the empire was at an end and the only thought of Frenchmen
now should be France, and that soldiers, instead of trying to overawe the civilians, should re-
serve their swords for the national enemy. The gendarmes answered curtly.

" I pitied the officer with the pince-nez ; he looked nervous and vacillating, and his lips
twitched. One could see that the steps of the Corps Legislatif were black with a palpitating
throng. The Chamber was in session, but still the bridge was barred. There arrived upon the
scene an unarmed battalion of National Guards to make a peaceful demonstration, but the
officer of gendarmes was firm for this once ; he would not let them pass. A moment after I saw
sabres flash in the sunshine. I ensconced myself behind a statue. I feared there was about to
be a charge, and this was inviting ground for such a manoeuvre level and open, with few ob-
structions. The National Guards did not persevere ; the officer had merely meant to frighten
them, but one National Guard had somehosv received a cut on the head, and his comrades,
swathing him with pocket-handkerchiefs, hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him back
towards the Rue de Rivoli to employ him as a species of living appeal to conflict a common
artifice in French revolutions. But more battalions of the National Guard pressed on, and the
crowd got so near to the gendarmes, surrounding their horses, that opposition was out of the
question. The cordon was broken through and the multitude surged over the bridge. The
linesmen on duty at the Corps Legislatif fraternized with the people and held up the butts of
their rifles in sign of amity. Amid a hurricane of tumults the dethronement of the emperor
was decreed and the Third Republic ushered into existence to the sponsorship of a mad, up-
roarious, exultant rabble. A Provisional Government' was improvised and an adjournment
made to the Hotel de Ville. There was no effusion of blood save that of the solitary National
Guard, who may have received his cut on the head* from a fall. . . . While these scenes were
being enacted the empress had made her escape from the Tuileries. . . .**

Mr. O'Shea's second volume closes with the opening of the siege of
Paris. He has left the siege itself and the Commune untouched, and has
not related many of the subsequent historical events in other countries,
from Sweden to Hindostan, of which he was a witness. If he publishes
another volume dealing with these it ought to surpass in interest even the
book before us.

HYMNS AND VERSES. By Lady Catherine Petre. London : Burns & Gates ;
New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.

All these poems without exception are sacred in their character. They
are arranged in the order of composition, beginning with verses written at
the early age of fifteen and ending with " The Son of a King for me," pub-
lished in the Month for March, 1882. The conver^pn of the authoress to

860 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Mar., 1 88 5 .

the Catholic Church gives occasion to their division into two parts. The
first part, " Written before Conversion," is very interesting, as exhibiting,
not of set purpose, but incidentally, the steps by which she gradually drew
nearer and nearer to the church. The very first poem, however, like Car-
dinal Newman's Rosary on his theme-book, contains what we may per-
haps call a " foregleam " of her future home. These hymns and verses are
marked by an earnest spirit of devotion not a merely sentimental devotion,
but that of one who has evidently made it her first and life-long object to
conform her mind and heart to our Lord's. While there is nothing that
in the least savors of extravagance or obtrusiveness, there is manifested an
intimate personal familiarity with the higher walks of true Christian per-
fection, its trials and consolations. Looking at their external form, the
versification is in general pleasing, correct, harmonious. The poems
" Magdalene " and " The Son of a King for me " rise to a higher level and
show decided power.

T. LUCRETII CARI DE NATURA RERUM LIBRI SEX. With an Introduction
and Notes to Books I., III., and V. By Francis W. Kelsey, M.A., Pro-
fessor of Latin in Lake Forest University. Boston : John Allyn. 1884.

This edition contains the complete text of the six books of Lucretius
that of Munro's third edition but only three books have been annotated.
In the grammatical notes the author has adopted the excellent plan of re-
ferring, with number of paragraph, etc., to well-known grammars. We are
afraid, however, that these notes are not sufficiently numerous, especially
towards the end. On the other hand, some of the biographical notes (that,
for example, on Memmius) are too long : for such information a biographi-
cal dictionary should be consulted. The main object, however, which Mr.
Kelsey has had in view has been the philosophy of Lucretius, to point out
in what respect it agrees with the materialistic and agnostic philosophy of
our own times, and in what respect it differs from the latter. For this pur-
pose his notes contain numerous references to the writings of Haeckel,
Biichner, Darwin, Tyndall, and other acknowledged expositors of this phi-
losophy, and also brief extracts from their writings. He has not been con-
tent with this, but has given, as fully as the scope of such a work will permit
the answers to the arguments adduced by Lucretius, thus supplying, along
with what we must consider, the poison, its antidote. Some of these notes
contain a very well-put and succinct statement of the arguments on both
sides. An account of " Atomism, ^Ancient and Modern," has been prefixed,
in which are stated with great clearness and precision the main positions of
this theory of the universe and the substantial identity of the ancient with
the modern. "The materialistic evolution of our time is simply the ma-
terialism of Lucretius, wrought over in accordance with the scientific
methods and adapted to the scientific knowledge of the day. Subjected to
the scrutiny of careful criticism, it is found to be not a whit nearer to a
settlement of the fundamental questions of existence than the system of
the Roman poet." In these words the author sums up the results of his
study of the same theory under two presentations. With one or two re-
servations we heartily commend this scholarly work, believing it will be
very useful, and we hope that so many others will be of the same opinion
as to induce Mr. Kelsey to publish the notes to the second, fourth, and
sixth books. We should add that an analysis is given to all the books,
which will be of great s^vice to the student.

vol.40

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